ricketyclick

This, from my favorite SF show Firefly:

May have been the losing side; still not convinced it was the wrong one.

Chuck Norris, a.k.a. Walker, Texas Ranger, explains that while he, “a black-belt patriot”, could take out a robber with a roundhouse kick, he’d prefer to use a gun:

[Youtube link]

I am not a Chuck Norris fan, because all too often, his stories involve being a Hero who comes in to help those who won’t, or can’t help themselves.

Here, though, he’s not offering to bring either his gun or his feet to protect you. He’s asking you, you personally, to stand up for your right to protect yourself, by checking the actual voting records of politicians who claim to support the right to keep and bear arms.

Bravo, Chuck! This, not your kick, makes you my hero for the day!

Swiped from Tamara K’s Porch.

Oh, man, please don’t tell me I’m gonna have to start watching Boston Legal:

Crap. I’m gonna hafta start watching BL.

I asked ya not to tell me that.

Crap.
[Via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical.]

Via Cold Fury, the unbelievable news that Annette Bening

Annette Bening in a red dress

…will play the role of Helen Thomas in Ryan Murphy’s Nixon pic Dirty Tricks.

Helen Thomas on the left Nixon on the right.

“Whitewashing the past” doesn’t even begin to cover it. As Mike says, “Not enough makeup in the world.”

Bening’s pic via IMDB. Thomas’ via, dang it, a link I cannot now find, I believe the Army Times [ah, found it] Stars and Stripes.

I believe that both were about 50 years old when their respective pictures were taken.

Of course, when we see her name, most of think of at least this Annette Bening:

Bening with Michael Douglas in The American President

[via Geocities.]

Some of us, of course, remember this saucy grifter. I refuse to believe that Helen Thomas ever looked like that.

This is a reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Michael Moore Malone standing in for Scrooge and the Fourth of July (Which Malone wants to shut down) standing for Christmas.

[Rotten Tomatoes]
[IMDB]

What follows I crossposted (in slightly modified form) over at Curmudgeonly and Skeptical, because I had earllier announced there my intention to go to the evening show specifically to pay full price, to put my money where I stand.

I went to an eight o’clock show. Good crowd at the ‘plex, but almost nobody in this auditorium. The laughs were half-hearted, forced even. The people there wanted to like it, wanted to laugh. We were hungry for the sentiments expressed.

But my god, it was dry and boring.

Unfortunately, it is at best clumsy, heavy handed preaching to the choir. There is nothing, nothing in this film that will explain its position to anyone that doesn’t already agree with it, much less convert them.

The patriotism was cloying. The family values were saccharine. The religious faith was flimsy.

Perhaps worst of all, the stabs at jihadism were clumsily wide of the mark, failing to acknowledge the very sincere fanaticism at work.

Go to the evening show at a big cineplex. Pay the full price. Buy popcorn and soda and hotdogs and candy.

Then watch another movie playing at the same time, because this one, I am very sorry to say, is a dog.

Two out of five stars. Sorry, folks. [scale adjusted for better resolution.]

[update -- additional reviews below the fold. Nobody agrees with me. Hey Hollywood: people are starving for this! Please, please, please, give us more!]

I do want to get this above the fold: By Hollywood standards, Zucker and co. are displaying career courage by daring to make this film.

(more…)

Vanishing Point:

[Youtube link.]

Thelma and Louise:

[YouTube link.]

In one, a loner who’s never hurt anyone rams a bulldozer blockade set up by the very authorities who have given him no other choice but abject surrender, and dies in a huge fireball witnessed by dozens of fans.

In the other, two women who have killed a man [admittedly in self defense], blown up an oil tanker, and robbed a convenience store, drive off a cliff, witnessed only by the one law officer on their side and a few of his colleagues. Rather than showing us the crash, the screen fades to white, leaving us the illusion that they are flying to freedom.

Essay question:
Which ending is emblematic of the fate of the nation if John McCain is elected, and which belongs to B. Hussein Obama?

Bonus Question:
Is it better to end up like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, two handsome and charismatic murdering robbers who charge out into a hopeless gun battle with the Bolivian Army? [Embed disabled.]

No, seriously. It does exist. Tolewyn explains:

Apparently it took three actors to replace Heath Ledger in the last film he was making. Johhny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law have all stepped in to replace the late Mr. Ledger in his role in Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” which he was filming at the time of his death.

When they learned that he had not updated his will to include his two year old daughter, all three of these gentlemen donated all of the money they earned from that film to her.

Good on them.

The Infamous Brad looks back over season one of Burn Notice, the only show I’m currently following with any regularity. He’s an aficionado, and sees things I’ve missed.

The first time I watched these, I was taken by how well written they were, how witty and wry the voice-over narration was, by how well series creator Matt Nix is paying homage to the great “Florida caper” writers John D. MacDonald and Carl Hiassen, how many great throw-away references to classic non-fiction spy literature he threw in for those of us who share his obsession with the subject, and especially just how much fun Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar were having with their parts. And lord knows, I’m a sucker for watching actors have fun with their parts.

…

This time through, something different struck me, and it’s the way in which the three main characters of Fiona, Michael, and Sam personify one of the ugliest moral and political dilemmas of the War on Terror. Sam is (or at least was) a government agent, CIA covert ops at the end of and right after the Cold War. Fiona is (or mostly was) a terrorist, an Irish Republican Army bank-robber and gun-runner….Michael, though, is neither a terrorist nor a government agent, he’s a private contractor. And it makes him feel awkward that Fiona looks at him and sees “one of us,” and that Sam looks at him and sees “one of us.” And in fact the main plot of the first season is driven by just how fine the line is between being the kind of mercenary Michael is and the kind of international criminal mastermind and terrorist Fiona is.

Read the whole thing and catch up on the first season. And don’t bother trying to call  me on 3 July, when they’ll marathon the whole season back to back, or the evening of 10 July, when the 2nd season premier starts.

Burn Notice is on the USA Network. [Warning: Loud Trailer automatically plays. Scroll down to find the player on the right margin. That said, as trailers go, I really like this one.]

So, you, or someone you know, is thinking about enlisting, “moving to the sound of the guns”. What should you read to prepare yourself?

Beats the bloody-be-heckers out of me. I’d guess maybe Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, famous, even notorious for its provocatively pro-military views. But it’s SF, and the lady in question is not a fan, to put it mildly. (If she were, of course, she’d already have read her Heinlein, including the inspiring but now-quaint retelling of the American Revolution, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

How about movies? I remember Private Benjamin being an entertaining portrayal of a privileged young woman who goes to boot camp in rebellion against her smothering parents and intended husband. An Officer and a Gentleman shows a full-of-himself young man also benefiting from almost washing out in Basic. (Turns out Larz’s Mom has already ordered Benjamin. I can’t wait to find out how that goes.)

But that was all I could come up with, so I wrote to Grim Beorn, a very literate warrior indeed. I knew he’d published reading lists for folk already in the service, but didn’t remember seeing anything for civilians considering enlistment. Grim kindly pointed me to his standard post on the topic. It starts out with a story about adjusting to the culture in Iraq, but then moves on:

“An eighteen year old arriving at West Point,” says Grim, “already knows nothing but High School. What he needs to learn is how to be a hero.”

His suggestions:

• Beowulf. “Out of the darkness of the prehistory of the human race, a superb and splendid hero emerged, to do battle with the monstrous forces of evil.” –Lin Carter, if I’m not mistaken. Quote from memory.
• The Illiad (Fitzgerald translation)
• The Saga of Burnt Njal.
• The Havamal, which “will teach you everything a hero needs to know, from how to enter a room to how to behave in company, from how to make and keep friends to how to be respected among great men. It is in its way a complete education.”

Grim explains:

This will teach our soldiers what they need to know to relate to the sheikhs, and indeed many other cultures abroad. But it also does the soldier a great kindness, as it makes him an educated man. These are exactly the things you need to know to comprehend the Western tradition. With these as your base, nothing in America’s history is forbidding.

In his email, Grim goes on to make what, for me, was a very surprising suggestion: The Hobbit, which offers “a deep but subtle introduction into the pieces I suggest in the standard reply”. It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Hobbit, because I prefer the longer, sterner Lord of the Rings. Precisely because of that sterness, and the heavier use of myth and fantasy, I rejected LotR for Larz. And because, in contrast, I’m used to considering The Hobbit as, well, fluffier, more of a children’s book, I didn’t even think of it. But Grim’s got it right: it’s a fairly easy read, and shows very well the transformation of a quiet stick-in-the-mud civilian into a hero. I’m going to have to read it again myself.

He continued:

Try her on the Norse sagas — they involve very much sailing and hardship, and serve as an advanced course in heroism. Don’t worry that they aren’t “modern,” because really, the technology changes aren’t that important.  What really does matter is the culture, and the culture of fighting men (and, these days, women) is a thing long ago perfected.  We just need to continue to remind ourselves of what our ancestors knew.

Then he said something else I’ve never considered, but take very much to heart:

In addition, the slightly alien feel of the sagas will prepare her for thinking about a slightly alien world like the Navy. It’s an important skill that she should learn, how to think about the meaning behind customs and traditions that are different from what she already knows.

Whether Larz reads this stuff or not, it’s clear that I, myself have some catching up to do. She’s young and fit and strong and can no doubt even now whip my flabby middle-aged butt anytime she chooses, but I will not be outdone on the reading front.

Then, as a parting gift for boot camp, I can in good conscience give her selections from here,  the official Marine Reading List. This list also includes another work of science fiction that has come under peacenik fire: Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. This, too, is a tale of a boot-camp, but a very strange one, one for grade-school children in outer space. I would never have guessed that the Marines would take that as an authoritative introduction to military life–but now I see that the “slightly alien feel” Grim speaks of may well have played a role.

Another important item from that list is available on-line: the Marine Corp manual on Warfighting [PDF]. This is golden: the inside skinny on how Marines think about the thing they do better than any other force in the world.

Anyway, thanks, Grim, for the reply, and for your website generally, which has over the past couple-three years given me considerable insight into the Warrior Spirit, as exemplified by this from G.K. Chesterton:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.

Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,

When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.

The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, –

You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

A couple of other bits  I dug out while writing this:

Confederate Yankee’s take on LTC Dave Grossman’s original Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs essay (quoted in its entirety). Everybody, sheep or sheepdog, should read this.

Bill Whittle. Wordy, but oh so satisfying:

Here’s his recent piece on fighter pilots, and the fighter pilot, and what he taught America’s military about war fighting generally. Part 1 Part 2 This is survival material.

Honor, the short, sweet essay that made Whittle’s reputation. “…The many, many sergeants…”
I cannot hear or read the word “sergeant” anymore and not think of this essay.

Freedom, and the price that must be paid for it. Why we have the Second Amendment. Whittle hits his stride.

Empire: “For the first time in history, a nation powerful enough to rule the world has simply refused to do so.” Damn betcha, and why, exactly why, my precious, precious niece does an honorable thing by volunteering to go forth and put herself in harm’s way.

War. Why we’re at it, right now, written at a time so many of us were not sure.

History. A little bit about how we got here, about another time when everybody knew “The war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals.” And how it all turned around on an insignificant mound of dirt known as Little Round Top, with an insignificant amateur named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as the hinge pin.

Whittle. He’s one of the good guys, and does not write often enough. Read all his stuff.

[updated, and I will add more as I find it. This isn't exactly breaking news.]

OK, I’m not huge fan, but even I recognize greatness when I see it, and mourn its passing.

Best article on his life’s work I’ve seen so far.

Why then, it must be asked, did he take the leadership of the NRA, never the most popular of lobbying outfits in Washington? One cynical explanation is that the old star was looking for an audience that would treat him as he had been treated in the late ’50s and early ’60s, almost as a god.

But the abuse he took! The anger he generated. The fury he absorbed from a Hollywood and a critical community that were turning ever more liberal in the wake of the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Good Lord, he didn’t need that at all.

The only answer can be: He believed. His had to have been a ramrod sense of the Second Amendment and he never varied from it. Hate his politics or love them, you have to say: There was a man.

Ed Morrissey’s comment here seems to be mandatory:

Hollywood turned its back on one of its biggest icons for the sin of becoming Republican and of supporting gun rights. Of course, while Hollywood rejected Heston for his stand on the 2nd Amendment, it churned out more and more films dedicated to mass shootings and indiscriminate violence. Heston couldn’t have fired more bullets in his entire lifetime than in a year of Hollywood movies.

Best round-up.

Best civil-rights post.

 Agree or disagree with him, this was a man of principle.  In 1961, he attended a premier of one of his movies in Oklahoma.  The theater was segregated; he joined the picket line.  At a time when it was by no means politically expedient to do so, he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.  He was, throughout his adult life, a staunch opponent of communism, McCarthyism, and racial segregation.

In his later years, he was best known for his civil rights activism around the right to keep and bear arms.  And, for that matter, being a political target of such low-class individuals as Michael Moore and George Clooney.

Best one-liner from I don’t know where: “They should bury him with a sidearm so we can say, ‘No, not even now’”.

Best parody trailer ever for anything: Ten Things I Hate About Commandments featuring Samuel L. Jackson as Principal Firebush.

Best walk-on: Wayne’s World