Tag Archives: ben’s thoughts

Don’t Ask Me To Explain. This Trump Steak Headline Is Really Hard To Write.

by r9q9gb Posted on April 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Let’s say you’re throwing a dinner party and it is a very important dinner party and your boss is coming over and many other people you want to impress and you and your family spend all day getting ready for this dinner party—cleaning the house, preparing the food, rehearsing songs the children can sing as they depart for bed before the adults have post-dinner drinks—and it’s all very stressful but you’re committed to it because the play isn’t the thing, the dinner party is—and so you wake up early and clean the kitchen and the dining room and the entryway and the second bathroom and even the third bathroom, which probably won’t get used but it would be very bad if it did get used and it was dirty, and in a fit of panic you even clean the closets—because what if someone goes to put their coat in the closet and the closet is messy and they think “wow, what a sick, disgusting family this is” and then they take a photo of the sick closet and post it on Instagram with no filter and everyone on the internet laughs at you and you lose your job and have to move with your family to the arctic because that is the only place you can live without shame?—so you clean the closet; and the food is also important so you spend forever making the best recipes from the Top Chef cookbook, recipes you really aren’t even qualified to attempt but attempt them you do and after a few failures and misfires you make them good—and it is you who is the real Top Chef—and then it is the afternoon and you are ready, everything is perfect, but you are stressed and you want a drink but you don’t want to be drunk when people show up so you don’t drink because not again but you really are stressed out and your back is killing you, so you jump in the car and pop over to the local mall and go to the Sharper Image to sit in one of their massage chairs and while you’re sitting in the massage chair unwinding before the big party you get a frantic call from your partner saying that there was a problem with the refrigerator and the meal you’d slaved over all day is ruined and there’s no food and your dinner guests are going to be arriving any minute and now you’re panicking because what are you going to do and you look around the Sharper Image in a daze and realize that there is nothing you can do because it is too late and your life is over and you resign yourself to the arctic but then you think maybe just maybe they sell steaks at Sharper Image and you ask the Sharper Image salesperson and they say, “actually, yes, we do” and you say, “but are they good steaks” and they say, “oh they are the world’s greatest steaks” and so you buy a bunch of the steaks and go home and make the steaks and then the guests arrive and they love the steaks and the night is a success and when you sleep that night you dream of your new life where people come up to you on the street and say “I’d love to come to one of your dinner parties. I hear they’re great.” Maybe you’ll invite them. Maybe you won’t. Your fate is in your hands.

Bad news, my friend: You mishandled the steaks. You’re moving to the arctic.

tldr: The Sharper Image used to sell Trump Steaks. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort—which doesn’t actually sell Trump Steaks since Trump Steaks no longer exists—was just dinged by health inspectors for mishandling meat. There is no reason to believe that Trump Steaks were spoiled or that the Sharper Image didn’t handle their Trump Steaks correctly. This post is a joke about the fact that Donald Trump used to sell steaks at the Sharper Image. Please stop shouting at me.

Original article: 

Don’t Ask Me To Explain. This Trump Steak Headline Is Really Hard To Write.

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Eat Almonds, Drink Almond Milk, Live Free, Make Love, Hold, Touch, Dance, Laugh, Be Happy Always

by GarySorell2 Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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California’s water problems sleep with the fishes, who are thrilled.

Governor Brown did not praise the drought Friday. He buried it. It will spend the rest of eternity entombed in the ground, forced to watch helplessly as its mortal enemy, groundwater, flows resurgently.

Over the years many pages of this august publication have been dedicated to the drought. (It was often noted by the Mother Jones bureaus in DC and NYC that the San Francisco bureau appeared “obsessed” with the drought, which led to this passive-aggressive headline) Though my colleagues in California knew this was coming—the writing was on the wall—they are in shock. And jubilation has erupted in their office. Reports are coming in from Slack that the almond-fueled celebration could continue well into the weekend.

Why are they celebrating with almonds? Because almonds did the drought and if you ate almonds while the drought was going on you are a bad person. But now the drought is over and the almonds, they rain from the sky like kisses from heaven! And the almond milk! My god, the almond milk, once a controversial hipster indulgence, now flows like the roaring rapids of the Colorado river. A new era of cheap broccoli hedonism dawns!

Here is a list of some of the things we said you were not allowed to do because of the drought which you now can in fact do.

1. Eat almonds.

2. Eat nuts in general.

3. Drink almond milk.

4. We felt very strongly about almond milk.

4. Drink mimosas.

5. Eat avocados.

6. Have dairy of any kind, but specifically Greek yogurt.

7. Shower.

8. Do laundry.

9. Not be a total asshole to your neighbor.

10. Eat vegetables during the winter.

11. Ski.

12. Eat romaine lettuce.

13. Enjoy a complimentary glass of water at a restaurant.

14. Drink a drink with really large ridiculous ice cubes.

15. Almonds again.

16. More almonds.

17. Wow, we wrote a lot about almonds.

RIP California’s drought, survived by its loving children, mudslide and fire.

—

Let me tell you a story. In 2014 in an editorial meeting people were talking about the drought and I asked “where did the water go?” and they all laughed. “Ha ha,” they said. “Ha ha ha.” And I said, “I don’t think you know.” And they said, “everyone knows.” And I said, “where is it? There used to be water, now it’s gone. Where is it?” And they flipped the table over and stormed out, never answering my question. We have published a lot of really great stories about the drought since but none answering the question. I have encountered many theories. There was the theory of the blob and that the water was in the ocean. Maybe it was stuck in a cloud above the ocean. Maybe it was in France. Because here’s the thing, the water didn’t disappear. It’s somewhere. To find the water, you have to think like the water. What place had more water than before? I thought it might have been Seattle, but Seattle actually had a drought too. So, what do you think? You’ve been reading this paragraph and think I’m stupid. You’ve been chuckling along because you know where the water is. So, where is it? I want you to think in your mind where you think the water went. Maybe you think it is an unanswerable question. If that is what you think then I have a surprise for you: Researchers at Stanford, I recently found out, answered the question. I now know where the water went and I’m going to tell you where the water is and none of you will have guessed accurately. Ready? It’s in Alaska.

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Eat Almonds, Drink Almond Milk, Live Free, Make Love, Hold, Touch, Dance, Laugh, Be Happy Always

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It’s Pretty Sad That the President of the United States Needs to Watch Briefing Videos Like This

by WillyNiles9 Posted on February 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Thursday morning, Mother Jones fellow Ashley Dejean reported on a classified memo which revealed that Donald Trump’s “daily briefing book typically contains reports on only three topics, typically no more than one page each.”

On Thursday afternoon, American Urban Radio White House correspondent April Ryan asked the president a question about the Congressional Black Caucus that provoked a response suggesting Donald Trump thinks all black people know each other.

On Friday night, occasional Mother Jones contributor (and my brother) Harry Dreyfuss published a video neatly tying those two stories together.

Excerpt from – 

It’s Pretty Sad That the President of the United States Needs to Watch Briefing Videos Like This

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SantaCon Is the Devil. We Apparently Created It. We Are So Sorry.

by JaimieEnderby Posted on December 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every day I wake up and check my iPhone and read hundreds of comments from Twitter eggs calling me a stupid libtard intern who hates America and only got his job (or is it an internship?) at pinko commie rag Mother Jones because of nepotism. As though my dad called up SAG and was like “I am an actor from the 70s. Get my son a job at a magazine …founded in the 70s?” It grows tiring, but I get it: It’s an act! It’s a show stupid people—or who my beloved Welsh call “simple”—engage in to demonstrate to their team or to God or to whoever that they are the type of person who doesn’t like our type of publication.

Team sports is what politics is all about. No one wants to admit it, but it’s a well studied field. No one cares about every issue. It would be a huge waste of time to do that. They care strongly about one or two issues, identify with the team that shares their position and then take on the rest of the team’s platform as a form of solidarity, albeit unconsciously,

(A great example of this is southern Democrats who loved infrastructure spending but hated black people and then became Republicans because Democrats were too nice to black people and suddenly they also hated infrastructure spending.)

Anyway, Mother Jones isn’t perfect. Far from it. A lot of our articles I disagree with. But Mother Jones doesn’t really have institutional opinions. The articles are the vetted and edited opinions of the bylined author. (For instance: Not everyone here loves Love Actually)

However, one of the things we here at Mother Jones totally deserve group collective criticism for is being inadvertently responsible for New York City’s worst event of the year: SantaCon.

Atlas Obscura explains:

The original inspiration for SantaCon actually came from a 1977 article in Mother Jones about a four-day event organized by Solvognen, a socio-politically charged anarchist theater group in Denmark. Solvognen, literally “Chariot of the Sun,” took their name from Norse mythology and the name of a highly prized national artifact that represents a horse pulling the sun across the sky.

I hate SantaCon. I hate their vomit. I hate their attitudes. I hate their irascibility. I hate their piss-soaked costumes. I hate their souls. I hate them on a profound level. If I were the type of person who believed in letting people drown, these are the type of people I would let drown. I wish they would just go back to whatever hell they came from (Long Island? Staten Island? Murray Hill?). Their very existence in New York makes me wish we had never fleeced this land from the Native Americans.

SantaCon is just an excuse for people with severe emotional problems to get together and act extra out of control because they’re in a mob. It’s like if The Ox-Bow Incident were set at Christmas and filled with vomit. Or if the Stanford Prison Experiment were set at Christmas and, well, filled with vomit.

I know what you’re going to say: “Oh, the fun police are here! Policing our fun!” I am not a member of the fun police. I am a member of the social contract, which dictates there are ways to act in public police. If you want to drink half a bottle of Jäger and piss yourself while shouting about some imaginary injustice you suffered playing Madden ’98 on Nintendo Dreamcast, go right ahead. But do it in your own home. Don’t do it in public. Being in public means being in public, and when you are in public dressed like Santa—drunk, covered in piss, shouting about some nonsense—you are ruining the experience of other people who happen to be in public. You are a selfish jerk.

What about Halloween or Saint Patrick’s Day, you say? Well, those days are awful too. They’re all just excuses for stupid people who lack the conviction to do what they want to do—be drunk and piss themselves—on a normal day. They need society to arbitrarily say it’s okay to be a stupid drunk with your stupid drunk friends this one day a year. If you were at least an honest asshole you’d let your sociopathic flag fly and be a stupid drunk with your stupid friends just because it’s a Tuesday! Or a Monday! Or Easter! On any given day you can win or you can lose, but if you do it because of an email blast saying other people are going to make it nominally socially acceptable, then you’re a coward. SantaCon is not legally binding. It’s not like The Purge but for bros to act out. You do you, bros. But just know that the fact that you’re doing your thing on the day when normal society has tried to cordon you off means you’re a sheep.

Society hates you.

I hate you, SantaCon. I hate you the way Eddie Murphy hated Alan Arkin when Arkin surprisingly won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine and Murphy lost for Dreamgirls. I hate you the way I hate people with poor posture, which many of you stupid Santas have, by the way. The religious say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” I hate you the way the religious hate the sin.

Why are you the way you are? We could lay you on the couch and play psychology—Daddy wasn’t around! Mommy loved your sister more! You come from a long line of alcoholics with no shame and are just playing the part!—but we don’t have to. Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to watch in horror as you stumble around drunk, secreting fluids on yourself.

I hope you all make it home alive this Saturday and don’t stumble into the street and drown in your own vomit, but Darwin suggests many of you should probably in fact stumble into the street and drown in your own vomit. I’ve been to the Galapagos. It has a lot of things. It does not have SantaCon.

There’s a line in Richard II where he’s about to be tossed from the throne by Bolingbroke and he says, “Let’s make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the world.” Saturday, thousands of drunken bros will make snow their paper and with bleeding kidneys write sorrow on the bosom of our streets.

So anyway, have a great Saturday! (Have a great life!) Stay safe. And for our part in the creation of SantaCon, we’re eternally sorry.

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SantaCon Is the Devil. We Apparently Created It. We Are So Sorry.

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The New York Daily News Just Doubled Down on Its Attack on the NRA

by EnriqueAgnew Posted on December 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, the New York Daily News put up a controversial cover that I thought was pretty good. Today, they are out with another cover that, I’ve got to say, is a bit much for me. It calls the alleged perpetrator of Wednesday’s massacre, Syed Farook, a terrorist (accurate!) and Robert Dear, Dylan Roof, Adam Lanza, and James Holmes terrorists (also accurate depending on your specific definition!), but then in the right hand corner it labels Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, a terrorist.

Now, look, I’m not fan of the NRA, but they’re not a terrorist organization and I don’t think that term should be bandied about all willy-nilly. From 2001 to 2003, this shit happened all the time. Terrorists! Terrorists! Terrorist! Terrorists! It is not helpful. It stirs frenzy and panic in a population of people primed for frenzy and panic. We should use that term when it really makes sense, not just for political groups we disagree with.

But, on the other hand, just today Senate Republicans at the NRA’s behest voted to kill a law that would make it harder for terrorists, felons, and mentally ill people to buy guns. It’s also worth noting that most gun owners don’t even support the NRA’s radical agenda. So it’s not like I’m saying the NRA is a bunch of peachy keen cats deserving of sainthood or anything.

Relatedly, my colleague Julia Laurie spoke to a number of national news organizations about how and when they decide to call a “killer” a “terrorist.” Give it a read. Fascinating stuff.

Excerpt from – 

The New York Daily News Just Doubled Down on Its Attack on the NRA

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"Back to the Future Part II" Makes No Sense

by CierraSummerfiel Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today is October 21st, 2015, the day that Marty McFly travels to in the future in Back to the Future Part II. It’s #BacktotheFutureDay. To celebrate, I woke up my brother Harry in Los Angeles and forced him to talk about the film with me.

This conversation has been edited slightly for clarity.

Ben Dreyfuss: Today is October 21st, 2015. Happy Back to the Future Day, Harry.

Harry Dreyfuss: Mazel tov.

BD: The internet is going nuts right now with listicles about us not having hoverboards.

HD: We do have hoverboards! They just need huge floors of magnets.

BD: We have “hoverboards,” but they aren’t real hoverboards! They have wheels!

HD: No. They really hover! They just need huge floors of magnets. LOOK IT UP—TONY HAWK DID IT.

BD: OKAY, OKAY, MAYBE AT NASA. But the hoverboards all the teens say they are using have wheels.

HD: Oh yeah, you mean those Segway rip-offs without the handle that everyone drove at Burning Man this year?

BD: OF COURSE THEY WERE AT BURNING MAN.

HD: They looked nuts on acid.

BD: My real problem with Back to the Future 2 is that it really makes no sense.

HD: No movie about time travel makes perfect sense. But this movie has bigger problems as well. Like when they just dump Marty’s girlfriend in an alley.

BD: That is just a questionable thing for a caring boyfriend to do.

HD: Yeah, and not only did he not check the crime rate in 2015, but he also dumped her body right next to a mountain of asbestos.

BD: Hahahaha. Okay, but wait.

HD: I’m serious, look it up.

BD: I haven’t seen this movie in a while. When was the last time you saw it?

HD: It’s been a while, but I have strong memories of it because it was my first favorite franchise after you guys made me feel that it wasn’t okay for me to like Ace Ventura anymore.

BD: We were right then. We are right now. But let’s quickly recap what happens in Back to the Future 2. So, okay, in the beginning of the film Doc comes to Marty and Jennifer in 1985 and tells them that they need to go to 2015 to stop their son from ruining his life.

HD: Yeah. Because he’s a coward? I can’t remember the first plot point.

BD: Their kid is going to be bullied by a 2015 Biff descendant into doing some criminal thing and then he’s going to end up in jail.

HD: They got a lot of stuff right about the future in that movie, and one of them was bullying.

BD: A timeless tradition. But here, right off the bat, there is already a problem. Simply telling Marty and Jennifer about their son’s future mistakes should be enough to change the future. They don’t need to go into the future. Marty and Jennifer can just decide to be better parents.

HD: That’s a humdinger, Ben. I have no argument.

BD: Okay, so then they go into the future and a bunch of things happen, blah blah, including that they spy on their old 2015 selves. But why are their old selves even there? In 2015, the McFly family would be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Marty’s mysterious disappearance.

HD: I mean…celebrating?

BD: Remembering? Lighting a candle?

HD: Wait, let’s get something clear. Marty came BACK. So he didn’t disappear.

BD: So you’re saying that the future takes into account the presumption of Marty’s return to 1985?

HD: Yes. Detective Ben is going too far here.

BD: BUT THEN WHY DOESN’T THE FUTURE TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE FACT THAT THEY FIXED THEIR SON’S LIFE?

HD: Ah well that’s another humdinger.

BD: But wait, wait, this isn’t even my biggest problem.

HD: Lay it on me.

BD: In 2015, Old Biff steals the time machine when Marty and Doc aren’t looking, and he travels to 1955 to give the gambling almanac to young Biff. He then returns to 2015 and puts the time machine back, and Marty and Doc retrieve Jennifer from the asbestos pile and go back to 1985.

HD: Go on.

BD: But when Old Biff goes back to 1955 and gives young Biff the almanac, he should then return to a different 2015. One in which he is a Casino tycoon.

HD: Do you hate movies?

BD: I love movies, but Doc and Marty and Jennifer should be stranded in their 2015!

HD: Look, if we all took issue with these kind of things, none of us would ever be able to like a Christopher Nolan movie.

BD: Christopher Nolan movies also make no sense.

HD: It’s called a fantasy, Ben. Movies are DREAMS. DREAM WITH ME.

BD: But they still have to abide by their own internal logic.

HD: “Have to” would mean that Back to the Future wouldn’t go on to become the beloved franchise that it has. But it did, and you are in your own world of high-horse complaints.

BD: Okay, sure, yes, like the movies are still good and enjoyable. “Have to” was too strong. This is America. People don’t “have to” do anything. This isn’t North Korea.

HD: Exactly. Back to the Future would not fly in North Korea.

BD: But the first Back to the Future actually doesn’t have all these problems, I don’t think. It’s fairly straightforward.

HD: Boy goes back in time. Boy’s mother gets not-okay feelings for son. Son has to redirect feelings toward his utter-loser father played by “Willard.”

BD: Exactly. A story as old as time! It makes perfect sense.

HD: It does. But it’s frankly not as good. Back to the Future Part II even goes BACK to Back to the Future Part I, when Marty goes to 1955 to sneak around his first-part counterpart. It’s so cool!

BD: Okay, okay, okay. So let’s talk about that because I have a problem with that too.

HD: Of course you do.

BD: One of the rules that Doc makes clear from the beginning of this film series is that if one version of a person interacts with another version of themselves from another time, either the universal will implode or they’ll pass out from shock. This happens in Back to the Future 2 when Jennifer sees herself in their 2015 house and they both immediately pass out.

HD: I see your rule. So you’re saying that Marty in Part II should pass out when he sees Marty in Part I?

BD: Probably, but Biff definitely should! Like Old Biff has a whole talk with Young Biff about the future and the gambling almanac!

HD: Yeah, but old biff wouldn’t pass out because he was expecting to see himself. It was his plan.

BD: But young Biff would!

HD: Young Biff is an idiot.

BD: But But but but but but but but but but but but…

HD: Look, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t react well, but then Old Biff does his old curmudgeon act of like, “Shut up, you young idiot, and listen to me,” and it breaks through the space-time continuum rule. Ben, just enjoy the goddamn movie.

BD: BUT YOU JUST HELPED MY POINT. Like when Young Biff first meets Old Biff, he doesn’t believe the old man is really him from the future. Like, maybe the fact that he doesn’t believe him is why he doesn’t immediately pass out. But then Old Biff convinces him! He predicts the sports score! Why doesn’t Young Biff at least pass out then?

HD: Maybe it isn’t a rule that they pass out when they see each other, but Jennifer and her future self are just weak, perhaps due to exposure to asbestos?

BD: HAHAHAHA. Okay, fair point.

HD: But I’ll grant you that you raise some good points, Detective Ben, about the rules of time travel. But I’m going to go ahead and reiterate that no movie about time travel does not raise these issues.

BD: I think I have more than raised questions. I have pointed out undeniable logical flaws.

HD: Yes, indeed, you have. Mostly you’re saying, “Why doesn’t what they eventually do at the end of the film already take effect at the beginning of the film?” But in that case, how could what happens at the end of the film even take place? The beginnings just wouldn’t happen anymore! Then you get stuck in a loop that nobody gets out of!

BD: No! No! My biggest problems are (1) that old Marty and Jennifer are even in the future, since they disappeared in 1985. There is even a shot of loser 1985 Biff running outside of the house and seeing that they’ve disappeared.

HD: They didn’t disappear! They came back, you schmuck.

BD: But remember in the first film? When Doc demos the time machine the first time with Einstein the dog in it? Einstein is gone for a few seconds, and in that time he really is gone. They acknowledge that he is gone. They are making a rule for the universe of the film that when you are gone in time, you are gone.

HD: You are gone until you return and you can set the return time for any time! If you return to “one second after you left,” then that is when you’d come back.

BD: So you’re the person now who is saying that whatever happens in the other times just is inevitable and forgives the temporary displacement.

HD: If I went into the future right now and stayed there for a week, but then came back to the past and set my return for one minute from now, I would only be gone for one minute, Ben.

BD: Sure, but what if in that future week someone stole your time machine and went back to 1990 and convinced our parents not to have you? Then that person took the time machine and traveled back to 2015. They would arrive in a 2015 in which you were never born and you would be stuck in an alternate 2015 with no time machine to get home.

HD: I mean, I don’t think I would even be stuck in an alternate universe. I think I probably would have just disappeared into the abyss we exist in before we’re born.

BD: But the movie makes clear that there are alternate timelines! It’s like the main theory of the film! He draws it on a chalkboard!

HD: Detective, Detective, it’s true that this movie does not follow its own rules okay?! But in order to explore the very serious other points this movie succeeds at making, you have to look past the glaring time travel issues that you just can’t seem to look past.

BD: “Serious points it succeeds at making”??????????? Like WHAT? That bullying hasn’t been totally defeated as a phenomenon?

HD: Like…hoverboards, and the fact that in the future we don’t have waiters, we have robots, and that the 80s are coming back in style, and that if you let one asshole make all the money then the future is going to be all goth and awful.

BD: We still have waiters.

HD: At Chili’s we don’t. We have touch screens.

BD: Chili’s is not the future. Chili’s is an alternate future we need to escape.

HD: I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a Chili’s. But I read that Chili’s has no waiters, and the point of that article was that Back to the Future is coming true.

BD: I was at a sushi restaurant in Canada where you use iPads to order, but there were still waiters to bring you the food, and also the iPads kept screwing up, and to be honest it was terrible.

HD: CVS has you checking out yourself and airports do it too, but right now we’re in a hybrid state of having real people mixed in with robots because the robots are too stupid about HR. But it will get better and then those people will be out on the street.

BD: Okay, okay, I’ll grant you much of that.

HD: AND APPLE STORES JUST LET YOU DO IT WITH AN APP, AND APPLE IS THE FUTURE. ARGUE WITH THAT.

BD: There are Apple Geniuses! The people in the shirts!

HD: Not for long.

BD: We need to talk about a few minor things before we wrap this up. At least one thing that hasn’t come true: Jaws 19.

HD: I told a person yesterday that my dad was in Jaws, which I swear I don’t do very often, and he said, “Is that the one with the shark?” And then I thought the future looks pretty bleak for me if that trump card is going to stop working.

BD: In the Back to the Future Part II version of 2015, no one would have to ask that because they’d still be making more Jaws films.

HD: That sounds like heaven to me.

BD: But, yeah, dear reader, just in case, it is the one with the shark.

HD: And Richard Dreyfuss is the one with the beard who kills the shark and saves the movie.

BD: Jesus Christ, no. Dad doesn’t kill the shark. Roy Schieder kills the shark. I swear to god this whole family hasn’t even seen that movie.

HD: Ben, have you ever considered that you are just the black sheep of the family and that there are good reasons for that? Re: not having love in your heart for Dad and his movies or any movie? He killed the shark.

BD: I hate you.

HD: He. Killed. The. Shark.

BD: Okay, okay, he killed the shark. But let’s get back to Back to the Future Part II. There is no Jaws 19 in the real world. And, like, outside the theater the shark hologram eats Marty McFly, and we don’t really have that sort of thing at theaters now and days either.

HD: I guess in Japan they have whole concerts with just holograms because the cartoon people are so popular that they don’t need performers anymore, and Japan, like Apple, is the future.

BD: “Japan Is the Future Back to the Future 2 Promised”

HD: That resonates with me.

BD: Minus the flying cars and actual hoverboards and Jaws 19 and dehydrated food and shoes that lace themselves and jackets that dry themselves.

HD: Yeah, but they do have gum that makes your sweat smell like roses—I’m considering have some shipped over.

BD: “Japan Is the World of Pure Imagination Willy Wonka Promised”

HD: Hahahaha. I want to move there now.

BD: Okay, this seems like a good place to wrap this up.

HD: I think we settled this. You just hate movies and Back to the Future is the best.

BD: And you’re moving to Japan.

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"Back to the Future Part II" Makes No Sense

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"The Good Wife" Is Back. We Have to Talk About It Right Now. Stop What You Are Doing.

by BerthaDigiovann Posted on October 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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The best show on network television finally returned last night, but is this Good Wife still the Good Wife we all know and love? Kalinda and Finn have joined Will in that great big green room in the sky and last night’s episode felt…different.

Let’s talk about it.

Alicia’s life sucks at the moment. She has no law firm. She has no male love interest. She has no friends. And where are her dumb kids anyway? She’s a pariah! “I’m a pariah,” she does not say as the episode begins, but she might as well have. She’s whiling away her days in Shooter McGavin’s bond court, fighting for pick-up cases with beleaguered unclean lawyers who probably went to a joke Ivy like Cornell unlike Alicia who went to Georgetown, which never pretended to be an Ivy in the first place. Poor good wife.

Governor Bad Husband promised his good wife last year that he wouldn’t run for president if she didn’t want him to and she didn’t want him to so he isn’t running for president. OK? Fine, Good. Whatever. But then the good wife changes her mind, because Peter running for president is going to be the plot line for this season—paralleling the plot line in America these days—so she needed to get with it. Peter’s chief of staff, the Russian computer hacker from GoldenEye, is very pleased with this development and he celebrates by wooing Margo Martindale, a top-flight campaign consultant, the meth-making matriarch from the second season of Justified.

But Margo Martindale doesn’t want to be just another campaign strategist. She wants to be the campaign manager and for reasons not entirely clear, Peter goes along with this and fires Alan Cummings. The good wife’s bad husband is also a bad boss.

Meanwhile the attractive young man who used to be Alicia’s rival before becoming her law partner before becoming superfluous to the main plot of the show is unhappy at the big fancy law firm that bears his name. Cary’s few scenes in this episode are dedicated to him trying to be popular with the first year associates who think he’s a stodgy old fart because he spends all of his time with his stodgy old fart partners in their stodgy old fart ivory tower.

Speaking of Cary’s aged old partners: Diane and the lawyer who makes the divorces happen are facing off against Alicia in probate court over some meaningless bullshit about a painting that is worth a lot of money. Who will get the deceased’s paining? No one cares. But this does provide a nice forum for the show to do what it does best: wink at the audience and acknowledge that the show isn’t really about the cases. The Good Wife, more than any other legal drama, doesn’t want you to care about the cases. The cases are just a thing for the characters to do. The marathon of random specialists testifying about post-it notes in this probate case are a great example of that. Not even the judge cares about what the post-it scientists have to say.

Anyway, Alicia covers for one of the bond court lawyers—because bond court lawyers stick together— and then the bond court lawyer covers for Alicia in the probate hearing for which she’s totally unprepared. Diane and Divorce Attorney are going to school her so hard but then—shocker!—the bond court lawyer is good at law and wins the case. Bond court lawyer is apparently supposed to be Alicia’s new friend.

Then Alicia hires Alan Cummings to be her chief of staff because the good wife is also a good friend. Alan Cummings tells Margo Martindale that he is going to destroy her.

Oh also Michael J Fox wants Alicia to work with him. And I think she sort of said yes at the end. (Or did she?) It wasn’t entirely clear.

What is this show about now? It used to be about Alicia finding the courage, through crosses and losses, to become the person she wanted to be. Is it still about that? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

See the article here:  

"The Good Wife" Is Back. We Have to Talk About It Right Now. Stop What You Are Doing.

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John Wayne Was the Worst Swimming Instructor

by ReyesSynder Posted on August 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Do you know how to swim? I bet you do. But once upon a time you didn’t know how to swim. Go back to that place.

John Wayne is dead, but once upon a time he was alive. Bring him into that place.

Now tell John Wayne you don’t know how to swim. Go on. Tell him.

He’s John Wayne! TELL HIM!

Sucker.

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John Wayne Was the Worst Swimming Instructor

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The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

by CarynKunkle Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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MANHATTAN—New York City has the best bagels in America. This is a truth handed down from generation to generation. Why are the bagels here better than the bagels in Boston, Boise, Birmingham, or even cities that begin with letters other than B? Legend has it that it has something to do with the water that’s piped down here from upstate. That’s never really felt right. I’m not a water scientist but it just seems like some nonsense that sounds like it could be true so what the hell, sure, it’s true! Doctor Oz probably credits NY bagels to the water.

So, anyway, some cats from the American Chemical Society got together and ran some tests and spoke to some chefs and concluded that indeed it’s not the magical properties of the Empire State’s water supply that makes NYC bagels unique, but rather the unique competence of NYC bakers. Yes, the softness of the water plays a role but not an integral one. The baking method used in New York is just better than the baking method bakers in other cities use—but there is no reason why those bakers couldn’t start using the NYC method (with some slight modifications), or so sayeth the video.

Is this video accurate? I have no idea. I am not a professor of baked goods. It sounds maybe reasonable to me. It sort of makes sense, right? Because, yeah, New York has the best bagels but I’ve certainly had good bagels other places. But those bagels are normally the exception to the bagel culture of the area. I’ve definitely had one or two okay bagels in LA. Maybe those bakers are using the NY method? I don’t know. What do you think?

Originally from:

The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

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