Army of the Dead (2021)

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Last updated: March 7, 2023


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Quick Summary:

I had little patience for this zombie movie, despite the very-expensive special effects. So much CGI, it's hard to tell where the locations are at!

Notes on Individual Scenes

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Area 51 Gate at Double Eagle Airport (35.157073°, -106.796553°) 

Convoy on Atrisco Vista (35.130528°, -106.785809°) 

Explosion on what road? (Probably Highway 6). 

Various Vegas scenes - who knows? Could be Liberace Museum for a bit. 

Route 66 Bingo! 

Plus, Jack's Step-Inn Lounge

Las Vegas sign 

Lucky Boy Hamburgers 

etc. 

Ski-Hi Liquors, on Central Ave. NW 

Rail Yards 

Highway 6 (34.889116°, -107.075213°) 

Here are some photos of the mesa's edge just north of the coordinate location given above.

etc. 

Interestingly, Laguna Pueblo is mentioned in credits, maybe for the Highway 6 scenes.

The Wave (2019)

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Last updated: July 9, 2022


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Quick Summary:

Frank, an opportunistic insurance lawyer, thinks he's in for the time of his life when he goes out on the town to celebrate an upcoming promotion with his co-worker, Jeff. But their night takes a turn for the bizarre when Frank is dosed with a hallucinogen that completely alters his perception of the world, taking him on a psychedelic quest through board meetings, nightclubs, shootouts, and alternate dimensions. As Frank ping-pongs between reality and fantasy, he finds himself on a mission to find a missing girl, himself - and his wallet.

Notes on Individual Scenes

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The bar exterior is the El Madrid, under the Coal Avenue overpass at First Street. 

Not sure about the bar interior. Given the tiki references, wondering if it's the new (but closed) Burt's Tiki Bar on Central. Still, there's that stairway to a second level. 

I haven't worked out the Party House yet. 

The Taxi Pickup site is roughly 8912 Corona Ave. NE. (35.180039°, -106.543359°) 

In an amusing twist, Frank's House, which is supposedly way on the other side of Los Angeles in the movie, is actually just around the corner, at 8908 Corona Ave. NE. 

Brief views of Roosevelt Park? The Alley behind Lindy's Diner? 

Somewhere out at White Sands. 

Drug dealer approaches car. On First Street. (35.078744°, -106.649093°) 

The "Bar Sign" Parking Lot adjacent to El Madrid. 

The Workplace Lobby definitely appears to be the lobby of the Journal Publishing Company. I assume that the rest of the workplace is also at the Albuquerque Journal. Apparently the Journal is getting into the movie business.

Euphemisms for Slavery

Hundred of years of employment opportunities:

Involuntary relocation.

That’s one of the euphemisms a group of educators in Texas came up with as part of the curriculum that would introduce the transatlantic slave trade to second-graders.

Now, fortunately the Texas State Board of Education rejected “involuntary relocation” — which sounds more like what happens when your car gets towed, not centuries of government-sanctioned kidnappings. But the fact remains that these educators are tasked with finding a way to make slavery sound less slavery-ish.

...Then again, Texas is where a ninth-grade social studies textbook rebranded the enslaved as immigrant workers, in a caption that read: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” Because slavery wasn’t an inhumane institution; it was hundreds of years of employment opportunities in a foreign country.

...Take Gov. Greg Abbott for instance. He’ll be 65 in November — born in 1957 and educated in Texas. The Dallas Morning News used to publish a little comic strip called Texas History Movies, which began in 1926. As the title suggests, the strip was designed to teach young readers about the state’s beginnings. Teachers from across the state started incorporating the comic strip to supplement their lesson plans. For 30 years it was distributed to students in the state. Among the whitewashing hits: Gen. Gordon Granger freed the slaves in 1865 and “the law provided for the education of Negroes even while they were slaves.”

You can see how “immigrants flocking to the Republic of Texas” got into the classroom. Or why someone like Abbott, who was alive while Texas History Movies was still being sent to classrooms, is not a fan of the 1619 Project.

W. Caleb McDaniel, who won the 2020 Pulitzer for history, said of the full hardback edition of the comic strip: “It contained no mention of the over 200,000 slaves living in Texas at the beginning of the war, and no mention even of emancipation after the war.”

...Pick any era — from the Civil War to Reconstruction to the civil rights movement to whatever the hell we’re living through today — and with each turn of history’s page there are countless examples of white people fighting systemic racism. Heroes worthy of honoring and remembering in the history we teach our children.

That’s the history Toth is afraid might be taught.

Celebrating the Fourth

Ummmm. pic.twitter.com/XOESbiyjV9

— Cody (@new_orleansjazz) July 6, 2022

American Sausage Standoff (2019)

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Last updated: July 9, 2022


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Quick Summary:

In the rural-as-heck town of Gutterbee, ex-con Mike Dankworth McCoid (Antony Starr) and German orphan Edward Hofler (Ewen Bremner) dream of opening their own sausage house. Gutterbee’s local cabaret host and self-appointed spokesperson Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. (W. Earl Brown) intends to prevent the establishment's existence, lest invaders soil the area’s reputation. Mike and Edward march onward in the face of prejudice, winning over townsfolk with their juicy meats while Jimmy does his best to deter the duo’s motivations. A tale as old as national traumas, one that encapsulates America’s crustiest defenders and the harm their hatred causes.

This is a strange and interesting movie about the strange characters found in American rural towns - far stranger than what you find in cities. Roy, NM, in northeast NM, plays the town of Gutterbee.

Notes on Individual Scenes

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Various Gutterbee scenes (Harding Co. General Store; Floersheim Mercantile Co.) are on Richelieu St. (NM Highway 39), such as intersections of 2nd & Richelieu and 3rd & Richelieu. 

The only Albuquerque scene appears to be the former Westside Jail, where Mike goes free. 

Jimmy and the Lords Joyful Hall of Music is about 420 Richelieu St. 

Edward's German Restaurant appears to have been specially-built for the purpose. Location is about: (35.941890°, -104.197130°). 

Bar is at 4th & Richelieu. Sheriff Dept. is at 3rd St. (NM Highway 120) and McKinley St. Church is on 2nd St. 

Edward's speech is 3rd & Richelieu. 

Two Sausage Standoff is at 2nd St. & Champlain St. 

Initial cemetery scene may be the Roy cemetery. I'm thinking the final cemetery scene is actually at Wagon Mound Cemetery - needs to be confirmed.

Otero County Idiots Beg The County For Help

Otero County is not impressed:

SANTA FE – Otero County commissioners on Friday rejected a plea by one of their colleagues, Couy Griffin, for taxpayer-funded legal representation as he fights a lawsuit seeking his removal from office.

Griffin – who was convicted of the misdemeanor offense of entering restricted grounds at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 – faces a legal complaint alleging he should be barred from holding public office for participating in the insurrection.

Griffin, in turn, maintains he was simply engaged in peaceful protest and was wrongly convicted.

His defense sparked laughter from members of the audience Friday as he made the case for county legal representation and said it was time to take a stand against “tyrannical Marxists” who want to take away freedom.

“Look this is hard enough without you all laughing,” Griffin said at one point in the meeting.

The other two members of the commission voted against authorizing county representation. Griffin didn’t vote.

Otero County Attorney Roy Nichols said the commission was prohibited by law from providing Griffin’s legal defense in the case, partly because of evidence that Griffin visited Washington, D.C., in his personal capacity, not as part of his duties as a county commissioner.

“It’s pretty black and white here, Couy, it really is,” Commissioner Vickie Marquardt said. “I know you’re in a bind.”

Fireworks and Air Quality

Fireworks are awful for air quality. It's the only time of year that airborne phosphorous levels become a problem. Los Angeles suffers particularly:

“Fine particulate matter levels on July 4 and July 5 are typically among the worst days of the year in the South Coast Air Basin,” the advisory said. “The smoke and combustion products from fireworks add to the fine particles already present in the basin that are primarily caused by motor vehicles, as well as fugitive dust and industrial emissions.”

...The aftermath from this year’s fireworks doesn’t yet appear quite as bad as in 2020 or 2021, said Scott Epstein, air quality assessment program supervisor at the AQMD. The effect of fireworks on air quality is typically a function of the intensity or number of fireworks, as well as the weather on July 5, he said. 

“It looks a little bit cleaner than last year, but I hesitate to use the word ‘clean,’ because it’s not clean,” Epstein said. He said wildfires are the only other events that can compromise air quality as fireworks do.

Lost Duck

Driving along a suburban Sacramento street as fireworks filled the nighttime sky and explosions echoed off the houses. What’s that walking in the middle of the street in the distance? A confused female duck. I just hope she can find her way home.

Trouble Shipping Out The Almonds

Supply chain woes:

“It’s all about money,” Phippen, 72, said, shaking his head in frustration on a recent hot and sticky morning. “After years of prospering together, foreign shipping vessels have decided to stop servicing us.”

Now, the powerhouse almond industry is in a pickle. Roughly 7,600 California farms produce 82% of the world’s almonds. But they don’t get paid until their product gets delivered in robust markets like the European Union, China, India and the United Arab Emirates.

As a result, the prospect of harvesting 2.8 billion pounds this year — just shy of the 2.9 billion pounds in 2021 and the record 3.1 billion pounds in 2020 — has industry leaders both excited and worried. That’s because about 1.3 billion pounds of unsold almonds are still sitting in piles at processing and packing facilities.

The problem comes at a time when inflation and a historic drought are pushing the costs of production and water supplies to an all-time high, and the price of almonds has fallen to an all-time low of about $2 per pound. It’s a sharp reversal for the industry after four decades of relentless expansion across 1.6 million acres in California’s agricultural Central Valley from Tehama County to southern Fresno County. 

“We’re running into a delivery and cash-flow crisis,” said Aubrey Bettencourt, chief executive of the Almond Alliance of California. “From last September to February, the almond industry lost $2 billion in value — that’s a lot of money that’s not going into our communities.” “If we can’t tackle this problem,” she added, “our products will be replaced with something else.”

Just a Few Pictures From Broadway Cruise - June 4, 2022

The cruisers were celebrating after getting the law changed:

Olivia Fonseca stood near her light blue 1952 Chevrolet Deluxe, parked along Broadway late Saturday afternoon in Sacramento.

Four days earlier, Fonseca appeared virtually as a member of a group that had formed in recent months, the Sacramento Lowrider Commission, urging City Council to end Sacramento’s 34-year anti-cruising ordinance, which council quickly unanimously agreed to do.

And now, with an assortment of classic cars starting to slowly maneuver up and down the boulevard, near the 4 p.m. start for an event planned before the council’s action, Fonseca and others could celebrate.

“My gosh, it’s liberation,” Fonseca said. “That’s what it means ... you don’t have this fear factor that we’re out here and we’re going to get stopped and we’re going to get a ticket.”