Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) is a single man who lives the life of the rich and famous on Wall Street. It’s just before Christmas, and he rushes to put together a billion-dollar merger the night of Christmas Eve, when he hears that his former girlfriend, Kate (Téa Leoni), has tried to call him after many years. On the way home he has a strange encounter in a convenience store, and eventually he goes to sleep in his penthouse apartment.
The next morning is Christmas Morning. He wakes up in the New Jersey suburbs with his wife Kate, two little children, and a life apparently very different from the one he knows. He rushes back to the city to go to work and finish the deal, but nobody recognizes him. He gradually figures out he is in an alternate universe, where he has a lesson to learn: How to be a family man.
But he can’t help himself, and he muscles his way back to the business world, while playing husband and father at home. Will it change him?
The Family Man first came out in 2000, but it is just as valid and amusing now in 2020. I enjoyed watching it. Nicolas Cage is a very versatile actor and along with Téa Leoni, he tells an entertaining story with a happy ending.
I saw this post on social media, clipped it here.
Since this is just an image, here is the text version for easier reading and for the search engines.
Stop for a minute and look at this photo.
This is NOT a political post by any means.
This is simply something that everyone should stop and think about.
Can you imagine the weight he must be feeling right now?
When he signed up for this role (without pay) he did it for us Americans.
He didn’t do it for the fame or glory, he had all that.
The magnitude of what we’re currently experiencing has to be paralyzing.
For some, NOTHING he does is ever right or good enough.
Do you ever wonder how he must be dealing with it all?
When his head finally hits the pillow at night after press conferences and meetings.
Does he break down and cry from all the pressure?
Is he scared and confused?
Is he even able to sleep?
Can he shut his mind off at all?
Or does he lay there and talk to God all night praying for strength and answers?
Whether he’s making you proud or not, look at this photo and ask God to soften your heart just a little bit and lift this man up in prayer.
He needs them right now more than ever.
He is carrying the weight of OUR country on his shoulders.
Be kind and pray for President Trump and for the entire world. 🙏🏼❤️
Unfortunately, I don’t buy any of this. If I were asked to write the equivalent, this is what it would be:
Stop for a minute and look at this photo.
What we have here is a colossal failure of a person.
Can you imagine the fear he must be feeling right now?
When he signed up for this role, he knew it would be the ultimate infomercial.
He would have carte blanche to usurp enormous government resources from our own and foreign government to line his own pockets.
He knew he would forego his salary to make him look good to the stupid masses of voters he cares nothing about.
He didn’t realize it could come with responsibility.
Much of the disaster we are currently experiencing was directly or indirectly created by his ineptitude and lack of judgement.
Do you ever wonder how he must be dealing with it all?
He pretty much does nothing unless he makes money or attracts adulation that he so craves.
He throws tantrums when things don’t go his way.
He ridicules his own staff and followers.
He lays there at night drawing up battle plans for the next day, since it’s him against the world.
No matter what he says, to me he does not look like a person who believes in God.
We are carrying the mess he has created, the six trillion in debt, the 226,000 COVID dead, on our shoulders for decades to come.
Just so he can bask in self-adulation.
We must vote him out of office, and see his ilk run for the shadows like roaching under the florescent lights.
Trump likes to say that we don’t really have a problem. It just looks like a problem, because we see more cases than any other country because we test more than any other country.
To elaborate on that, I guess we could say that “testing causes cases.”
Well, testing does not cause cases. The cases need to be there before testing can find them. That would mean that other countries that do less testing find less cases, but the cases may or may not be there.
However, I can conclusively say that testing does not cause deaths.
We have the highest death count.
People die of COVID whether they have been tested or not.
None of Trump’s statements even make sense anymore.
Who are we kidding?
Jerry Jeff Walker passed away on October 23, 2020. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a full moon. There is no way I can watch a full moon and not think of the moon in Luckenbach, Texas.
THE LUCKENBACH MOON
Hondo Crouch
Nuthin’ much happened in Luckenbach this month,
‘Cept the potato chip man came by.
Then there was the moon.
We try to tell folks who come by here to look at our town
What a big, mean moon we have
But nobody’ll believe it.
And last night it showed off.
The greatest ever.
It just hung there, darin’ you to look at it,
Makin’ silhouettes into things and things came alive.
It even shined plumb to the bottom of the canyon,
Under bluffs and plopped dark doughnuts ’round the bottom of trees on top of the mountain.
A kind of moon that makes haunted houses uglier
And ugly girls prettier.
And little animals see farther and feel closer together.
Brave weeds even rose up to look ’round for lawn mowers.
Grandpa sat up in bed and said, “What’s that?”
And the hair on Grandma’s legs stood on end, he said.
On moonbrite nites like this, big eyed deer
Tiptoe into larger openings and they can dance better ’cause they can see where the rocks are at.
Their prancin’ gets fancier and freer because they know mans not there to darnpen the dance.
This kind of moonshine makes you crazy if you sleep in it, they say
But I think you’re crazy not to try it.
Momma even slept with the baby to protect it and I
Flounced in bed even in a thick rock house.
And when I went outside to see what was the matter
Somethin’ scared cold chills up my back.
Everything was standin’ at attention over new shadows.
Then what was that that moved?
Probably just a Nuthin’.
You know, a big full moon like ours is kinda like a person:
It needs help to show off, and last nite
All the clouds stayed home on purpose
to create a great solo.
We can’t stand an encore!
It takes too much out of you.
Those who saw the moon said they could smell it.
One said it tasted like sin.
The quietness at the parkside road was deafenin’
And the little single couple sittin’ there touched the backs of their hands together.
` `Scare Me ! ‘ ‘
We’ve been tellin’ strangers who come to Luckenbach
`Bout our Moon,
But I know they won’t believe that
We have such a big moon
For such a small town.
I listened to Jerry Jeff Walker’s music a lot in the 1970ies. Nice road trip music. Ridin’ High was one of my favorites. Brings back memories of living in Arizona in 1978. He was a legend, and I will miss him.
During the last debate, Trump said he didn’t think the federal government should be involved in the minimum wage. The chart below shows that it hasn’t. No change since 2009. But the rich have almost tripled their net worth.
Do you really think Trump is looking out for the average Americans? Who are these people at Trump rallies? I wonder what their wages are.
I am really tired being fed nonsense news from “NASA” by the U.K. rag Daily Star about asteroids set to “collide with Earth’s orbit” or “asteroids crashing into earth’s orbit.”
I get links like this every few days. Here are two separate links to that effect:
Fake Asteroid Link 1 and Fake Asteroid Link 2.
It appears there is somebody who works at the Daily Star who specializes in fabricating pictures of earth from space with fiery balls or huge rocks heading for earth.
Note also that the headlines are “technically correct” since the asteroids never actually crash into earth, just into earth’s orbit. Earth’s orbit is a huge imaginary circle around the sun with an approximate length of 940 million kilometers. At any given time, the earth is only at one point along that giant circle. So yes, every day, lots of asteroids come close to that circle somewhere in space. That point in space can be on the other side of the sun, about 300 million kilometers away. It’ll take us 6 months to get there.
I don’t think I’d call it “crashing” when a space rock crosses over an imaginary line somewhere in space. Obviously, this fluff in the Daily Star is silly click bait and I don’t understand what causes it to show up so frequently in my social media feeds.
It’s another effort to dumb us down.
Dear Mr. Issa:
I am an Independent.
I met you and shook your hand in 1995 at a meeting of the Rotary Club in Fallbrook at the Grand Tradition Estate. Today you sent me this envelope containing a letter and this form:
In your form you ask for my advice. I needed more than the three lines your form gave me. Here it is:
I am not reprinting the letter you included, since it does not deserve the column space it would take up. All you seem to have left to talk about is the terrible socialists that are taking over our country and the healthcare costs that will kill America if the ACA stays. Well, it hasn’t killed America in the 10 years it’s been active, and I don’t think it’s going to start now.
And what is the picture of Senator Sanders doing on the envelope along with the picture of your opponent? What does Sanders have to do with the current election?
You have reduced yourself to scaring people about invisible demons, “socialism” that will destroy us all, and healthcare costs that will bankrupt us. Huh? Have you and the GOP forgotten that Trump has added $6 trillion to the debt? What happened to the fiscal conservative party that you and Paul Ryan represented years ago? Do you remember the years when you continued to whine in Congress about raising the debt ceiling, over and over again, under Obama? That does not seem to be a concern now.
You say:
I stand with you against a government takeover of healthcare, against Socialism, and with our President!
Seriously?
That is all you have? You think we are worried about socialism out here right now? You think that’s what’s keeping me up at night?
You say not one word about Covid in your letter. Not one word about 223,914 American dead since March 2020. Not one word about the flagrant corruption in the Trump Administration. Not one word about the nepotism and employment of dilettantes all through our government. You support a kleptocratic White House and a dismal failure of a president. You and the enablers in Congress turned our country into an oligarchy. You are a tech tycoon. Why are you not promoting solar and wind power, electric vehicles, and transition to emission-free energy? I believe you understand these issues are important, but I also believe you’re not being truthful to us.
Campa-Najjar may not be the perfect candidate to oppose you. But heck, pretty much any candidate would be better than you right now back in Washington. He is out-fundraising you because he has motivated thousands of independents like me to send him money to keep you out of Congress.
If I were back at the Grand Tradition standing with you at the Rotary Club meeting, I would look you in the eye (above my mask) and ask you:
Seriously, Mr. Issa, you support Donald Trump? Can you explain to me how that is possible? What happened?
Obviously, you do not have my vote.
Lindsey Graham is wondering where all of Jaime Harrison’s money is coming from. He thinks there are some dark forces afoot. Here is an article in HuffPost with more detail.
Where’s all this money coming from?” Graham asked in an interview Wednesday with The Hill. “Some of these shadowy figures out there running ads, is there any foreign influence afoot?”
Graham conceded last month that, in fact, he’s getting “killed” by Harrison’s fundraising because his foes “hate my guts.” He pleaded for contributions on Fox News.
— HuffPost
Well, I know where SOME of Harrison’s money is coming from. From me.
I live in California, and I have no contact of any type in South Carolina and I would not normally take an interest in their local elections. However, I have been sending multiple $50 contributions to Harrison over the last few months, the most recent just a few days ago.
Lindsey Graham has acted like a snake in the grass in the last four years. When Trump was just a candidate, he blasted him for what he was, a cheat, a dilettante, a fraud and a national security risk. There are videos of Graham to this effect. When Judge Garland was in line to be confirmed, Graham stated that in an election year, the current president should not be appointing a new justice.
Yet, he has been enabling Trump and pandering to him for political expediency. Graham could have acted like an individual with character, like McCain, or Romney, and stood for what was right and decent. In that case, he would have had my support. Instead, he has chosen the swamp. And now he is drowning in that swamp.
The message to Graham is: There is nothing dark about the money coming to Harrison. It’s voters all over the country, like myself, sending their $50 every month to make sure you’re not re-elected. It’s over.
I think I’ll send another $50 now just for good measure.
General McMahon (Brad Pitt) is a four-star general in the U.S. Army. He is a badass, he has the reputation of a tough soldier, his men admire him, and his country sends him to Afghanistan with a mission to …. do exactly what?
He is supposed to clean up the mess left after eight years of war and no strategic plan to win. But he can do it! There is no political will or support at any level to help him get the job done. His soldiers are tired and disillusioned. None of them believe in the mission they were sent to accomplish.
But yes, if they want him to liberate the country, he is going to liberate the shit out of the country, no matter what. So he forges ahead.
War Machine is a comedy, albeit a tragic one. It tells the story we have seen since 2001 on TV, night after night, starting with Bush, continuing with Obama, and on with Trump. We’re building a nation in Afghanistan, right!
I chuckled, I laughed, and I was sad and disheartened, because what I watched was satire.
Satire as real as life itself.
Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are two police detectives, both disgraced and sidelined. Terry has made some mistakes in the line of duty, and Allen would be better suited as an accountant rather than a cop, since he does not like to take any risks. Both are going to work every day to fill out paperwork for other cops.
When the two are assigned to a high-profile investigation of a sketchy rich guy, they must deal with their differences and inherently mismatched personalities to do the tough job of the cops they usually just idolize from a distance.
The Other Guys is a police comedy that came out in 2010. We watched it late one night to get our minds off the crappy national news. It’s the kind of unmemorable movie I would have completely forgotten about the next day, had I not taken a few notes right away so I could write this minimal review that says – just don’t bother.
I have been working from my home office now for over 7 months solid. I spend a lot of time at this desk, and I found that having some fresh flowers behind my laptop brightens up my mood.
On July 30th I posted about growing sunflowers from seeds. Here is that post. Now, the sunflower plants line our fence, some of them eight feet tall. Here are a few sunflower blossoms grown in our own yard, from those seeds.
It’s a bright spot in my day.
Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling and unemployed writer. His girlfriend Lindy (Abby Cornish) breaks up with him over lunch. She has just been promoted to editor and does not want to be with a loser anymore. At rock-bottom, Eddie runs into an old friend who gives him an experimental drug called NZT which is supposed to unleash 100% of one’s brain capabilities and capacity.
Eddie takes the pill, and immediately realizes that it gives him virtual superpowers. He remembers everything he has ever seen, read, experienced, watched and observed, and he can put together conclusions from those memories with lightening speed. His laser focus quickly results in unleashing a financial genius. When he draws the attention of business tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro), their collaboration gets them on the way to make billions.
But the drug has side effects, there is only a limited supply of it, and he quickly finds out that he is not the only one that has it. His life gets complicated very fast.
Limitless is an action thriller of a different kind. It explores the capacity of the human brain and its possibilities – which do appear limitless.
I enjoyed watching this movie. It was entertaining. But – end the end – forgettable.
