Oliver Stone, Leonard DiCaprio, and Travis McGee

I may be a little late to this party, but the entertainment reporters are saying Stone may direct "The Deep Blue Good Bye" which, at last report, was to use child actor DiCaprio as Travis McGee.

I suppose Stone is okay, but I still can't see DiCaprio as Trav, although it's probably a better match than the unholy stupidity of trying to make Dean Martin a credible Matt Helm.

"Deep Blue . ..,"(1964)i s the first McGee, and there is no Meyer. I can't imagine who Hollywood would have cast as that saint.

If it had been my Mom they criminalized worse than a violent street thug over a case of unauthorized goldfish mongering, I am afraid I might have reconsidered my essentially pacifist tendencies.

Why oh why are the British peasants not massing before No. 10 Downing, the Palace of Her current residence, and where ever the Hell Scotland Yard hangs out these days? Torches. Pitch forks. Recordings of Winston's 1939-41 speeches blaring over portable PA systems.

H/T to Tam

Terror in the Heartland

I have no explanation for it other than that we are being infiltrated by semi-sentient vertebrates deemed too kooky for San Francisco.

You'll recall that a few months ago a minor panic made big Iowa news when someone reported a suspicious bomb-like device in the road. It turned out to be a roadkill muffler.

Now come the media to report that the cops went full anti-terror tactical when a man in uniform and carrying a rifle was seen running through a field a couple of days ago.

The massed forces of law and order converged and discovered he was a National Guardsman on a training run. The AP says the cops "determined the rifle he was carrying was a training model and loaded."

You go ahead and figure that out. A loaded rubber duck?

Policeman Kelly Fitzpatrick said the soldier, "didn't use the amount of moxie and common sense that should be expected in the present day." If so, I personally assign the blame less to the soldier and more to the "present day."

If the terrorists' objective was to turn us into an a diapered nation with 911 tattooed on the backs of our hands and all the courage of Uncle Wiggly, they're succeeding admirably.

...by the company they keep

"Hank (Johnson) is a true leader who represents the very best essence of a public servant."

(President Obama on Hank's campaign site.)