May 1, 2017

At the Red Bud Café...

P1130479

... reflect on the topics of your choice.

(And, please, if you have some shopping to do, consider showing entering Amazon through The Althouse Portal.)

35 comments:

JohnAnnArbor said...

One of those public marriage proposals went south.

Guys need to stop doing that. It's not cute.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Guys need to stop doing that. It's not cute.

5/1/17, 1:12 PM

I feel sorry for the guy. What a humiliation. Red Sox fans, did you have to behave like such assholes?

(I'm sure a Yankee fan would reply, "That's who they are" but Yankee fans probably wouldn't behave any better.)

Ann Althouse said...

"Red Sox fans, did you have to behave like such assholes?"

Because they don't have a woman either. They're all crying out in pain together: "She said no!"

Freeman Hunt said...

What happened to National Geographic? It's so politicized now. Or was it always that way?

David Baker said...

What if I was a movie critic:

Oh, what to do about Emma Watson. She can’t dance, she can’t sing, and she can’t act. But she’s cute, and was passable playing snotty, super-Anglo Hermione Granger in Harry Potter; the gay wizard. (Did the Lady Rowling know he was a raving lily, even at age ten? Dodging “Professor Doubledoor (sic)” was one thing, but Harry Paaa-Turrr?)

So now comes “The Circle,” a movie about the internet of things, co-starring the ever-snotty Hermione Granger. I haven’t seen The Circle, so I’m taking my cues from the NYT movie review. They didn’t like it, although they easily spared Hermione any and all sexual connotations. Essentially because she’s asexual (snotty Anglos are not into such crassness-ness).

Meanwhile, it’s painful watching child stars try to transition into viable adult actors. But what else can they do, wait tables? Although I would be pleased if Emma happened to wait my table at i-Hop or Denny’s. But never at Hooter’s, because for that you need real talent.

David said...

That's quite a photo, but at first I had trouble figuring out what the disk was, or what was in it. Looked a little like jello.

David said...

"What happened to National Geographic? It's so politicized now. Or was it always that way?"

You could argue that the "old" National Geographic was also politicized because it created (reflected?) a mainstream and euroamerican view of the world. But there were so many exceptions to this it's hard to say the mag was political. It had a cultural viewpoint, in many ways advanced for its time, but with a gee whiz innocence. The current slants of really politicized publications are monolithic. No exceptions messages are just pounded into you.

A few days ago I watched a 1930's documentary-travel film on Vera Cruz Mexico. Paternalistic, somewhat patronizing but very sweet natured. It showed dancing, native fishermen and gringo sport fishermen, among other things. The most stunning thing was the huge lovely crescent bay and its empty beaches, hardly a building in sight. Now it's like Rio, everything built and crowded. Everything changes when you bring so many people into a place like that.

David Baker said...

The photo looks like a birdbath gone to ground. Which may explain why our resident woodpecker flew off to Chicago.

David said...

David Baker:


Ron Howard.
Mickey Rooney
Jodie Foster
Christian Bale
Elizabeth Taylor
DeCaprio
Shirley temple
neil Patrick harris
Mayim Bialik

There are quite a few more.

David said...

They're all crying out in pain together: "She said no!"

Interesting take.

Freeman Hunt said...

Re: National Geographic

Current issue has, for example, some pictures of flower salesmen in India. "Flower Men: Vendors at India's floral markets wear their colorful wares every day. In Kolkata the visual contrast blurs the lines between masculine and feminine."

But it's pictures of regular men carrying flowers that they are selling. There is no "blurring" of masculine and feminine. But musing about the blurring of masculine and feminine is currently an in thing in the West, so the template has been laid on these vendors.

There's another article about a bird that begins, "What kind of dad stays home with the kids while their mother is out having sex?" It then goes on to call this bird one of "the animal world's most extreme cases of sex-role reversal."

There is also an article about the Dakota pipeline protests entitled, "United in Protest: The fight against an oil pipeline inspired new activism among indigenous nations."

And, "Whose Moors Are They? The future of Scotland's signature landscape is murky amid debates over class, culture, and nature."

And, "Akhenaten Egypt's First Revolutionary, King Tut's father upended the religion, art, and politics of ancient Egypt, and then his legacy was buried amid a backlash. But today he endures as a symbol of change."

Way to take interesting things and make them sound as boring and studies department bland as possible. The actual long form articles may be good--I haven't read them yet--but the way they're pitched to the reader is in the least appealing way possible. "Take your virtue medicine and suffer this porridge prose, prole!"

tim in vermont said...

One of the things I hate about movies in recent years is that so often one can predict the plot based on the political points that are there to be made. It infects everything, not just magazines. It's like every media outlet, like a Soviet submarine, has a 'political officer' to ensure right thinking by all parties.

David Baker said...

@David;

Impressive list, although I'd quibble about Shirley Temple, and a few others.

Still, there are glaring disappointments. Kristin Stewart, for example - who was groped and virtually molested on-screen at age 12 by Jodie Foster in the movie "Panic Room." I'd love to see the before-and-after of that script, I'll tell you. Foster should'a been arrested.

Although Stewart did manage a transition of sorts, she's still managed to earn a fortune for simply showing up.

And of course, Emma Watson. And don't even mention Brooke Shields, the worst non-transition transition in modern movie history.

Then there's the eternally childish-looking Selena Gomez trying to grow some cleavage. Add her to the current crop of seriously untalented actors.

BTW, Stewart came out as a "same-sexer" recently, most likely thanks to Jodie Foster.

What a business.





tim in vermont said...

An FBI translator with a top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate, CNN has learned. The rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI about where she was going and warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records. Greene´s saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI

"Never trust a female!" - Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

Chuck said...

Here in Southeast Michigan -- and I expect it may be the same in central Wisconsin -- this has been the best summer for Redbud in my memory. Spectacular.

Chuck said...

Bill Shine has resigned from the Fox News Channel. (His title, I think, was Co-President of News; whatever, he had been a Hannity producer and rose through the ranks with Hannity.)

It is a very, very big deal because just four days ago, Hannity was saying that he "hoped" that the rumors about Shine were untrue, because if they were true, it would be "the end" of Fox.

Hannity is scheduled to be on tonight at 10 ET, and for once I will tune in. Wait; no, I can't because I'll be watching Better Call Saul. I'll watch later. If I miss Sean Hannity's live national-tv resignation, I'll get it on a recording.

Hannity and O'Reilly both gone from Fox. After Greta. This is so fantastic. All we have to do is get back George Will, and Bill Kristol, and we'll be all set!

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Women is the most fiendish instrument ever devised to bedevil the days of man." O' Brother

Paco Wové said...

FH: we got fed up with the slow inexorable rise of PC in Nat.Geo. about 10 years ago, and failed to renew the subscription. Sorry to hear it's gotten even more ham-handed since then. Smithsonian lasted a bit longer.

Ann Althouse said...

"The photo looks like a birdbath gone to ground...."

Yes, essentially. It's an idea of Meade's.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Bill Kristol and George Will. Yeah. America can hardly contain it's excitement.

Freeman Hunt said...

We received Nat. Geo. as a gift. The sender was certainly imagining the Nat. Geo. of old.

I ordered it for a year several years ago and didn't renew for reasons I can't remember. (Likely every issue was about climate change because I remember that being a problem with science magazines for a while. There are other topics to cover!)

Science News and Astronomy Magazine are well-received around here.

Original Mike said...

@Freeman - I love Science News. And you can't go wrong with Astronomy.

David said...

"Take your virtue medicine and suffer this porridge prose, prole!"

--Gotta remember that.

You can get every edition of National Geographic (up to a fairly recent cutoff) on cd (dvd?) for $99. That's quite the deal for all that historical material. Someday I would love to go through all of it, year by year.

David said...

Ann Althouse said...
"The photo looks like a birdbath gone to ground...."

Yes, essentially. It's an idea of Meade's.


A present for the local cats.

David Baker said...

I think it was advertising genius David Ogilvy who said: Never try to improve a good thing.

Obviously, FOX-NEWS wasn't listening.

David Baker said...

...Waiting to see if they gave Hannity a stern talking-to.

David Baker said...

Yes, essentially. It's an idea of Meade's.

Yes, and I've always enjoyed Meade's ideas.

Chuck said...

For the Annals of Althouse; I am afraid that I am the very last Atlhousian to have heard of the term, "hippie punching"... ?

A columnist for The Guardian recently used it, and it was notably grafted into the headline:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/apr/29/ny-times-hired-a-hippe-puncher-to-give-climate-obstructionists-cover

(I would have missed entirely this part of the far-left freakout over Bret Stephens' beautiful debut column for the New York Times, but for a very nice review of that freakout by Kyle Smith at the National Review, where he noted the Guardian headline, and the epithet aimed at Stephens.)

Urban Dictionary has a page for "hippie punching":
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hippie%20punching

(That page was linked in The Guardian column.)

RedState pointed out long ago that the term is now at least ten years old:
http://www.redstate.com/diary/barrypopik/2010/09/25/origin-of-hippie-punching/

And so naturally I checked to see if I had missed an examination of "hippie punching" on the Althouse blog. Sure enough:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/im-beginning-to-understand-why-that.html

Now, if I can only find someone else who has never heard of "hippie punching," I won't be the last person on earth to have heard of it.


I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Likely every issue was about climate change

Also the reason I no longer subscribe. So preachy; so unrelenting.

Is a shame. Used to be fantastic. I spent many happy hours at my grandma's as a child reading stacks of both National Geographic and Reader's Digest and I had hoped to give my kids the same experience.

William said...

I only see Natl Geo in waiting rooms. The pictures are worth flipping through, but the only thing I read are the captions under the photos. How much does one want to know about Indian flower sellers?.......The New Yorker is worth reading if you skip the endless articles expounding and explicating the squalor and stupidity of Trump. There's usually a profile of some suicidal poet that's interesting and informative......Many child stars in later life have behavioral patterns that resemble those of abuse or incest survivors. I think Hollywood knows more about covering their trail of slime than the Catholic Church......Emma Watson seems like a nice girl. Didn't she graduate from Harvard? I think she made enough from the Harry Potter movies to be rich forever. She's young, fabulously wealthy, and smart. If she doesn't become a great actor, perhaps she can find other ways killing time.

David Baker said...

"Emma Watson seems like a nice girl... I think she made enough from the Harry Potter movies to be rich forever."

I think you'e right, William.

Still, it must be difficult when the best that life has to offer seems to be behind you. Where does one go from here? Especially at such a young age.

David Baker said...

Well, Hannity played it coy last night, indirectly acknowledging the turmoil swirling all around him, even teasing that he "might" talk about it at some random point in the show. But in the end he said nothing.

So, they did give him a good talking-to. And who wants to lose their job during Christmas.

Freeman Hunt said...

"Still, it must be difficult when the best that life has to offer seems to be behind you."

Being in a big movie is certainly not the best life has to offer.

The best things it has to offer are the so-called little things which are actually the big things.

David Baker said...

"Being in a big movie is certainly not the best life has to offer."

Wisdom is not a characteristic of youth.

But in literature, there were two notable exceptions; Romeo & Juliet

David Baker said...

There are still reports of major flooding in your neck of the woods, Freeman. Locations like Pocahontas look inundated.