Rules of Thumb

1. Spend more time doing a sport than watching sports.

2. Order extra dishes (usually appetizers). Cost: a little extra money, potential benefit: discovery of a dish you'll eat forever.

3. Drink less alcohol as you get older

4. If you only have time for tv episodes, just watch a movie over multiple days

5. If you find a pair of pants you like, buy an extra pair in a different color immediately

6. Always be practicing 

 

Logging

Film: Avatar: The Way of Water

Perhaps my expectations were low, but I sort of enjoyed it. Especially when I compare it against the other 3D previews of various Marvel and DC fare...

I guess it felt a bit like a rehash of other Cameron films, but is that such a bad thing?

My subtextual readings of the film - have kids - lots of them. Learn to swim. And Americans of a certain age will never get past Vietnam.

Logging

Film: Tar 

Mixed feelings. Overall, a solid film but probably not a rewatch. Depends a lot on how one contextualizes it. In comparison to Memoria - much more captivating. I quite enjoyed the weird paranoia and creepy Michael Haneke thriller aspects. As an anti-PC, cancel culture diatribe...eh. It's okay, maybe a bit snobby. I feel like the appropriate response to the PC stuff is mockery, not an erudite lecture. As a hang out movie? Total fail. I feel like the people in Tar are types I'd dedicate my life to avoiding, so spending 2.5 hours with them over the course of the last two nights does feel like a waste. 

I didn't understand the last shot, but I'll remember it. 

My list of movies of the year is slowly picking up. Tar will be on there, but near the bottom.

Homelessness

Read something the other day that simplified things for me. Homelessness corresponds to one simple factor: housing cost/scarcity. There's simple data to demonstrate, but I lost the link. So...I guess when the economy booms at a faster pace than we can build, this homelessness is inevitable. 

Logging

Film: Amsterdam

One of my favorites of the year, despite being too cute at times.

TV: White Lotus S2

First and last episodes were my least favorites, but maybe that's the nature of TV. 

Film: A Most Wanted Man

There are better Le Carre adaptations, but this is still solid. 

San Francisco

In the last 5 days, these things happened.

Legacy of Gavin Newsom and George Gascon. And yet Democrats keep electing these guys. We're insane.

China Protests / World Cup

So the World Cup triggered these protests, right? These regular Chinese folks just broke when they saw the entire world (not the West, not America - the WORLD) just partying and watching soccer and living life and they just threw up their likes like "what in the actual fuck?" Amiright?

This brings me back to a thing I keep hearing and it keeps annoying me: the Americans who were feigning guilt about the corruption of Qatar and Fifa, etc. The same types who said they'd leave the United States if George W Bush got reelected, that would leave the US if Donald Trump got elected, and now threatened to - GASP - not watch the World Cup because of Qatar's corruption, the dead building workers, the homophobia of the country (I guess Americans don't realize there are 1 billion Muslims who basically share in this belief along with hundreds of millions of Christians, and Hindu's - so we should what? Refuse to talk to them?)

Here's news for those people: Qatar is a country with a population about the size of the Westside of Los Angeles. It is a tiny spec of dust that matters in terms of global affairs not one single IOTA!

Fifa is corrupt, of course! Is it that much more corrupt than the NCAA? Do I hear any of these people protesting college football every single goddamn weekend of the fall? No.

And let me remind these folks of the last two settings of the World Cup and Olympics - Russia and China - arguably the two most corrupt, autocratic, and most importantly - significant countries in the world. China has locked up in prison more Uighurs than the entire population of Qatar. 

My point: get some FUCKING perspective here people.  

And I'm not saying I - or anyone - could've predicted the World Cup would lead to a protest movement in China - but it has. And this protest movement might end up being one of the most significant events of our century. On the scale of "what matters" the situation in China is like a Blue Whale whereas Qatar's sloppy construction practices is equivalent to an ant.

2nd Amendment

Here's why we have it. 

"Equity"

An efficient way to produce a more equitable outcome in institutions would to be to simply disqualify ivy league graduates from certain positions - say, showrunner, or executives above VP level, or Supreme court.

Hold them to their own words and play by their own rules.