Weekend Box Office

Thanks and a tip 'o the hat to Box Office Mojo

Ferguson

I don't want to weigh in on Ferguson. Ferguson being my shorthand name for the recent pheonmenon of possibly excessive police violence.

Listen, I got good reasons. I'll put it this way. Rioting to the point of property damage is wrong, and I can't condone it. But I understand where it's coming from. There are an awful lot of police killing an awful lot of unarmed men and boys, for dubious reasons. And it doesn't look good that so many of the victims are black, and they're not firing people over it.

On the other hand, I respect cops. They have an impossible job and it's likely that if they did it strictly by the book, we'd be at the mercy of crime lords and thugs every day of our lives. So I get that in individual cases, it makes sense to shoot before they can pull a weapon on you.

The problem, though, is that I can't give a blanket approval to everybody in any one group. I can't say all the cops aren't hair-trigger racists -- most are not, but some of them clearly must be. And I don't think the rioters are nobly expressing themselves. Most are, but a handful of them nationally are taking advantage of the unrest to wreck stuff and steal things.

So there you have it. How do we solve this? I don't know. I'm a goddam blogger, not Ghandi.

Your Annual Update

"Do you still have a blog?" my mom asked me more than once during this Thanksgiving weekend. It's more complicated that she suspects. Obviously I still have one; you're reading it. But I haven't updated in a long time. A long, long, LONG time.

As I write this I'm on an Amtrak train, the SnowPiercer, back from Oregon. It's an 18 hour trip in which I take a train, a bus, a train, and then another bus to Van Nuys, from whence I drive home.

It's not really called the SnowPiercer, but I AM taking two busses.

Anyway, I have an awful lot of free time this afternoon and the WiFi is spotty at best, meaning that writing is about the best choice I have to keep myself occupied. You know how it is: if you don't keep busy than sooner or later to devise a plan to make it to the front of the train and kill the overclass. Incidentally, note to myself -- next time I'm on a redeye, the sleeper car is worth the money.

This is all by way of explaining why I'm writing now. Politics has lost its appeal to me, since I've learned that no one I argue with is remotely interested in entertaining a rogue viewpoint. People on the right believe what they believe, even if it's implausible, or illogical, or it completely opposes something they believed yesterday. The only way I know if I'm getting through to them is how soon the personal insults come out. I spent a lot of time at my old haunt Where Are My Keys in the last couple of months posting variations of "are you SURE Obama is trying to kill us with the ebola virus?" and as of right now, based on the responses, they still believe he is. It's kind of like "winning" a chess game by simply refusing to admit the game is over. BTW, congratulations of getting the senate you guys. I'm looking forward to seeing the Tea Party wing filibuster the GOP wing.

I do still post to Skot's hangaladderonit.blogspot.com blog, whenever I want to chatter about some old (and usually awful) thing I found on Roku, so it appears I'll never tire of showbiz.

But this thing, this personal blog, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I mean I really have no personal life to speak of. I can't write a mommyblog. In fact, my friend who writes a mommy blog has devoted her attention lately to a raw food blog. I wonder if her kid just dropped below acceptable levels of adorability?

Well, check back in a couple of weeks and we'll see if I have come up with an adequate direction for this thing.