watching the first Austin Powers because i haven’t seen it in like, fifteen years. and you know what? it’s still pretty funny
“austin, the cold war is over!”
“finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? comrades? eh?”
“austin…we won”
“oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism”
one thing about this movie, it looks great. the cinematographer, peter deming, had previously worked EVIL DEAD II and MY COUSIN VINNY among other films. he also went on from this to shoot MULHOLLAND DRIVE
watching this I just remembered one of the great video games of this era, NO ONE LIVES FOREVER
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it's remarkable. generally the popular defense of the american constitutional order is either a (many times mistaken) assertion of framer's intent or just outright folk civics with no relationship to reality
for example, "they designed the electoral college to protect rural/small states from urban/large states" is a commonly believed thing that is a) false and b) makes no sense on its face, i.e., every state in 1787/88 was "rural"
even the more intelligent defenses rely on something like "you just don't understand the higher purpose of the framers." see this response to one of my columns: nationalreview.com/2021/11/jamell…
beginning the new year with a big dumb superhero movie, and one of my personal favorite big dumb superhero movies, AQUAMAN
tomorrow we’ll hunker down with something serious but for now i just want to see crab people and an octopus drummer
i’ll say though for as dumb as this movie is, the submarine sequence is legitimately great action filmmaking, and yahya abdul-mateen is just utterly captivating
got my hands on four pounds of great looking collards and i am very excited to cook them on saturday
longtime followers will know that i’m a guy who loves collard greens
a recipe i really like is from asha gomez’s “my two souths.” i use all collards & swap the ham for smoked turkey. i also do it in the pressure cooker (40 minutes), which means less water/stock (just a cup). the nutmeg is very non-traditional but trust me it works.
My newsletter will still come out tomorrow but this is my last column of the year, on the late Tyler Stovall’s last book “White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea” nytimes.com/2021/12/17/opi… l
This year, I have been really interested in questions of labor, political equality, the intersection of race and capitalism, and constitutional reform, and my favorite columns have touched on at least one of those areas. I thought I’d share some of them.
In January, I wrote about the history of the filibuster. “The framers wanted stability in government, not stagnation. What we have now, with the filibuster intact, is a Senate that can barely move.” nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opi…
just put on batman: forever to have something playing while i do a little work and the thing i remember most about this movie — besides “kiss from a rose” — is those dope glass mugs that you could get from mcdonald’s
five minutes in and one thing i can say for sure is that tommy lee jones is *going for it*
having watched a bit of schumacher recently one thing i wish this movie had was more of his signature sweatiness. everyone should be glistening, imo