Archive for 2024

REAL SCIENCE FICTION DISASTER:  Marooned.

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, SHE PACKED THAT HIGH SCHOOL GYM:

I LOVE SONNY’S: Sonny’s BBQ celebrates founder’s birthday. When I was a law clerk in Nashville, I lived across Murfreesboro Rd. from a Sonny’s, and when I was feeling down I’d go over there on all-you-can-eat chicken night and eat an entire barbecued chicken. We used to have a couple in Knoxville but they closed, I suppose unable to fight the competition from the local Buddy’s chain, which is also good but different. I’ve bought some bottled Sonny’s sauce but it’s not the same — sweeter and without the touch of mustard that I remember.

Plus, a special Sonny’s memory.

OPEN THREAD: Hang on baby, Friday’s coming.

“AN IRRESISTIBLE MIX OF ART AND GENITALS:” How a classy, A-list historical film turned into a $17 million hardcore porno.

“Caligula,” one of cinema’s oddest and most tawdry experiments, was produced by Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione, the massively wealthy publisher who poured his own money into the project about the infamously depraved ancient Roman emperor.

Opposed to the serious drama that director Tinto Brass and screenwriter Gore Vidal desired to make, Guccione commandeered the production in post and added graphic scenes of hardcore sex to spice things up.

* * * * * * * *

A lot of sex. Multiple, unsimulated orgy scenes leave nothing to the imagination — and go well beyond what most imaginations can whip up. For instance, at Emperor Tiberius’ (O’Toole) home on the island of Capri, a completely nude woman wields a live eel.

Penthouse even published a special collectors edition in January 1981 called “Girls of Caligula,” the same of which could not be said of “Cleopatra” or “Spartacus.”

Critics were appalled at the gratuitous filth. Roger Ebert, generally open-minded, called it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.”

But starting Friday, a new version of that trash called “The Ultimate Cut” will begin playing select theaters.

Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren must be so proud this week.

WELL, YES, AND IT WOULD:

She could try learning from a successful leader: Newsweek: Javier Milei Got Rid of Rent Control in Argentina. Housing Supply Skyrocketed.

UPDATE:

JACK MCWILLIAMS, CREATOR OF “JOGGING IN A JUG,” SMILES: Vinegar Has a Surprising Effect on Depression, Study Finds.

Flashback: Ask Well: Can Vinegar Aid Weight Loss? “The weight loss claims hinge mostly on a 2009 clinical trial of obese Japanese adults that found those who consumed a beverage containing one or two tablespoons of vinegar every day lost two to four pounds after 12 weeks, while a comparison group given a plain beverage did not lose weight. . . . Several studies have shown that consuming small amounts of vinegar before a meal containing starches may blunt a rise in blood sugar afterward, reducing the glycemic response by 20 to 40 percent, Dr. Johnston said, by partially inhibiting the digestion of starch.”

Plus: “I’m curious to see how much vinegar was consumed by people 50-100 years ago, and our ancestors who used it as a primary food preservative. Pickles anyone?” I wonder if the switch to refrigeration led to lower levels of vinegar in the diet, and hence to the midcentury jump in heart disease? Purely speculative, of course, but interesting.

AND YET WE’VE SPENT 20 YEARS DEVELOPING ANTI-AMYLOID MEDS: The Real Cause of Alzheimer’s Might Not Be Amyloid: Groundbreaking Discovery Challenges Decades-Old Theories.

Flashback: Study: Decreased proteins, not amyloid plaques, are tied to Alzheimer’s disease.

Well, the amyloid-plaque theory has issues: “A now-seminal study published in 2006 provided evidence that the toxic accumulation of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain was tied to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Recently, an assistant professor from Vanderbilt University suggested that some of the images in this study were manipulated by the authors.”

UNEXPECTEDLY: V For Vendetta Got It Wrong: Tyranny Comes To Britain Under The Political Left.

Whenever scientific dictatorship is envisioned by fiction writers the end result is usually very similar to already existing socialist regimes.  Soviet doctrine and the ideals of the Third Reich were inspired by Karl Marx; meaning, both regimes were built on far-left philosophies.  Progressives today often maliciously associate Nazis with conservative thought, but both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were avid followers of Marx.  As Hitler noted on January 27, 1934, in an interview with Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt:

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teachings of Marxism. Volksgemeinschaft: that means a community of all productive labor, that means the oneness of all vital interests, that means overcoming bourgeois privatism and the unionized, mechanically organized masses, that means unconditionally equating the individual fate and the nation, the individual and the Volk…”

Hitler presented himself as a Christian patriot to win over the German public as they faced economic and moral degradation during the unchecked liberalism of the 1920s, but in private he was not a fan of the religion.  Hitler is noted by Albert Speer as saying:

“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

In fact, finding and defining a “conservative” totalitarian regime is almost impossible in modern times.  Without the defense of free markets, individual liberty, meritocracy and a healthy respect for constitutional fairness one cannot call himself conservative.  The Nazis were no more conservative than Neo-Conservatives are conservative, they are simply leftists that pursue ultimate power using nationalism as a proxy instead of pure globalism.

How the “right wing” was culturally associated with authoritarianism is all thanks to modern Hollywood.  The same people that write endless tales of Nazi horror have long ignored the even greater genocides of communism in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere.  And, whenever a modern dictatorship is portrayed in art or film it is usually tied somehow to a conservative (and often Christian) takeover of society.

This brings us to a little film called V For Vendetta released in 2006, and it brings us to the tyranny now accelerating in the UK.

QED: The riots have unleashed a torrent of class hatred.

The likes of David Goodhart, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Embery have been writing in recent years about one of the most profound social upheavals of the past 50 years, which has become even more acute and obvious of late – namely, the alienation of the white working classes from the better-off who profess to care for them. For many, the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the class hatred that abounded in its aftermath, confirmed many of their suspicions – that middle-class liberals regard the lower orders as ignorant, low-information scum.

Yes, we must condemn those guilty of acts of criminality and acts that make ethnic-minority people feel fearful. But don’t pretend that imperious disdain and naked contempt for the white working class in general, which may serve to boost your ego and earn you peer approval, will make matters better. It might just make them worse.

Earlier: When the elites loved rioting. From the London riots to BLM, liberals and leftists have spent far too long celebrating street violence as virtuous.

So much so that they kneeled in their presence: