Saturday, October 18, 2025
"One Battle After Another"
Last weekend (October 11th) I went to see "One Battle After Another," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, and others. I was excited to see this film because parts of it were filmed in Sacramento, and I anticipated grooving out over recognizable scenes. The promotions also suggested this movie might be Hollywood's first take on ICE raids, and so I was interested in that too.
The Sacramento scenes were there, but at least initially I had trouble finding my groove. The premise of the movie seemed absurd to me. The comic-book-like character of Perfidia seemed based on Tupac Shakur's mother Efeni Shakur as portrayed somewhat-unrealistically in the 2017 film "All Eyez On Me." It was all too much removed from reality for me. And why is Benicio del Toro's character running an Underground Railroad for undocumented children? Not explained well enough for me to catch.
So, by halfway through the film, I was in distress.
Then, the movie started to become charming. Leonardo DiCaprio is charming as all get out. That's probably why people like to cast him. In the Sicario movies I didn't like Benicio del Toro's character, but I liked his whimsicality and unflappability here. Plus, Sean Penn commits 100% to his character.
Then they had the car chase scenes. I had to overlook the fact that these scenes were filmed sometimes hundreds of miles apart, but California does have some excellent scenery available for filming car chases. Plus, there aren't enough car chases in movies these days (probably insanely expensive).
So, the movie is a mixed bag, but I'll give it a thumbs up. The movie stars one of Sacramento's Light Rail trains, the Sacramento Superior Courthouse, scenes near the Rail Yards, the J St./Fair Oaks bridge over the American River that all filmmakers love to use, and numerous alleys.
Cause that's what movies are all about. That, and car chases.
Plus, Leonardo DiCaprio is charming.
No Kings (October 18th)
I was so busy all day long that I got almost no pictures of the huge demonstration at the California State Capitol, and no pictures at all at the Howe and Arden later the same day.
Rachel did get a picture of me, though:
A Role Model For Our Times
Be like him! (from 2020):
Denver area TV viewers might recognize the person pictured here- Marty Coniglio was a meteorologist with KUSA (channel 9) for years, but he was fired in July after comparing federal troops in U.S. cities to Nazis on Twitter. A few days ago, a local arts and culture paper (Westword) published this piece from Marty explaining why he did what he did- I think the significance of it goes well beyond Colorado, so I've put the entire text of the piece below:"Better to be a good American than a good employee. Distilled to its most elemental expression, that is the reason why I blew up a 35-year career in broadcast media to add my voice to the alarms sounding about the current state of our Republic.
My former employer did the right thing in firing me. They set the rules, standards of conduct and guidelines for content. Break them and you pay. I did and I did.
To anyone gleefully saying that I got what I deserved, I agree, so let’s move on...back to our imperiled democracy.
At a public event the Saturday after the 2016 election, a colleague asked me what I thought of the result of the presidential race. “Racism and sexism are alive and well in the United States of America,” I responded. After seeing our 45th president’s rise to power fueled by the “birther” movement and his callous attitudes toward women self-described (one might say “confessed”) in the Access Hollywood tape, there is no other conclusion a reasonable person could reach.
The birther movement was based on fiction. However, that did not stop Donald Trump from repeatedly, over the course of several years, questioning Barack Obama’s legitimacy as president. When the entire fabrication unraveled, Trump simply turned everyone’s attention to the next shiny object of distraction and we obediently went along for one of what would turn out to be many excursions down the rabbit hole. As for the Access Hollywood recording, you have a man either bragging about sexual assault or lying to Billy Bush about committing sexual assault; there’s no third choice. It’s inconceivable that a person with those attitudes and (again, self-confessed) behaviors would be hired for any job in a position of authority at any organization, yet here we are.
For pointing these facts out, I’ve been called — well, I’ve been called a lot of things, the gist of which comes down to “liberal.” Fact is, I’ve been a registered Republican, Democrat and, for several years (including now), Unaffiliated. As a fiscal conservative who believes that everyone in the United States should have equal access under the law, there is not a tidy cubbyhole in which I can store my philosophies. Regardless of how you label yourself politically, it should be horrifying to see the relentless assault on truth that engages most of our current president’s time and energy. I’ve never seen myself as a journalist. My training is in psychology and political science, and then late in my college career, I cultivated my fascination with meteorology. I am a scientist who happened to be engaged in mass media, like Bill Nye without the bow tie.
As such, I observed journalists for a long, long time. The wealth of close contact that I enjoyed brought me to the conclusion that journalists do not set out to lie, twist the truth or advance an agenda. The people with whom I worked at several media outlets tirelessly sought to achieve accuracy even when interview subjects were hiding the truth.
Balance in storytelling was also the topic of long conversations in editorial meetings...to be sure that all relevant, varied points of view in a story were presented in a restrained, respectful way. In other words, playing by the rules of a polite society.
The mistake that journalists have made is to assume that our current president and his ilk have any intention of playing by those same rules.
By repeatedly labeling the free press “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” (yep, he does it in all caps) the 45th President of the United States declares open warfare on the First Amendment to the Constitution. Casting journalists in this light allows him to be the sole arbiter of “truth,” a scheme aided and abetted daily by talk radio and FoxNews propagandists.
This was all working pretty well until coronavirus came along. The virus doesn’t care what you believe, it doesn’t care who you vote for, it doesn’t care where you live. Donald Trump came up against something he couldn’t spin. Oh, he tried, lord, how he tried. How many times have we heard it would just “one day magically disappear”? There’s a public-health policy for you. 9The United States has the most deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the world, the most coronavirus cases in the world, and much of that world has banned travel from the U.S. to their respective countries. After proclaiming “We’re doing great,” Trump has now tested positive. George Orwell could not have written this situation better.
It is this all-out war on basic truth that I find so appalling. As I said, I am a scientist, and though scientists get things wrong due to a lack of knowledge or insufficient data, we do not get things wrong in a deliberate attempt to call attention away from our own failings.
Which leads me to why I did it. Why I posted what was described as an “incendiary” tweet that ended my media career.
I watched masked, unidentified men in camouflage grabbing people off of the streets of Portland without ever identifying themselves or the authority under which they were operating. I watched the president say that he would deploy similar forces to cities and states governed by his political rivals. This would in essence be a national police force used for “law and order” at the behest of one political party over the objections of local elected officials. Sorry, folks: That ain’t conservative, small government no matter how you spin it. By the way, what jobs do those masked guys in camo normally do? Where are they from? Why did they need camo? Has anyone missed them at their regular jobs?
Finally, I watched U.S. Navy veteran and Naval Academy graduate Chris David being threatened with semi-automatic weapons, beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed in the face. Why? Because he dared to challenge those unidentified men by saying: “Remember your oath to the Constitution.” After that assault, I did not hear any outrage from the “Respect our veterans” crowd. But I was outraged.
My father fought the fascist Germans in North Africa and the fascist Italians in Italy during World War II. Three of my brothers served in the Army. My late brother Tim was an Army Airborne Ranger and retired as a major after a twenty-year career. So don’t you dare try to lecture me about respecting our veterans.
It was at that moment I realized that maintaining a high-prestige job with a comfortable lifestyle and predictable future was not the most important thing to me. The idea of what America is — self-government, equal access under the law, equal justice under the law, respect for truth: Those were the things that were the most important to me.
I ask everyone who reads this to think about the ideal of what America was intended to be, the promise that America has the potential to afford to all of us and, while recognizing that we have yet to fully realize the potential of America, realize that it is worth sacrifice to aspire to the lofty goals our Founding Fathers set for us.
Better to be a good American than a good employee."
Away With You, Griffin!
On our late night walks, Jasper and I monitor the wildish animals in our neighborhood. I haven't seen skunks and possums for awhile. I'm thinking they must be in trouble. We've occasionally seen raccoons prowling the neighborhood at night, though.
I've been using less and less bird seed at the bird feeding spot. The reason is that there are fewer pigeons now than ever, likely due to predation and disease. The remaining sparrows and doves just don't eat as much as the pigeons.
Nevertheless, the bird seed has been a big source of trouble. I stored the bird seed in the pickup truck bed, where a rodent managed to raid it. This is the first time in eighteen years that a rodent was smart enough to figure out the system. So I moved the bird seed into the adjacent economy-car trunk. The rodent found that bird seed too, and incidentally feasted on electrical insulation, knocking out the right rear tail light and causing enough damage that $1,800 was required to repair it. Currently, the bird seed is under siege in the pickup truck cab, in hardened metal containers.
Late at night, you can hear a variety of owls on the prowl. One night, an owl landed on a utility line just a short distance above us. The owl's shadow loomed over us. It hooted. Aha, a Great Horned Owl! But then it made a completely erroneous Canadian-Goose honk too. It started making a ruckus, alternating with hoots and honks.
What kind of bird was this? Was it trying to escape being pigeonholed? Was it some sort of Gondwanaland experimental hybrid escaped from the lab?
Later, I read that Great Horned Owls also make sounds beyond just hoots, so it must have been a Great Horned Owl. Still, I like the hybrid idea - owl head, goose body. Maybe it was a Griffin, like on some medieval map. Here there be Dragons. The Griffin then flew away, honking and hooting all the way.
This evening (October 16th), I released Jasper from the house into the back yard, where he promptly surprised and killed a rodent. I've been hearing rodents in the back yard for months now. In Sacramento they like to live in palm trees and under ivy. Maybe - could it be? - was this the once-in-a-generation intelligent rodent that has been making my life miserable? One can hope!
Grand Opening of the Sacramento Running Company
This evening (October 15th), Jasper and I rounded the corner of our block, and stumbled into a large party at the old art gallery space, at 2nd Ave. and 21st St. To my surprise, most of the people at the party immediately proceeded to run away.
I asked, and learned it was the Grand Opening of the Sacramento Running Company in the old art gallery space. Running, in circles and otherwise, is what these people do. Nobody does it better. So why not run right now?
When Jasper and I returned from our walk all the runners had returned. It was a large party; about a hundred people. Music, wine, healthy snacks, plus the best shoes and warmup gear. I’ll have to drop in soon and check on the merchandise.
Surprisingly-Large Rainfall in Sacramento
Well, that was an interesting storm! A tight, powerful system that came from the north and moved down the coast. The 2025-26 water year has already started (October 1st), but the rainy season in Sacramento rarely starts before November 1st, so this storm is almost like a freebie.
At Sacramento Executive Airport, we got 1.57 inches of rain, on a par with the larger storms that typically come in the winter. It's surprising that the valley got as much rain as it did. We're at the bottom of the valley. Elevation doesn't help us at all, but the storm persistently wrapped the rain around the low and kept us wet anyway.
I was surprised by the relatively-lower rainfall amounts immediately northeast of Sacramento and in the foothills northeast of the city. Carmichael got 0.95 inches, Colfax got roughly 0.84 inches, and Grass Valley got only 0.63 inches. Winds were frequently from the east in those areas as the storm slid south, however. Thus, there wasn't much help from orographic uplift, so totals suffered.
Davis and Woodland got roughly 1.1 - 1.2 inches.
Mountainous areas northeast of Fresno and Bakersfield, and north of Ventura, Los Angeles, and Rancho Cucamonga got clobbered, with upwards of 3 inches of rain.
There was an intriguing paper out of the University of Arizona a few years ago showing that response of the California rainy season to global warming has been to focus the rainy season into a short span of time. So, instead of rain spaced evenly out over five months you get four dry months and one really wet month, and God forbid if it doesn't rain that one month! We'll see if that's the pattern we get this winter.
More New Protest Signs
Today’s new protest signs (October 10th). I try to keep things fresh. Trump presented a new weakness the last couple of days, and I exploit that.
Big Layoffs in West Sacramento
You learn the craziest things protesting at Howe and Arden on Saturday in Sacramento. A motorist stopped for the traffic light rolled down her window and pleaded with me and the other protesters to keep on protesting, no matter what, because "all these people out here (gesturing at the other motorists) just don't know what's going on."
Then she informed me about the big layoffs announced the day before in West Sacramento (October 3rd). She knew about the layoffs sooner than most because she worked with labor unions. "We deserve better than this," she said.
Even though our Howe and Arden protests are aimed primarily at ICE and its abuses, there is a sense that we also need to stand for many other causes too, because we are all fighting many of the same foes. The Trump Administration is no friend at all of the labor movement, so we must also support organized labor, as they support us.
Sure enough, the layoffs finally made the news on Thursday (October 9th), but nearly a week after the fact. So few reporters these days; so much to cover! The powerful love the uninformed citizenry, and the information gap, so we need to help fill in that gap too.
Manna Beverages notified the state on Oct. 3 that over the next four days it planned to close its West Sacramento plant and its warehouses, where 378 workers made and packed juices, energy drinks, teas and sparkling waters for some of the country’s largest beverage brands. At the same time it said it also planned to shutter facilities in Anaheim and Chino, where an additional 260 people worked.
Manna Beverages said it was underperforming financially and struggling to make debt payments, in a letter to employees that was included in the state notice. It began looking for buyers in June and received two offers, but couldn’t finalize a sale. The company, the letter said, was “out of time and money.”
Sacramento Helicopter Crash
RIP, Suzie Smith, a nurse who deserved better.
This crash closed Highway 50 for a time and messed up my commute, and the commutes of others, the next day.
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