The Grouchy Editor

The Hunt

If you just read the synopsis of this upcoming (see below) movie, your immediate reaction could well be, “What is Hollywood thinking?  Liberal elites hunt down Trump supporters?”

But if you watch the trailer, you might have an entirely different opinion. Looks to me like the thing might actually be pro-Deplorable. If that’s the case, won’t a lot of people feel silly for criticizing it?

Of course not.

Editor’s Note:  The film studio just announced it is cancelling The Hunt’s September release. Not to worry: I imagine that, just like The Interview several years ago, the movie will eventually be released for streaming and we’ll all find out the fuss was much ado about nothing.

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Watching the media these days, I get the strong impression that we are on the verge of civil war.

Here’s a suggestion: Let the media fight the civil war and the rest of us will watch on television.

Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham can battle Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman, and Jim Acosta. I’d watch that. Wouldn’t you?

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Big Tech Battle

Are Twitter and Facebook more like a newspaper or the phone company? If the former, you have to let us sue them when they misbehave. If the latter, they can’t be allowed to censor anything that doesn’t already break the law.

I vote for the latter. Treating them like Ma Bell won’t be pretty, and the Wild West will rule social media, but hey, you can always block, mute, or unfriend.

Problem right now is, these “algorithms” don’t work worth a shit.

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Unpopular Thought No. 1:

If our parents and grandparents were truly “the greatest generation,” then why did they do such a lousy job raising their spoiled-brat children (the Boomers — my group), which in turn did an even lousier job raising their spoiled-brat children (the Millennials)? Just asking.

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Unpopular Thought No. 2:

Farmers pride themselves on their supposed independence, yet with their endless government bailouts and subsidies, aren’t they our biggest welfare recipients? Just asking.

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Unpopular Thought No. 3:

Listen, I’m no gun nut. If you believe the world would be a better place with absolutely no guns, I’m with you. But if you scratch your head when the pro-gun people resist every attempt to regulate gun ownership, I have two clichés for you: “slippery slope” and “if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.” Those might be clichés, but that doesn’t make them untrue.

I know this, because incremental regulation worked well for the anti-smoker brigade. I’m a smoker who watched “common sense” regulations progress from no smoking on airplanes to where we are today, which is basically treating smokers like lepers oozing disease from their pores.

The gun people watched that happen, too. So that’s probably why they fight every little attempt to regulate them.

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Far be it from me to add fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories. However …

What do (dead) Jeffrey Epstein and (living) Jim Comey have in common?

Answer: They both potentially have/had very damaging dirt on the rich and powerful. Epstein is now conveniently dead, and Comey last month escaped charges from the Justice Department, which is very convenient for him.

Moral of the story: If you are a convenience store clerk who dreams of joining the rich and powerful, be content with your lot in life. Joining the rich and powerful can be hazardous to your health.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

We’re feeling especially lazy this week, so the “Review” will be short and sweet. Well, short, anyway.

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I was Internet surfing and came across this shot from Piranha 3D:

I think every woman who has ever asked, “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” should take note that, compared to water, your pants ain’t nothin’ to worry about.

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Money Heist: Part 3 has a plot that’s often just as ridiculous as in earlier seasons, but at times it’s a wildly entertaining ride. The final episode, especially, was packed with twists and turns.

And the pregnant cop (below) as villain? A stroke of genius.

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Between rancorous politics and mass shootings and just things in general, I’m thinking this might be a great time to move to New Zealand.

Can I smoke in New Zealand?

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

There’s a Reason Our State Bird Is the Loon

There is a woman who follows me on Twitter (I also follow her), whom I don’t really know. I don’t recall how we became mutual followers. But looking at her avatar, she appears to be just an ordinary female American, possibly a soccer mom, possibly not. I believe she mentioned in one of her tweets that she is 52 years old.

But looking at my feed in recent weeks, it appears that she’s become more active. Here is a sampling of what she’s had to say:

Mind you, this sampling is just from the past 24 hours. These rants go on all day, every day.

Why in hell is she so angry?

What is it about Donald Trump that has driven so many Democrats off the deep end?

I think it’s the Rocky syndrome. In America, there is no story or myth more powerful than that of the underdog rising up against insurmountable odds to triumph. It’s how we were born:  rag-tag patriots knocking off the all-powerful British Redcoats.

And it’s how Rocky Balboa became a movie legend in 1976, not quite defeating, but going the distance, against Apollo Creed. Granted, Donald Trump is no humble nice guy like Rocky was. But in November 2016 he pulled a Rocky for the ages.

Now imagine you are on the wrong side of that shocking event. You are a Democrat and you voted for Hillary. But on November 8 you became the British in 1776, or Apollo Creed in 1976. You are the loser and the villain.

That’s a hard pill to swallow.

That’s why the Democrats have lost their marbles.

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Of course, I could be wrong. In the past, I’ve voted for certain Democrats, which no doubt makes me a naïve fool in the minds of some on the right. I’ve also voted for certain Republicans, which no doubt makes me an evil bastard in the minds of some on the left.

In my defense, I live in Minnesota. This is a state that gave the world Ilhan Omar and now this woman, who plans to run against her:

OK, so many problems here. First, I have no idea who the dude in the MAGA hat is. Also, this is Minnesota, and Minnesotans don’t say “y’all” the way the guy introducing this young lady does.

But remember, this is the state that gave the world Jesse Ventura and Al Franken, so you can’t really be surprised by Stella, who, by the way, has apparently been charged with this:

I’m from Minnesota, where there is no shortage of loons. Most of them seem to be in politics.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Where I was when …

The first men walked on the moon:

With my family on vacation at a lakeside resort in Minnesota called Izatys. I recall (hazily — hey, I was a young fart) a small group of us vacationers huddled around a black-and-white TV in the resort’s recreation room, watching the famously grainy images of Neil Armstrong and company on the moon. If there was cheering or any other overt displays of emotion from our small group, I don’t recall it.

Kennedy was assassinated:

Have to admit I’m not sure, because I was basically a toddler. I do remember playing on the living-room floor of a neighbor’s house while the tragic event was being endlessly discussed on television. I also recall – I think – that dinner with my family was an especially somber occasion that evening.

The terrorists attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001:

At home getting ready for work, listening to the radio describe a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I believe that at first they thought it was a small airplane. Later, at work, we spent most of the day watching CNN report the dramatic developments.

Ilhan Omar married her brother:

Probably at home alone, possibly masturbating.

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Speaking of Ilhan Omar … I got an e-mail the other night inviting me to the Minneapolis airport (about a 20-minute drive) to welcome her home from D.C.

I thought about going and wearing a MAGA hat, just to see what would happen. But I decided not to because a) I don’t own a MAGA hat, and b) I value my life.

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I might have hyped this show before, but if you like funny and you dig British comedy, check out Trigger Happy TV on YouTube.  As far as I can tell, it’s the clear inspiration for YouTube channels like The Daily Dropout, Vlog Creations, Jack Vale Films – you name it.

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Babe of the Week: Jessica Sula

I was watching the third season of Scream (don’t ask why; it wasn’t anything special) and wondered where I had seen the cute actress who played “Liv.” Oh, yeah, she was the bare-bottomed lass who gets butt-whipped in Godless:

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Where do they find these courtroom “artists”? This woman is supposed to be a beauty queen? And check out those shoulder pads on El Chapo.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Talk about fortunate timing. I’m referring to the producers of the movie Crawl (above), an alligators-and-hurricane thriller that opens just as Hurricane Barry barrels into the southern coast.

Although I suppose it won’t set any box-office records in New Orleans.

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Last week I said that Stranger Things doesn’t appear to be overly political.

Can’t say the same for Netflix, which caved to social justice warriors and will no longer allow smoking on shows like Stranger Things.

What’s next — going to use digital technology to delete Humphrey Bogart’s cigarettes from old movies like Casablanca?

Oh, hell. I shouldn’t have said that. They’re probably working on it right now.

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America’s biggest problem? I think YouTube pundit Tim Pool nails it in this video:

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Good golly, The Donald is in for some heavy criticism no matter what happens during tomorrow’s promised purge of illegal immigrants.

You just know that the media is salivating at the prospect of documenting “families torn apart,” making Trump look as cruel as possible. Democrats will liken it to Jews being crammed onto trains bound for Auschwitz.

But if Trump calls the purge off or limits it to just a small number of violators, the right will howl that, when it comes to immigration, Trump is once again simply a boy calling “wolf.”

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Stranger Things premiered its third season and, thanks to our cultural wars, I was seeing politics everywhere in the first episode.

The villains are Russians. This must be a dig at Trump, and Netflix is virtue signaling to the Russian-collusion crowd, right?

Then again, the story takes place in 1985, when the Cold War was still in full swing, and so who better to play the bad guys than Russians? So maybe it’s not a political statement.

One of the evil Russians is a smoker. This must be a nod to anti-smoking fanatics, right?

Then again, the coolest, funniest guy in the show, Sheriff Hopper (pictured above), is also a smoker. So maybe it’s not a political statement.

Also, if you support the Hollywood boycott of Georgia and its abortion laws, will you put your money where your mouth is?

You should not be watching Stranger Things, because it is filmed in, you guessed it, Georgia.

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I’m not sure what these Democrat presidential candidates hope to accomplish with their relentless hyperbole about Trump and, by association, his supporters. Trump is a white nationalist, a neo-Nazi, a homophobe, a misogynist, and a rapist, they say. How could 60 million people vote for him?

So, if you voted for Trump, you hear this rhetoric and might think: “Wow. I supported a guy who is a homophobic, racist, rapist, Nazi, white nationalist – I must be really terrible and must atone by voting for (fill-in-the-blank Democrat).”

Or you might think: “These Democrats are no saints. They lie and slander and will say anything to get elected, including insults thrown at me. I’m no worse than they are. I’m voting for Trump again.”

Which option do you think Trump voters will take?

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I’m not a big fan of adults using their children to make political points. But come on now, you idiots are threatening this cutie pie?

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Let me count the reasons we should hope that the U.S. women’s soccer team gets bumped off in the World Cup:

1) They are poor sports and showoffs; when you win by a score of 13 to zip, celebrating after every goal just tells the world you are a bunch of jerks; 2) the team supposedly represents the U.S., yet one of them protests the national anthem. Why should the country support you when you don’t support the country? 3) they play soccer, which bores the heck out of me. I am supposed to wish you well in a sport I don’t like just because you are female?

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To Trump or Not to Trump

The problem with Donald Trump isn’t just Donald Trump; it’s the insane reaction to him. If you’re sick and tired of all the whining and rancor that seems – at least on TV and Twitter – to be tearing the country apart, deciding whom to vote for next year is a devilish dilemma.

On the one hand, Trump is in office as a gigantic “fuck you” to the establishment and the (mostly liberal) status quo. In his role as a “fuck you,” Trump has been an unqualified success. But on the other hand … does anyone really want four more years like the past two howling, snarling, civil-war-inducing years?

If the Democrats had a candidate who is neither 1) completely off the rails and beholden to the radical left, nor 2) pretending to be beholden to the radical left and simply lying to get elected, I think a lot of Trump supporters would switch sides, simply to return to some sense of normalcy. It would be a relief.

But the Dems aren’t doing that. They continue to throw an all-encompassing temper tantrum and threaten to create an entirely new country. So the choice is four more years of Trump, or electing a Democrat whom we hope is lying to us.

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Good sitcom you are not watching:

Rosehaven, now in its third season. It’s funny. It’s good. Enough said.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

“Kenneth, what is the frequency?”

UFOs and (possible) space aliens continue to make the news.

Tucker Carlson keeps reporting on them, and YouTube features a wealth of UFO-related videos. President Trump was asked this week about the phenomenon.

If you’re a certain age, none of this is particularly new. You recall the above quote, in which a hapless Dan Rather was accosted by a stranger on the street, and you think: “Aha. Sounds like a question some space alien would pose.”

First Theory

My guess is that the aliens have been observing Earthlings for some time and have decided that we are at a tipping point. What tipped the point is the following: Thanks to the Internet, American Deplorables decided that too much wealth and power is in the hands of too few Americans (the “elite”) and said, “enough!” And so they elected Trump. And so we got Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Meanwhile, also thanks to the Internet, Third World denizens decided that too much wealth and power is in the hands of too few people (Americans and Western Europeans) and said, “enough!” And so they are storming the borders of Western Europe and America.

In other words, if Congolese tribal communities weren’t sitting around watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians on their cell phones, none of this would be happening.

The aliens are simply watching these earthly developments, trying to decide whether or not to step in — or they are just enjoying the show.

Second Theory

So how do you recognize a space alien? I suspect it is the Sleepy Eye.

Aliens recognize each other on the street by the distinctive-yet-subtle facial feature of one sleepy eye on a human face. Some of these sleepy-eye aliens are in the public eye, so to speak. Two examples:

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                                 Sleepy eye on the right                               Sleepy eye on the left

Lest you make the mistake of thinking that Sleepy Eye Aliens all disguise themselves as older white males, here is another example:

Fox reporter Christina Coleman; sleepy eye on the right

So what does any of this have to do with that stranger accosting Dan Rather on the street? It does not appear that Rather has a sleepy eye. Actually, both of his eyes look somewhat sleepy (below).

My best guess is that Rather had a mote or some other irritation in one of his eyes, and was temporarily afflicted with the alien-recognition cue.

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Addendum: If this week’s review seems uncharacteristically off the wall, I blame it on the fact that I am currently reading a book by David Foster Wallace, a famous writer who took his own life in 2008. Wallace was very smart but also a bit weird. I in no way claim that the above post is very smart, but I think we can all agree that it is weird.

Addendum 2: I just recalled that there is a small town in Minnesota named Sleepy Eye. My guess is that Sleepy Eye is in reality an alien hub or base of operations.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Black Mirror

TV Updates

The Name of the Rose: In case you hadn’t noticed, this is 2019 and the midst of the “Me Too” era. And so if you’re going to remake Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (there was a 1986 film), it must have a “strong female character.” Or two. Never mind the fact that Eco’s novel and the Sean Connery movie relegated female characters to minor and/or victim status (it’s been awhile since I read the book; perhaps I’ve forgotten something).

Political correctness aside, Sundance TV’s eight-part miniseries, like the 1986 movie, is great fun to look at (it’s set at a mountaintop medieval abbey), and is bolstered by some superb actors.

I’m a sucker for a great villain, and I challenge you to find a better boo-hiss bad guy than Rupert Everett’s Bernardo Gui (below).

Black Mirror: Charlie Brooker’s Twilight Zone for the 2000s remains thought-provoking, and often touching. But something’s missing that was there in the early seasons.

That something, methinks, is the word “clever.” The new season playing on Netflix consists of three movie-length stories that are never dull, but lack that “wow” factor that so distinguished the show when it was an obscure British offering.

Is this change a result of selling out to the American behemoth Netflix, with its (presumable) insistence on casting big-name American stars and writing scripts with happier endings? Or has Brooker simply run out of gas?

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You would think that someone in Trump’s inner circle would point out that the above photo op during his interview with George Stephanopoulos resembles nothing so much as a prosecutor grilling a defendant, but then again there are lots of questions about Trump’s inner circle.

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I have only recently gotten used to the fact that there is a major league baseball player named Evan Longoria, and now I learn that there is an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers named Christin Stewart.

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Some kid pitched a no-hitter and my local paper decided this was a good picture to post in honor of the occasion:

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Hey, I’m an old-timer. I still get most of my news from cable TV and the print media. But they tell me that is not the future. The future, they say, is online. 

I read RealClearPolitics because, at least in theory, the left and the right are evenly represented. You can read what The Daily Caller says about Trump and then you can read what The Daily Beast says about Trump. Somewhere in between all the spin, you hope, lies the truth. I also check TV ratings to see who’s on top, Hannity or Maddow. But the future, they say, is online.

And so I’ve been following the “adpocalypse” on YouTube, in which parent company Google is evidently pissing off every American under 50 years old by haphazardly censoring content providers on both the left and the right, because Google doesn’t seem to know what the hell it’s doing. Or it does know what the hell it’s doing and nobody’s happy about it.

This all began because of a feud between two snot-nosed brats named Steven Crowder (a conservative) and Carlos Maza (a liberal). I watched a bit of their content and decided I don’t like either one of them. They come off as over-educated, whining brats.

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                                       Sniveling Carlos                                                 Ranting Steven

Crowder and Maza are both Millennials. The future, they say, is online and the future is Millennials. 

God help all of us.

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Lest I be accused of ageism with my tut-tutting about youth online, I should mention that it’s not all so bleak on YouTube. There is a guy named Tim Pool who posts about current events every day, and he seems level-headed, thoughtful, and well-informed. He’s likable. YouTube needs more Tim Pools.

Cool Tim Pool

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The Five’s Greg Gutfeld said that, in his opinion, the difference between a psychopath and a normal person is how he or she reacts to the spinning woman in this video:

If you reacted in horror, Gutfeld believes, you are normal. If you laughed hysterically, you lack human empathy and are likely a psychopath.

I watched the video and I was horrified. Once I learned that the woman was going to be OK, I laughed hysterically.

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