I got a great deal of enjoyment about the memes on Facebook about Tom Hanks in movies, that you wouldn’t want to travel with him.
The movie Sully should not have worked. There’s a major event, which you almost certainly know about because they wouldn’t have made the film otherwise. You KNOW it has a positive outcome. The picture shows the event TWICE. And yet the audience is on pins and needles, both times, including me.
This is fine film making by director Clint Eastwood about airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), where experience outweighs the machines. It is what happens when one man simply does his job every day in a professional manner. The one odd thing – and maybe this really happened – is that Sully’s dealing with his wife Lorrie are all on the phone, so one doesn’t get a real strong feel for her character.
The Wife and I saw Sully at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany last month and were happy to spend the 90 minutes. And I LOVED seeing the real people at the end, including many of the passengers.
Unfortunately, I read a lot of reviews before I saw the film. A few of those folks thought that the National Transportation Safety Board members were somehow persecuting Sully for his arguably risky maneuver. Whether it actually happened that way – movies based on real life are not supposed to be documentaries – I thought the questions from the NTSB folks were quite reasonable, in an attempt to learn for future situations. If they were a little too “villainous”, it served the story.
I got a great deal of enjoyment about the memes on Facebook about Tom Hanks in movies, that you wouldn’t want to travel with him, lest one be captured by Somali pirates (Captain Phillips), get stuck talking with a volleyball (Cast Away), get stuck in an airport (The Terminal), or get stuck in space (Apollo 13).
And when he DID run, Stewart, before he retired in August 2015, thought DJT quite amusing. The news organizations loved the boffo ratings of the Republican debates, which were four TIMES greater in the summer of 2015 than four years earlier. It was all great theater, I suppose, but I never thought it was all that humorous.
Finally, on the late, lamented Nightly Show in December 2015, they were doing a skit when a couple of the actors, Mike Yard and Ricky Velez, told host Larry Wilmore that doing Trump schtick just wasn’t funny anymore. I noticed recently that someone was complaining that the comedians were all bashing Trump more than Hillary; I figured it was penance.
The 16 Republicans who ran against him were largely intimidated that he might slap a nickname on them. The guy’s been in the public eye since the 1970s; where was their opposition research?
Yeah, yeah, maybe Bernie could have won, and easily, I think, because he had passionate followers, one of the reasons I supported him in the primaries. And maybe the FBI director James Comey’s announcement of a new investigation less than two weeks before the election sunk her.
Obviously, I think “the people” are wrong. I realized it fully last April, when my daughter expressed interest in seeing Donald Trump when he was in Albany. She didn’t support him, just wanted to see him. And I vetoed it, not for political reasons, but because I worried for her safety and mine. THAT’S who we just elected President. (NOW will he release his income tax returns?)
This is a blow I have to muse upon a bit more.
ADDENDUM: I wrote on Facebook yesterday: Ah, it’s November 8. According to Wikipedia, what happened on this date? 1519 – Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Montezuma welcomes him with a great celebration. 1644 – The Shunzhi Emperor, the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, is enthroned in Beijing after the collapse of the Ming dynasty as the first Qing emperor to rule over China. 1923 – Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government. Anything interesting happening today?
Author Donald Ahrens in his text Meteorology Today describes a rainbow as “one of the most spectacular light shows observed on earth”. Indeed the traditional rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets. The “bow” part of the word describes the fact that the rainbow is a group of nearly circular arcs of color all having a common center.
Although the most common rainbow is a single crescent containing every color from red through violet, if you pay close attention, you will discover that rainbows come in a surprising variety of colors and shapes. And scientists are finally figuring out why.
From Middle English reinbowe, reinboȝe, from Old English reġnboga (“rainbow”), from Proto-Germanic *regnabugô (“rainbow”), equivalent to rain + bow (“arch”). Cognate with West Frisian reinbôge (“rainbow”), Dutch regenboog (“rainbow”), German Regenbogen (“rainbow”), Danish regnbue (“rainbow”), Swedish regnbåge (“rainbow”), Icelandic regnbogi (“rainbow”).
XKCD (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License).
God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth…”
Skybrary is a carefully curated, ever-expanding interactive library of digital books and video explorations designed to engage young readers and foster a love of learning.
Rainbow Bridge is one of the world’s largest known natural bridges. The span has undoubtedly inspired people throughout time–from the neighboring American Indian tribes who consider Rainbow Bridge sacred, to the 85,000 people from around the world who visit it each year.
Started in 2006, Antioch’s program is, to its leaders’ knowledge, the country’s first and only graduate-level L.G.B.T.-affirming clinical psychology specialization.
“Shall there be approved in the County of Albany, Local Law No. “H” for 2016, entitled A LOCAL LAW OF THE COUNTY OF ALBANY, NEW YORK, AMENDING VARIOUS PROVISIONS OF THE ALBANY COUNTY CHARTER AND LOCAL LAW NO. 8 FOR 1993 AS SUBSEQUENTLY AMENDED AND FOR THE PURPOSE OF INCORPORATING THE PROBATION DEPARTMENT AND THE BOARD OF ELECTIONS INTO THE ALBANY COUNTY CHARTER.”
* Incorporate the county’s Probation Department and Board of Elections into the charter – seems pretty much administrative
* Extend the period in which the county executive may make an appointment to fill a department-head vacancy position to 90 days from 45 days, and the period in which the legislature may confirm the appointments to 60 days from 45 days – I assume this has been a problem
* Mandate a written designation of an order of succession for the offices of the county executive, comptroller, and sheriff – I like THAT
* Mandate that the county adopt an administrative code – it doesn’t have one?
* Require public hearing notices be posted on the county website – transparency I like, but why does that need a vote? Whatever
* Update various sections of the Albany County Charter by defining previously outdated or ambiguous terms and correcting language for clarity – sufficiently vague
Also important: I was looking at my sample ballot and noticed the words: PROPOSITIONS ARE L0CATED ON THE REVERSE SIDE OF THIS BALLOT. Don’t miss it!
Note that the charter revisions will NOT include any provision to downsize the county Legislature, unlike last year’s ballot. *** You may be surprised to discover that there are candidates to vote for besides the President. There are members of the US House of Representatives, and for many Americans, a race for US Senate. Plus the entire New York State legislature – the Senate and the Assembly, is up.
Unfortunately, there are a number of judge races in this area, plus the Albany County District Attorney’s contest, that are running unopposed. I hate that, as it reminds me of the lesser days of Albany politics.
At the same time, there is an opportunity to help Marquis Dixonin the form of a YouCaring drive. We have an opportunity to help support his family by helping to remove some of the financial stress of more than 2.5 years of supporting Marquis while he was incarcerated.
A friend of mine suggested this, and I’m liking it: a write-in vote for Marquis Dixon for Albany County D.A. District Attorney David Soares supported sending Dixon, a 16-year old at the time of the offense, to adult prison for nine years for the theft of a pair of sneakers, a minor incident during which no one was harmed.
Last week the appeals court strongly repudiated Soares’ position, unanimously granting Marquis Dixon “youthful offender” status he should have initially had and reducing his sentence to the minimum of one to three years. This write-in vote will send a message to D. A. Soares that his punitive incarceration-based policies are unacceptable.
An interesting aspect of the book is the appearance of one Barack Obama.
Back when Jon Stewart was hosting The Daily Show, he had on Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), the lion of the civil rights movement. He was plugging March, Book Two, which continued the description of the “historic events he participated in as a leader of the civil rights movement,” sharing “his desire to inspire the next generation of activists with his graphic novel trilogy.” I said, “I should get that,” but did not.
Recently, Lewis returned to The Daily Show, now hosted by Trevor Noah, promoting March, Book Three. So when I got a chance to review that book, I took it.
The movie Sully should not have worked. There’s a major event, which you almost certainly know about because they wouldn’t have made the film otherwise. You KNOW it has a positive outcome. The picture shows the event TWICE. And yet the audience is on pins and needles, both times, including me.
