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Airplane Movies

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When trapped on a plane, one can find themselves sitting through schlock that they never would on their couch:

Star Trek Beyond

Plenty of time to catch on email while watching this movie.

This movie is notable both because it was the least bad of the bunch, and so memorable that I had to use Google to find it because I couldn’t remember it at all (I knew I had watched a movie…).  Through the whole thing there are moments of great creativity and incredible stupidity (such as when the story uses the most contrived circumstance imaginable to cram a play back of the Beastie Boys Sabotage in yet another Trek film).

 
X-Men: Apocalypse
Blue without you…

That first X-Men movie from years ago was the best of the bunch, and even then it was just OK.  In this, yet another reboot, a bunch of characters no one cares about half destroy the planet in a quest to do…something.  The ten second cameo of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine almost stole the film; the only reason anyone shows up for X-Men is Wolverine.

Jason Bourne

Matt Damon’s face through the whole film.  No kidding, check Goggle images.

Really?  After all these movies there’s still CIA guys left alive that want to kill Bourne?  This is essentially a repeat of the second and third movies, which weren’t all that good to begin with.  There’s lots of entertaining chases and fisticuffs, but not enough to fill the empty void that is the rest of the movie.  (As a note the movie ends with yet another mix of Moby’s Mysterious Ways, which at this point is every bit as worn and tired as everything else Bourne related, fitting).

Terminator Genisys

Probably better in a language that you can’t understand.

WTF?
It’s kind of like the movie Clue, but with more Terminators and less humor.  Two sandmiches because the plane landed before I could partake in the entirety of this travesty.

Chinese Democracy

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In China they do have some low level elections, but typically it’s a choice between two party approved apparatchiks so the point seems kind of lost on westerners.  What’s the point in voting when the result is already preordained?  As well, what effect could such voting have on the general lawlessness in the upper echelons of Chinese society?  Although China currently has a premiere, diktats typically come out of the black box of the Politburo to be rubber stamped by their Central Committee (it wouldn’t even surprise me they pass laws only to find out what is in them later).

The party’s rule is absolute and it tolerates no competition.  This leads to all manner of laws concerning the environment, labor, taxes, etc. to be selectively applied to those viewed as “unfavored” (i.e. not a member of the nomenklatura). Barring that, the party labels any dissenters (or those that they feel labeling as such) as traitors to the revolution.  Even if these people are not detained, they will be drummed out of “polite” society, with their careers and livelihoods ruined.
A large portion of the population (perhaps not a majority, but enough) favors this system since they feel that they are in on the scam being run by their elites.  They report any activity that they view as subversive and would gladly and openly vote for the corrupt elite that makes the lives of the rest of their countrymen so miserable.

Of course even in a country like China it’s dangerous for the elites to wield such violence, so the violence of the state is absolute.  It goes without saying that no one can own a firearm, but as well all press outlets echo the party line, telling people what they should or should not care about.  If something does happen to break out of the party echo chamber it is squished after a set time in order to ensure that party rule is no being openly doubted.

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In other news, this isn’t bad: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152024526021/i-wake-you-up-for-the-presidential-debate. The only thing that I’ll fault it for is the final line that mentions “policies” since in this election cycle (and quite possibly all future Federal elections) has nothing to do with any sort of policy debate. 100+ years ago Intellectual political debates in the U.S. were all the rage, now we’re like many (all?) other nations where we argue over the scraps that the oligarchs let us keep.  The left are witting fools in this since they want to be on the side of the oligarchs and get first choice at the trough.

For instance, people take issue with the cost of medical care, housing, cars, education, etc. or the paucity of wages, but never the system that led to those issues to begin with.  What I hear 99.9% of the time is how the knobs on the system might be better tuned so that it’s wretchedness might not be so apparent.

I itch to post these rants to Facebook, but it’s a dead end.  Thinking about a future with no student loans, no medical insurance, and no need for monkeying with the minimum wage because what we need is affordable by nature is too much.  Whenever I tell people that producers have to offer their product at a price that the consumer can afford, I feel like the Lawrence Fishburne character in The Matrix, but everyone takes the blue pill.  The “blue pill” works until it doesn’t, which it’s close to

(Beer) Coma

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I’d mentioned this…elsewhere, but when we were at a bar in Massachusetts when we saw buckets of food going to other tables.  “Buckets?”, I thought “that’s my favorite form factor for food!”

 We ordered one out of sight and it turned out to be a bucket of New England clams steamed with chorizo, yum!  Although…seafood and beer, um, don’t really get along together.  (As I rediscovered later when a pound of sushi and a quart of Sam Adams dueled away in my stomach).

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Some noise about the Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan’s anti-SJW rant.  My favorite part was the SJW-leftie sympathizers ranting about how they were pulling his music, blah blah.  Well that’s a very tiny taste for them of what it’s like for conservatives every waking minute of their lives when all their music, TV shows, books, movies, video games, and whatever else you have are written by the SJW crimethought police.

I thought of it recently while reading Neal Stephenson’s critically acclaimed (of course!) sci-fi novel Seveneves.  His (way) previous novel Snow Crash was rather inventive and somewhat politically incorrect, but his latest efforts reeks of SJW appeasement.
Homersexuals?  Of course!
Unrealistically ethnically diverse cast?  Well he has to stay appealing to that vast tract of black sci-fi readers!
Climate change rants?
Anti-militaristic tones?
Multicultural cheerleading?  It’s all in there!

So tiresome, and it’s cut from the same cloth as the rest of the tired sci-fi crap that came out in 2015.  I can’t help but think back to the slate of Philip K. Dick books that I’ve read that, despite their often copious flaws, featured normal people in extraordinary situations (rather than weirdos on stupid adventures).  It says something about western culture when it takes a guy living in a communist country to write a homersexual free sci-fi novel where the bad guys are left wing death cultists (though I repeat myself).

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I’ve been looking for an excuse through the years to mention the Guns N’ Roses song Coma.  Clocking in at north of ten minutes, it’s a curse filled, angst driven, overly indulgent song on GNR’s already overly indulgent Use Your Illusion double album.  It’s not everybody’s sound that’s for sure (maybe only me and five other people like it), but it’s a sound which was very predominant and is now dead, gone to the age when sci-fi space ships weren’t full of fraggets (I’m ever amazed that GNR’s One in a Million is still on YouTube; any big time producer who pumped that tune out today would have to undergo years of self flagellation under the all-seeing eye of merciless thought police).  Some may view such passing as a good thing, though with no normal morals left to slay, the crime thought police have moved on to made up crap like gay marriage and judgement free molester zones (I repeat myself again).

And songs?  I went to a bar with Mrs. Sandmich and remarked that when we were dating (we’re talking dinosaurs here) the bars played the exact same songs, modern pop music being a wasteland of auditory abuse.

Anyway, while loading up on sushi (at a different bar and at a different time) a young couple was joined by the young lady’s friends.  The conversation got tedious, quick:
Girl one (to guy): “Oh what do you do?”
(note: obviously they’re white because only white people “do” stuff)
Guy: “Well-”
Guy’s girfriend: “He saves DOLPHINS!”
Girl two: “Oh wow neat”
Guys: “-Coast Guard and-”
Girls (same tone and as quickly as possible): “That’s/Pete down at/AWESOME!/car repair/Julie said that/I had to move/car repair/nails done/”etc. etc. for five minutes.

If I was the guy I would’ve gotten up and walked out, heck I didn’t even know them and I wanted to leave.  However Coma came to mind since as part of the angsty guy’s get-away-from-it-all frustration just such a vocal track was crammed in late to the song (between 7:10 and 7:40), scrub to listen and relive the enthralling experience! (For those who are not fans of the song, which will be all of you, it will be pain on top of pain!)

Bartender (afterwards): “Wow you really ate all of that!”

Although, for the single guys out there, apparently “saving dolphins” is a thing…
Girl: “And you said that saving dolphins is part of your job?”
Guy: “Oh yeah totally baby.”