Spiderman, the Spiderverse

Saw this yesterday in Lincoln with youngest son.  Its long.  It moves slowly.  The animation and art  work is good, fine images.  Give the video folks a few more years and we will not be able to tell live actors from CGI actors.  Aunt May is very convincing, in a few more years they will be able to slip her into a live action movie and we could not tell that she was not acted by a human.  Sound man does good, I could understand all the lines.  Camera man (CGI artists?) done good, all the scenes are properly lighted.  It's animation all the way, no live actors at all.  
    Miles some-thing-or-other, is the teen age protagonist.  He is drawn as black or Hispanic.  He serves mostly as a punching bag thru out the film.  He doesn't seem to have a mission, he doesn't do much, he gets dumped on, he seldom  acts for himself.  He has an impenetrable relation with his father (a cop) and an uncle who alternates between family member and masked villain.  The artist doing Miles should have made him cuter, more like the ultra cute but nameless Spider girl.
   Plot is strange.  Some kinda inter dimensional door opens and Spidermen (and girls) from a dozen strange dimension turn up, including Peter Porker.  
   Only diehard Spiderman fans need to see this flick.  It's too long and slow moving for  kids.

Bimbo payoffs are now campaign finance violations???

Paying off a bimbo to keep her mouth shut is kinda slimey, and NOT an indicator of good moral character, but it ain't a campaign finance violation.  Even  Alan Dershowitz  agrees with me on this point.  Why this Cohen character, former fixer for Donald Trump, is pleading guilty to a campaign finance violation 'cause he cut the check[s] to one or two bimbos is a mystery to me.  You would think an experienced lawyer/fixer would put up more of a fight in court.  And for that matter,  I'd expect Donald Trump to do more than he has to keep an old buddy/fixer out of jail. 

Congressional Hearing on Google reveals smart phones report your position, every minute

Scary,  Testimony in front of Congress this morning claims that Android cell phones report their ( and their owners) position about once a minute.  I only carry a cheap dumb phone.  I wonder what it is reporting, and to whom it reports to.    The idea that the government, the cops, NSA, FBI and who knows who else can know where I am, minute by minute, is scary.  I certainly am not gonna update to a smart phone. 

NH Senate Organization Day

Second day on the job.   Left the house at 7 AM.  Got to Concord a little past 8 8AM.  Since they had not assigned me a State House parking space, I parked in the shopping mall and walked up.  It's only a couple of blocks. 

   We met in the newly refurbished Senate chamber.  Lovely corner room, with lots of nice big windows on two walls.  Lots of sunlight.  All the elaborate wood work had a fresh new coat of cream colored paint, new carpet,  half the murals had been cleaned.  Governor Sununu swore us all in. First order of business was to elect Donna Soucy of Manchester as the new Senate president.  She was nominated and then we did a voice vote.  All aye's, no nays.   Then we re-elected Tammy Wright as Senate clerk, same procedure  just one nomination followed by a unanimous voice vote.

    Then we got down to a substantive vote for the Secretary of State.  We moved into the house chamber, they had seats for us in front.   Bill Gardener  is the incumbent, has been for better than 40 years.  He has kept NH scandal free, no Florida style disasters.  He favors the use of paper ballots, which I agree is a good idea.  They cannot hack  paper ballots over the internet.  Colin Van Osten  was the challenger.  A lot of democrats like Van Osten because he looks likely to enfranchise a bunch of democrat leaning voters that Gardener won't.  After nominating speeches, followed by seconding speeches,   we voted by paper ballot.  When those were counted, we had 208 votes for Gardener, and 207 for Van Osten.   That caused a tizzy, the Speaker declared the margin too thin and we would have to vote again.  This set off  an hour of  motions and speeches  and citing of  "rules".  Then we did a second paper ballot  and Gardener squeaked by 209 to 205.

    By then it was 4 in the afternoon and getting dark.  The bankers threw a free beer and munchies event across the street at Tandy's.  Naturally I stopped in, I never turn down free beer.  Spent about an hour, chatting with a whole bunch of people.  Got on the road home at 5 PM.  It was pitch dark by then.  Traffic going north on I93 was heavy, but it kept moving right along at 70 mph.  Got home a little after 6PM.  Cat was overjoyed to see her human back safe and sound. 

Ivanhoe 1952 Taylor and Taylor

Too bad Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies as good as this one.   It stars a young Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca of York.  The movie is a love triangle with Joan Fountaine (Rowena) and Elizabeth Taylor (Rebecca) competing for the attentions of Robert Taylor (Wilfred of Ivanhoe).  Elizabeth Taylor is ultra cute, has good lines, speaks them well, and nearly snags Ivanhoe away from Rowena.  Robert Taylor plays a fine knight, brave, chivalrous, and a stout fighter. The movie is based on a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, published way back when, sometime in the 19th century.  It is set in the 12th century and revolves around ransoming King Richard Lion Heart from the Austrians and preventing his brother John from taking over England.  The history isn't bad, a few names have been changed but most of the stuff in the movie really did happen.  Richard's minstrel Blondell did actually go from castle to castle looking for Richard.  In the movie Ivanhoe gets Blondell's job, but heh it's a movie, a little poetic license is perfectly legitimate.  We have real jousting, on horseback and with long lances.  The knights wear period correct chain mail rather than gleaming plate armor which didn't come in until a couple of hundred years later. We have a castle stormed and taken by Robin Hood and his merry men.   We have King Richard returning in time to save the day in the last reel.  It's in Technicolor which always gives the best red rendition and good color saturation.  The costumes are good looking, and everyone wears a different color, so we can keep track of who is who.  Sound is excellent, I can understand every line.  In it's day Ivanhoe won three Oscars, and was nominated for four more. 
    Netflix has it.  Enjoy.

TV Newsies starting the 2020 presidential campaign right now.

I'm watching Beat the Press on NBC with Chuck Todd.  He said some nice words about President Bush, now deceased, and then moved on to prognosticating about 2020.  First of all, I am tired of election horse race talk, we have had too much of it for the last two years.  Second of all, nobody knows what's gonna happen in 2020.  Pure speculation, and I am tired of that. 
   Surely something real happened somewhere in the world worth a little air time?  

I don't understand all the Manaport and Cohen talk

The TV newsies are all excited about it.  Even Fox News who ought to know better. Me, I don't understand what either of them are accused of doing, I don't know if what they are accused of is a real crime, and I don't understand how this relates to Trump, other than both of them used to work for Trump.   Back in 2016, before Trump got elected, it isn't illegal to do a real estate deal in Moscow.  Might be stupid, because you cannot take Russian real estate out of the country, and inside Russia there are no courts that can protect your investment from seizure by the government.   But it ain't illegal for Americans to do business in Russia.