Monthly Archives: August 2025

 

 

If I wrote the headline about the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce engagement:

 

Dumb Jock Lands Mid-Looking Feminazi

 

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In theory, I should love The Thursday Murder Club. The novel is a “cozy” mystery, with elderly protagonists, and I dig cozy mysteries by Agatha Christie with older heroes like Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. I also enjoy the 1960s Miss Marple flicks with Margaret Rutherford.

But I was bored by Thursday the book and I was bored by the Netflix adaptation.

Being an old person doesn’t automatically make you interesting. Being Pierce Brosnan or Helen Mirren doesn’t mean you get to play interesting characters.

If you subscribe to the school of comedy in which older people cursing — or expressing an interest in sex — strikes you as hilarious, this movie is for you. I call it the “oldsters acting like teenagers” genre. That sort of thing was mildly amusing in 1971, when Ruth Gordon starred in Harold and Maude. Today, it’s an uninspired cliché.

I watched Thursday with cautious optimism. I thought British star power might overcome a weak story. After 20 minutes the movie became background noise as my thoughts drifted elsewhere. After 45 minutes I turned it off.

 

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Until Dawn

Settle down, kids, no nudity in this movie

 

Until Dawn opens with an overhead drone shot looking down on a forest as a vehicle moves along a lonely road. Inside the car is a group of five young people: three girls and two guys. They stop at a gas station, where an older man at the cash register creeps out one of the girls. Seems somehow … familiar.

How many horror movies have opened this same way?

Sigh. That opening should have warned me about the rest of this film, in which our young heroes discover something is going to kill them. And kill them again. And again. You know, like in Groundhog Day or, more apropos of the genre, Happy Death Day.

The plot, such as it is, checks a number of woke boxes: The alpha male turns cowardly; the beta male turns heroic; the final girl has girl-boss attributes and no romantic interest in the boys — that would no doubt be too heteronormative. Instead, her main interest is her sister.

The movie is well produced, competently directed, and doesn’t embarrass any members of the cast. There are a few effective moments. Lots of jump scares, lots of gore. 

But how many times do we need to see this kind of crap?

Release: 2025  Grade: D

 

Would I watch it again? I had a difficult time watching it once.

 

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I’ve been watching “Pop Culture Crisis” on YouTube, and I feel a bit sorry for the hosts.

When you are conservatives covering pop culture, which these hosts are, there must be no end to the hair-pulling, eye-bulging, and teeth-gnashing over the tidal waves of Twitter bile, TikTok nonsense, and constant streams of “woke” product from the progressive entertainment machine.

Somehow, Millennial Brett Dasovic and Gen Z’s Mary Morgan manage. They don’t suck celebrity ass, and they pepper plenty of homespun wisdom atop the nonstop crap they cover.

 

They do have weaknesses, of course.

Dasovic —

Good: Affable and amusing.

Bad: Terrible taste in movies and TV. His idea of good television:  a 25-year-old CBS police procedural. His idea of bad television: Kenneth Branagh’s (superb) Wallander.

 

Morgan —

Good: For someone so young, she’s very good at calling out bullshit.

Bad: She is alarmingly ignorant of anything (or anyone) pop-culture-related prior to the year of her birth.

 

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It’s rare to see Morgan laugh out loud. But curiously, suspiciously, she lost it when a woman in the clip below accused a dude of having a small penis. That’s not very Christian of you, Mary.

 

We’ll give her a pass, since she does have quite the perky behind in this (fake?) clip:

 

 

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“Woman Spreading”

 

In the old days, young women went to finishing school, where they learned modesty and other old-fashioned virtues.

Today, we have girls like Lauren on Big Brother (below), who apparently likes to advertise her availability to a national TV audience:

 

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I’ve been watching season two of Wednesday. The show’s either lost some of its charm, or it’s in a sophomore slump. 

The script relies too much on Jenna Ortega as the title character. She’s great, but a series needs more than that. The problem, as usual, is a weak script. The mystery is pedestrian and the subplots are nothing special. Wednesday has gone from quirky delight about a weird girl invading a Hogwarts-like school to “Nancy Drew Mystery of the Week.”

Or maybe I just have no business watching a show aimed at teen girls.

 

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I’ve been arguing with an A.I. character. I don’t recommend it.

Debating with humans can be exasperating, but real people are nowhere near as obstinate as A.I. characters.

 

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I could mention something about the week in current events, but if we are all living in a simulation, the news doesn’t matter, anyway.

 

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Media Matters

 

I guess it’s not a done deal, but it looks as though Howard Stern’s days are numbered as a “shock jock” at Sirius.

I have mixed emotions. Back in the 1990s, Stern was indeed the King of All Media. He had a hit movie, bestselling books, and his radio show. I liked him because, as a dirty young man, I could relate to him.

I especially enjoyed his, uh, talent(?) for talking all-American girls out of their knickers for the omnipresent male gaze. (See “Butt Bongo Fiesta,” pics below, if you dare.)

 

 

Man offers his bare-bottomed wife, Marie, to Howard for a spanking, above and below. She seems to like it. Click on pics for a larger view.

 

 

But in recent years he’s tarnished, if not completely destroyed, his radio legacy. He’s become a modern Howard Hughes, holed up in his penthouse, fearful of COVID and the world. He’s just a bitter, cowardly old man.

Also, it’s hard to feel sorry for a dude who’s raked in tens of millions of dollars — or more. He should never have divorced his first wife. He should never have endorsed Hillary Clinton.

 

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I have no problem with South Park mocking Donald Trump and Kristi Noem. It’s what the show does. I DO have a problem with the lack of mockery for low-hanging Democrat fruit like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That’s the opposite of edgy; it’s cowardice. 

 

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Other than money to be made, I don’t understand the motivation of women who do small-penis humiliation. 

Maybe this explains it:

 

 

 

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by Mary Higgins Clark

 

Clark’s debut novel has a decent premise. After her guilty verdict for the murder of her two children is overturned, a young widow flees California, changes her identity, and begins life anew in New England.  Seven years later, her new children also go missing. Guess who the cops consider their prime suspect.

That’s an intriguing plot. Unfortunately, too many other elements of Children cry out, “first-time novelist.” Clark’s characters are shallow and dull, the dialogue is often stilted, and the atmosphere is dated (the book was published in 1975).

At times, I felt like I had stumbled onto an ABC movie of the week from 50 years ago. Not exactly boring, but also not memorable.

 

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I stand by my suspicion that I am a teen girl trapped in an adult male’s body. How else to explain my delight listening to songs by Harry Styles (“As It Was”) and Chappell Roan (“Pink Pony Club”)?

You, too, can become a teenage girl if you spend enough time listening to upbeat, bubble-gum crap on stations like the one I listen to (KDWB in Minneapolis).

 

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They say A.I. will be the end of us. By “us” I mean humanity. 

In the meantime, it’s offering some startling, borderline amazing, visuals. Like this video of a dog eating a woman’s face, which is not a face but a taco salad, or something, and … well, see for yourself.

 

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Speaking of fakes, are these pictures of a California woman attempting to impede ICE officers for real?

 

 

I am unable to grasp her strategy. Does she believe that by cavorting naked in front of the officers and giving them erections, she will somehow abort the deportations? Hell, I don’t know, maybe it worked.

 

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