Month: July 2021

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) – A Movie Review

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Here’s a movie that I can’t decide if I love or hate.  Steve McQueen is the too cool to have any facial expression Cincinnati Kid.  He’s a stud poker player in in New Orleans.  His girlfriend is too cute for words farm girl Christian (played by Tuesday Weld) and his mentor is Shooter played by Karl Malden.  Shooter is the man who arranges all the high-end poker matches and acts as the professional dealer.  He’s married to Melba, played way over the top by Ann Margaret as she slinks around in her underwear waiting for the Kid to betray his girlfriend and her husband and join her in bed.

The climax of the movie is a high stakes poker match between the Kid and Lancey Howard played by Edward G. Robinson.  Lancey is “The Man.”  If the Kid can beat him, he becomes the foremost stud poker player in his world and his future becomes assured.  But a rich New Orleans gambler named Slade (played by Rip Torn) is stinging from a poker beating he took from Lancey and he extorts Shooter to throw the game to the Kid.  Halfway through Cincinnati figures out he’s being fed cards and because he wants to win the game himself, he forces Shooter out of the deal.  And for good measure, during one of the breaks from poker, he beds Melba.  Unfortunately, Christian picks exactly that moment to return from a visit to her parents and discovers Melba even less dressed than usual in Cincinnati’s room.

The end of the game comes in a hand that includes an ace high full house and a straight flush.  Oh, come on!  I’ll let you watch the movie to see who ends up on top but I’ll add that the Kid ends up getting the girl back (at least in one version of the movie).

So why can’t I figure out how I feel about the movie?  Well, it’s a construct.  It’s like they put it together by recipe.  Ultra-cool young gambler, Steve McQueen, check.  Impossibly sweet, pretty blonde girl, Tuesday Weld, check.  Cast of familiar, stereotyped character actors, check, check, check.  Voluptuous, half naked girl throwing herself at star, Ann Margaret, check.  Classy, golden age actor to lend some gravitas, Edward G. Robinson, checkmate.  It’s all by the numbers.  They even lay on the New Orleans atmosphere with old time jazz players and even throw Cab Calloway in as one of the gamblers.  It’s just too much.

But for whatever reason if I’m in the mood to watch a spectacle I end up enjoying the movie.  Edward G. Robinson is just too much fun to watch and listen to.  He doesn’t have that much to work with but he fills out the roll with style.  We feel the aches and pains of the old man sitting hour after hour at the table playing against the younger man.  His banter with Joan Blondell as the alternate dealer “Lady Fingers” is amusing.  Even the scene where the Kid meets Christian’s back country family and shows them some card tricks is charming.  What can I say?  I like it.  I know it’s a set up and I’m the mark but it works.  The critics said this was a copycat movie of Paul Newman’s pool room film, “The Hustler.”  They’re probably right.  But this is the less serious, less fraught version and I think it’s more enjoyable.  I’ll recommend it with my remarks above as the qualifier.  It’s a contrived spectacle but that’s what Hollywood makes.

10JUL2021 – American Greatness – Post of the Day – Return of the King by Josiah Lippincott

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This fellow Josiah Lippincott takes Angelo Codevilla to task for his essay, “What is Trump to Us?”  His point is that despite whatever failures Trump had in his term in office without him there would be no populist movement.  He does a pretty good job of defending this idea and reminds us of who would be the conservative political team if Donald Trump hadn’t appeared on the scene, guys like Marco Rubio.

One of the more interesting ideas that he presents is the idea that Trump should run for Liz Cheney’s house seat and then become Speaker of the House if the Republicans recapture the House of Representatives.  That’s a pretty wild idea.  I like it.  Can you imagine Trump mocking Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s lectern?  Anyway I like his point of view.  Sure I’d love to see DeSantis step up and start to push our agenda forward but until he does something revolutionary we still have to remember that without Trump none of this would even exist.

Even the Left Admits There Are Now Two Americas

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In Ed Kilgore’s screed he talks about the undeniable fact that the two Americas are permanently opposed to each other on almost every issue and that we basically despise each other.  Of course, he describes it from the point of view of a Leftist and paints our people as the unenlightened, unintelligent and immoral side of the argument but at least he isn’t claiming that we don’t speak for half the country.  And he doesn’t pretend that we will come around to his way of thinking.  They hate us and we’re learning to hate them right back.

From my point of view the Left saying out loud that we are “not of the body” is a very good thing.  And I hope they start talking about getting rid of us by dumping the flyover states and going it alone.  That would be the single best thing that could possibly happen to us.  I don’t think it’s likely.  I think they know we would be phenomenally better off without them and they would be in a really bad place without us.  But even if it’s just talk, I think they should be encouraged to talk this way.  If enough of the stupider people in their camp started repeating this idea enough maybe we could make them think it’s their idea and stampeded the whole thing through before they have a chance to wise up the idiots.

The way to assist in the process of convincing the Left that we should move apart is to resist every policy that benefits them and make the red states as uncomfortable as possible for their ilk.  I think the red state governors should do everything possible to make their cities less appealing to Leftists.  Whatever policies the cities have promulgated should be reviewed at the state level and vetoed if they tend to attract Leftists to the red states.  The first thing I can think of is wean the population off welfare.  Not just temporarily but permanently.  The next thing I’d go after is the public schools and colleges.  Review their curricula and delete all the woke and LGBTQ stuff.  Hungary just enacted a law banning the proselytizing of minors on the homosexual lifestyle.  It was hilarious when the gay members of the EU governments started howling about this law.  That’s how I know it’s an effective law.  The public schools and state colleges are funded with our tax dollars.  Pulling that money out of the hands of Leftists is the single largest impact we can have in the Culture War.  Imagine if we could effectively end the programming of our children against us.  That alone might win the war.

And most importantly the states can nullify the anti-Constitutional federal laws and policies.  Banning affirmative action and allowing individuals to sue corporations for curtailing free speech on the social media platforms would put the hurt on those companies who have jumped on the woke bandwagon.  These things would be the best way to re-establish the constitutional basis for American freedom.  Without freedom of speech and religion and association we are not really Americans, we’re prisoners of war, we’re strangers in our own land.

So, yeah, I agree with Ed Kilgore, strange as that is to say.  We are two nations and we should be separated and allowed to go our own ways.  It’s no different from Czechoslovakia becoming Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  Who knows, after we part ways we might find we can be very good neighbors.  They can buy our food products and minerals and we can buy their movies, at least after they’ve been put through a wash cycle to remove the filth.  We can even divide up the nuclear arsenal.  Although with their strong aversion to all things masculine maybe they better just let us take care of those scary things.  Wouldn’t want to upset their troops during their drag queen war maneuvers.

Let’s agree to disagree and get on with the divorce.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – East Berlin and Breaking Bread with Ivan

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When I worked in counter-intel I often went to West Berlin. There about every other person you met was a spy for one side or the other. Great parties, though.

I got into uniform and went into East Berlin all according to Hoyle. I had a camera and took some neat pictures of the architecture. Of course, the polizei had to come and harass me. I told them to piss off and get a Russian officer, which was according to the treaty. The polizei weren’t squat in East Berlin if you were an American in uniform. I kept walking about and a Russian officer approached me and was polite. GRU, naturally. We chatted and sat in a bistro and had beer and sandwiches, which I paid for. We talked and both agreed it would be sad if we ever had to go to war against each other as we had more in common than with most of our allies. Rather charming fellow. We played it according to the rules and he asked what I was photographing, I told him the buildings and that I wasn’t stupid enough to photograph military things out in the open with the polizei watching me like a hawk. We both laughed. I left him with a spare Zippo lighter with a naked woman on it and two packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. I had already gotten the message I went in to get. He walked me to the checkpoint and had them wave me through without issues. All gentlemen and friends.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – East Berlin and Breaking Bread with Ivan – Part 2

09JUL2021 – OCF Update – photog’s Ark

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Forty days and forty nights of rain has pounded my brain into mush.  Seriously, we’ve had a phenomenal amount of water falling out of the sky on us for the last week or so.  Based on the amount of water I’ve measured in the water bucket I have out in my yard we’ve had almost thirteen inches of rain so far and it’s not letting up at all.

Right now, the rain is torrential and I see no indication that it intends to stop until this whole corner of New England slides off the mainland and deposits itself into the Atlantic Ocean.  What I’m waiting for is the idiot on tv to tell me about the drought condition that we’re currently suffering through.  It’s inevitable.  Apparently, the morons who run the water supply are incapable of understanding that doubling the population of the state means that it will be necessary to increase the water supply to compensate.  Granted that is a monumental task but it has been done in the past and a supposedly progressive state won’t shy away from stealing people’s lands for a state boondoggle.  But in our current Gaia worshipping mood the solution is to ration water until people decide to voluntarily die of dehydration to “save the planet.”

Well, I’ve snapped out of my Stasi induced funk and I once again feel that I’ll outlast these buggers.  I’m an inherently optimistic man and I still believe that knuckling under to these cretins is a mistake and one way or another I’ll escape them and live to see their nightmare system come crashing down.

So, unless I drown in the biblical deluge that we’re currently experiencing I intend to send out a few more rants and other words of scorn at our sad pathetic elites.  Long may they whine and cajole and to no effect.