Senator's Selects 2023/02/08
A gold doubloon to the first person who can bring me a bag of Mikesell's...
From the Desk of…
I’d written it already when the news broke, but I am truly saddened at the potential loss of my favorite potato chip, Dayton’s own Mikesell’s. Their Green Onion flavor… the stuff dreams are made of. Anything else happen? Some damn rodent telling us about weather. Oh, good God, the Black History Month police cruiser with the fake Martin Luther King, Jr. quote on it. I about fell out of my chair when that crossed my desk. This is what your tax dollars go towards people! Can we even call it performative if no one buys it? Just terrible. There was that spy balloon business too. Not sure what to make of that one, but the jokes were pretty fun while they lasted. Oh, the New York Magazine etiquette guide was good for a laugh. There was that train derailment and environmental disaster in northeast Ohio. Pretty cool that we let private corporations do stock buybacks instead of upgrading critical infrastructure! Love that for us. Beyond that… the speed in downtown Columbus will be 25 mph soon. That’s nice, for a change. What’s rolling around in the rest of my head? Let’s see…
The Brain Dump
had a terrible meal idea at the grocery, so now i've got that to look forward to this weekend
tamarind is a top-tier flavor
the spy balloon was actually a new way to advertise for Shen Yun, a dance celebration of 5,000 years of civilization reborn
hmm.. if i were to raise spiders in a warm oxygen-rich environment, one that simulates the ancient Earth... perhaps they would grow to enormous size...
one thing I do to keep my mind healthy and active is ask questions constantly, questions like "where did I put that" and "why did I go to this room"
Weirdly good week for the brain. Must be firing on cylinders due to… something… chemical exposure on the wind, maybe? Watched a lot of movies too.
At the Movies
I did it! I went and saw new things!
Triangle of Sadness (2022), dir. Ruben Östlund ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Way better than the other food-prominent social satire of the year, and something I'd definitely recommend to folks looking for a smarter movie with a bit more bite.
That said, it was all too broad and on the nose for me personally... the word "puerile" floated through the mind at least once. Still, pretty good. Great soundtrack too.
Knock at the Cabin (2023), dir. M. Night Shyamalan ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐❤️
Yeah, there were some little things here and there I'd change about it, but it was a tense and taut movie that mostly kept me on my toes and was chockablock with good performances.
It's also the only movie I can recall that got applause from the crowd during the opening credits for simply announcing its director.
Top Gun (1986), dir. Tony Scott ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The most homoerotic and maudlin piece of Cold War propaganda imaginable, a film where every scene takes place in the golden hour before sunrise or sunset, a film that with a few more on-the-nose lines may as well have been written by the gang on It's Always Sunny (albeit a film without the bravery to show full penetration), a film that regrettably plays its overwrought beats well enough and has the planes flying loud enough and the Berlin song on the soundtrack enough to remind us that, despite the myriad complaints and criticisms I could attempt to levy at it, dudes ultimately do rock, and that is at its heart what the film manages to express.
The fourth star is for Goose and for Goose alone.
I maintain that my review of Tár that riffed on a Tarr film is one of the funniest things I’ll come up with this year, but I understand if not everyone is there yet.
One Picture
Let me know if you can figure it out.
In closing,
You still have about a week to sort out your Valentines.
horse?
red dog