I mean, really, you, Jesus! Talk to your dad and tell him to cut it out!
Taking people we actually like! Oh come on!
Meanwhile the big fat orange heart attack waiting to happen goes untouched?!?
💔😫
Hold on, I need to center myself.
Talk among yourselves. Here's a topic: Catherine O'Hara's extensive voice over work.
Discuss!
OK, Dave-El!
Wow! She was in the a lot of great animated films.
She was both Sally AND Shock in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
She also provided voices for Chicken Little, Monster House, Over the Hedge, The Addams Family (2019), Elemental and The Wild Robot just to name a few.
That's a pretty impressive resume.
Now back to Dave-El.
Thank you.... whoever that was. (It's just me in here. Weird!)
Anyway, where was I?
So Catherine O'Hara has passed away and I'm really sad about that. She had iconic roles as Kevin's devoted (and also distracted) mom in Home Alone and Home Alone 2 and as the ditzy Deelia Deetz in Beetlejuice and it's sequel as well as dozens of other movie and TV roles over nearly 5 decades.
I first encountered her considerable comedy talents in the Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV.
She came to renewed prominence for her role as Moira Rose in the acclaimed sit com Schitt's Creek.
I never saw her in anything where her talents and just her presence did not elevate the proceedings.
Let's pour out a glass of peach craauauabapple wine for the late, great Catherine O'Hara.
It's still too damn cold here at the Fortress of Ineptitude.
Since the post on Sunday, wintry precipitation did unto us strike with a mix of snow and ice that is still with us.
We had a few days with clear blue skies lit by a bright golden sun which afforded us a little melting.
But that glowing sun was working against temperatures that never got much beyond freezing.
And dang if we don't have more snow and ice on the way this weekend.
One does not venture out with being completely bundled up in many, many layers of clothing.
Which ironically leads us to....
It's MOVIE TIME!
I say ironically because today's post is about a documentary on the subject of nudity in film.
"Once you've seen one woman naked....
you wanna see all of 'em naked!"
comedian Ron White
"Why, there's boobies on my TV!"
George Cooper in Young Sheldon
From 2020, it's Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies.
It's about all things in movies that are naked, nude and have no clothes on.
Yes, we mostly explore the cinematic nakedness of the female woman of the opposite sex but in the interest of fair play....
Malcolm McDowell is interviewed about his bare ass appearance in Caligula.
But yeah, it's mostly women as they discuss dropping dresses to be naked in the movies.
Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies has a matter of fact vibe with it's comprehensive look at the subject of being naked in film.
This movie came out in 2020 in the immediate aftermath of the #MeToo movement, rightly asking questions about what it’s actually like for the performers, the choices they felt they did or didn’t have.
What effect does being nude in front of film cameras and up on the movie screen have on the actors who bare all? Actresses like Sylvia Miles, Mariel Hemingway and Mamie Van Doren confess to some disquiet about doing nude scenes.
Skin shows us some pre-code skin.
Babylonian partying gave us a lot of skin in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916)
Clara Bow bared her breasts in the first Oscar-winning best picture, Wings (1927)
Hedy Lamarr scampering through the wilderness in Ecstasy (1933)
We learn about the first use of a body double in Tarzan and His Mate (1934), when a model stood in for Maureen O’Sullivan during a nude underwater swimming scene.
After all that, codes enacted by Will Hays and enforced by religious scold Joseph Breen kept nudity out of the movies for the next 30 years.
The 1960's was a time of cultural revolution and skin was in starting with the beauty of Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (1956) and horror of Janet Leigh in the shower scene of Psycho(1963).
Once the walls of the Hays morality fortress were breached, other films begin to engage in on screen nudity.
Blow-Up give us aflash of Jane Birkin’s pubic hair which was a first. And we're off to the races for more nudity in the movies.
A reminder that it's not just women baring all in the movies:
Skin shares the humorous tale of an extended nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Women in Love. (1969).
The sequence was edited down to accommodate American audiences. The edits made the scene play less like the wrestling match it was supposed to be but now looks like a sex scene. The movie gets an X rating.
We also get a way too long look at extend fight scene in Borat with a naked Sasha Baron Cohen against a very large, very fat guy. Any prurient interest in watching naked people? Succcessfully squashed.
While a lot of the actors interviewed for Skin are sanguine about their experiences in nudity in front of the movie cameras, not everyone emerged from the experience unscathed.
Erica Gavin, the star of the 1960s' exploitation film Vixen recalls her dark descent when she saw herself naked on screen and her subsequent struggles with anorexia where she starved herself down to 76 pounds.
Sean Young recounts the absurdity of shooting the limo-sex scene in the 1980's drama No Way Out where she had to take all her clothes off but Kevin Costner kept his own. (According to Sean, Kevin was more nervous than she was about the scene.)
Malcolm McDowell talks about the insanity of shooting Caligula, the most high-end porn film ever made.
Cerina Vincent recounts her experience in Not Another Teen Movie playing a foreign exchange student who is more accustomed to life au naturel in her native country. So she wanders about school just gettng through her day completely naked. No quick fertive scenes of nudity. Cerina is just standing there or walking like a normal person... who happens to be naked.
We also get directors like Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Kevin Smith, Amy Heckerling, Martha Coolidge, and Kristanna Loken about the rewards and challenges of being behind the camera with nudity in front of it.
Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies shows us a variety of nude scenes in movies that cover a wide range of intent, from the puriently sexual to evoking innocence, vulnerability.
Or just plain weirding us out. Geez! That scene from Borat...Damn!
Let's wrap up this post with a musical performance by Seth McFarlane about the beautiful tradition of women baring themselves quite literally in film.
I was sad to hear about the passing of Sal Buscema last week at the age of 89.
Sal was a comic book artist mostly at Marvel Comics and I will be blunt, I did not care for his art when I was a younger Dave-El.
I found it too cartoony, too messy, too... some other third thing I can't think of.
But I didn't care for it. And I wasn't the only one to not think highly of Sal's art. Which was a shame as the problem with Sal Buscema's art wasn't always Sal Buscema's fault.
Sal was a very fast artist who could deliver pages very quickly so Marvel frequently pressed him into service on multiple books and a lot of last minute fill ins. Sal would provide breakdowns and layouts for the inker to finish in the details. Which meant that the final product was at the mercy of whatever inker was available.
Which was OK if for example he was inked by one of the Bobs (McLeod or Layton) but no so good he got the short straw and was inked by say Mike Esposito or Vince Colletta.
From an older and wiser perspective, I found that when Sal was on his A-game and he and his work were treated with care and respect, he was a powerful, dynamic and expressive storyteller.
I think the first time I really appreciated Sal's talent was on Rom: Spaceknight, a series that was just a tie to an unsuccessful toy line but was elevated in comics form by writer Bill Mantlo with art where Sal Buscema had the option of inking his own work
Sal Buscema also had a strong run drawing The Incredible Hulk, an assignment that Sal especially enjoyed a lot.
Sal also had a long run working on Spider-Man as well
I'm sorry, Sal, it took me so long to truly appreciate your gifts and talents.
Welcome to my bi-monthly look back at comic books I bought 50 years ago.
Today our 4 color Tardis takes us back to January 1976.
What did the new year offer us?
Inflation! DC's comic now cost me six nickels instead of 5.
30 damn cents for a comic book? Why I should stop buying the damn things!
(I didn't and today the base line lowest price point for a comic book is $3.99. That's a lot of nickels!)
We'll start today's post with Justice League of America#129 with a story called "The Earth Dies Screaming" written by Martin Pasko with art by JLA stalwarts Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin.
After Pasko finished up the 12 Labors of Wonder Woman in.Wonder Woman #222 (Nov 1975), he popped over to JLA for Diana's first official return to the Justice League.
The villain is Nekron, lord of the unliving and he's threatening the Earth with a solar flare 'cause he loves himself some roasted human! Yummy! (Tastes like chicken!)
Nekron also has a whammy on the heroes that make them fear death and not want to take the risks associated with doing super hero stuff.
What editor Julius Schwartz giveth, he also taketh. We get Wonder Woman back but the Red Tornado is destroyed.
After relying on such great artists as Neal Adams and Nick Cardy as go-to cover artists, DC is turning to Ernie Chan for most of their cover art.
Which begs the question: WHY? My God! WHY?!?!
Ernie was not a bad artist per se but his forte was NOT super hero art. He would later move on to Marvel to act as John Buscema's inker on Conan the Barbarian where Ernie's art was a much better fit.
But before that happens, we're gonna be stuck with Ernie on covers for awhile.
Speaking of Ernie, we get 'im on the cover and interior art for Batman#274.
After the artistic heights of Neal Adams that kicked off the 1970's Batman, Ernie Chan was the principal artist for our intrepid Caped Crusader. He would not be my first choice for Batman but that's who we had in 1976.
"Gotham City Treasure Hunt" brings us to part 3 of writer David V. Reed's Underworld Olympics. Batman has figured out, "What the hell? Are international criminals using Gotham City as their arena for some kind of contest? That can't possibly happening because that's stupid! Well, dammit! I got to deal with THAT now!"
Meanwhile, Superman#298 brings us to part 3 of an ongoing story line from writers Cary Bates & Elliot S! Maggin and artists Curt Swan & Bob Oskner.
Superman is dealing with an identity crisis wherein he loses his powers when he's Clark Kent. Thinking the problem is psychological, he spent issue #297 as just Clark and now in #298, he's Superman 24/7.
Issue #299 will resolve the storyline and the mystery of Clark's sinister neighbor Mr. Xavier who was first introduced like 4 years earlier.
We get a Silver Age like cover from Bob Oskner.
Superboy#216 answers the question "Why are there no black people in the Legion of Super Heroes in the 30th century?" with the 12 page lead story, "The Hero Who Hated the Legion" by Cary Bates and Mike Grell.
The answer is offensively trite and profoundly stupid.
Here's what artist Mike Grell had to say about this issue: "Their explanation for why there were no black people was that all the black people had gone to live on an island. It's possibly the most racist concept I've ever heard in my life...I mean, it's a segregationist's dream, right? So they named him Tyroc, and gave him the world's stupidest super-power."
It's Stephen Miller's wet dream come true.
Tyroc had a sonic scream that... made stuff happen? Think like Green Lantern's power ring but using sound instead of light.
Or something. His powers made no sense.
On Tyroc's design, Mike Grell said "I gave him a silly costume. It was somewhere between Elvis' Las Vegas costume and something you would imagine a pimp on the street corner wearing."
Here's how the story ends with a lesson that the Legion ain't racist! Look, we've got blue people and green people and...
So that's how racism was solved in 1976.
The back up is a 6 page adventure with Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel by Bates & Grell. These two Legionaires got married back in issue #200.
Bouncing Boy can inflate his body and Duo Damsel can split into two women. Yeah, I know! We really need a story about their sex life!
World's Finest Comics#237 pits Superman and Batman against an "Intruder from a Dead World" by Bob Haney, Lee Elias and John Calnan with a cover by Ernie Chan & John Calnan.
The "intruder" in question is a creature from the planet Krypton. Also presenting a problem: a horde of space locusts.
Just another goddam day in Bob Haney's corner of the DC universe.
Lee Elias was born in 1920 and rose to prominence as the artist on The Black Cat published by Harvey Comics in the 1940's.
Lee's previous work on World's Finest Comics was on the Green Arrow back ups from the 1950's.
Speaking of Green Arrow back ups....
Action Comics #458 brings us to the end of the Green Arrow/Black Canary back up series by Elliott S! Maggin & Mike Grell. Subsequent issues of Action would have Superman themed back ups like "The Private Life Of Clark Kent".
The lead Superman story is by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan and Tex Blaisdell and introduces us to the characer of Blackrock.
That's our bad guy zapping Superman on that Bob Oskner cover. Blackrock is a creation of the United Broadcasting television network to give it a competive edge over Galaxy Broadcasting which gets all the good Superman stories.
Our look back at the comics I bought in January 1976 concludes with Detective Comics #458 and holy shit! What is with that logo!
Why is there a Dollar Tree pinata of Batman's head on that Ernie Chan cover?
"The Real Batman Dies Next" is written by Elliot S! Maggin, pencils from Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez with Ernie Chan on inks.
At a charity fundraiser, Batman dies in Bruce Wayne's arms.
And after two issues of trying to make his own solo title fly, Man-Bat flaps into the back up slot of Detective Comics for part 1 of
a 2 parter by Martin Pasko, Pablo Marcos & Tex Blaisdell.
And that was that for Man-Bat's solo career until Bob Rozakis and Marshall Rogers made a go of it in Batman Family#11 in 1977.
It seems January 1976 was a slim month for Li'l Dave-El. That extra nickel on the cover price must've hurt more than I thought.
Paramount has been.... threatening or promising, it depends I suppose on your perspective... a Starfleet Academy project for years.
After the debacle of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, there was a draft for the next film to be set at Starfleet Academy before it was decided the original crew needed a proper send off and we got Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Since then, series set at Starfleet Academy have existed in various forms in extended media such as novels and comic books. But has avoided TV or film canon until now.
So we get a TV series called Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Is it's arrival fulfillment of a promise or a threat?
First a word on what we got going on here.
The series is set in the 32nd century, the far-future of the Star Trek franchise where Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets are recovering from the cataclysmic event known as "the Burn" (which decimated warp travel for a century) as we saw starting in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.
Setting the show in the 32nd century is a brilliant idea as the Academy is just coming back online after being shuttered for a century. This is a time of growth not just for the new cadets but for the school itself.
The school is a starship, the USS Athena, that docks at the Starfleet Academy campus in San Francisco but can go into space for some actual practical space travellin' experience.
Well, that's some practical stuff. Just who is in this darn thing? Let's find out.
Nahla Ake is Captain of the Athena and Chancellor of the Academy. She is half Lathanite, the long lived alien species we met in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the form of Chief Engineer Pelia (Carol Kane).
Played by Oscar winner Holly Hunter, Ake is a most unusual leader from what we normally see in Star Trek: mishievous, empathetic, non-conformist. She prefers to go barefoot as much as possible in defiance of the Academy dress code. She also never just sits in a chair. She kicks her legs over the side or drapes herself over a chair upside down. (I wonder if the half of Ake that is NOT Lanthanite is Caitian, the feline species of Dr. T'Ana from Star Trek: Lower Decks.)
FUN FACT:ST:SA brings several things from the animated series Lower Decks and Prodigy into live action canon. The rocky skinned Brikar from Prodigy show up here. And remember the Exocomp from Lower Decks called Peanut Hamper? ST:SA introduces us to Almond Basket.
Ake's 2nd in command on the Athena and her cadet master at the Academy is Lura Thok who is part Klingon, part Jem'Hadar which makes NO sense at all but there she is in all her awesome glory.
Andrea and I were both almost convinced that Lura was played by Jo Martin from Doctor Who but nope. She's Gina Yashere of Bob ❤ Abishola.
Lura Thok is a very bold character, barking orders at her green recruits like the warrior she is but really trying to be more nuanced with her space hippie Captain and her wife, Jett Reno.
YAY! Tig Nataro from Star Trek: Discovery is in this thing and Star Trek can always use more Tig Nataro. Reno teaches temporal mechanics at the Academy which is a sweet deal for an actual time traveller.
Also joining the gang from another Star Trek series is Robert Picardo as the Doctor. OK, it's been 800 years since he went online as the holographic Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager and he still doesn't have a name?
FUN FACT:Picardo being 20+ years older since the end of Voyager is addressed. The Doctor added an aging program to his holomatrix since his not aging was freaking out organic life forms.
One more member of the cast I want to bring up: the Digital Dean whose omnipresent announcements provide a color and texture to Academy life and some humor as well. Which is to be expected as the voice of the Digital Dean is provided by Stephen Colbert.
Because this is a show set a school, we have to have students and this is where the show is really having to work to get me to care or like them.
There are the elitists who think the Captain's chair is some kind of devine destiny or something. At least Type A personality Genesis Lythe knows she has to work hard for this while entitled rich kid Darem Reymi thinks he can bluster is way to a Captain's rank.
There's the overeager, trying too hard to be friendly class nerd SAM (Series Acclimation Mil), a photonic life form programmed to be 17 years old but only brought on line a week ago.
And we have Jay-Den Kraag, a typically grim and dour Klingon who actually is not big on being a warrior but aspires to be a medical officer. He'll put on a Klingon glower if he has to if he needs to make someone stand down but the whole warrior ethos is not really his thing.
And there is the cadet who really tries my patience, Caleb Mir.
To be fair, Caleb has been through some shit. And it is Starfleet's fault and Ake was part of it. As a child, he was seperated from his mother who was found guilty of crimes while working with a space pirate. Now 22, Caleb has spent his entire youth living rough and cycling in and out of various alien prisons. Ake has been trying to find Caleb and save him from this life to atone for her role in him losing his mother.
Caleb Mir is not inclined to listen to or follow Nahla Ake.
Except now he's caught in an alien prison he can't escape from and the penalty for stealing is having his hands cut off. So yeah, maybe he will take up her offer to join Starfleet Academy.
It's taken 3 episodes for him to realize his obstinate loner act ain't working and maybe Nahla Ake is really trying to do right by him. And dammit he's making.... what do you call them? Yeah, right... friends despite himself.
But Caleb Mir is a piece of work and tries my patience.
I guess the writers are looking at some kind of redemption arc and I get that but Mir doesn't make it easy.
FUN FACT: At least one net positive for ST:SA is that the series pisses off Stephen Miller. I hate to bring up the Trump regime in the otherwise safe haven of the Tuesday TV Touchbase but here we go.
Upon seeing ST:SA, Miller took to social media to berate the show for being (you guessed it!) too WOKE what with racial diversity and a woman in charge pushing his Nazi buttons.
Miller's suggestion was that the 94 year old William Shatner should come back and be put in charge of Star Trek.
The one and only time William Shatner was ever in charge of Star Trek was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. 'Nuff said!
Sadly Stephen Miller is not alone in his critique of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. From what I can tell, most of the complaints are clearly manufactured by Chatbots or angry white dude bros with an axe to grind and don't really get what Star Trek is all about.
As for me, I will admit that I feel that I may not be the target demographic for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy but that's OK. I recognize that Star Trek is trying something different here from the standard issue "alien problem of the week" thing we're used to and that is a good thing if we want to keep this franchise alive.
And there's a lot going on that I find genuinely amusing and interesting.
If nothing else, I am intriqued by whatever Holly Hunter's Nahla Ake will do next.
Or the next oddball annoucement from Stephen Colbert's Digital Dean.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, you have my attention. Let's see where this goes.
And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
Well, Donald Fuckin' Trump's goddam gestapo good squad murdered another American citizen.
Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen was shot and killed by ICE agents.
As per standard operating procedure at the Department of Homeland Security, ICE Barbie Kristi Noem accused the murder victim of being a domestic terrorist who was threatening ICE agents with a gun and in order to defend themselves, they had to shoot him.
Now I've watched enough Law & Order to know that it's hard to make a case of self-defense when the victim is shot in the back.
And yes, there is video evidence that none of what Noem said is at all true.
Here's how the timeline breaks down:
1) Alex Pretti saw a woman protesting ICE had fallen and he went out into the street to assist her.
2) He had a cell phone in one hand, the other was empty.
3) When confronted by ICE, Alex held both arms up, showing the cell phone in one hand and the other hand as empty.
4) Up to 6 ICE agents swarmed Alex and threw him to the ground.
5) Alex did have a gun on his person but he did not have it in his hand. The gun was removed.
And then....
6) Alex Pretti took several gun shots to the back.
A doctor who witnessed this incident said no one was taking any action to resuscitate Alex and the doctor finally convinced ICE to let him help. But by the time he got to Alex, he had bled out. The doctor still attempted CPR but no avail.
And in no time, ICE Barbie bitch Kristi Noem accused Alex of brandishing his gun because he "wanted to massacre law enforcement".
Stephen Miller oozed out of his coffin in his vampire lair to call Alex a terrorist and an assassin.
And yes, Li'l Donnie piled on to condemn the murdered American citizen as the problem.
So as we saw with Renee Good a few weeks ago, we have an American citizen who was NOT engaged in any overtly threatening activity being murdered.
And once more with video evidence asserting this American citizen was not a threat, the lackeys in Trump's administration are labeling the dead person as a threat, as a terrorist.
The willingness of Trump's goddam minions to deny the reality we can all fucking see is beyond audacious and reprehensible.
Before the latest murder by ICE agents this weekend, I wanted to address the case of Nekima Levy Armstrong and what the fucking White House did afterwards.
Armstrong was arrested with at least two others Thursday for an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest that allegedly disrupted a service at a church where an ICE official also serves as a pastor.
You might think that an alleged pastor who reportedly preaches the word of Christ AND is also an ICE agents seems like a contradiction.
And you would be right.
An ICE agent recording the arrest told Armstrong, “We don’t want to create a false narrative."
Anyway, Armstrong was arrested and below are photos from her arrest.
The photo on the left is what really occured, Armstrong calm and stoic as she was led away in handcuffs.
The photo on the right?
Remember the ICE agent who said, “We don’t want to create a false narrative."?
Say hello to the "false narrative".
The photo on the right was issued by the White House where an employee working on our taxpayer dime took the time to darken Armstrong's skin and alter her demeanor from calm and stoic to hysterical crying.
When busted by the press for their fake photo, White House spokesman Kaelan Dorr issued a statement:“Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Translation: "Fuck you! We can do whatever we want!"
As I've said before, Donald Trump has declared war on America and that is not a metaphor.
There is a literal battlefield where innocent blood is being shed.
And Trump and his lying enablers have declared war on the truth.
Maybe, just maybe one day we can reach the other side of this madness where we can finally hold these people to account for the damage they have done to this country and for the lives lost in pursuit of their agenda of hate and fear.
One of the many, MANY frustrating things of living in this time of Trumpian chaos is when Donald Trump says something so profoundly stupid and objectively untrue, I have this feeling of over overwhelming aloneness, like I am the only one who can see that this man is very stupid and a goddam liar.
It's like living in one of those sci-fi horror films where this one person can see that humans are being replaced by alien duplicates and everyone thinks that person is crazy.
Li'l Donnie makes some rambling speech about some damn thing that makes NO sense and people are falling over themselves on Fox News and Newsmax, etc to tell us what a masterful oratory it was, what a spellbinding vision of the future, what a strong message that should make Americans happy and proud and....
Is it just me?!? Have I got some kind of aphasia where Trump speaks in glittering and erudite rhetoric and my broken brain is translating it into gibberish?
No it's not just me.
Last week for the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, Donald Trump held forth a litany of lies, hate, fear, anger and stupidity.
Well, that's what I heard.
And that's what everyone at the summit in Davos heard too.
(For some particularly cogent analysis of Li'l Donnie's visit to Davos by someone smarter than I am, click here for what Fred Kaplan has to say. Fred's a smart guy and I really trust his insights.)
As you know, the big story going into this summit was Trump's increasingly bellicose and belligerant threats to acquire Greenland, by purchase or if necessary by force.
Despite Greenland not wanting to be part of the United States.
Greenland is a territory owned by Denmark.
Trump and his cronies (like Stephen Miller) basically said that Denmark's army was a bunch of pussies and we can take Greenland if we want.
Such action would destroy NATO, fracture alliances with the European Union and it's member nations and shift the world's bala ce of power to China and Russia.
You would have to be crazy to want to do something like that.
And the leaders of Europe listened to Trump talk and....
Verdammt! Er ist verrückt!
Merde! Il est fou!
Or if you are not up on your German or French...
Shit! He IS crazy!
I watched Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos which was clear, direct and made sense. God! I miss that!
Without mentioning Trump by name, Carney calls out Trump's bullshit and his absymal failure to understand how the world works.
Carney may not have mentioned Donald Trump's name but the fucker knew who Carney was talking about and when it was time for Li'l Donnie to talk in a speech that was muddled, confused and made no goddam sense, Trump did call out Carney by name like a school yard bully, asserting that Canada only exists because of American might and Carney best just watch his mouth.
Which only served to underscore Carney's point.
Faced with a European Union united to inflict economic damage for any of Trump's tariffs and by NATO that made it clear that it will defend Denmark and Greenland, Donald Trump shambled away from Davos with a mealy mouth announcement of a "framework for a deal" for which he of course had no details.
Or corroboration.
Denmark was all, "Deal? What deal?"
Despite what might be heard from the Trump sycophants on Fox News or Newsmax or propaganda minister Karoline Leavitt about Trump's rousing success in Davos, the rest of the world heard and saw a doddering old man with no grasp of the truth, no understanding of history or economics or comprehension of how the world really works outside the realm of his own fragile ego and ignorant delusions.
____________________________________
Besides fuckery abroad, we have fuckery at home. A second post about that later this morning.
Chance are wherever you are in the United States, it's too damn cold!
It's cold here at the Fortress of Ineptitude
Here in the Greensboro environs, this is not a level of cold we're used to.
And it's just getting started.
Apparently the low temperature for Tuesday is going to be 5....
No, I am not forgetting a digit, it's just gonna be 5 degrees.
That's Farenheit because I'm an American, dammit and don't need no metric system.
As I write this on Saturday afternoon, we're staring down the barrel of a major winter weather system that's going to bring us.... stuff.
What kind of stuff?
Well, apparently I will know by the time this blog posts on Sunday.
Right now this stuff may include...
Snow
Ice
Freezing rain
Sleet
Glaze
Frost
Blizzard
Hail
Elsa from Frozen
The damnation of God!
Cold shit
Even before it arrives, I've already been dealing with this winter storm for a whole damn week now.
My wife Andrea has been living in fear of this thing with daily frantic reports of wintry anxiety with updates on the types of winter precipitation, when exactly it will get here and just how cold it's gonna get.
Back in 1993, Andrea was still living with her parents when a major snow and ice storm blustered into Greensboro and knocked out power to her home for 3 days.
I know this story well because she tells it all the time whenever there is inclement weather.
It doesn't even have to be WINTER inclement weather.
Even in summer time when we're in the middle of a bad thunder storm that threatens to knock out our power....
"There was that time in the winter of 1993 when the ice storm knocked out our power for 3 days!"
Legend has it that the power could've been back on sooner but her dad bitched at the power company one time too many.
Life lesson: You do not cross Duke Energy.
So Andrea has been sharing this tale of woe from 32 years ago all week and worrying herself into a tizzy of a doozy of a panic.
What if we get snowed in and can't get out? What will we do for food?
There's enough food in the house for several days. We're even fine for milk and bread.
But what if the power goes out?
Well, we'll just have to bundle up as best we can and go somewhere else where they do have power if we have to.
But how will we go somewhere else? The roads will be icy.
I guess I will have to drive VERY slowly and VERY carefully.
But what about the food in the refrigerator if we lose power?
Since the temperature is dropping to 5 degrees, I will put stuff on the front porch where it will freeze!
But what about.......
(Sigh!)
A side note to my son Dean in case we die either by freezing to death or a crazed murder/suicide, well, I guess the Fortress of Ineptitude is now yours.
And if you're hungry, help yourself to whatever frozen food you find on the front porch.
