Month: May 2021

Last Man Standing – Thoughts on the Last Episode of the Series – A Television Review

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Back in January 2021 I wrote a review of the last season of “Last Man Standing” that was beginning at that time and I said the show was unwatchable.  And it was, but being the stubborn fool that I am, I decided to watch the final season as a lesson to myself.  And as predicted it was unbearable.  Sure, every once in a while, Tim Allen would inject a funny moment.  But the overall unfunny, bland, bad writing, the trivial plot elements and emasculated male characters was beyond awful.

But I stuck it out until the bitter end and I’m glad I did.  Because in the last half of the final “double episode” Tim Allen injected a plot element that was an open metaphor for the hijacking of his series by the network.  The story element was that Mike’s classic pick-up truck that he restored from the ground up was stolen.  Now just in case the metaphor escaped anyone he even slips and says “show” instead of “truck” in one place.  He stresses several times that he’s had the “truck” for ten years and of course “Last Man Standing” premiered in 2011.

At one point the characters are talking about the fact that they can’t find the truck because the tracking GPS is off the “network.”  One of them asks if it could be found on another network and someone else says he’s heard of something like that and then Tim Allen says he doesn’t think it will work.  So, he’s hitting out at both ABC and Fox with this statement.  Later on, he asks “Who steals somebody else’s work like that?”  And there is a mock wake where the various actors talk about their feelings for the “truck.”  And finally in the Mike character’s final VLOG episode Tim Allen says just like Ronald Reagan after his 1976 defeat in the Republican primary that he is bloodied but he’ll get back up again.

So maybe Tim Allen thinks he has another show in him.  But what network will play it without neutering all the normal masculinity that Allen is known for?  I don’t see it happening.  But at least it was something that he at least acknowledged that his brain child had been butchered by the powers that be.  For that at least I salute him.

If he ever does start a new series, I’ll give it a look.  Who knows?  Miracles can happen.

22MAY2021 – OCF Update

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My apologies, today is going to be a busy day in the real world.  I don’t know if I’ll be doing much writing until this evening but on such a beautiful day as today everyone should be out in the real world, at play in the fields of the Lord.  So I’ll see you soon.

House Rock Valley Road, Sony A7S and Voigtlander 10mm lens

I Won Yalta

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The world was divvied up.  I got everything I wanted.  My “allies” were stiff armed and I emerged triumphant.

Actually, none of those things are true.  The gathering was great.  There was music and good food and boisterous camaraderie.  We told stories and exaggerated our exploits in any number of old adventures from the “good old days.”  And we mocked the corporate “powers that be” and their toadies who are in charge of torturing us for fun and profit.  And we laughed at how lately things have been going sideways for them quite often.

And we had desserts, splendiferous desserts.  And we drank coffee and talked about those who were gone and planned our next gathering as the hours slipped away and a hot late-spring day became a fairly cold night.  And toasts were pledged and handshakes were exchanged and no one was silly enough to feel nervous about human contact.  The police never showed up and as I was driving away, I thought, “We’ve neglected to get together for a year because we were afraid of the Left?”

But we had been.  And not mistakenly, but of necessity.  The Left controls our lives.  They have the power to imprison us and make us paupers and take every good thing away from us, even our rights as Americans.  COVID and the BLM riots and the election fraud have made all those things clear to me and probably to millions of others.

And now that it’s clear we need to decide what we are willing to trade to escape from these people.  If I had lived in South Dakota then COVID would have affected me not at all.  I would still have had to live with the election fraud and maybe the BLM losers would have had a local presence somewhere in the urban centers but it would have been a mere shadow of the madness that went on in the Northeast and other blue areas.  In the fall when the flu season resumes the masks will be brought back and the Karens will shriek about the death that was waiting in the wings and now has come back to put them back in charge of making our lives miserable.

I’m trapped in place here for at least a year or two more.  But I’m guessing there are countless others who will take this opportunity to move to places with fewer Leftists and freer air.  And I envy those people.  It’s the right decision to make.  The only real question is which is the best place.  There are trade-offs having to do with employment opportunities and climate.  But all of these things are details that can be worked through if time and thought are taken.

My advice is take the time now and get the wheels rolling and start making it happen.  If you wait too long it just gets harder to break away from the encumbrances that grow up around you when you live somewhere for a long time.

Alright, end of rant.  The ice is broken and next week I’m hosting a Memorial Day family party, flush with barbecued meat, watermelon, corn on the cob, cake and ice cream and a swimming pool full of children and grandchildren.  And all I have to do this week is get the pool pH right and fix the gate on the pool fence.  Sounds about right.  The only fear I have is a patch of poison ivy that has crossed into the pool area and threatens the serenity of my favorite poolside deck chair.  But with the help of the Lord and my good right arm (not to mention a “liberal” coating of ivy-block to my face and arms) I shall prevail and restore order to the realm.

Let the games begin!

Yalta – 2021 (Sorta)

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Toward the end of World War II the “Big Three,” Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin got together for a conference in the Black Sea resort of Yalta.  Here they discussed the fate of the post-war world and possibly drank vodka.  Today a similar event will occur.

I’m trying to decide which one I am.  Based on my bloody-mindedness I guess Stalin might be the closest analogy.  But if politics is the measure, I’ll be Churchill.

I guess the analogy breaks down along the lines of world domination.  The issues that will dominate this conference will be the need to wash down sandwiches and potato salad with lemonade and beer.  I am donating the aforementioned potato salad and Camera Girl’s world-famous ricotta cheese cake.  There is talk of penny ante poker and Russian roulette but we’ll see about that.  I expect points of disagreement but also wide areas of concurrence.  My only unbreakable rule will be that I must be addressed as “Your Grand High Celestial Irritableness.”  That is like iron!

This conference occurs at a distinct juncture.  The Southern New England states are surreptitiously admitting that even their spineless inhabitants have stopped believing in the mask farce.  So, the authorities are grasping the miracle of the vaccine as the excuse for this retreat from mask idiocy and will officially allow us to return to near normalcy.  So, we are not expecting Karen to report us to the boys in blue.  But if they do show up, we intend to don black-face and stand on our George Floydian right to do whatever the hell we feel like and resist arrest by any and all means up to and including overdosing on fentanyl.  Or cheesecake.  That’s my preference.

Seriously, it’s pretty great finally getting together with good friends and celebrate summer appropriately.  This will be the first major reassembly of the Morning Coffee Walk in over a year.  We’ll probably keep the political discussion to a minimum only because it won’t facilitate good digestion.  But we will at the very least discuss Joe Biden’s squint.

And of course, because of this celebration there will be a noticeable lag in content today.  I’m sure all will agree that this kind of conference is worth the cost.  The proximity of such high caliber minds is sure to spark some amazing consequences.  We may discover anti-gravity or even lo-cal pizza.  So let the good times roll.  Boy, look at that cape FDR is wearing.  Maybe I need one of those.

Robinson Crusoe (1954) – A Movie Review

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This is a Mexican production (in English) directed by Luis Buñuel.  And surprisingly contains none of the sensationalistic or bizarre affectations that he usually included in his films.  In fact, it is a very faithful and normal portrayal of Daniel Defoe’s classic tale.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with the plot.  Crusoe is an Englishman of upper-class background who decides to leave his family and make his fortune in the wide world of the late 1600’s.  He gets a ship and is headed to Africa to bring a cargo of slaves to the New World.

But the ship founders in a terrible storm and Crusoe swims off and eventually reaches the shore of a remote island somewhere in the tropical Atlantic Ocean off Africa.  The ship that he abandoned ends up as a wreck stuck on some rocks close to the island Crusoe is on.  He builds a raft and uses it to transport supplies from the wreck.  He takes food, guns, powder, tools, clothes and even a dog and cat that were his pets on the ship.  Shortly afterward the wreck sinks.

Crusoe builds a stockaded cave dwelling and improves his life with the tools he has saved from the ship.  He grows wheat from seed and bakes his own bread.  He builds a potter’s wheel and a kiln.  He builds a calendar out of a log and tracks his imprisonment.  But when his dog finally dies of old age then Crusoe finds his loneliness unbearable.  And he comes close to losing his sanity.  But one day he finds a human footprint on the beach.  He discovers that African cannibals visit the island occasionally to feast on their captives.  One day a captive breaks loose from the cannibals and Crusoe kills his pursuers and takes the escapee to live with him as his servant.  He names him Friday after the day he found the man.  Slowly Crusoe learns to trust Friday and they become true friends.

Years later a ship arrives and the crew comes to the island to collect water and also to maroon the captain and boatswain that they’ve mutinied against.  With the help of Crusoe and Friday, the captain is able to capture the leaders of the mutineers.  In gratitude the captain agrees to sail Crusoe and Friday back to England.  The mutineers are allowed to be marooned on the island rather than hanged for mutiny and Crusoe leaves them his settlement and instructions on how to live comfortably on the island as castaways.

None of the actors will be familiar to an American audience but the direct visual nature of the movie, and the sparse dialog or even narration works perfectly well to tell the story.  There’s nothing complicated here, just an adventure story.  But the concept of complete isolation is a sort of profound human condition.

Not to belabor the point I enjoyed the film and on its own terms it is well done.  And since you know exactly what to expect you can make up your own mind ahead of time whether this kind of story appeals to you or not.