#we can get into morality later‚ first he has to stop firing missiles at anything that mildly annoys him

[duhragonball]

So, Terminator 3.   T2 was such a huge hit that everyone just assumed a third movie was a given, but it took twelve years for it to finally happen.    The Wikipedia article has a section about the delay, but it’s really long and complicated, and I’m not that interested anymore.   The main takeaway is that James Cameron, who directed the first two movies, wasn’t involved in the making of T3.   Apparently, he really wanted to do it in 1995, but by the time the rights and everything got squared away, he got busy doing Titanic and Avatar or whatever else, and he decided that he’d already told the story he wanted to tell in the first two movies.   But he did tell Arnold Schwarzenegger to go for it if he got an offer.  

I guess the reason I’m explaining all of this was because I always thought Cameron did make T3, and the reason Linda Hamilton wasn’t in it was because of hard feelings over their divorce in 1999.  Which sounds kind of dumb now that I type it out.    A fan would think that, because they see actors appearing or not appearing in movies as the ultimate sanction, but for them it’s strictly business.   Arnold was in T3 because they paid him $30 million, not because he desperately wanted to play the character again.   According to the Wikipedia article, Hamilton wasn’t in the movie because there just wasn’t much they could do with Sarah Connor in the story.    Her role was to prepare John Connor for his own role.   This movie features him as an adult, so there’s nothing more for her to do.    Hamilton recognized this, and declined to participate.

I think T3 had a lot going against it, because it had so much to live up to, and fans of T2 had been waiting so long.   I think everyone wanted the T3 movie James Cameron might have made in 1995, but what they got in 2003 was this movie, which didn’t quite live up to the hype.   I’m not sure anything else could have lived up to the hype, though.    T2 had some mighty big shoes to fill.  

The big problem is that it’s basically the same plot structure as T2.  Two more Terminators come from the future and they fight over the life of John Connor.   After escaping the bad Terminator, John tries to stop Skynet from taking over and nuking humanity, and they end up having a final showdown with the bad Terminator along the way.  It really is the same movie in a lot of ways, so it just begs to be compared to T2, which only magnifies its flaws.  

The main difference is that John thought he already stopped Skynet years ago, so he’s horrified to learn that he only postponed the inevitable.    He goes to a lot of trouble to try again, but the audience probably already anticipates that this won’t work.  T2 was ambiguous about this, but T3 actually shows the nuclear missiles launching and destroying their targets.   So it’s kind of a downer to watch.   We even learn that Future John will die in 2032, because the good Terminator in this movie was the one who kills him, before he got reprogrammed to protect Present John.

The other difference is the addition of Kate Brewster, who’s fated to become John’s second-in-command and wife.   The bad Terminator was actually sent to kill her and other would-be Resistance leaders, until it discovers John and changes priorities.    Future Kate is also the one who sends the good Terminator back in time.   I never fully understood Kate’s purpose in the movie, since she’s basically a spare John, but I think they needed a viewpoint character.    In T1, Sarah was the viewpoint character, then it was John in T2.   But in T3, Sarah’s dead and John already knows all about this stuff, so there needed to be a new character with a special destiny.   The trouble is that I don’t think Kate gets a chance to digest this very well, probably because we’ve already covered this twice before already.  

I think this is the movie where the time travel stuff really went off the rails.  T1 was very consistent about establishing a predestination paradox.   T2 hinted that the future could be changed, but never made it clear whether it actually changed or not.   The value was in the attempt, not the result.   But the T-850 tells John that “Judgement Day is inevitable”, and that he only postponed it from its original date in 1997.  So they managed to change the future, just not enough.   Fair, but how does the T-850 know this?   Shouldn’t he be from the same altered future, where Judgement Day happened in 2003?  

Also, this movie introduces more Terminator varieties.   In the first movie, the T-800 is stated to be new in the future.   Then in the second movie, the T-800 admits that the T-1000 is much more sophisticated, because it’s an “advanced prototype.”   In this movie, the T-850 claims to be obsolete, and says the T-X is much more advanced.   So it sounds like Skynet was busily inventing better Terminators for these missions, except it shouldn’t have had time for that.   It lost the war and had to use the time machine as a last-ditch effort.  It’s weird enough that it used the time machine three times, but it shouldn’t have had years to do this.   The Human Resistance captured the time machine shortly after winning the war, right?   I really hope T4 explains some of this.

Roger Ebert called this movie “Essentially one long chase and fight, punctuated by comic, campy or simplistic dialogue."   The first 24 minutes are fairly dull, but once it gets rolling, it’s pretty fun to watch.    But he’s right.   When I watched all the DBZ movies in 2019, I realized that Movie 7 is just one big fight scene, with some slice of life stuff at the beginning to set things up.    T3′s basically the same, with very little else to occupy its time.   T1 had the relationship between Sarah and Kyle, and T2 had Sarah’s hangups and John’s bonding with “Uncle Bob”.   T3 really only has Kate and John hanging on for dear life as their protector drags them through the story.    It’s a fun chase, with lots of guns and explosions and breaking stuff, but there’s not much more to it.  

So what’s good about this movie?  What makes it really stand out?   Well, for openers, the T-X is pretty cool.  The T-1000 was going to be difficult to top, and I don’t think the T-X ever succeeded, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.   She has liquid metal on top of an endoskeleton, so she can disguise herself, but she can’t seep under doors and stuff like that.   Also, she has weapons built into her body, so she’s the only time traveler who could actually bring future weapons with her into the past.   Also, she can control machines, like when she hijacks a bunch of police cars and fire trucks to help her chase down John.   She’s ridiculously overpowered, and she does not give a fuck who knows it.  The previous Terminators at least attempted to keep a low profile, revealing themselves only when ready to attack, but the T-X just wreaks havoc all over the place.    She’s not worried about the authorities or a lack of firepower, or anything at all, so she’s free to execute her mission with reckless abandon. 

Second, I take some solace in John Connors personal crisis in this movie.  He was kind of chill about the whole thing in T2, because he got his mom back and he had a cool robot pal, and they seemed to have the whole Skynet problem figured out.     In this movie, Sarah’s dead, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.  He can’t quite believe that Judgement Day won’t come, so he lives off the grid and tries to avoid everyone.   He doesn’t want the Future War to happen, but at the same time, his life has no purpose without it.   Later, he becomes despondent and says that he must not be the chosen one after all, because he’s no leader and he never was.  

Except, he is, and he has to be, and he becomes one at the end of the movie, when he finally accepts his fate.   There’s something very powerful about the shot of Kate holding his hand as he prepares to give orders to the other survivors on the radio.  They’re stuck in this dark future now, and they have to see it through together.  

I think, whenever I watched these movies before, that I never really “got” John Connor as a character.  In T2 he was a kid, so I just wrote him off.   He wasn’t John Connor yet, so it didn’t matter much.    In T3, he seemed extremely pathetic, and I took his lack of confidence at face value.   I thought he really wasn’t ready to lead, and he only ended up in that role by default.    But this time around, I see how in T2 he was the moral center of the good guy team.   Sarah was lashing out at everyone and the Terminator only cared about mission objectives, but John kept reminding everyone of the value of human life, and what they were all fighting for.   Even as a kid, he got “it” in a way that others didn’t.   In T3, he’s demoralized, but he still knows how to do this stuff, and how to lead.  He just doesn’t feel motivated until the final act of the movie.  

That didn’t stick with me when I first saw this movie in ‘03, but I’m older now, and less sure of myself than I used to be, and all the validation I get feels hollow and unconvincing.  Like John, I may be aware that I have the capacity to do things, but it doesn’t always feel like it’s enough.  That’s what T3 has that T2 doesn’t.   It’s that crisis of confidence that separates the two films, although it’s subtle enough that it’s easy to overlook. 

[whitlockienterprisespresents]

I kinda hated ‘The Last Jedi’

I know a lot of people have said as much already, and normally I avoid negativity on this blog. But I saw it a couple of weeks ago and it’s still bothering me. I gotta purge. Spoilers, obviously:

Look, the whole scene with the bombers and everything was objectively cool action (and the stuff with Paige and her eventual death was top-notch, I felt the weight of that), but basic entertainment aside, it was dumb as Hell. Why would you have those insanely slow-moving bombers, with their incredibly unsafe and idiotic set-up, and not even any shields to compensate? Why wouldn’t you get something with a nice compact missile that you can fire at range? How did they even get their bombers over to the Dreadnought before the Dreadnought deployed fighters to shoot the bombers down? There’s no element of surprise when your ships move at a fucking snail’s pace. Who cares if you took out the Dreadnought’s exterior guns when they have individual fighters to blast you with anyway? How were those slow as fuck bombers supposed to get away back to the main fleet after dropping their payload? Everything about the Resistance battle plan here was moronic, and the First Order’s failure to stop them anyway was illogical.

Normally, battle tactics wouldn’t bother me so much, but they used the Pyrrhic victory with the bombers as a reason to get Poe demoted. He obviously did not formulate that entire basic-ass battle strategy on his own, so the Resistance leadership should be slapping and demoting themselves for that, not blaming the Commander who flew the mission. Poe not calling off the attempt after he took just sliiightly longer to take out the Dreadnought’s surface cannons doesn’t actually change the fact that the battle plan was idiotic to start with. If they had retreated when Leia said, and I were the First Order, I’d have sent out fighters (or just used the cannons on one of the other ships) to blast those slow-ass bombers outta the sky anyway. They were super slow, guys. You can’t just ‘oops, abort’ those back to the fleet in an instant. The bombers were sitting ducks, essentially on a suicide run to start with. That ain’t Poe’s fault, that’s the entire Resistance’s dumbfuck fault. The fact that he ignored orders is still on him, but when the whole situation is so transparently manufactured for idiotic drama, that kinda steps on the message.

Leia engaging in the ancient and odious trope of ‘woman slaps man to express her distaste for his masculine antics’ is gross. She’s a fucking General, it makes her look bad to be ineffectually slapping faces. Delete this.

I totally expected to hate Poe in ‘The Force Awakens’ coz I thought he’d be the usual cliche insufferable ‘cocky hotshot pilot’. I was delighted when he was competent without being an egotistical wanker about it. The shoddy attempt to tell some half-assed ‘toxic masculinity’ story by making him into a hothead in this movie is basically character assassination (not to mention kinda racist to play that ‘hothead Latino’ cliche?), and I am not here for it.

Leia Force-floating her way back to the ship was really embarrassing. Also, having never had her use the Force so overtly in the past, something as significant as this felt out-of-the-blue. Her prior Force use has mostly been passive connection to others over vast distances, going from that to ‘oh yeah also I’ma Mary Poppins through space’ was a lot to swallow. But my main problem was just that it looked stupid. For all its flaws, this movie was mainly very visually impressive, and this was a low moment.

Where are all the other pilots we met in ‘The Force Awakens’? Are they dead? Is every side character we met just unceremoniously dead?

Also do not approve of the implicit suggestion that Poe doesn’t respect Holdo on sight (’not what I expected’) despite knowing of her credentials in past engagements. How does he not know this person who is high up on the Resistance roster, anyway? She’s a Vice-Admiral, and there’s not that many Resistance folks anyway, at least not on these few ships. Having a not-previously-sexist character respond poorly to new (specifically female) leadership just to service the aforementioned half-assed toxic masculinity plot is some bullshit. I fucking love dismantling toxic masculinity, don’t get me wrong, but they did it fucking badly here.

P.s. why is there a guy still on the med ship when it gets destroyed? He didn’t need to be there to steer it or anything, it was out of fuel and floating dead anyway. Why did they not fully evacuate. Why.

Look. Holdo was right to NOT tell Poe what’s going on just because he demanded to know, he is not actually entitled to the information. However, there is absolutely no good reason presented as to why she wouldn’t tell THE WHOLE FLEET what her plan was; when Leia says she was more interested in ‘keeping the light alive than in looking like a hero’, that’s a nice cushy sentiment, but you know how you keep the light alive? Hope. Keeping up morale. The Resistance spends almost the entire film just...flying...running out of fuel...nothing happening for hours...there’s really no sensible reason for Holdo NOT to let everyone know that there is a plan, there is hope, so hang in there. Poe is wrong to try and mutiny, obviously, but there is no logical plot reason for the narrative pushing him to that point. It’s not about whether or not Holdo capitulates to the aggressive demands of some guy, it’s about whether or not she keeps up morale by letting her own people know they’re not actually doomed. I don’t blame her for this as a character, I blame the shitty writing that is too busy trying to tell that aforementioned half-assed toxic masculinity plot. If your characters are all behaving illogically to service it, you’re not making much of a point. This shit was weak, and it reflected poorly on the characterisation of everyone involved.

Holdo and Leia talking about how they totally like Poe and whatever also weakens this whole plot. If your toxic-masculinity narrative ends with the women who have been wronged agreeing that they like the dude anyway (despite the fact that he committed treason?), you probably did it wrong. Also, they don’t know it yet, but Poe’s actions also get almost the entire Resistance wiped out due to exposing their escape plan, so, like. Cool guy. Yeah, I like him too. Coulda avoided all of this with some incredibly normal and expected level of information-sharing, but whatever. Poe is absolved and the attempted narrative thereby rendered useless. 

Holdo’s sacrifice, taking out the First Order ships? That shit was awesome, I won’t lie. Let the record show that Holdo was great, even if the story she was stuck in wasn’t. One complaint: what the fuck with this ‘Godspeed, rebels’ line? It sticks out like dog’s balls and it sucks. Stop trying to make ‘Godspeed, rebels’ a thing.

 Two complaints, actually: bad editing makes it seem like Holdo sat around for AGES before she enacted this plan, and that makes it seem like the First Order should have shot ALL of the transports well before she got the job done. Editing fucking fail.

MEANWHILE, Finn. Why is he barely in the movie? Why is he stuck in an asinine subplot that has no ultimate impact on the plot of the film whatsoever? Bullshit. One of the best, strongest, most dynamic characters from TFA, and they waste him on some pointless idiocy that does absolutely nothing with his character template. Nothing. Coulda replaced Finn with anyone in this subplot. Better yet, replace the SUBPLOT.

If Finn and Rose could jump ship easy-peasy like that, why did the Resistance not have most of their people jump ship in the same way? They coulda dispersed all over the place and regrouped later, or at least sent out messengers to get help (or...runners...for fuel?) instead of keeping everyone in the same place to be shot at by the idiotic First Order (who could have done about a trillion other things besides just flying after some ships for eighteen straight hours. Why does no one in this movie know how to plan anything?). Kinda kills the non-existent suspense of having the Resistance stuck and running outta fuel, huh?

Rose deserved better than this useless subplot where her chief function is to exposition-dump about Canto Bight.

Just-so-happening to get locked in the same cell with a guy who has exactly the skills you’re looking for is an old cliche, not a good one, but it feels extra weak and convenient here because it’s so late in the film and also, ultimately, so pointless. So fucking pointless.

When Finn and Rose saw those racing animals, I literally sighed in frustration, because it was so obvious where the plot was gonna go. Most of the action of this movie was still fun to watch even when it was stupid. This was not one of those times.

Trashing Canto Bight is still pointless, and mostly just makes me concerned for the children minding the animals, and for the animals themselves. All the rich war profiteers will still go on, they’ll just party somewhere else for a bit while reconstruction is happening. They don’t fucking care. The poor downtrodden children, however, will be punished, and the animals will either be killed or returned to the race track, they didn’t get away, they were just right there on the hill. Finn and Rose didn’t achieve anything triumphant here, they just got the already-suffering into a worse situation. Nice job breaking it, heroes. Did I mention this was pointless? Also, anvilicious. 

Why even bother bringing Phasma back when you’re just gonna dispose of her after the briefest fight ever. TFA did a bad job of making her seem like she existed for a reason anyway, but this just hung a lantern on it. Stupid convenient pointless fight/death scene is stupid, convenient, and pointless. 

(on the subject of pointless characters: why does Maz Kanata exist? TFA at least gave her something to do, but it all just feels like Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie were a big deal when TFA was made so they made characters for them and went ‘eh, we’ll find an actual purpose for them later’, but then they...didn’t. It’s a waste of talent, and egregious, too. You know who does exist for a reason, and yet both this film and TFA did fucking NOTHING with her? Leia. I can’t believe they wasted her so much. There are so many wasted characters in this film, and the fact that most of them are the female characters does not escape my scrutiny)

 Hux is also mostly useless, for the record. The narrative gives him more attention than he's due, considering he's basically just 'random First Order commander', he doesn't have more personality than that. I don't really require more characterisation for my neo-Nazi villains anyway, but when the character framing keeps acting like the dude matters, it gets conspicuous.  

 YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER THAN THIS??? A spy in the Resistance. The only logical reason for Holdo to NOT tell her own people that they had an escape plan would have been if there was a spy in the fleet (say, someone who could be broadcasting the signal that the First Order was tracking...); a spy in the fleet is also a good way to create some actual tension and, um, narrative, instead of the fleet just doing that flying-in-a-line-for-a-whole-day thing with the illogical Poe/Holdo drama the only complication. You can still keep the Poe/Holdo stuff! Holdo's secrecy just makes sense now! It doesn't even require that Poe not know there's a spy - he could just as easily suspect that Holdo IS the spy, or at least feel that she's not trying hard enough to find out who is and is just consigning everyone to death instead of going on a witch-hunt, there's plenty of potential for different ways to play that without losing the core story (and while also, maybe, improving it...). But most importantly: we could keep Finn ON THE FUCKING SHIP INSTEAD OF OFF HAVING A RANDO POINTLESS DRAMA. Finn, as a former Stormtrooper, would be a prime suspect for a spy in the eyes of plenty of people! People get irrational under pressure! Finn's past making people mistreat him now would be a solid way for his actual characterisation to be part of his narrative, plus opens a lot of avenues for telling worthwhile socio-political narratives! Concern for Finn's safety and the desire to prove his innocence enhances Poe's story and motivation too! Rose can easily be made part of that narrative and can go on a character journey instead of being physically transplanted places just to provide exposition and jewellery! Having two narrative threads (Rey, and Poe/Finn combined, instead of Rey, Poe, and Finn) helps streamline the storytelling AND frees up time to actual explore those narratives thoroughly instead of wasting time on useless stuff and axing important plot developments to make it all fit! I COULD GO ON LIKE THIS FOREVER!!!

I have seen a lot of people insisting that the only reason Rose professing her love for Finn ‘comes out of nowhere’ is because Rose wasn’t presented like a sex object so audiences didn’t think of her that way, but, guys, no. It came out of nowhere because the two characters just had a buddy adventure over the course of a day and now suddenly Rose is in love? After a day? Her sister died, she went on an adventure, and now she loves this guy she just met. If they didn’t try to call it a romance thing (at least not yet! I got no problem with them developing a relationship after, y’know, more than a day!), it would have worked better; she can still stop him from sacrificing himself because she cares for him as a PERSON, not as a prospective partner. We need more of those narratives, tbh, and we need more young pretty female characters who don’t spontaneously develop romance subplots just by existing. 

SPEAKING OF WHICH, Rey. Rey’s story was so consumed with Kylo Ren, I keep forgetting she was there. How did the other great break-out character from TFA get co-opted into a vehicle for the Kylo Ren sob-story? Rey barely gets her own story here, it’s all really about either Kylo, or Luke. Female protagonist reduced to prop in men’s story. Whoopdi-fucking-doodah. 

 Look. I know Mark Hamill was very vocal about how much he disapproved of literally everything written for Luke in this film. He was right, too: it's fucking OOC garbage. BUT credit where it's due: the guy is still fucking delightful. I love bitter hermit Luke, but I'm giving all the credit to Mark Hamill for doing a fantastic job with the material he hated so much (plenty of that bitterness drawn from a real place, methinks), zero credit for the writing because the writing is, indeed, moronic. It's not that I don't believe Luke could become disenfranchised after what happened at his Jedi training temple: I can't buy that he'd end up in that situation in the first place. Luke Skywalker, who famously ditched his lightsabre in front of his Actual War Criminal father, Darth Vader, and saved the day by compassionately appealing to the goodness he solemnly believed could still be found in the old man despite all the genocidal evidence to the contrary? That Luke Skywalker is not gonna look at his young currently-innocent-of-any-crimes nephew and go 'shit, you've got evil in your heart' and decide to maybe just kill the lad in his sleep. I don't even buy that 'for a second'. Dude wouldn't slice a confirmed war criminal, guys. And then even after the massacre at the temple and all, you're telling me Luke Skywalker wouldn't try to rescue his own nephew from the clutches of evil? That he wouldn't try to fix his mistake? That he'd just shrug his shoulders and mooch off and hide while his nephew got to genocidin' just like gramps used to do?? Come on guys. You might as well retroactively kill Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi and have it over with.

 Why does Luke milk a beast. Why did this happen in front of my eyes.

 They don't spend nearly enough time on Rey's interactions with Luke, it makes her 'lessons' with him feel perfunctory, and their conflicts forced. Also, Rey never gets her third lesson that Luke promised, but rather than it feeling like she just left before she could finish (as with Luke on Dagobah), it feels more like they just forgot to tie that off. As I understand, there's a whole deleted scene/sequence involving the third lesson, so it wasn't deliberately omitted, they just didn't bother to cover the editing mistake. Fuck y'all. You kept the bullshit Canto Bight animal-race, but this...

 Rey's mirror-vision thing was super boring because it was so predictable. Why did it go for so long anyway.

 I never want to see Kylo Ren's nipples again. I can't believe they shamelessly subjected the audience to this obvious bait. He's a genocidal maniac, guys. He's a mass murderer. You cannot make fetch happen with him, and it's disgusting that you're trying.

 Related: I normally barely notice/care about costuming, but there were several faux pas in this film and I was irritated. Kylo Ren's pants were one. Rey's outfits being sleeveless but thick on the shoulders was two, it made it look like she was cold and uncomfortable and walking around with her shoulders up around her ears the whole time and it made ME really uncomfortable to look at her. Three is the older women's outfits, Leia's but especially Holdo's: they're Resistance leaders, why do they look like some idiot costumer prioritised them looking like classy older women over them wearing functional practical outfits? Holdo's dress is great, objectively speaking, but in context she looks several degrees overdressed. Did she not have time to ditch the formal gown when she got called in for emergency Resistance-ing? I have seen it suggested that the outfit is supposed to be part of the whole Poe-not-trusting-her-to-know-what-she's-doing thing, and if that is indeed what they intended, it's triple stupid.

 Kylo Ren's sob story is not really a sob story. Yeah, even if your uncle was standing over your bed holding a lightsabre, that's a rough deal but it doesn't entitle you to SLAUGHTER YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS AND RUN OFF TO JOIN THE NEO-NAZIS. What the actual fuck. Why did we spend so much time on trying to pretend Kylo is sympathetic. I mean, he was also supposed to already be being seduced into evil, that's what Luke saw that made him wanna kill 'im up, so. If they wanted us to sympathise with Kylo, maybe they should AT LEAST have focused on what it was that Snoke was using to seduce him in the first place, explain what gave him the in (as deeply, wildly flawed as the prequel trilogy was, it at least did a thorough job of exploring the how-did-it-come-to-this for Anakin). I mean - same as with Anakin - explaining why someone decides that genocide and dictatorships are the way to go does not make it acceptable, and Kylo Ren would still be a whiny little dickhead in need of a nice beheading, but if they explained his susceptibility to Snoke's logic that would at least be character building. Pretending the whole training temple massacre was 1. Luke's fault, and 2. a sympathetic backstory is pretty grotesque. Great way to make it seem like a certain writer-director thinks that the neo-Nazi sith is actually an ok dude, though...

 On which note: Kylo's 'justification' for killing his own father is also, uh, not justification. Just vague-ing about 'destroying the past' does not an explanation make; maybe if we had some of that aforementioned backstory on what made Kylo so susceptible to corruption, that could also have been used to make this bullshit excuse sound slightly less bullshit? As above, it'd still be bullshit anyway, but at least it wouldn't be faking being deep quite so hard. I'm a bit embarrassed by how stupid this was. The idea that any of Kylo's 'justifying' for any of his murderous actions is convincing to Rey is an insult to her intelligence as well as the audience's.

 Remember at the start of the movie, when Kylo smashes his wannabe-Vader mask? I frowned at it then, not realising how much I was gonna end up frowning about it later: Kylo Ren sucks and has always sucked, but in TFA we had this widely-applauded portrayal of the new Big Bad being an entitled white manbaby, and everyone was talking about how great that was as a reflection of modern society's issues, etc. Smashing his Vader-mask in the elevator was the closest moment this film had to acknowledging the tantrums Kylo threw in TFA, which were simultaneously hilarious and disturbing as they did indeed reflect that kind of childish yet violent acting-out you see with entitles young white men these days. Thing is, where Kylo of TFA chucked tantrums and idolised his former-Nazi grandfather and tried to make himself in gramps' image, this movie is subtly ditching those less-than-flattering details. Kylo smashes his Vader-mask, and while Snoke at various points goes on about his potential to be 'a new Vader', Kylo himself expresses no further desire to follow in Vader's footsteps. Smashing the mask has symbolically severed him from that aim, and thus, from one of the most prominent aspects of his neo-Nazi-modelled characterisation. It's almost like a certain writer-director wants to make the character more sympathetic by giving him a 'sad backstory' and distancing him from his neo-Nazi dreams...

 Speaking of ditching plot though, there are two incredibly egregious examples here: Snoke, and Rey's parents. As much as Snoke was a dud of a character who I definitely did not care about or enjoy, and as much as disposing of him is a surprise that opens up a lot of potential for new and different storytelling, the fact that he was apparently some colossal Big Bad who appeared out of nowhere with no explanation and then was treated like a big deal only to get killed off halfway through is...weak. It doesn't seem clever, it seems like they should have just not invented him in the first place if they weren't actually gonna do anything with him. We didn't have to waste time on this.

 The 'reveal' that Rey's parents were 'nothing' is even worse, tbh. They made such a big deal out of the identity of her parents, in this film and in TFA, and TFA is retroactively weakened as a film every time TLJ ditches one of the plot threads or characters that TFA introduced, because it renders swathes of the content of TFA pointless. Not content to just be full of pointlessness yourself, huh TLJ? Gotta fuck up your predecessor too so that you don't feel lonely? I have seen it argued that Rey not having some fancy pedigree and 'coming from nothing' like a normal person instead of doing the Secret Princess trope is a great move, and I agree with that in theory, but as presented in this film? Hell no. Sure, it woulda been a huge predictable cliché if she was secretly Luke's daughter or something, and the entire universe expected that sort of a reveal so there wouldn't have been much point pretending it was a secret, but this 'reveal' feels less like a cool twist-with-commentary and more like a certain writer-director going for cheap drama points by subverting expectation for no other reason than to be shocking. This feels more like laughing in the audience's face for the fact that they FOOLISHLY expected that a built-up mystery would actually deliver a surprise. Subverting audience expectation is only clever if you have an original twist; just going 'ha! You thought there was something there but there was nothing!' is not clever, it just means the writer-director wasn't smart enough to actually find something to do with the plot set-up he was handed after the previous film. Considering how much he fucked up the characterisation of literally everyone and filled this movie with meaninglessness and plot holes, maybe that's not surprising either...

 You know what would have been surprising? Kylo ACTUALLY SWITCHING SIDES. I was so ready for them to throw us a REAL curveball by having him actually turn, and have to spend the rest of this movie and however much of the next one trying to make amends and work through all the colossal awfulness that would bring up for everyone (before, ultimately, dying a nice redemptive-sacrificial death, because the genocidal maniac is NOT allowed to live happily ever after). That woulda taken some real guts though, right, and we're all about cheap meaningless thrills that don't ultimately change anything, here.

 Why were there so many Praetorian Guard guys. I swear Kylo and Rey fought all of them twice in the course of that battle. Who choreographed this editing nightmare?

 Remember, a thousand words ago, when I started off by criticising the idiotic battle plans of the Resistance? Same goes for this useless assault they launch against the First Order cannon on Crait. Lets run these rust-buckets straight at all their guns and things, even though we've only got thirteen of them and nothing to do but drive straight at our enemies guns! Visually exciting, but completely devoid of intelligent design. Using this second DUMBASS BATTLE PLAN WHICH INEXPLICABLY GOES WRONG as a trite-neat way to show how Poe 'learned this vital lesson about when to retreat to fight again another day' is kinda undercut by the fact that the Resistance is still sending people out to die stupidly in suicide runs, so...maybe they still haven't learned the real lesson here, the one about ACTUALLY PLANNING. You wouldn't have to worry so much about your 'dead heroes' if you made sensible strategic decisions in the first place. Pretty weird, that.

 Force-projection Luke was great, but this seems like it's supposed to be demonstrating some character arc for him when actually it's just repeating his whole passive-resistance thing from the original trilogy, just in a less significant way; as a projection, he's not actually endangered as he was with Vader, so it's less of a statement and more of an '...oh yeah I literally can't fight you anyway, peace out I'm dead now regardless'. Like most things in this film, it's only surface-level cool, as soon as you engage thought processes it becomes as empty as a Jedi cloak in the wind...

 Rey and Poe apparently meeting for the first time at the end of the movie was Hella jarring. They may not have met on-screen in TFA, but they were on the Resistance base at the same time, both personally attached to Finn, etc. We coulda just assumed they had met at some point before Rey left. This awkward meeting was awkward and also hung a big ol' lantern on the fact that our characters all got split off for completely different adventures in this movie instead of doing anything together, like, pretty much at all. Nice.

 Why does this film end so many times. At first I thought it was gonna end after the space battle, and then there was this whole extra action scene on Crait and I was like 'that's weird, why would you add an extra small action piece AFTER your big climactic space battle?', then I thought it was gonna end on a cliffhanger with Luke stepping up to confront the First Order alone (they had this shot from behind, showing the fire around him and the First Order arrayed out across the horizon, and the music was swelling and it would have been a PERFECT cut to credits, but then it cut to Poe's face instead and I was like 'whaaatt, momentum of final shot destroyed!'). Then I thought they were gonna end after everyone got away, but THEN there was that useless end scene of the kids back on Canto Bight being like, sooo filled with Resistance Feelings, and it was fucking dumb. Why would you include such a weak finisher when you had at least three solid final moments already? Honestly I think there were several other almost-ends in there that I'm forgetting now (like maybe also right before the fight on Crait started? I dunno). It was a mercy when they finally picked an ending, but it was the worst ending they had at their disposal.

 Am I finished purging now? Probably not. I'll probably think of a bunch of other things after I post this, plus I see a lot of dumb posts and articles defending various aspects of the film, some of which I can shrug off as differences of opinion, and some of which stick in my head for being nonsense to rival the film itself. For every whiny neckbeard out there complaining about diversity and 'woman heroes', there's a 'progressive' writer who defends the decisions in this movie for seemingly no other reason than because it makes the neckbeards upset, and that's just annoying. You can admit that the movie sucked without that meaning that the misogynists were right, the two options are mutually exclusive, and you lend credence to all the problematic crap this movie pulled if you refuse to admit its flaws. But whatever. It wasn't the worst film I ever saw. It was mostly irritating because of how much potential it had, if someone had just bothered to do a proper critical edit of the script and maybe think about telling cohesive stories with it and maintaining characterisation across the franchise, etc. Maybe the third film of the trilogy will fix some of the shit from this film, but the fact will remain, it shouldn't have to. Trying to patch up the holes made by the previous film should not be part of the third film's job; this movie shoulda just been solid to start with. A lot of what was bad about it is structurally unsound anyway, and a third film won't change that. This movie was a dud. A stupid, largely pointless dud. Delete this.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #174: Captives of the Collector!

August, 1978

I’ve been kind of excited to get to this issue. Because this was the very first Avengers cover I ever saw.

Back when I was a tiny bibliomancer, perhaps a novellamancer or even a pamphletmancer and I didn’t know what the Avengers even were.

My conception of superheroes was mostly X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman. Because of cartoons.

But I had a few issues of Wizard magazine and there was a price guide in the back. Because this was back in the heady, foolish days where the speculation market was booming and comics seemed like a real investment.

And the price guide sometimes had tiny images of covers to keep it from being just a page of letters and numbers. And I saw this cover and thought ‘I have no idea what’s going on here.’ I think I might have thought it was a Justice League thing.

In fairness, Justice League would totally have people in tubes on the cover.

So I don’t really have anything to say about this cover because I just get drawn into a vortex of memory. But I do have to point and laugh at Hawkeye who tied a cable around himself so he could swing around like Flynn but it doesn’t seem like its long enough for him to touch ground.

Anyway, lets get down to business. To review. This comic.

Last time: the Avengers met the Guardians of the Galaxy and agreed to help them with a time traveling cyborg called Korvac. Unbeknownst to anyone, Korvac married a supermodel and settled down in Forest Hills to pursue his dream job of taking over all of existence.

Meanwhile, the Avengers have gotten into shit with the government and gotten their sweet governmental perks withdrawn because their security is shit and the asshole Peter Henry Gyrich won’t brook that nonsense.

They’ve also been dealing with a strange rash of disappearances that have taken all their members and tangentially related characters until all they were left with was Thor, Iron Man, the Wasp, and Hawkeye. With the Guardians’ help, they tracked the disappearances to a non-TARDIS orbiting Earth where they discovered... THE COLLECTOR!

And now... the rest of the story.

The Collector gloats that actually the Avengers finding his secret hiding spot is a good thing because now his collection is complete and he’s not at all worried that now they’re in punching range.

When Iron Man and Hawkeye point out that they’ve been through this song and dance before, the Collector menaces them with a shake weight.

Or apparently a Vandarian Power Wand.

Which apparently only has one charge because when Iron Man deflects the Vandarian power blast with his iron abs, Collector just doesn’t use it again.

In fact, when Thor comes at him (the Vandarian Power Wand having been explicitly stated to be able to harm even Thor), the Collector (or Acquisitor as Thor calls him) summons... THE ENERGY CREATURES OF ERDILE!

They look like lightning peeps with kirby krackle but they are in fact, probably not lightning.

When Thor hits one in the krackle with Mjolnir, Mjolnir becomes stuck and Thor becomes unable to release his grip on it.

According to the Collector, hitting the ENERGY CREATURE OF ERDILE in the tum caused Mjolnir to pass into another dimension where it is held fast by the dimensional interface. And if Thor manages to pull it free, IT WILL DESTROY THAT ANOTHER DIMENSION! DOOMING BILLIONS!

The Collector is fun, provided you have a tolerance for villains whose whole thing is pulling new powers out of their ass. Like a kid in a sandbox who keeps making up new powers so they never lose make believe. Or like Gilgamesh from Fate.

The Collector is more fun than Gilgamesh though. Get rekt, Archer.

Speaking of archers, Hawkeye hangs back to help Thor... with morale support? while Iron Man tries to tackle the Collector.... ‘s hologram.

FOOLED YOU

Such a troll.

He then attacks Iron Man with “a simple child’s toy” he acquired on the planet Dergos, where the children MOVE FASTER THAN THOUGHT ITSELF. Which is good because this simple child’s toy shoots dozens of missiles which burst open to release gas on impact.

Iron Man seals off his armor from the gas but it wasn’t a poison gas or sleep gas. It was a gas that locks up metal joints, imprisoning Iron Man in his own iron, man!

FOOLED YOU!

The Wasp tries to distract the Collector by giving him a chance to exposit. Its the best thing for distracting villains, usually.

The Wasp: “Why are you doing this? What do you want from us??”

The Collector: “Why, a complete set! A perfect collection -- of Earth’s mightiest heroes! The only such collection of its kind -- that will survive the time soon to come!”

And then - not distracted at all - he shoots Thor and Hawkeye with a positron cannon. Because by this point, Mjolnir had absorbed enough negative energy from the ENERGY CREATURE OF ERDILE that the sudden positive energy knocks him the hell out.

And the Collector was lying about the other dimension.

FOOLED YOU!!

The Wasp has had just about enough at this point so she shoots the Collector in his wrinkly mug.

So he unleashes a flying roomba that catches her in an electrified net.

And now that just leaves Hawkeye.

The Collector: “Now, archer -- you are the last Avenger... and the least!”

Hawkeye: “That depends on whether you’re judging by raw power or skill, Collector! I may not be much in the first category! On the other hand -- in the second... Hawkeye is the best there is!”

Disarmed with a clamp-arrow (because of course Hawkeye has a clamp-arrow. He has a bouquet arrow and an antigravity arrow, a clamp-arrow is baby stuff), the Collector flees deeper into his not-TARDIS and unleashes a not-pterodactyl at Hawkeye.

Hawkeye manages to dodge its SKAW swoop and then uses a bola to ground the lethal flying lizard.

Oh how the table is on the other foot now. Before, it was the Collector who was pulling out new toys to triumph over every challenge but now Hawkeye is doing the same with arrows.

I guess the third best superpower (after squirrels and ants) is just having an indeterminate amount of stuff on your person.

Or, I guess. Versatility? Fear not the man who can punch really well, fear the man that carries arrows for esoteric purposes.

The Collector is starting to warm up to Hawkeye. In his own way.

The Collector: “You are resourceful! Perhaps you are even worth collecting for yourself -- and not just for your membership in the Avengers!”

But he continues fleeing and Hawkeye continues chasing. And the Collector is like hey rude, I’m going to prepare something horrible for you so stop follow.

And he drops some incendiary capsules which burst into flame.

So Hawkeye grappling hook arrows over the fires.

The Collector is apparently really spry because he’s already way ahead of Hawkeye but on a lower platform.

So Hawkeye gets a wonderful idea and summons his inner Flynn.

He uses his sharpened croissant arrow to cut a cable so he can swing down in front of the Collector. And now he has him cornered on a catwalk. Not able to grab any new collectibles. And if he had something on his person that was better, he would have used it by now.

So I guess Hawkeye wins. Although this is only page 12. Weird.

The Collector gives Hawkeye one last chance to surrender. Which. I mean, he must have something up his sleeve, right? Perhaps some last collectible that he didn’t want to use because it was mint in box.

Hawkeye: “Sorry, pal, I don’t buy it! I figure our surprise entrance caught you more off-guard than you’ll admit! You lucked out against the others, with gadgets you had lying around... but if you had anything to throw at me now, you wouldn’t be standing there flapping your lips!”

The Collector: “Bah! One needs no gadgetry -- who commands POWER COSMIC! I am old beyond your ken, insect -- and it has been eons since I wielded the energies I possess! It is a chore at my age! I resent being forced into this!”

And he or she who possesses the power cosmic can do all kinds of things like breath in space, talk to squirrels or apparently cause the catwalk to warp and wrap around Hawkeye to crush him.

Hawkeye: (*Uhh* What an idiot I am! Why didn’t I try to free the others? Why did I try to take him alone? Now we’ve all had it! Why did I have to be... the last?)

But he fires off one last hail mary arrow on one last physics baffling bank shot.

Except I was lying. It wasn’t a hail mary arrow. It was a taser arrow. And it hits the Collector right in the shoulder, causing him to collapse in pain.

Victory: Hawkeye!

He goes to revive the other Avengers and free them from their comfortable tubes.

And now it looks like the Collector has some ‘splainin to do.

The Collector: “I -- ? Explain to such as you? Absurd!”

He then proceeds to explain his entire backstory and motivation.

Because. Villains CANNOT resist. Exposition.

He explains that he is one of the Elders of the Universe. Extremely old people that have obsession based immortality. Basically, as long as they’re obsessed over their one thing, they’ll stay alive to do that one thing. Like the Grandmaster and his games. Or the Collector and his collecting.

Although much of the nuance of the Extremely Old People of the Universe is something we learn later.

The Collector explains that although his brother roamed in search of games, he only wanted to study the simple creatures of the universe. I guess he started off as more of a the Zookeeper or the Botanist than a hoarding the Collector.

But the Collector also had the gift of prophecy and he foresaw the rise of Thanos, a power that would rival the Elders and threaten universal death.

Concerned over the fates of the primitive creatures he loved so much but afraid of challenging Thanos, the Collector set out to preserve them. Gathering samples. Collecting, basically.

But to his surprise, Thanos was destroyed. Turned into stone by Adam Warlock.

The Collector might have stopped collecting then (which would have killed him, as losing your obsession can make an Elder just drop dead) but he foresaw the coming of another, even more dangerous power.

And this time, he chose to interfere.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd that brings us back to Forest Hills where Carina is confessing to Korvac that she was to betray him but couldn’t bring herself to.

She confesses that her father sent her to spy on him and that he is a prophet who foresaw that Korvac would be cruising for a date at a fashion show.

Korvac is peeved.

Not that Carina was sent to spy on him, it doesn’t seem.

Korvac: “If he is a prophet, can he not see that this troubled planet is destined to find peace only under my proprietorship! Nothing... no one can be allowed to interfere!”

And even as Carina begs him not to, Korvac finds the Collector’s hidden not-TARDIS in orbit and reaches towards it crackling with energies.

Back on the Not-TARDIS, the Avengers are still quizzing the Collector.

Iron Man: “-- So you were playing a sort of galactic Noah, huh? Preserving us helpless ‘lower lifeforms’ from a horrible fate!”

Indeed. But the Collector feared that just preserving the creatures he’s so fascinated by won’t be enough.

This newest enemy might cause a war among the great powers of the cosmos (your Odins, your Zeuses, your Mephistos, your Eternitys. Those guys) in his attempt to achieve universal sovereignty. And such a war could obliterate all reality.

Which is why this time, he interfered. He sent his daughter to spy on the enemy in hopes of finding a weakness.

Iron Man: “You sacrificed your daughter?”

The Collector: “Perhaps... and it seems she now returns the favor!”

But before the Collector can reveal the name of the enemy (Korvac), a bolt of energy strikes him from out of the blue, disintegrating the Avengers’ old foe.

RIP the Collector. You were one of the greats.

The Avengers are horrified that the unnamed enemy (Korvac) so easily struck down the Collector, just when he was about to reveal the enemy’s identity.

Iron Man: “And right before our eyes -- as if to show us how insignificant we are! Fleas compared to a being -- who can kill a god!”

And the issue ends back in Forest Hills, with Korvac telling a crying Carina that she is now an orphan.

Because he just killed her dad.

So here we are on issue #174 of the Korvac Saga which started in issue #167. For the first time, the Avengers are actually aware of the nature of the threat. They heard from the Guardians that Korvac was up to something but his machinations are so subtle and so above the Avengers, they likely never would have found out until it was too late if it hadn’t been for the Collector.

Although Korvac is the big overarching threat of this saga, the plot has been driven by the Collector reacting to it, rather than Korvac himself.

And that’s interesting to me.

The Collector goes back to issue #28 of the Avengers so he’s about as classic an Avengers foe as you can get. And this saga is kind of his story too.

Its backloaded into this issue because mystery. But we learn so much about the Collector here. A little about his origin, about his secret powers, that he has a daughter, and his motivation.

And considering what a nerd he’s been, ranting about his perfect collection of Avengers (was collecting complete runs as much of a thing back then?), he has a surprisingly sympathetic motivation.

Its even a little bit of a retcon given how he’s acted before. But as of this story, all he wanted was to preserve the things he loved. And that included the Avengers with all their daring and adventure and melodrama.

Although, its kind of hard to ignore how much the Collector was just worfed. He was never a powerhouse but as I said, he is a classic Avengers villain from their third year in print.

And he got new, never mentioned powers in this issue. THE POWER COSMIC. The same juice that makes Silver Surfer and Galactus so peppy.

With little effort, Korvac killed him from afar. How scary he must be to manage that. Even when the Collector saw it coming literal miles away.

Oh, speaking of retcons. It is interesting to me to trace the Collector going back and forth from fantasy to sci-fi.

In his first appearance, he used flying carpets, giant summoning beans, potions, and a catapult. At the end of that appearance, he used a time machine though.

In his second appearance in Avengers #51, he has a spaceship and he uses aliens and robots to fight the Avengers.

In Avengers #119, he strikes during Halloween and uses the legendary coats of Hercules, the birthstones of the half-mythical Vultures of Nepenthe, and two rocks that summon infinite bats.

And now in this issue, he has a not-TARDIS that hides in another dimension and uses power wands, energy beings, a child’s missile launcher, and a positron cannon. Plus he reveals his sci-fi origin as one of the oldest beings in the universe.

I don’t think this means anything but its interesting. I think the Collector is more solidly on the sci-fi side of things going forward but its interesting to see his inspiration sine wave like this.

Next time: the Korvac Saga starts to wind to a close. The Avengers now know there’s a mysterious enemy who threatens all of reality. What do?

There might be a delay in new posts. I’m taking a trip to the cold lands this week and I don’t think I’ll be able to get two more posts done before I have to leave.

Use that time to not google ahead for spoilers. Also, maybe follow @essential-avengers. That would be cool of you.

[the-record-columns]

Dec. 4, 2019: Columns

A cook book including a couple of recipes for life…

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Through the good offices of Ben Lane of Wilkesboro, I now have in my possession a fascinating relic from 1946. 

No, not Ben, but a fairly well preserved copy of the North Wilkesboro Woman's Club Cook Book.  The Woman's Club was established in 1920 and has been a fixture in North Wilkesboro ever since.  The cook book had recipes from the members and I am sure some others as well.  For me, having grown up on North Wilkesboro in the 50’s, many of the names were familiar.

  Some of the ladies who had recipes in the book were folks I delivered the Greensboro Daily News to as an 11-year-old boy.  Of them, one of my favorites was Mrs. Fred Hethcock.  The Hethcock's were a retired couple who lived on 6th Street in North Wilkesboro, just down the hill a bit and across the street from one of my other favorites, Carl W. Steele.  When I would go by on Saturdays to collect my 45 cents for the previous week’s paper, Mrs. Hethcock would always invite me into her kitchen and give me a glass of sweet tea—a treat like no other.  She would let me sit at her table and I remember she put lots of lemon in the tea the way I liked it.  Her recipe in the cook book was for shrimp sauce.

Another name I saw in the cook book was Mrs. William Marlow, Mary.  I was fortunate enough to get to know Bill and Mary Marlow through my association with the Lions Club of North Wilkesboro, and later, as a neighbor down the street from them.  They were just the kind of people you are thankful to have known and I can remember my daughter, Jordan, remarking about Mrs. Marlow's wonderful cookies, and the fact that the Marlow's always bought whatever stuff the school system had the kids out selling without complaint.  Mary Marlow had her recipe for Dream Bars in the cook book, which I have personally been lucky enough to have enjoyed.  I have also had many opportunities to speak with Mary, who had an accent I won't try to describe, except to say it was a wonderful Southern voice which was perfect for the stately lady she was.

There were lots of other familiar names in the cook book, Mrs. W.K. Sturdivant, Madge; Mrs. A.B. Johnston, Ruby; Mrs. Hoyle Hutchens, Virginia; Mrs. Maurice Walsh, Sina; Mrs. Jack Brame, Virginia; just to name a few.

 However, it is the two nuggets in the boxes I want to call your attention to.  They both caught me completely off guard and I was very pleased to see them.  The first is just past the title page and is called "Club Sandwiches," and the second was in the Pickles and Preserves section and is entitled "How to Preserve A Husband."

  These gals obviously knew their way around life, as well as the kitchen.

Club Sandwiches

A very special recipe from page 2 of the 1946 North Wilkesboro Woman's Club Cook Book

Take 80 club women, well seasoned by the experience of living--these should be firm, yet tender.  Mix well with equal parts of faith and hope.  Sprinkle in the spirit of service and add a dash of pep.  Stir in a heaping cup of tolerance, and let stand until all arguments have dissolved and the mixture has cooled.  Spread between two slices of courage with all crusts removed and wrap in a cloth dampened with the milk of human kindness.  This recipe will serve the entire community.

How To Preserve A Husband

Interestingly enough, this piece was in the "Pickles and Preserves" section of the cook book.

Be careful in your selection.  Don't choose too young, and take only such as have been reared in good moral atmosphere.  Do not go to market for him, as the best are always brought to your door.  When once decided upon and selected, let that part remain forever settled and give your entire thought to the preparation for domestic use.  Some insist in keeping them in a pickle, while others are constantly getting them in hot water.  This only makes them sour, hard and sometimes bitter.  Even poor varieties may be made sweet, tender and good by garnishing them with patience, well sweetened with smiles, flavored with kisses to taste.  Then wrap them in a mantle of charity; keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion, and serve with peaches and cream.  When thus prepared, they will keep for years.

 ‘In A World Where You Can Be Anything, Be Kind’ 

By HEATHER DEAN

Record Reporter

Note: This was not my planned topic this week but I have many friends either struggling with the loss, or caregivers dealing with  serious ailments of loved ones, and wanted to rerun this column from a few years back to remind us all to be kind, and be present.

 Tis the season… All the hustle and bustle, rushing here and there, making sure everything is perfect for the gatherings that are getting ready to happen. We sing holly jolly songs, take the kids to see Santa, make plans to see family out of town, and eat enough goodies to stuff a reindeer. We giggle and snort about tacky sweater parties, and maybe we roll our eyes at those that don't share the enthusiasm of the holiday; maybe even muttering "Scrooge" or "Grinch" under our breath.

But…maybe they have lost their joy for a very valid reason.  It's hard sometimes to see the melancholy, past all the glitter and lights. For many people, this is a horrid time of year; reflecting on who won't be home for holidays, especially if it’s the first one without them.  

I would like to share with you a song that my friend Brian Brown penned about his daughter, who was the poster child for Christmas, if ever there was one. .She was named "Bria", after her father, was the only daughter, and the baby of the family. Bria suffered from asthma, but that never stopped her from enjoying all things Christmas- singing, playing in the snow, all the fun kid stuff. It was after all, her favorite holiday.

Bria died in February 2015, after suffering an acute asthma attack at the age of 14. Christmas was never the same for Brian and his wife, or the rest of the family.

My Christmas is Gone

My Christmas is Gone

Hard to see the blinking lights

Tough to see the twinkling stars

Hearing them bells ring

just opens up all the scars

Happy families holding hands

humming holiday tunes

I'm Scrooge in the corner

wishing it was June

CHORUS

Please don't happy me this

Please don't merry me that

Cause my Christmas is gone

It ain't coming back

Even if Santa's sleigh landed right here

I'd step right over them reindeer tracks he knows my Christmas is gone...it ain't coming back

Yeah my Christmas is gone

It ain't coming back

This was her time of year

Loved decorating the tree

Singing those old Christmas songs; come adore on bended knee.

Everytime the snow fell

Bundling up to go outside

Fingers went numb

From the snowball fights

CHORUS

I got no more silent nights

No more decking the halls

Every day's now to be the same

Behind these four blank walls

There might be joy to the world

It just hasn't found me

My soul's laid bare

As Charlie Brown's Christmas tree

CHORUS

Brian wrote this song, "to find a way out of the dark pit of self pity while still embracing the sadness that is so important for healing.”

So while you’re out there, take a moment to make eye contact with people.

Be aware.  

Try to be the comfort in another’s holiday grief.

If you are the one grieving, know you are not alone.  

 HOTLINE 800-273-TALK (8255)  

Israel - The U.S. security net

 By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

Special to The Record

Those who wrongly consider Israel as "illegal occupiers" of land deeded to her by God Himself, are woefully failing to accept the truth which, in plain language, means a Middle East without Israel would be nothing more than a region filled with overwhelming violence and chaos. 

In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip hoping to receive peace in return.  It did not happen.  Prior to 2005, Israel vacated a significant portion of Judea and Samaria leaving the West Bank, which includes the Golan Heights, in the hands of Palestinian Arabs who, with the support of Iran, Turkey and North Korea, turned the area into a giant launching pad for missiles and terrorist attacks threatening Israel and every pro-US Arab regime in the region. 

In 1967, Israel seized the strategically significant Golan Heights from Syria in a defensive war - a war which she did not instigate.  Israel was again attacked by her hostile Arab neighbors without any provocation whatsoever. In only six days and against seemingly impossible odds, Israel emerged the victor. She successfully defended her land and her citizens and even gained land in the process. 

Israel's presence on the mountain tops and ridges and in the Golan Heights serves as a sort of security policy for Jordan and others who are friendly to the United States.  Having Israeli troops in the Golan is also a kind of security safety net for the U.S. negating the need to send U.S. troops to patrol the Golan Heights as unrest and war rage in Syria, as Iran continues to spread it tentacles in Lebanon and Syria with ambitions to control the land all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, as Turkey's president sets his sights on Syria with expansionist intentions, and as Russia continues to expand its presence in Syria, Lebanon and any other place in the Middle East where there is the slightest opening or where leadership is weak.

Controlling the Golan Heights is important not only to Israel but also to the entire world.  Damascus, Syria is less than 50 miles from the Golan.  In the Middle East, Damascus is the center for the proliferation of global terrorism and drug trafficking.  You might remember that Damascus welcomed Nazi war criminals who fled Germany and Poland following WWII.   

Keeping Israel in control of the Golan Heights is essential to maintaining stability in the region.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply not thinking. Israel's presence is one of deterrence from which the United States, and the world in general, greatly benefits.     

It’s a Carolinas Heritage Christmas

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

We have been busy elves working on our new Christmas Special.

The 2019 theme is A Carolinas Heritage Christmas. We have been filming on location in historic Gold Hill.

The people of Gold Hill kick off the Holiday celebrations with an annual event they call “The Lighting of the Fall Fires.” The event is always the Saturday before Thanksgiving and is held rain or shine. This year it rained, but that did not seem to dampen the sprits of the attendees.

When people arrive, they exchange their tickets for a bag of gold nuggets (painted gold that is). Once they have their nuggets in hand, they board a trolley that takes guests to their choice of three stops. The nuggets can be exchanged for various food offerings throughout the village.

I met a fellow at the Brunswick Stew station. He so loved the stew that he used three nuggets for three servings. He said it was the best he had ever eaten. Then we met a lady at the chicken and dumpling station who was in line for the second time. She said it brought back great memories.

The village was filled with all sorts of music for people to enjoy as they went from place to place. It was a friendly event with all the charm you might imagine.

Vivian Hopkins at the E. H. Montgomery General Store provided great assistance in our production as well as sharing a look into life in the village. The Montgomery is a popular location during the Holidays and throughout the year with weekly Friday Night Bluegrass gatherings.  

There were three fires. We were on location with three cameras at the largest fire when it was set ablaze. As the fire was set, I chatted with Darrius Hedrick and John Yelton who have been part of the event from the very beginning,19 years ago. Darrius said that the event transitions us into the Holiday season.  John, now in his 90’s, said we need to be thinking about what we can be thankful for.

We were enjoying our chat as the fire grew, so much so that Darrius looked at me and said with a calm smile, “We better move back a bit before my pants melt.” I suppose I was so caught up in the moment that I did not notice that the ground around us was starting to steam from the mist in the air and the growing heat of the blaze.  

It was great talking with Darrius and John as they were both involved in making the Gold Hill Village what it is today. Naturally, there are many people involved; however, at that moment I became very aware that “The Lighting of the Fall Fires” is much more than an event to raise money and awareness for the Gold Hill Historic Preservation Society; it is a celebration of the fact that Gold Hill has significant Carolina history and, most importantly, it stands today as the Historic Gold Hill Village and provides a glimpse into our past and comfort for our future.

We will be back in Gold Hill for more filming during the “Christmas in the Village” celebration which is always the first full weekend in December.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas Season!  Let’s make some new friends and traditions this year and if we do maybe depression will not be in our stockings during the upcoming months.

Carl White is the executive producer and host of the award-winning syndicated TV show Carl White’s Life In the Carolinas. The weekly show is now in its eleventh year of syndication.   For more on the show visit  www.lifeinthecarolinas.com and join the free weekly email list. It’s a great way to keep up with the show and things going on in the Carolinas. You can email Carl White at Carl@lifeinthecarolinas.com.  

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #2

UPDATE 2: The Wannabe Heroine’s First Outing

Last time Taylor had introduced herself, shown the awful place that’s her high school, and showed her powers. Also she wants to be a superhero and plans to try get into that world very soon. Let’s see if her dreams are torn to shreds in this update.

There were no doubts Taylor takes seriously her training, and if anyone had doubts, she proceeds to dispel such doubts by describing her exercise regime. Running, mostly. There was a time jump here, straight to the day when Taylor will try her hand at being a hero. That was quick! I was sure it’d take longer than that, that there’d be a couple scenes more at school, but nope! Here we are, she’s ready to go outside and kick ass. You know, I had been warned a couple times that Worm had a slow start – slow burn, is that what they call it these days? – but this wasn’t slow at all! It took just like 5000 words! That’s like the blink of an eye! It’s almost as ridiculous as when one calls a 4000 chapter in a book ‘a long chapter’.

But yeah, Taylor is prepared and dyed her costume, buying the rest of the pieces to save time. Some of the armor wasn’t ready so she went ahead without it. I really hope that won’t be as troublesome as I have the impression it could be...you sure you know what you’re doing, Taylor? Her mask design includes lenses and bug mandibles. I admit I’m a bit surprised there’s no antennae, but that’s a good election. Antennae would provide foes a way to grab someone. It could be said the same about long hair, now that I think about it, but it doesn’t sound to me like Taylor has unnecessarily long hair, so she should be fine.

While Taylor walks to the bad side of the town, she proceeds to do some worldbuilding for the reader’s benefit. ‘From pretty much any point on the Docks, you could see one of Brockton Bay’s landmarks, the Protectorate Headquarters.  Besides being a marvel of architectural design with its arches and towers, the PHQ was a floating base of operations that a squadron of local superheroes called home, outfitted with a forcefield bubble and a missile defense system.’ That’s cool. Not the subtlest of headquarters, but at least it has defenses. I thought the superheroes’ need for secrecy would include not having headquarters in middle of the city like this, but I suppose not as much secrecy as I thought is needed. Just enough to keep their real identities away from their hero work. I wonder who are the three leading members of the Protectorate. Surely they’ll appear at some point in the story.

The need for money and the lack of work made the blue-collar workers of Brockton Bay fueled the supervillain population of the city. Henchmen are always on high demand, aren’t they? And this is a job, so those workers had to join and do their best. Hope they at least got good enough pay for that. Villains thrived until heroes started to fight them, and now there’s a balance between the two factions. It’s all a familiar setting, in some ways. It feels like I have heard something similar to it before.

Now that Taylor finished her worldbuilding, she arrives to the bad part of Brockton Bay, where she avoids anyone she sees. I had been about to comment it was amazing no one in the Boardwalk or anywhere before that had seen her and commented about her costume or anything, but then I reread and noticed she was going outside after midnight. Either way, she encounters trouble. A gang, called ‘Azn Bad Boys’. They’re no small fries, and their leaders are said to be people with powers, and given that they’re all gathering and doing thuggish faces, something is afoot. Be careful, Taylor.

There he is! The big leader of the gang makes his appearance, and he has all the signs of being the bad guy. ‘He had an ornate metal mask over his face’. That screams that he’s the leader, yeah. His powers are interesting, though. He transforms gradually the more he fights, gaining advantages and making him a tougher match. Oh, and also can control fire. Hm. He’s not...exactly the best target for the first fight as a hero, especially since he has overcome superheroes that surely had more experience and skill than Taylor.

Honestly? I think Taylor has bitten way more than she can chew. I don’t know how Mr. Wildbow starts his stories – or if he has written anything else before Worm – so I don’t know if he’d start a tale with the main character being badly beaten up. I won’t be surprised if it happens. Frankly, I’d be surprised if she does manage to hold her ground.

So, the leader’s name is Lung and he’s giving orders to the gang members. To listen better, Taylor decides to take a risk and climb a building, thankfully having made her outfit with soft soles. Once she’s on a nearby building, she listens to Lung’s commands. “…the children, just shoot.  Doesn’t matter your aim, just shoot.  You see one lying on the ground?  Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure.  We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?” ...alright, that’s certainly alarming. Any chances of aiding the targets escape instead of confronting the gang members, Taylor? That seems to be like it’d work better than fighting the gang members directly.

‘They were going to kill kids?’ Yeah, apparently they will. The chapter ends here. It was mostly a chapter of worldbuilding. I suppose the next chapter will be when Lung and his gang start doing what they plan to do. Children, hm...well, I know pretty much nothing about what Lung may have in mind, but I doubt he routinely gets his gang to kill children just because. I mean, it wouldn’t be unheard of, but I’d like to believe there’s a reason to do it. Maybe those children are important to someone else. Maybe they’re in the way of something. Or maybe Lung simply hates children. It’d be boring if it’s villainy for the sake of villainy, despite the powers. Either way, next chapter, please!

The first thing Taylor does is wish she could call other heroes – quite significant she calls them ‘the real heroes’, that is a detail that shows how much Taylor is doubting herself right now. Kudos, Mr. Wildbow -- and makes mental note to carry a cellphone and spare change next time. Then she tries to see if there are any alternative meanings to what Lung said. ‘Children’, did it really mean ‘children’? But no, Taylor doesn’t think that, she’s thinking why anyone would go out of the way to kill children. There’s no time to think about that for long, a car comes by and the group starts walking down the street.

‘As much as I didn’t want to face it, there was really only one option that I could have no regrets about.’ And that is to try to stop them, of course. Looks like Taylor has her moral compass aligned correctly at this point of the story. All swarms in the vicinity, every single bug around, is ordered to attack them. Hmmmmm...well that is bound to deal with the normal gang members. Guns and knives aren’t good against insects. Lung, though, I really doubt that’ll affect him. His powers give him the edge here. If there’s something Pokemon has reinforced in me, it’s that Fire is super-effective against Bug. Hah! Kidding, of course that doesn’t matter here, but my point is that it’s going to be very difficult to attack Lung with bugs if he can control fire. The gang members are more or less defenseless, and if Lung directed his fire against them in an attempt to kill the bugs it’d kill them.

So, the fight starts! Taylor stays on the roof of the building she had gotten on last chapter and directs the swarms from there, using the data she feels from the insects to know what’s going on. It doesn’t take long for Lung to use fire. Taylor isn’t worried about it, though, she’s...suppressing a laugh. It’s the adrenaline.

‘Was that all he could do?  I directed the swarm to gather, so those who weren’t already biting and stinging were in the midst of the gang.  If he wanted to turn his flames on the swarm, he would have to set his own people on fire’. Oooooh, she realized it! Nice, I’m warming up to Taylor. Not enough for me to really think of her as an invaluable character, but she’s decently clever and can see how the situation is like. It also speaks well of the author. It’s often said smart characters can only be as smart as the author is.

Hm. It’s a disappointment that it’s not said what the gang members are doing right now other than being bitten and stung, if they’re panicking or if they’re even screaming or loudly wondering what’s going on or anything. That was a missed chance, it could have added a sense of franticness that would have benefitted the scene. You kind of dropped the ball here, Mr. Wildbow.

Taylor decides to go into the next part of the fight: attacking Lung with the poisonous bugs. She knows she’s going to need to overwhelm him with venom to affect him, and the fact he’s large and strong makes it even more difficult. She’s running out of time to do anything, he’s starting to get covered in armor.

‘I felt a sadistic glee as I organized the attack on Lung’ Is that so, Taylor? It never speaks well of a main character when one feels something like ‘sadistic glee’ without the conscience coming by to douse it with guilt. It’ll be fine –and frankly I think it’d be awesome-- if Mr. Wildbow decides to go on have a main character who does feel things like sadistic glee at causing pain on her foes...as long as he doesn’t try to paint her in some kind of positive light later. I have seen many authors do that kind of mistake way too often with some flaws.

Taylor doesn’t play around; she goes straight to causing as much pain to him as possible and that involves doing the proverbial punch below the belt, just that here it’s done with bugs. Haha!

Oh, there it is! In the next paragraph. ‘Rationale aside, I did feel a stab of guilt about taking pleasure in someone else’s pain’. I see, I see. Taylor had no trouble quieting that stab of guilt by telling herself Lung was going to kill children. Interesting. Not that Taylor now has long for things like dealing with the guilt, Lung explodes in a ball of fire.

The explosion pretty much cripples Taylor’s swarms, leaving her in disadvantage. He’s furious! Methinks you should start going away now, Taylor! Lung and the gang have been alerted there’s something going on, the gang members must be in quite some pain from being stung who knows how many times...I don’t think they’re in state to do whatever they were going to do tonight. It doesn’t mean they have been stopped – other different gang members may do it – but it’ll at least be inconvenient. But nope, luckily for the children Taylor is willing to go all the way to the end. She prods Lung with some harmless swarms, testing him, but he’s indeed getting stronger and that’s bound to continue.

The gang members still are inexistent. I’ll pretend they ran away or something.

‘Despite my earlier glee, I wasn’t sure I could win this anymore.’ Yeah, I think you’re over your head on this one. Not that it stops Taylor from trying her best, she decides to get creative and meaner. That involves aiming wasps and bees at Lung’s eyes. There’s a rather effective description of stingers on the eye. It wasn’t descriptive to the point of gore, but it certainly painted a vivid image that made me cringe. Jeez! I’m both impressed and dismayed at the same time, hahaha. Bonus points to Mr. Wildbow for remembering the existence of eyelashes and blinking.

Lung had enough of this all and sets himself on fire, effectively disabling any attack Taylor could hope to make. He’s also getting even more armored than before. Taylor figures that the gang members were unable to carry out any plan and that it was time to leave. Yeah, that’s what I thought, Taylor! But unlike me, she also plans to contact the Protectorate Headquarters, just in case. That’s...something that didn’t cross my mind. Oops. Not a bad first outing as a hero! Taylor starts her retreat, steps on the gravel and that’s enough to alert Lung. ‘A victorious roar filled the air, less human than the outcry he had made earlier, and I felt a kind of resignation.  Enhanced hearing.  The package of powers the bastard got from his transformation included superhuman hearing.’ Well I suppose it was illogical that everything would go okay...even if I honestly had gotten so engaged in this I was hoping she’d get away safely. Dang. Well it was kind of a foregone conclusion that something would go awry at some point. Worm isn’t the story of a successful superhero, after all. I don’t know where this’ll go now, but she wasn’t going to get out of this as a celebrated hero. Oh well.

That’s where the chapter ends. Good show of strategy and action, nicely done, Mr. Wildbow. Next chapter!

Lung is less than elated to find the person who may or may not have anything to do with the insects that ruined the plan. Yeah, if he wasn’t sure, I bet once he sees Taylor’s mask he’ll confirm she’s the one who did it. He jumps almost all the way to the roof and Taylor quickly thinks about her options. Luckily for her, Lung is taking quite a while in climbing the building, so she has enough time to consider what to do. Escaping isn’t going to work, so what’s in the proverbial utility belt? Or...utility pocket on her back, same thing.

...I forgot chalk dust was for gaining traction on the hands while climbing or doing anything like that. I had thought it was to throw into people’s eyes. Hah, my bad. But yeah, looks like Taylor’s items won’t be very useful against a superhuman madman that’s covered in fire. The pepper spray is her only option. Hm. It’ll be difficult to get close enough to someone that both has a metallic mask and is on fire, right? I mean, the heat is going to be a problem here. Taylor seems to have decided it’s worth a try, though, and she gets ready. Once Lung appears she goes ahead and shoots...missing the first time. The second time it’s a hit, and...Lung is actually affected by the pepper spray! Alright! Not that it does much other than making him even angrier than before. Now that Taylor sprayed him, she...she decides escaping is wise. Hnrg. Maybe you should have done that instead of taking your chances with the pepper spray...or maybe not. Lung has superhuman hearing right now, he could have heard her try to escape and would have stopped climbing the building.

All in all, this is an extremely dangerous situation. I can’t think a way for her to get away unharmed.

Lung managed to hit Taylor! Thankfully nothing of her is set on fire. She falls and gets in fetal position, waiting to see what she could do because...because yeah, things look bad and Lung keeps advancing. The pepper spray seems to have been a lucky move, though, it has blinded Lung enough for him to not be able to see that well in the darkness. He aims flames to the roof of the adjacent building, which has the perk of not being where Taylor is at right now, and she tries to look at what he’s aiming at.

Huh. Taylor is certainly lucky. Guess it’s true what people say, fools can be lucky sometimes. Yeah, this was kind of a foolish endeavor for her, but it’s too late to repent about it. What matters is that three people arrived along with beasts! Beasts that look like a cross between a lizard and a tiger and also no skin. Not the shining image of heroism, I’d say, but given that Taylor wants to be a hero and she has bug powers and costume I think it isn’t fair for me to immediately assume those things’ owners aren’t superheroes. ‘He was dressed entirely in black, a costume I realized was basically motorcycle leathers and a motorcycle helmet. The only thing that made me think it was a costume was the visor of his helmet.  The full-face visor was sculpted to look like a stylized skull, and was as black as the rest of his costume’ There aren’t many heroes either that wear skulls as their emblems!

The newcomer with the helmet tries to help Taylor stand up, but she doesn’t trust him. Good. He doesn’t seem to really care, instead he reveals they were Lung’s target. “When we got word Lung was aiming to come after us tonight, we were pretty freaked.  We were arguing strategy for the better part of the day.  We eventually decided, fuck it, we’d meet him halfway.  Wing it.  Not my usual way of doing things, but yeah.” So these are the children Lung was talking about. Huh! Certainly not what Taylor was imagining, I bet, and certainly not what I imagined. There was the chance Lung hadn’t meant children, but I had chosen to take it more or less literally.

The fight is over before I know it. Lung has been driven away by the beasts despite the many advantages Lung has, so either he was defeated despite them, or he knows he doesn’t have a chance. The second in charge Oni Lee is around but he’s such a non-entity to the chapter right now he isn’t even shown. Hah! Oh well. The guy with the black helmet sounds kind of impressed that Taylor did something that hurt Lung like that, and one of the other girls describes all that happened. How long were they around while Taylor did her work, I wonder?

‘“Introductions.  That’s Tattletale.  I’m Grue’ Tattletale. Hah! Of course she’s called Tattletale, look at what she just did. Grue as in ‘gruesome’, buddy? Ah, yeah, and the other girl ‘“-We call her Bitch, her preference’ Edgy, but who am I to criticize what she wants to be called like? If she says Bitch is her name, then that’s what I’ll have to use here. The last person is Regent, but...but I’m not sure who Regent is. May be introduced later.

What’s important here is something Grue said in middle of the introductions: “...interests of being P.G., the good guys and media decided to call her...” The good guys, he says. Hoh. So this is it. These are the villains Taylor will join. This certainly wasn’t how I thought she’d meet them. That’s awesome! Taylor doesn’t seem to notice it yet, though.

Regent gets his description, no hint about power or role in this band. Now that Grue finished the introductions, he asks Taylor if she’s okay. Tattletale continues doing honor to her name and reveals Taylor is shy, which seems accurate enough to me, and suggests it’s time to leave. Taylor is offered a ride on one of the dog creatures. Ah, yeah, forgot to point that, they may be dogs. They’re not a cross between tigers and lizards, they’re like dogs. Where did Bitch get them, did she make them appear out of thin air? That’d be impressive! Taylor rejects riding one, but it isn’t like there’s much time to be picky here.

“Well, Bug, a cape is gonna show up in less than a minute.  You did us a solid by dealing with Lung, so take my advice. Someone from the Protectorate shows up, finds two bad guys duking it out, they’re not going to let one walk away. You should get out of here,” Bug. Oh well. Leaving the newly christened name aside, that’s advice I can’t measure. Would the Protectorate believe Taylor if she stayed and said she meant to stop Lung and his gang? I mean, it doesn’t seem like Lung has been subdued. She can’t offer a villain to the group and introduce herself as a hero. It’s possible they’d say she screwed up, which’d be unfair, but what else would one think without proof? Besides, if Taylor rejected the offer, that’d be...suspicious for them, right? And who knows, Tattletale may even find out why she stayed, if Taylor doesn’t go straight home. I don’t know how Tattletale’s skills works, but better safe than sorry. Hm.

...yeah, looks like Taylor got into something she never imagined, hahaha. The group leave Taylor alone, not having insisted with the rides. Lucky for her! But Taylor finally realizes what everything that happened means.

When I realized what had just happened, I could have cried.  It was easy enough to pin down Regent, Tattletale and Bitch as teenagers. It wasn’t much of an intuitive leap to guess that Grue had been one too.  The ‘children’ Lung had mentioned, the ones I had gone to so much effort to save tonight, were bad guys.  Not only that, but they had mistaken me for one, too.

Sad trombone music goes here. Hah, but no, really, that was certainly a deviation of plans I hadn’t thought would happen. Everything I read in these three chapters were pretty much unexpected for me. In hindsight, what I imagined last time that would happen in Taylor’s first time as a superhero was kind of illogical. I’m pleasantly surprised Mr. Wildbow went in this direction and subverted my expectations. The writing was rather good, too. There were some flaws – the biggest one being the missed chance I pointed earlier – but other than that he did a rather good job with the pacing of the action. I think I may have learned a thing or two from how he did it? Writing action scenes is very difficult, but I find the way he paced it and how he used descriptions and movements be rather vivid and fun to read. It’s something one as a writer and as a reader can appreciate.

All in all, I’m starting to warm up on this story, I think I can say I’m starting to like Worm. I’m not modifying the meter in this update, but if it manages to subvert my expectations again I’ll do it. Not that...I honestly have any concrete expectations right now. For the moment I’m letting Mr. Wildbow lead this wherever he wants, I’ll just sit back and see where it goes.

Next update: next time

[nancyedimick]

Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

Politically powerful car dealerships have given Tesla a rough run of late, winning battles in courthouses and state legislatures to prevent Tesla from selling its cars directly to the public. IJ Communications Associate Nick Sibilla has the story in the New York Times.

New on the podcast: an unseemly cash forfeiture, misleading pregnancy speech, and an unseemly vehicle impounding policy. Click here for iTunes.

Allegation: Five men are killed in Yemen by Hellfire missiles fired by an American drone; three of the men were the targets, two were collateral damage. Can the families of the latter obtain a ruling that the killings were unlawful? D.C. Circuit: This is a political question we cannot resolve. Concurrence: “Our democracy is broken.”

Homeland Security employee hands out security clearances, then transfers to Department of Defense. DHS finds some clearances were granted in error and tells DOD, which fires the employee. D.C. Circuit: No, DHS did not violate the employee’s privacy rights. It would be strange if an employee could avoid the consequences of a mistake by hightailing it to another agency.

Allegation: Passenger in stolen car makes a break for it on foot, is struck by a Bridgeport, Conn., police cruiser. He continues to flee but is Tased by three officers and winds up paralyzed. Second Circuit: No qualified immunity for two officers.

Scott Township, Pa., ordinance requires all cemeteries to be open to the public during the day and authorizes officials to enter any property sans warrant to determine if it contains a cemetery. A property owner objects, says the ordinance authorizes unconstitutional searches and unconstitutionally takes property. Third Circuit: While we encourage the Township to give up its inspection provision, the property owner doesn’t have standing to get a ruling on any of her claims.

Public defender is fired after he tells judges, lawyers, and politicians he was demoted — reassigned from the trial team to the juvenile court unit — because he refused to railroad clients into plea agreements. Third Circuit: The lawyer’s rumor-mongering impugned the integrity of the public defender’s unit and threatened to undercut staff morale, so his firing did not violate the First Amendment.

Bucks County, Pa., officials put database online identifying people detained or incarcerated in county jail as far back as 1938. Plaintiff: And my decades-old, expunged arrest record is publicly available (including on websites that post mugshots and charge a fee to take them down), bringing shame upon my family. Third Circuit: He may pursue a class action against county officials.

Ours is a tolerant legal system, says the Third Circuit. But three Orthodox Jewish rabbis who planned to kidnap and torture a (fictitious) Orthodox husband until he granted a divorce to his wife (an undercover agent) cannot have their convictions overturned on religious-freedom grounds.

A recent North Carolina law allows magistrates who oppose same-sex marriage to not perform them. If, as in one county, every magistrate recuses, the state pays to bring in a willing out-of-county magistrate. Plaintiffs: Which is an unconstitutional expenditure of public funds in aid of religion. Fourth Circuit: No one has been prevented from getting married. Plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue.

Hale County, Tex., jail officer sexually abuses detainee, resigns. Six months later, another officer rapes another detainee. Can she sue jail officials for failing to train and supervise their employees? Fifth Circuit: No. After the first rape, they put up a poster and told officers not to assault detainees, which was sufficient to get them qualified immunity.

Ohio men convicted of unspeakably horrible crimes, sentenced to execution. Ohio’s Execution Protocol calls for a three-drug cocktail with the infamous midazolam as the anesthetic. En banc Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): Which does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In Indiana, beer wholesalers can get a license to sell wine, and wine wholesalers can get a license to sell liquor, but nobody can get a license to sell both beer and liquor. The history is clear that this system was designed to promote political patronage. Unconstitutional? The history is irrelevant, says the Seventh Circuit, because it is imaginable that the system raises prices and therefore lowers consumption of alcohol.

Allegation: Displeased with the way a septic tank installer installed a septic tank (at the installer’s mother’s property), Brown County, Ind., health officer revokes the installer’s license — apparently for violations of the county’s secret septic-tank ordinance. Seventh Circuit: Could be the installer’s procedural due process rights were violated.

Minneapolis landlords: Inspectors ordered us to fix up our properties, which we rent to low-income families. But the alleged code violations are trumped-up; the remediation orders are vague; and officials won’t clarify them or let us appeal. Meanwhile, far worse violations persist in the city’s public-housing units. Eighth Circuit: All of which does not amount to a violation of the Fair Housing Act.

The NCAA bans anyone with a felony conviction from coaching at NCAA-certified youth athletic tournaments, a policy that disproportionately affects African Americans. Illegal racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act? Ninth Circuit: Coach needed to show that an equally effective, less discriminatory alternative exists, which he failed to do.

In which the Ninth Circuit provides a brief illustration of why, if you’ve successfully invoked your right to an attorney, you should really, really stop talking.

Ninth Circuit: Though they appeal to public safety concerns, U.S. truckers who oppose Mexican truckers operating in the U.S. are in fact much more concerned about new competition. Separately, their suit against the feds over the issue can’t go.

In 1715, 11 Spanish galleons carrying a cargo of gold, silver, and precious jewels sank off the Florida coast in a hurricane. In 1979, a Florida company retrieved a cannon from the wreckage, kicking off litigation that continues to this day. The Eleventh Circuit has the latest installment.

Sarasota, Fla., detective applies for state court permission to track cellphones. ACLU: We’d like to see those applications, which are public records under Florida law. Feds: Ah, but the detective is also a deputized U.S. marshal, and state law cannot compel a federal officer to produce anything. Magistrate judge: That’s so, though he did sign one of the applications “Detective Smith, Sarasota PD.” Eleventh Circuit: The ACLU is entitled to some jurisdictional discovery.

Food trucks in Louisville, Ky., are prohibited from operating within 150 feet of a restaurant that sells similar food without the restaurant owner’s written permission, which is revocable at any time without notice. Unsurprisingly, large swaths of the city are no-go zones for food trucks, as getting permission from every brick-and-mortar food establishment is virtually impossible. Restaurants have even been known to add items to their menu specifically to force food trucks to move. Last month, a pair of food truck owners sued the city, arguing the 150-foot rule is an unconstitutional restriction on their right to earn an honest living. Read more here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/10/short-circuit-a-roundup-of-recent-federal-court-decisions-63/

[wolfandpravato]

Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

Politically powerful car dealerships have given Tesla a rough run of late, winning battles in courthouses and state legislatures to prevent Tesla from selling its cars directly to the public. IJ Communications Associate Nick Sibilla has the story in the New York Times.

New on the podcast: an unseemly cash forfeiture, misleading pregnancy speech, and an unseemly vehicle impounding policy. Click here for iTunes.

Allegation: Five men are killed in Yemen by Hellfire missiles fired by an American drone; three of the men were the targets, two were collateral damage. Can the families of the latter obtain a ruling that the killings were unlawful? D.C. Circuit: This is a political question we cannot resolve. Concurrence: “Our democracy is broken.”

Homeland Security employee hands out security clearances, then transfers to Department of Defense. DHS finds some clearances were granted in error and tells DOD, which fires the employee. D.C. Circuit: No, DHS did not violate the employee’s privacy rights. It would be strange if an employee could avoid the consequences of a mistake by hightailing it to another agency.

Allegation: Passenger in stolen car makes a break for it on foot, is struck by a Bridgeport, Conn., police cruiser. He continues to flee but is Tased by three officers and winds up paralyzed. Second Circuit: No qualified immunity for two officers.

Scott Township, Pa., ordinance requires all cemeteries to be open to the public during the day and authorizes officials to enter any property sans warrant to determine if it contains a cemetery. A property owner objects, says the ordinance authorizes unconstitutional searches and unconstitutionally takes property. Third Circuit: While we encourage the Township to give up its inspection provision, the property owner doesn’t have standing to get a ruling on any of her claims.

Public defender is fired after he tells judges, lawyers, and politicians he was demoted — reassigned from the trial team to the juvenile court unit — because he refused to railroad clients into plea agreements. Third Circuit: The lawyer’s rumor-mongering impugned the integrity of the public defender’s unit and threatened to undercut staff morale, so his firing did not violate the First Amendment.

Bucks County, Pa., officials put database online identifying people detained or incarcerated in county jail as far back as 1938. Plaintiff: And my decades-old, expunged arrest record is publicly available (including on websites that post mugshots and charge a fee to take them down), bringing shame upon my family. Third Circuit: He may pursue a class action against county officials.

Ours is a tolerant legal system, says the Third Circuit. But three Orthodox Jewish rabbis who planned to kidnap and torture a (fictitious) Orthodox husband until he granted a divorce to his wife (an undercover agent) cannot have their convictions overturned on religious-freedom grounds.

A recent North Carolina law allows magistrates who oppose same-sex marriage to not perform them. If, as in one county, every magistrate recuses, the state pays to bring in a willing out-of-county magistrate. Plaintiffs: Which is an unconstitutional expenditure of public funds in aid of religion. Fourth Circuit: No one has been prevented from getting married. Plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue.

Hale County, Tex., jail officer sexually abuses detainee, resigns. Six months later, another officer rapes another detainee. Can she sue jail officials for failing to train and supervise their employees? Fifth Circuit: No. After the first rape, they put up a poster and told officers not to assault detainees, which was sufficient to get them qualified immunity.

Ohio men convicted of unspeakably horrible crimes, sentenced to execution. Ohio’s Execution Protocol calls for a three-drug cocktail with the infamous midazolam as the anesthetic. En banc Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): Which does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In Indiana, beer wholesalers can get a license to sell wine, and wine wholesalers can get a license to sell liquor, but nobody can get a license to sell both beer and liquor. The history is clear that this system was designed to promote political patronage. Unconstitutional? The history is irrelevant, says the Seventh Circuit, because it is imaginable that the system raises prices and therefore lowers consumption of alcohol.

Allegation: Displeased with the way a septic tank installer installed a septic tank (at the installer’s mother’s property), Brown County, Ind., health officer revokes the installer’s license — apparently for violations of the county’s secret septic-tank ordinance. Seventh Circuit: Could be the installer’s procedural due process rights were violated.

Minneapolis landlords: Inspectors ordered us to fix up our properties, which we rent to low-income families. But the alleged code violations are trumped-up; the remediation orders are vague; and officials won’t clarify them or let us appeal. Meanwhile, far worse violations persist in the city’s public-housing units. Eighth Circuit: All of which does not amount to a violation of the Fair Housing Act.

The NCAA bans anyone with a felony conviction from coaching at NCAA-certified youth athletic tournaments, a policy that disproportionately affects African Americans. Illegal racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act? Ninth Circuit: Coach needed to show that an equally effective, less discriminatory alternative exists, which he failed to do.

In which the Ninth Circuit provides a brief illustration of why, if you’ve successfully invoked your right to an attorney, you should really, really stop talking.

Ninth Circuit: Though they appeal to public safety concerns, U.S. truckers who oppose Mexican truckers operating in the U.S. are in fact much more concerned about new competition. Separately, their suit against the feds over the issue can’t go.

In 1715, 11 Spanish galleons carrying a cargo of gold, silver, and precious jewels sank off the Florida coast in a hurricane. In 1979, a Florida company retrieved a cannon from the wreckage, kicking off litigation that continues to this day. The Eleventh Circuit has the latest installment.

Sarasota, Fla., detective applies for state court permission to track cellphones. ACLU: We’d like to see those applications, which are public records under Florida law. Feds: Ah, but the detective is also a deputized U.S. marshal, and state law cannot compel a federal officer to produce anything. Magistrate judge: That’s so, though he did sign one of the applications “Detective Smith, Sarasota PD.” Eleventh Circuit: The ACLU is entitled to some jurisdictional discovery.

Food trucks in Louisville, Ky., are prohibited from operating within 150 feet of a restaurant that sells similar food without the restaurant owner’s written permission, which is revocable at any time without notice. Unsurprisingly, large swaths of the city are no-go zones for food trucks, as getting permission from every brick-and-mortar food establishment is virtually impossible. Restaurants have even been known to add items to their menu specifically to force food trucks to move. Last month, a pair of food truck owners sued the city, arguing the 150-foot rule is an unconstitutional restriction on their right to earn an honest living. Read more here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/10/short-circuit-a-roundup-of-recent-federal-court-decisions-63/