Mankind Vs, People

My Plans For Saturday

What are my plans for Saturday?  

Random Stuff

What's up? 

I suppose I could comment on whatever damn lying fuckery Li'l Donald Trump has been up to in the last week, since yesterday, in the last hour or 5 minutes but you guys know the drill.

BREAKING NEWS!
Donald Trump lied about something 15 minutes ago!  

BREAKING NEWS!
Donald Trump is lying about something right now!  

BREAKING NEWS!
Donald Trump will lie about something 15 minutes from now!  

So you know what? Let's do ourselves a favor and find any damn thing else in the world to talk about. 

TGI Friday's Potato Skins may not actually contain potatoes.  This refers to the potato skin chips that can be found in vending machines around the world which are alleged to contain potato flakes and potato starch but no actual potato skins. 

This allegation is not tied to what I am sure are the completely wholesome and very real potato ingredients that can be found in the potato skins served at your friendly neighborhood TGI Friday's.  

I haven't been inside a Friday's in years. Andrea and I used to go rather regularly; there was a fish & chips dinner on the menu that our daughter Randie would actually eat but then it went away. Personally, I find Friday's a bit overstimulating but I did rather like their hamburgers. 

I have had the TGI Friday's Potato Skins and I didn't need a lawsuit or a scientist's report to tell me there's no actual potato skins in there.  

Next, a real life woman with super powers?   

Jo Cameron, age 71, is a woman who does not feel pain.
Cuts, burns, fractures — these did not hurt either. In fact, it often took the smell of burning flesh or her husband identifying blood for her to notice something wrong. And it's not just an immunity to physical pain. She also never feels anxiety.   

Scientists suspect Ms. Cameron has a genetic mutation

Jo Cameron is Wolverine.  

I can't imagine being without pain, physical or mental. As I get older, I have to plan things, pace myself as I do something simple like stand up or sit down because I know it's gonna hurt. 

And don't get me started on anxiety.  

I am rather jealous of Jo Cameron.  

Elsewhere...

While your area high school theater class is putting on another version of The Crucible, Our Town or (maybe if you go the budget for it) Oklahoma, a high school in New Jersey has taken as taken an interesting turn with a school play based on the 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien. 

Yes, really!  

And no less than Sigourney Weaver, who played Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in the movie, has endorsed this production.  

Click here for a video clip.  

I bet it gets a lot of attention for theater from people who may not have given the school play a second's thought. 

I want to see a school play based on Spaceballs.  

OK, that's all I got for today. 

Remember to be good to one another.  

Have You Found Jesus?

The Mueller Aftermath

On Monday, I posted that in the wake of Robert Mueller delivering his report to the Attorney General that Mueller was never going to save us all from the very, very stupid man currently occupying the White House.

Sorry, boys and girls, no Trumpian collusion with the Russians.

That’s not to say there was nothing going on. But I as I noted in Monday’s post, “I think to prove collusion, Robert Mueller would've needed a more defined quid quo pro between the Russians and the Trump team, like Donald Trump Jr. slipping a Russian operative the password to John Panetta's email account.”   Russia did intersect with Trump World on several occasions but it seemed to me early on that such interactions bordered on a comedy of errors with the Trump operatives being hapless operatives who had nothing to give the Russians that they didn’t already have. 

Well, as much as I completely and utterly despise the very, very stupid man currently occupying the White House, it is a good thing that it has been determined that the whoever might be occupying the White House is not actively and deliberately conspiring with a foreign power in opposition to American interests. 

The thing is, what do we really know? Well, we don’t know squat when it comes to what is in Robert Mueller’s report other than some select quotes provided in the 4 page summary from Attorney General William Barr.

And I don’t want to indulge in paranoia but it bears remembering that William Barr even has the job of Attorney General because Li’l Donnie fired Jeff Sessions for not having his back. Trump wanted an Attorney General that was in HIS corner, looking after Trump’s interests. Barr was already on record from over a year ago disagreeing with the mission of the Special Counsel. Barr could not just chuck the whole report into a trash can but he gave it a good soft-sell spin.

For Trump and his more sniveling, ass kissing sycophants, it’s been more of a hard sell. “Total exoneration!” Trump bellowed even though Barr himself never indicated anything of the sort. Nonetheless, “total exoneration!” was the rallying cry from Sarah Sanders, KelleyAnn Conway, Rudy Guiliani and a host of Trump’s ball lickers. 

Fox News began partying on Friday when the news came out that Robert Mueller delivered his report on Friday, 2 whole days before William Barr released his summary on Sunday afternoon. The partisan pundits on Fox were breaking out the noisemakers and confetti on Friday, acting on the assumption that Mueller’s report delivery did not coincide with any indictments to suggest that the report was good news for their dark lord and master, Vooldemort Donald Trump.

In the days that followed the release of Barr’s letter, there was been a full court press to push the message of  “total exoneration!” as well calling out any politician, pundit or journalist who had ever so much insinuated that Trump or his crew ever even so much as considered the remotest possibility of colluding with Russia. Apparently, Trump has presented the news networks with a list of people who should not be allowed back on the air unless they are prepared to repudiate and apologize for prior negative statements made about Trump and collusion with Russia.

Trump may have won this round and he is (not at all unexpectedly) being a total dick about it. Declaring a total victory where it is not warranted. Demanding retribution against his enemies.  

Basically behaving the boorish way of a very, very stupid man.   

An Aquaman Adventure

Today, Aquaman is released on Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray Ultra HD and DVD.

It's been available for digital download since March 5th so I imagine no one cares about this.

To commemorate the release of Aquaman the movie on old fashioned home video, let's take a look back at when Aquaman was just a guy in a comic book.

And he wasn't even the star of that comic book. 

This story is when Aquaman was merely a back up in Adventure Comics. The story is written by Paul Levitz, the future writer of Legion of Super Heroes and future publisher of DC Comics. This episode is only Paul's 2nd published story and his first foray into super heroes. 

The art was by Mike Grell who was wowing readers like me over in Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes. I remembered idly thumbing through this issue of Adventure and pleasantly surprised to find Mike's art work inside.  

Mera's usually green outfit is colored purple on the last page for some reason.  

The villain on page 2 is Black Manta, the death ray zapping bad guy from the Aquaman movie.   

Aquaman would return to Adventure Comics some issues later, now in the lead spot with Paul Levitz writing (mostly; he needed a helping hand from Gerry Conway and Marty Pasko on some issues) with art by Jim Aparo.  Aparo had drawn Aquaman in his solo title earlier in the 1970s.  

Scans are courtesy of the ol' Groove Agent from Diversions of the Groovy Kind. Thank you kindly, good sir. My copy of that issue of Adventure Comics is buried deep and probably not in that good of a condition anymore. 

The No Collusion Conclusion

For two years now, there has been a fever pitch intensity surrounding the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election, possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign and potential obstruction of justice by Donald Trump against that investigation.   

For two years: 

What is Robert Mueller up to?
What does Robert Mueller know? 
Robert Mueller is getting close to Trump now!
Robert Mueller is going to lower the boom on Donald Trump!
Robert Mueller is going to save us all!!!

Sorry, folks, it looks like Robert Mueller is NOT going to save us all.

Sadly, I don't think Robert Mueller was ever going to save us all. 

Despite the efforts of Donald Trump and his enabling ass kissers in his immediate circle jerk of advisers in the White House and on Fox News to categorize Robert Mueller  as some kind of crazed witch hunter on an errant mission of Democratic vengeance, the reputation Robert Mueller had going into this thing was that of a tough as nails guy who played by a very firm and well defined rule book. 

On the subject of collusion, my first guess is that Robert Mueller may have found many instances of the two worlds intersecting, the world of Donald Trump's campaign and the world of Russians seeking to put their thumbs on the scales of the American electoral process.  My second guess is that Robert Mueller did not find the level of cooperation and coordination between the two worlds to needed define their interactions as collusion within the strictest parameters of the law defining collusion.  

Now this is just the opinion of a random blog writer looking in from way, way, way outside but it seems that in the bits and pieces that did come out  about Russian and Trumpian interactions, it seemed that Trump operatives always came off as a bit hapless, lacking coordination and intelligence as they stumbled into contact with the Russians. In short, it never seemed to me that the Russians received any help or guidance from the Trump campaign towards their mission to disrupt the 2016 campaign for President. If the Russians were in fact putting their thumb on the scale to help Donald Trump with a cyber campaign of social media disinformation, they really didn't need Donald Trump's help to do that.  

I think to prove collusion, Robert Mueller would've needed a more defined quid quo pro between the Russians and the Trump team, like Donald Trump Jr. slipping a Russian operative the password to John Panetta's email account.  

I don't think Robert Mueller was ever going to find that level of cooperation. And from what we know from the Attorney General William Barr and his letter to Congress on Mueller's report, he did not find that. 

As far as collusion was concerned, I don't think Robert Mueller was ever going to save us all. 

On the subject of obstruction of justice, the water is a bit murkier.  Mueller’s team drew no conclusions about whether Trump illegally obstructed justice according to Barr. So Barr and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, offered their own conclusion, that there was insufficient evidence to establish that the president committed obstruction of justice. 

It seemed to me (again, just some schmuck with a blog looking at this from way, way, way outside) that Donald Trump's blundering efforts to blunt, slow or stop the investigation were morally and ethically questionable but not anything that that was outside the strictest parameters of what a president legally can or cannot do. 

Robert Mueller, a tough as nails guy who played by a very firm and well defined rule book, was not here to venture beyond the strictest parameters of the law. 

Yes, Donald Trump is a very, very stupid man who should never have been president. Perhaps under the hard, reserved flinty exterior, Robert Mueller may have felt that way too. But Robert Mueller's job wasn't about this feelings. 

When it came to saving us from the very, very stupid man who should never have been president, Robert Mueller was never going to save us all. 
_________________________________

Alas, the Anteaters.  UC Irvine did not advance past Oregon in the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament.  

Robert Mueller cannot save the Anteaters.   

ANTEATERS ARE STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

As I noted in this blog post from Tuesday, with regards to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, I noted my intention that in addition to the Duke Blue Devils, I would be pulling for UC Irvine because...well...

ANTEATERS, dude!!!!!!!!!!

On Friday, the underdog UC Irvine Anteaters defeated the higher seeded Kansas State to advance to the next stage of the tournament.  

ANTEATERS ARE STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

Today, the UC Irvine Anteaters face the Mighty Ducks of Oregon! 

ANTEATERS versus DUCKS, dude!!!!!!!!!!

This is a tough call. I like ducks but c'mon....

ANTEATERS, dude!!!!!!!!!!

Prognosticators are given the Ducks a slight edge, a 51% chance to win over the Anteaters. 

OK. 

But for now...

ANTEATERS ARE STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

Queer Eye

After finishing up Umbrella Academy (which I am still angry about, by the way), daughter Randie and I were joined by mom/wife Andrea to turn our attention to elsewhere on Netflix to burn through 8 episodes of season 3 of Queer Eye.

 

The premise of Queer Eye is 5 gay guys (the Fab Five) come into the life of some hapless schmuck and de-schmuck him. Better clothes, a better haircut, better food, better place to live and a better way to live await our no longer hapless person at the end of a week.

 

A few things that strike me about Queer Eye.

 

The first two seasons saw the Fab Five frequent the environs of rural Georgia; this seasons, our gang of gay is hanging out in Kansas. The upshot is that these decidedly cosmopolitan gay gents are helping people in areas that you might not expect to take kindly to cosmopolitan gay gents.  For the most part, this has not been an issue. No southern or mid-western country folk have yet fired up their torches to run these interloping gays out of their God fearing towns.  The arrival of the Fab Five is usually cause for uproarious hellos and bear hugs all around.  Still, the Fab Five have not always known such warm greetings. They have their respective stories of coming out and facing rejection and it still haunts them a bit when they enter the latest small town. 

 

It's not like the people in these small towns don’t realize the Fab Five is gay. Particularly when Jonathan comes flouncing into a room to meet their latest new friend and the way he flounces out the door when their work is done. While Jonathan’s flamboyant take is often on display, the Fab Five tend to dial the “gayness” up and down the dial depending on the mood.  They are who they are and they don’t hide from anyone.  

 

The Fab Five make significant changes in the lives of their charges but what’s interesting to me is how dramatic these changes are not… dramatic that is. Often makeovers turn clueless schlubs into some kind of impossibly glamourous models.  The people the Fab Five help will by the end of an episode look much better but not completely different. The person at the start of the episode is recognizably the same person at the end. Just better.  

 

A lot of that improvement comes not just from a better wardrobe and a nicer hairstyle but an infusion of confidence. The Fab Five’s target for the episode may start out as a total mess but the five will greet this person with boundless enthusiasm and energy. Before the first old ratty t-shirt is thrown out, before the first scraggly follicle of unruly hair is trimmed, the Fab Five instantly and completely embrace this person for who they are at that moment. The Fab Five are not so much about fixing what’s wrong with a person but rather finding what’s right with that person and bringing that out. Much of the episode tracks how the Fab Five, individually and collectively work with their charge to slowly bring this person to the realization that they deserve to feel good about themselves.   

 

Queer Eye is a reboot of the old Bravo cable series Queer Eye For the Straight Guy which was predicated on the premise that straight men have no clue how to dress themselves. In the current Queer Eye, most of the people the Fab Five help are straight men have no clue how to dress themselves. But this is not an exclusive demographic for our team.  One of the people helped by the Fab Five in season 3 is Jess, a young African American woman and an out lesbian. Her race and her sexual orientation has frequently left her feeling cut off from the rest of the world and bereft of ever having a family. When the episode is over, Jess has a fresh new look and a cool looking apartment but the most important improvement in her life is the knowledge she has a family.

 

The sad part about Queer Eye is the Fab Five goes away. They sweep in and deliver a whirlwind week of new experiences and then they go.

 

I need five gay guys in my life to make me a better me. But I would hate to see them go.  

The Madness of Dumb Donald

The Madness of King George is a 1994 British film about the the true story from 1788 about the  deteriorating mental health of King George III of Great Britain.  There was a lot to make the king a bit unsettled, including enduring a nasty break up after a passionate and contentious affair. The "affair" in question was with the American colonies. 

In 2019, we are forced to deal with the Madness of Dumb Donald. And Donald Trump's madness has been on a full bore press as of late.

Li'l Donnie's continued white hot feud with Sen. John McCain continues to burn with incredible ferocity despite the fact that McCain is dead. Despite being dead and buried for 7 months, McCain still retains a strategic intellectual advantage over the bolivating Trump.  

Li'l Donnie has taking to tilting a literal windmills. He mocked the use of wind as a source of renewable energy. "Turn off the television, darling; the wind isn't blowing." What's next? He'll mock solar power for being no damn good when it's night? 

Li'l Donnie thinks Saturday Night Live is doing something illegal by making fun of him. Even when it's a re-run. Apparently last week's episode which originally aired in mid-December irked him. 

George Conway thinks Trump is mentally ill. His wife Kellyanne Conway thinks Donald's doing just fine. Yes, Kellyanne is siding with Donald over husband. My God, all his sycophantic suck ups will even put loyalty to Li'l Donnie over their marriage and family. I mean, what the fuck, y'all? 

I've had enough of the Madness of Dumb Donald. What can we do to make it stop? 

Toys and Things

A couple of days ago, a new trailer dropped for Toy Story 4.

And my heart, it is a breaking. 

"Why are we alive?" Indeed, Forky. Pixar heads have been wrapping their heads around that one for decades. 

How exactly are toys alive? And why?  

Click here for the Toy Story 4 trailer. 

And then yesterday a new trailer for the 3rd season of Stranger Things finally dropped. 

Has it really been two years? Really?

Oh, the kids are growing up.

And my heart, it is a breaking. 

Click here for the Stranger Things 3 trailer.   

Umbrella Academy

This past weekend, my daughter Randie and I finished up season one of Umbrella Academy.  Based on the comic series from Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, it is ostensibly an off kilter take on a team of young super heroes with strange powers operating under the guidance of a Professor Xavier type. 

It is more to the point about a family that is as dysfunctional as fuck, a fractured group of very damaged individuals whose lives have turned to shit and they seem incapable of stopping their own self-destruction even as they stand as the only defense against an encroaching apocalypse. 

That is if their dysfunction doesn't actually cause the 
apocalypse first.  

I can't express how much I hate this show.  

Don't get me wrong. This is a remarkably well made show. 

It looks terrific with a unique visual aesthetic. 

It sounds fantastic with a trippy soundtrack of pop tunes spanning decades. 

It's smartly written with a balanced mixture of melodrama and humor. 

The actors are superb in their roles, capturing nuances and complexities to bring to life fully actualized characters you dare to give a damn about.  

Which is why I hate this show!

Umbrella Academy made me care, damn it!  

THEY MADE ME CARE!!!!

The core of our cast are people captured in arrested development, some more literally than others. A life time of being groomed and trained by an emotionally cold and distant father has left our "heroes" brutally damaged.   

Poor messed up Klaus, acting silly and flamboyant and deep diving into a drug fueled haze to hide from the pain and the horror that comes from a power that involves communicating with dead people. 

Or Number Five, with the ability to teleport through space and time, denied so much as a name and denied human company as he grows up alone in a future wasteland of an Earth laid waste by the apocalypse. 

Or Diego, tough as flint and cold, a fierce and deadly fighter who cares more for his family and for others than he would ever dare admit. 

Or Luther, super strong and super loyal, willing to be the leader, the big hero, the big brother in a world and with a family he cannot fully comprehend. 

Or Vonya, the one without powers, reminded on a daily basis that she is ordinary, that she is not special. She's only now after nearly 30 years discovering she has powers. Vonya goes from beaten down and unconfident to pulsating with incredible world shattering power, fueled by a rage that comes from manipulation, betrayal and neglect.  

Agnes, the nice lady who makes the doughnuts down at the doughnut shop... hell, I cared about her! 

The doughnut lady?!?! 

THEY MADE ME CARE ABOUT THE DOUGHNUT LADY?!?!?

Which is a good thing, right? Umbrella Academy appealed not only to my imagination but to my emotional core.  

But that ending...

For all of the 10 episodes of Season 1 of the  Umbrella Academy , our main characters and even our supporting characters fought and fumbled against the fractures and fissures of lives that didn't make sense, against a world of seemingly boundless cold and cruelty, in defiance of an apocalypse that seems determined to come no matter what.  

When the season ends, our heroes have not stopped the apocalypse. Their every mistake and misstep has served to not save the Earth but to bring the world completely and utterly into the cross hairs of Armageddon.  As the moon shatters and rains down upon the Earth, bringing extinction to all life as we know it, Five surrounds the group in the swirling light of his power, ready to bring him and his family into one last desperate leap to maybe, just maybe, save the day. 

And then...

And then...

Cue credits! 

What the holy fuck? REALLY?!?! We're going to end there? 

Is there a second season? C'mon!! Ten hours I gave this show and THIS IS WHERE YOU LEAVE ME?!?!? 

I can't express how much I hate this show!!! 

I hate Netflix!

I hate whoever the fuck invented Netflix! 

I hate whoever the fuck invented streaming!!!

I hate Gerard Way for writing the damn comic book that spawned the damned TV show! 

I hate the band members of My Chemical Romance who failed to convince Gerard that he should focus solely on music and forget that silly idea of writing comic books!!! 

I hate Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson who in 1934 thought it would be a good idea to put a bunch of comic strips into a magazine, creating the medium we know of today as the comic book and leading to Gerard Way nearly 70 years later to write a comic book called the Umbrella Academy!!!

I hate the cave people who developed sequential art for their cave walls as a story telling device which laid the foundations for story telling in comic strips, comic books, movies and TV shows!!! 

That's how much I hate this show!!! 

Umbrella Academy made me care, damn it!!!!!

THEY MADE ME CARE!!!!

Stupid TV show. It hurt me. 

..

..

I hope Agnes the doughnut lady is OK.  
..

..

Stupid TV show.   

ANTEATERS!!!!!

Among the teams in the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the UC Irvine Anteaters.

Yes, anteaters. 

Here is the UC Irvine Anteater mascot with Conan O'Brien. 

Unless UC Irvine comes up against Duke somehow, I think I have no choice but to root for UC Irvine during the tournament. 

Because.... anteaters, y'all! 

GOOOOOOOO, ANTEATERS!!!!!!!!!

New Zealand

The mind continues to reel in the aftermath of the massacres at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, where the death toll now stands at 50.

The scope of the horror with so many dead so violently in so short a span of time is difficult to contemplate.

In addition to the horror, there is rage and frustration at the ignorant hatred that spawned this heinous and cowardly act of mass murder. 28-year-old white supremacist Brenton Harrison Tarrant posted a jumbled 74-page anti-immigrant manifesto online before the attacks and apparently used a helmet-mounted camera to broadcast live video of the slaughter. This son of a bitch wore his ignorance, his hatred as a badge of honor. He was proud to show off this deadly work in pursuit of his fear and hate mongering ideology.

Tarrant also cited his sources in his manifesto, citing American white supremacy as an inspiration and naming Donald Trump specifically “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

Yeah, Trump. Sadly, we'll get back to this moron in a moment.   

Meanwhile, New Zealanders struggle to cope with a tragedy on a scale they are not used to. Before Friday’s attack, New Zealand’s deadliest shooting in modern history took place in 1990 in the small town of Aramoana where a gunman killed 13 people following a dispute with a neighbor.

But the people of New Zealand in their grief are united in their repudiation of Tarrant's hateful perspective. It has been uplifting to see people come together, aspiring to humanity's better nature in the wake of humanity's worst impulses.

Across the water in nearby Australia, senator Fraser Anning did not get that memo. Anning put the blame for the massacre on New Zealand's immigration policy. In other words, it's Muslims fault for being there to be shot. A teenage boy struck Anning with eggs; then Anning punched the boy in the head.

Over here in the United States, Trump did express sympathy to those affected by the “monstrous terror attacks” in Christchurch. But when asked if he was concerned about rising white supremacy around the world, Trump said he didn't see this as a problem.

Well, of course not. Trump doesn't see white supremacy as a problem. For Trump, white supremacy is a solution. White supremacy is a strong core of his base of supporters. White supremacy is behind the whole "national emergency" debacle at the Mexico border. White supremacy is coded deep in the DNA of every strategy and position taken by Trump and his sycophantic enablers in the White House, in Congress and the right wing media.

But that, perhaps, is the subject for a different day.

What matters now is the grief and pain from such a dreadful and violent loss of life.

What matters now is in the depths of darkness of despair and loss is the light of those who unite, not divide, in the sharing of that grief and pain, the unity of spirit that helps us to make it through today and towards the ideal that we can make a better tomorrow from the ashes of today's loss.