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Posts Tagged ‘Hollywood’

Most kids can’t drive, and they’re still out here stealing cars.  –  genius cop

When I first saw the news of Melba Montgomery’s passing, her name didn’t ring a bell.  But when I listened to a few of her hits and recognized them from the local AM radio station of my childhood, I thought, “Oh, her.”  The links above this video were provided by Popehat; Rick Horowitz; Nun Ya; Lucy Steigerwald & Jesse Walker; and T. Greg Doucette (x2), in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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To the…people who called DEC, there’s a special place in hell for you.  –  Mark Longo

It wasn’t easy to choose a sendoff for Quincy Jones, but I think the blues title for In the Heat of the Night, sung by Ray Charles, is the right choice.  The links above the video were provided by Franklin Harris, Mike Masnick, Jesse Walker, Franklin Harris again, Greg Lukianoff, Jesse Walker again, and J.D. Tuccille, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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I’ve always been dedicated to the idea of this as the time of year for spooky fun.  So every year I collect all the spooky, creepy or scary content from the previous year into one place just before Halloween.  If you’ve come to my blog in the past year, or don’t remember previous editions, they are “Trick or Treat”, “More Trick or Treat“, “Tricks and Treats“, “This Trick’s a Treat”, “Tricky Treats“, “A Trickle of Treats”, “Tricking and Treating“, “Tricks for the Treat“, “Tricked Out Treats“, “Tricks and Treats and Such Small Deer“, and “Trick Treatment“.  Horror, death or Halloween-themed columns of the past year included Day of the Dead 2023, Diary #697, and “Why Zombies?” There are creepy or spooky-fun videos in Links #695, #698, #721, #722, #739, #745, and #746, and a collection of seasonal links appears below.

 

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Attention, all "progressive" types: are you angry and disgusted by what Republicans are doing to Haitians right now?YOU were doing the same to sex workers all through the Teens, until "Pizzagate" and QAnon forced y'all to let Trumpists have that narrative.And I will never let y'all forget it.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-15T17:07:40.233Z

Honestly, I thought I was later than that; I dawdled for a couple of months after getting my first invite.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-17T05:02:25.648Z

Whatever an individual chooses to do with their time, body, money, and brain is nobody's business but their own, and CERTAINLY not the government's, as long as it hurts nobody else.Everyone understands this deep down, which is why control freaks keep trying to expand the definition of "harm".

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-17T17:18:13.072Z

This is very, very good; it's rare I see an article which portrays the problems with US politics so clearly and recognizes partisanism for what it is. http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ca…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-18T16:51:36.658Z

They were teeny, tiny mistresses.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-20T03:55:37.871Z

The advantage of this for cops is that their videos go from being reviewed by entities with only rudimentary consciences, to being reviewed by entities with absolutely no conscience whatsoever. http://www.npr.org/2024/09/23/n…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-25T17:01:17.251Z

I *wish* this were only a GOP thing, but it isn't. "See Something, Say Something" dogma has been promoted by both parties in the duopoly for a generation, largely in the service of campaigns to inflict police violence on women and drug users, but also to promote single-side hobby-horses.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-03T17:24:33.518Z

 

When a person's brain is so small and weak it can only conceive of two possible positions on any issue, it's no surprise to see such a mind switch from one extreme belief to another.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-08T17:33:31.681Z

No lies detected.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-09T18:26:03.866Z

“There is a cult of ignorance in the US, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.” ― I. Asimov

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-11T18:20:42.620Z

It can babysit your kids, walk your dog.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-12T17:12:14.673Z

"Some people…embrace [politicians] and…idealize them…in the way that fans treat celebrities, or that medieval peasants treated kings. Not only is this unhealthy for the fabric of…society; it is unrealistic. You cannot be a fully moral person and be elected president of the US".

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-12T23:49:53.760Z

Prohibitionist "dopamine" propaganda (against drugs, porn, video games, etc) is just puritans straight-out declaring that they are against pleasure, and most Americans being much too stupid to understand what they're being directly told.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-14T17:45:54.245Z

REAL protest targets the people the protesters disagree with, rather than fine art or people trying to drive somewhere.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-15T19:42:32.683Z

"The Supreme Court’s devotion to finality in case outcomes is built upon the fiction that justice is not only possible but almost certain during the trial process. Nothing could be further from the truth. " http://www.teenvogue.com/story/robert…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-10-17T16:40:28.675Z

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It’s one of the ironclad rules of media journalism that all “100 best” lists are bad.  Certainly, some are worse than others; some are merely skewed, while others cause the knowledgeable reader to wish they could reach through the screen or page to repeatedly slap the compilers while shouting “WHAT! THE! HELL! WERE! YOU! THINKING?!?!!”  Nearly all of them are biased toward the last 40 years prior to their compilation (for obvious reasons) and most of them seem to be compiled by committees which include at least one, and sometimes as many as a majority, of individuals who absolutely should not have been included due to such factors as A) conformism; B) contrarianism; C) inexperience; D) ignorance; E) lack of taste; F) stupidity; G) crippling bias; or H) any 2-6 of the preceding.  Today’s example of the genre is Variety‘s new list of the “100 Best Horror Movies of All Time“, whose chief flaw is summed up by the title of this column: it seems to have been composed by a group composed of 1 serious horror fan, 1 casual fan, 2 fans of adjacent genres, 3 non-fans, and 1 person who does not actually like horror movies, for the consumption of Variety readers who are not actually horror fans per se.  Now, before any of y’all accuse me of bias, let me get this out of the way: de gustibus non est disputandum.  There can be considerable disagreement between aficionados of any genre about which examples are best, much less the specific order they should be arranged in.  I’ve already written about my own favorites, and about my philosophy of the genre, the most important principle of which is that slashers are not horror:

Slashers are actually more closely related to porn than horror; both genres grew out of the exploitation films of the 1950s, which featured both gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence.  Those in turn were essentially cinematic Grand Guignol, whereas true horror began as filmed “ghost stories”; the former are theatrical, while the latter are literary.  Expressed another way, slasher films are designed to shock the body via intense imagery, whereas horror intends to shock the mind via terrifying ideas.

So right off the bat, the Variety list fails by putting a slasher in the top slot; the top ten are further puffed out with a satirical black comedy, a couple of suspense thrillers, and a literary exploitation flick.  And the rest of the 100 are similarly heterogeneous; there are lots of horror and slasher movies in the list, but also lots of suspense, psychological drama, tense sci-fi, monster movies, dark satire, black comedy, and other types of flicks which may indeed be entertaining and exciting and even thrilling, but are not horror.  34% are from the past 40 years (not bad as “top 100” lists go), but 14% are from the 21st century (not exactly a notable period in genre history).  So, go take a look at it if you feel so inclined; you may find a few things there you’ll want to see, even if they aren’t “the 100 best horror movies” as advertised.  And try not to get too annoyed if they ranked your favorites much too low.

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Busybody control freaks…don’t give a damn about women’s dignity, but are happy to use it as an excuse for oppression.
–  “The Enlightenment Police”

The urge to censor is a mental illness.  No normal person wants to control what other people think, and no sane person could believe that he can control what anyone else thinks.
–  “Thought Control”

My sex appeal is about as gentle and understated as a brick to the face, and some men have even described me as “intimidating”.  –  “Your Move”

In true horror, there is little to no “explanation”, because the unknown is far more horrifying than any trite Hollywood “origin”.  –  “No Explanation“

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If you're a woman, you better thank a whore for being able to vote. You better thank a whore for the right to own property. You better thank a whore for sexual rights. You better thank a whore if you like cosmetics or attractive clothes. You better thank a whore…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-02T19:05:33.910Z

"Likes" serve no practical function for the "liked" creator whatsoever. If everyone who "liked" my content retweeted it instead, I'd have 10x as many followers and probably two or three times the monthly subscription income.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-03T16:56:31.984Z

The precedent for this was set by local politicians in the US who think they can reschedule Halloween to a more "convenient" weekend time. reason.com/2024/09/04/c…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-05T17:26:44.617Z

About damned time. Lest you forget, Mel Brooks released "The Producers" only 22 years after the end of the Holocaust. Humor serves an important social & psychological function, a fact too many Americans denied for virtually the entire 2010s.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-09T17:11:23.844Z

Maybe this will help the morally-deficient grasp why consent can be revoked at any point.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2024-09-13T16:26:54.102Z

 

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The greatest defect of any democracy lies in the tendency of a certain segment of the population to cooperate with the agents of oppression.  –  “Bootlickers”

The existence of a movie featuring “lurid tall tales” about sex work does no more to prove them than the existence of The Wizard of Oz proves the existence of flying monkeys and talking scarecrows.
–  “A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#329)”

The common yokel considers my job degrading, but I’m not the one getting paid to lie about violent thugs so the public stays asleep while a vast police state is constructed around them.  –  “Lipstick on a Pig“

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Some men simply can’t handle the truth that women are in control of the sexual sphere, so they invent myths and fantasies with which to convince themselves that it’s actually the other way around.
–  “Head Games”

If the primary purpose of a movie is to entertain, it makes sense that a film can be “so bad it’s good”; some movies are just so incredibly, amazingly, jaw-droppingly bad that we can’t help finding them funny.
–  “Pull the String”

The claim that sex workers “sell our bodies” is…based on the notion that…a woman has nothing of value to offer except her sexuality, [therefore] if she “sells” that she has “sold herself” and there is nothing left.  –  “More Harm Than Good“

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There’s a reason I called the Department of Mental Health, not the police.  –  Myung Moon Yang

I chose this piece as David Sanborn’s sendoff purely on vibes.  The links above it were provided by Carol Fenton, IncarcerNation, Franklin Harris, Mike Siegel, Nun Ya, and The Onion, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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