"The Holdovers"

I was surprised. A better movie than I expected!

 

Ballroom Dance Reminiscence

Through some oversight, I had never watched Baz Luhrmann's "Strictly Ballroom," (1992) so I fixed that tonight. No one loves Dancesport like the Aussies! 

It reminded me of my days in ballroom dance. In 1982, I was a poor graduate student, but through the generosity of my instructor, Margaret O'Hanlon, I was able to hover at the edge of Tucson's Desert Terrace Dance Studio, and enjoy the brilliant, upcoming dance talent. 

 One instructor in particular stood out - Rick Valenzuela. He was chosen to play the role of Vanessa William's tyrannical dance partner in the 1998 film, "Dance With Me." That film was a dance monument, and featured a number of the top dancers at the time, including Liz Curtis and Natalie Mavor. 

Here, Rick and Vanessa dance:

Elon Musk's Faceplant

I love the recitation here of all the dumb things Elon Musk has done to destroy Twitter:

Musk’s conversation with Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin extended for more than an hour, during which time Musk apologized for supporting the antisemitic post, saying it was the "dumbest" thing he has shared online.

However, that’s highly debatable.

Was it dumber than Musk threatening to sue researchers who documented a rise in hate speech on Twitter? Was it dumber than when he sued Media Matters for America for demonstrating how ads can fall next to racist or antisemitic posts? Was it dumber than when he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after they found his site overrun with accounts pushing “virulent antisemitism”?

Was it dumber than when Musk welcomed back infamous neo-Nazis, including the man who created the Nazi site “The Daily Stormer” and was an organizer of 2017’s torch-wielding Nazi march in Charlottesville? Dumber than when he welcomed a neo-Nazi group that was suspended for repeatedly pushing the same “great replacement” conspiracy that Musk endorsed in his post? Was it dumber than when he falsely accused a Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi involved in a street brawl?

Was it dumber than when he drove away NPR by labeling them as government-controlled media and then threatened to give away their account so someone else could masquerade as NPR? Dumber than the whole blue checkmark scheme?

Was it dumber than when he accused Black people in South Africa of openly plotting “white genocide”? Dumber than when he reposted a “white lives matter” tweet from a notorious white supremacist? Dumber than when he said the Biden administration was destroying democracy? Or when he defended slavery? Or when he spent Pride Month handing out “likes” to transphobic tweets? Or when he said the media was racist against white and Asian people, and defended a man who called for segregation? Dumber than when he went to the southern border in a cowboy hat and video game T-shirt to spend a day endorsing false claims about an immigrant invasion?

Elon Musk apologized for one post. But advertisers didn’t leave the site formerly known as Twitter because of one post. They left because Musk gutted the site’s moderation teams, welcomed those who spread hate and lies, repeatedly demonstrated that he was always ready to believe a racist conspiracy theory, and showed he would make a threat at the drop of a hat.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

Interesting story:

As the holiday season of 1938 came to Chicago, Bob May wasn’t feeling much comfort or joy. A 34-year-old ad writer for Montgomery Ward, May was exhausted and nearly broke. His wife, Evelyn, was bedridden, on the losing end of a two-year battle with cancer. This left Bob to look after their four-year old-daughter, Barbara.

One night, Barbara asked her father, “Why isn’t my mommy like everybody else’s mommy?” As he struggled to answer his daughter’s question, Bob remembered the pain of his own childhood. A small, sickly boy, he was constantly picked on and called names. But he wanted to give his daughter hope, and show her that being different was nothing to be ashamed of. More than that, he wanted her to know that he loved her and would always take care of her. So he began to spin a tale about a reindeer with a bright red nose who found a special place on Santa’s team. Barbara loved the story so much that she made her father tell it every night before bedtime. As he did, it grew more elaborate. Because he couldn’t afford to buy his daughter a gift for Christmas, Bob decided to turn the story into a homemade picture book.

In early December, Bob’s wife died. Though he was heartbroken, he kept working on the book for his daughter. A few days before Christmas, he reluctantly attended a company party at Montgomery Ward. His co-workers encouraged him to share the story he’d written. After he read it, there was a standing ovation. Everyone wanted copies of their own. Montgomery Ward bought the rights to the book from their debt-ridden employee. Over the next six years, at Christmas, they gave away six million copies of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to shoppers. Every major publishing house in the country was making offers to obtain the book. In an incredible display of good will, the head of the department store returned all rights to Bob May. Four years later, Rudolph had made him into a millionaire.

Now remarried with a growing family, May felt blessed by his good fortune. But there was more to come. His brother-in-law, a successful songwriter named Johnny Marks, set the uplifting story to music. The song was pitched to artists from Bing Crosby on down. They all passed. Finally, Marks approached Gene Autry. The cowboy star had scored a holiday hit with “Here Comes Santa Claus” a few years before. Like the others, Autry wasn’t impressed with the song about the misfit reindeer. Marks begged him to give it a second listen. Autry played it for his wife, Ina. She was so touched by the line “They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph play in any reindeer games” that she insisted her husband record the tune.

Within a few years, it had become the second best-selling Christmas song ever, right behind “White Christmas.” Since then, Rudolph has come to life in TV specials, cartoons, movies, toys, games, coloring books, greeting cards and even a Ringling Bros. circus act. The little red-nosed reindeer dreamed up by Bob May and immortalized in song by Johnny Marks has come to symbolize Christmas as much as Santa Claus, evergreen trees and presents. As the last line of the song says, “He’ll go down in history.”

Spelling Challenges

This business card appeared from the bottom of an expired cereal box....

Trees appear? Treescaper? Trespasser? Cutted down? It would be fun to be a tree magician…. Not even the E-Mail address is safe.

Various Signs Out and About These Days

Exemptees only. (I don't know what this means - it was at the Sleep Center.)

Ghost killers. Will help if you have a ghost. Check up $1.00. $3.50 if hard to get rid of.

Hippies use side door.

This is an NFT.

You're a monk, I'm a monk, we're all monks.

I came back from the dead, and all I got was this stupid hat.

Kentucky on a Map

Adam and Bill Begin Bundling Episodes

Adam Ramirez and Bill Dickey love discussing "Breaking Bad" filming locations. Still, they finally realized they can't devote an entire hour to each episode. So, here. they push through three Season 1 episodes:

 

An Assassination

Drug-cartel violence doesn't seem to be widespread in the U.S. Events like this suggest our happy bliss can change quickly:

A convicted drug trafficker linked to the Sinaloa cartel who worked for the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was gunned down Thursday morning in an industrial stretch of Willowbrook, according to authorities and court records.

Eduardo Escobedo, 39, was one of two men killed in the 14200 block of Towne Avenue, according to officials from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The other victim was Guillermo De Los Angeles Jr., 47.

...Escobedo, whose nickname, “El Mago,” translates to “The Magician,” served four years and nine months in federal prison for conspiring to distribute more than 10,000 kilograms of marijuana and laundering drug proceeds. He was released in 2018.

Raised in East Los Angeles, Escobedo rose to become the primary distributor of marijuana in Los Angeles for Guzman’s oldest son, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, a prosecutor said at a 2014 detention hearing. He laundered the proceeds in part by buying exotic cars and shipping them to Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa and the cartel’s stronghold.

...Escobedo was born in the United States, his lawyer, Guadalupe Valencia, said at the detention hearing. He attended Garfield High School, where he met his wife, and later graduated from a continuation school, Valencia said.