Very interesting after-action report from the Hard Lefty side of December 12 in DC. Quite unlike Hard Righties’ comments in similar circumstances: Hard Lefties are very tactically minded and are also willing to admit failure when they fail. itsgoingdown.org/d12-report-bac…
Hard Lefties also think socially, in terms of making friends.
Lots of frank thought about successes and failures, with ideological shoring-up after having had to rely on police protection.
All in all, a very interesting document.
Note too that the Proud Boys didn’t do anything too clever or interesting. They just brought more people, that’s all. It boils down to “how many guys ya got?”
Note that in an ongoing event, any numerical advantage could be whittled down quickly if one side has jail support and lawyers and the other doesn’t.
Hard Lefties have excellent jail support and the NLG number of the day written on their arms. Proud Boys, not so much.
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Watching Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA (1985) with Jennifer Connelly (!!) as a movie star’s daughter who sleepwalks and has a psychic link with insects
and Donald Pleasence (!!!) as the entomologist who enlists her talents to catch a psycho killer
and, for some reason, a chimpanzee
PHENOMENA is clunky, but the gimmick is interesting, and the Swiss locations are gorgeous and unusual.
The scene chemistry between Pleasence and Connelly is interesting. It’s not avuncular, and it’s not creepy; it’s a little distant but respectful.
Jennifer Connelly is bullied by her boarding school classmates and amasses a goddamn enormous horde of flies to unnerve them and this movie was a formative inspiration for the webnovel WORM, wasn’t it?
Today’s background movie is ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (1973) with Robert Blake as a tough but sensitive motorcycle cop who wants to move up to homicide. Really good so far!
Nothing much happens in the first half hour but establishing Blake as a gentle weirdo — but that’s adorable.
ELECTRA GUIDE IN BLUE has one of those scenes where a cop’s instincts about a case are ignored — except instead of the usual tough cop being ignored by wussy superiors, he’s a sensitive cop whose instincts are ignored by the tough guys!
It’s a dynamic you’ve see a million times, but swapping the personalities on either side makes it fresh and compelling.
The plot to kidnap (and potentially kill) the governor of Michigan isn’t just the feds rolling up a dumbass to pad their statistics. It’s one to note.
Remember: never never never trust the journos; always always always read the actual affidavit. bit.ly/3jIMuhY
The FBI’s go-to play is:
1) find a dumbass who is potentially dangerous but at this point just runs his mouth 2) indulge him and rev him up 3) introduce him to a friendly undercover FBI agent offering to sell him explosives 4) THE ARISTOCRATS!
This is not one of those.
This one is unusual in that they had a group of guys, several of whom were already ideologically into the idea of violence and hadn’t managed to talk themselves into actually acting yet.
They were, however, fervent. Plausibly dangerous dudes, shit-talking themselves up.
Reread BATMAN: YEAR ONE and was amazed anew by just how insanely tight the writing on that is. It’s four issues! The *entire trade paperback* is under a hundred pages!!!
Get in and out of scenes early? You have *nothing* on 1986-vintage Frank Miller. Check out Jim Gordon’s relationship with his crooked partner deteriorating in *two panels.*
Note: not only did we not see Gordon come down hard on Morgan, the character Morgan is never introduced.
Issue one: Jim Gordon meets his partner on the second scripted page, has had *three distinct scenes with him* by page FIVE, gets jumped by the partner and other crooked cops at the bottom of page seven, gets beaten up on page eight, gets revenge on pages fifteen through eighteen.
Watched STATE'S ATTORNEY (1932) based on the recommendation of @NitrateDiva and LORD ALMIGHTY JOHN BARRYMORE IS WILDING
Bachelor mob lawyer Barrymore defends hooker Helen Twelvetrees, shacks up with her, then switches to prosecutor and goes straight but keeps Twelvetrees
UNTIL
Barrymore's political ambitions put him in circles with society gal Lilian Ulrich, who tells him she had a serious relationship at nineteen, and when he asks how serious her response is to *whisper*
to which he replies, "That makes things much easier!"
cut to: a parked car
headlights pass as they sit up and she talks a drunk Barrymore into going to find a judge or the mayor and get married
which they do
Barrymore then goes to tell Twelvetrees and then elects to sleep it off at a bachelor hotel