Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: comic strip havanese strip poodle strip

The multimillionaire Republican candidate for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat is running not one, not two, but three different AI-created commercials emphasizing how much money his Democratic opponent spends annually on hair and makeup. (The commercials aren't explicit, but other news reports place the total at $2,887.) I'm curious what he thinks this line of attack is accomplishing.

As a voter, am I supposed to be mad that someone spends campaign donations on their appearance? Given the cost of everything these days, three thousand for hair/makeup services doesn't strike me as extraordinarily excessive, especially for someone on television running for office. This line of attack seems particularly counterproductive given that it's the Republican party that has fully embraced the much more expensive artificial "Mar-a-Lago Face" (base price: $90,000).

Does the attacking candidate have market research indicating Georgians want their government representatives to look like unkempt trolls? Should we all get our haircuts from Great Clips? (Even they now charge at least $20 per basic monthly trim, tip not included.) I won't deny that a majority of us voted for a sunburnt orange with a bad comb-over, but if we love slobs, just being a candidate with splotchy five o'clock shadow should be enough to win the race without AI recreations to make your opponent look even better than he does in real life.

I assume that if stronger, more substantive attacks could be made, there wouldn't be three commercials with this silly complaint, leaving me with the feeling that all this has to be an old-fashioned attack on his opponent's manhood, as a Real Man would never use a beauty product more exotic than lye soap. Maybe someone should have told that to John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds; those ladies looked particularly good in makeup and wigs.

The particular candidate making these loud dog whistles has a history of employing people with extremely unpopular (some might say "anti-women" or "pro-Nazi") opinions and no qualms about using deep fakes of his opponent despite the current AI backlash, so I already had plenty of reasons to doubt his judgement. But no matter how many times you mention it, I just don't care if my representatives in Congress are spending their money on professional stylists. That's certainly a better use of cash than AI attack ads. At least the stylists are real people.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: georgia politics

TCM has wisely decided that their Star of the Month for October 2026 is Myrna Loy. They've dedicated Mondays to Loy movies starting early today with her oldest surviving talkie:

118/2688. Noah's Ark (1928)

Technically, it's a "part-talkie," defined as films with synchronized sound but limited speaking scenes, the template established by Warner Bros' The Jazz Singer, released February 1928. (Loy has a silent cameo in that as a chorus girl!) The part-talkie format didn't last long; Warner's first "all-talking" picture, Lights of New York, came out in July of the same year. Loy made only five part-talkies, two before this and two after, but this is the only one with a surviving "talkie" soundtrack.

As you would expect from a film titled Noah's Ark, the climax of the film is a spectacular biblical flood. The rest, you might be surprised to hear, is a World War I romance preaching that humanity has learned its lesson about intolerance and will end all wars immediately. Whoops. The two halves don't really go together, and, worse, the dialogue is particularly ham-fistedly awful, like Hollywood had never bothered listening to people having actual conversations before they invented "talking" pictures.

Loy's part in Noah's Ark is not big. She's credited for two roles, but only one is identifiable in the existent film. She comes in at about the 53-minute mark and is on screen for only 39 seconds, emerging from behind the curtain of an improvised cabaret. For future reference, this is her whole part:

Myrna Loy as DANCER:
Why are you always staring at the soldiers? Who are you looking for?

Dolores Costello as MARIE:
Well, if you must know, I'm looking for an American soldier.

DANCER:
That ought to be easy. There are only two million of them over here.

MARIE:
Really? I thought there were more.

DANCER:
Now, tell me the sad story.

MARIE:
I don't think you'd be interested in my story.

Having seen your story, Marie, I can tell you that you're right. On the other hand, I'll be watching Myrna every Monday this month.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies myrna loy

104/2674. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
It's very accurate to describe this anime as a gender-swapped Groundhog Day (with a little Donnie Darko vibe). I found it quite charming.

105/2675. Chungking Express (1994)
I really didn't know what to expect from this, and I spent most of the film wondering why I was still watching it. Ultimately it's very much like one of Jim Jaramusch stream of consciousness films (Night Train springs to mind) and the influence on Tarantino is obvious. If nothing else, it's a great palate refresher for the typical Hollywood formula.

Production teams: This film has so many Coca-Cola products on screen, you'd think they bankrolled the whole thing.

106/2676. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
This is a ridiculously contrived thriller in which a former newspaper reporter decides to frame himself for a murder because... well, with a setup like that, you can probably guess. The Big Twist Ending makes it all so, so stupid.

Screenwriters: When your detective pumps the strip club bartender for leads, have him order something stiffer than a Coke.

107/2677. Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
A triumph of style over substance! They wanted it so badly, they should have just gone ahead and titled this Lady John Wick. It gets the candy-colored ultra-violence right but rings emotionally hollow. Wick cheated, of course, as a murdered dog guarantees audience buy-in; maybe I just care less about human children.

Set decorators: Coke advertising builds retro vibes, and the red foreshadows bloody violence!

108/2678. Appleseed (1988)
I'd read the manga, but this is the first time I'd seen the anime. As good as Ghost in the Shell is, this is not.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: coke movies

It's nice when house guests finally settle in for the evening.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: cecilia cydney dogs poodles

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: comic strip havanese strip poodle strip

I feel like Batman got short shrift this Batman and Football month. Since we're almost out of time, here's a link to the song that R.E.M. wrote in 1992 for Batman Returns:

Winged Mammal Theme

I don't love it, but at just just under three minutes in length, I find it a lot more palatable than the nearly twice as long and much more widely known One Word Wonder Batdance.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: batman music one word wonders prince rem youtube

I accompanied my father to his general practitioner appointment today. I had to. I took his car away last week.

If you recall last month's post about Dad's decision to sleep-drive through a mailbox you will understand why I judged it necessary to take away his keys after three days in a row during which he couldn't remember that he wasn't supposed to drive to the pharmacy to pick up pills I had already picked up. Dad didn't take that well and chose to start a physical fight with me, further demonstrating that he wasn't thinking straight. I'm no toughie, but an 80-year-old man who runs out of breath tying his shoes shouldn't even try stealing candy from babies. Dad gave me the silent treatment for two whole days before he forgot that he was supposed to be mad at me.

On the way out of the appointment, the doctor pulled me aside to helpfully suggest that if Dad was resistant to surrendering his keys, maybe I should contact the state to have his driver's license suspended.

"Why would I do that?" I asked.

"Because he can't drive without a license," the doctor said with a totally straight face.

Thanks, doc. Given that the problem is that Dad can't drive now with a license, I think I'll get a second opinion.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: dad dear diary family illness

In Metro Atlanta, all cars are required to pass an emission inspection each year in order to renew their tag and stay street legal. In theory, this is a good system to maintain our air quality. In practice, it has some problems.

I own my grandfather's 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue (which he explicitly told my father never to give to me) with only about 104,000 miles on it. For many years, I've spent too much money keeping it running. Right now, it has a broken smog filter system. I'd fix it, but parts are hard to come by, which is no surprise considering that GMC retired the entire Oldsmobile brand in 2004. After consulting with the local GMC dealership, my mechanic found and tested several potential aftermarket replacements, but none worked. Oldsmobile, it seems, didn't do a great job of documenting the parts necessary for a car they were discontinuing.

In their infinite wisdom, Georgia lawmakers foresaw this problem and allowed the Georgia's Clean Air Force (GCAF), which is responsible for oversight of the emissions testing, to give a car a waiver if it can be declared Non-Complying Obsolete. I applied for such a waiver. They denied my request. They spoke to my mechanic who explained the problem, and then they said their much more knowledgeable researchers could find suitable parts online, though they declined to share which parts they found. They suggested I look at Autozone, which I think was their way of politely telling me to go to hell. (I looked. Autozone does not have the part.)

The GCAF offers that I can still apply for a Repair Waiver if I spend a total of $1,176 on repairs. To date this year, I have spent $816 on parts from eBay and mechanics bills before we ran into this availability problem. What's the point of paying a mechanic another $360 to remove and reinsert the old parts over and over? Even if I did, I expect the GCAF would still find another polite way to tell me go to hell.

The "good" news is that there's another way to bypass the emission requirement: cars 25 years old and older are exempt from the requirement. By my math the Oldsmobile will be 25 years old in 2027. Although the tag expires on my birthday, I wrote a letter to my local tax commissioner's office asking if I could simply wait to renew in January. They said no. Apparently the 25-year exemption is somehow tied to my birthday, not the year of renewal. In response to my repeated pleas, they insist that they will not let me renew it with an emissions exemption until next September.

So, my options are

1. Donate to my mechanic $380 for a car that is increasingly not worth repairing and hope the GCAF will issue a waiver;

2. Cancel my insurance and mothball the car in my driveway for a year;

3. Try to sell a car with a permanently on "service engine soon" dashboard light to someone born in January; or

4. Move myself outside the Metro Atlanta area.

That last option is looking increasingly attractive.

I'm frustrated that despite my best efforts, I haven't found a solution that doesn't require me to buy a new house or a new car. But that's why everyone hates government, isn't it?

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: cars georgia oldsmobile rant

98/2668. Dames (1934)
You have to watch an hour of not very entertaining romantic comedy to get to the giant Busby Berkley finale play-within-a-play. But it's worth it.

99/2669. The Kid Detective (2020)
A dark, dark take on the elevator pitch "What happens to Encyclopedia Brown when he grow up?" It shares the cynical comedic sensibilities of Inherent Vice, and I'm sure it would horrify most Donald J. Sobol fans (which is kind of the point). I enjoyed it.

100/2670. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)
Despite what I'd read in reviews, I found this sequel more engaging than the first, probably because it leans harder into Easter Eggs from games deeper in the Mario Bros. canon.

101/2671. Gunga Din (1939)
I was constantly distracted by the studio's choice to have Indian Gunga Din played by a 40-year-old white man, which makes him seem more like someone with a mental handicap as opposed to an adventurous boy. Otherwise, Cary Grant is fine as a British sargent.

102/2672. Destination Tokyo (1943)
Cary Grant is also fine here as a U.S. Navy captain, though the too-long picture felt unfocused for a wartime submarine slice-of-life melodrama.

103/2673. The Man Who Laughs (1928)
This is the movie Bob Kane credits in his 1989 autobiography, Batman and Me, as the inspiration for the Joker in 1940's Batman #1. Specifically, "a 'photo-play' edition of [the Victor Hugo source novel], made from the screenplay," illustrated with a "photo of Conrad Veidt as Gynplaine." Given that almost everything else in Batman and Me is bullshit, this story probably is, too. (Kane couldn't even be bothered to verify that in the original French, Hugo named his character "Gwynplaine," which is how it is spelled on the silent film's English intertitle cards.) I don't care for the Joker, and neither did I care for this movie. Pacing is too slow in all the wrong parts, and I learned only after the fact that the unearned "happy" ending is a Hollywood rewrite of Hugo's original (but not particularly better) intent. At least now I've seen it and don't have to watch it again.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: batman movies