These are the mad political rantings of one Matthew McNeil, Liberal/Democratic radio host in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN. The postings are mine, the thoughts are mine. Mostly about politics, but I will occasionally get into raising kids, cooking, gardening, the arts and my favorite sports. Bon Appetite!
Let's scare everyone today! Of the many accomplishments of writer/director Ryan Coogler, making an old Irish drinking song into the surprise hit of the year could be the most incredible. Generation Z seems to LOVE this scene from the great movie Sinners. I do too.
Next is the scariest movie I've ever seen, Jaws. It did not help that I was a kid in Rhode Island when this came out, and they filmed a lot of it off of Block Island, just south of the Rhode Island coast. This was like watching a documentary. This movie played for 2 years at my local movie theater.
The best horror isn't demonic villains and teenage slaughter fests. The best horror is the kind where it feels VERY real. Sharks are a thing on the coasts, and the all-star cast of this movie, plus Spielberg's brilliant direction, made the scariest movie of all time (in my opinion).
Here is the scene where they realize what exactly they are dealing with, and particularly, watch the great Robert Shaw's eyes when he comes out and finally sees the shark. His eyes actually get wider, with an undeniable shock for even this old fisherman. THAT'S acting! Then the theme kicks in. I hid under my movie seat!
From make-believe scary to real scary, I have two more for you.
Hurricane Melissa was a monster, and as the Caribbean nations it targeted recover, I am reminded of how scary hurricanes are. When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey in 2012, it was MASSIVE. Here is a video from Madison, Wisconsin, nowhere near New Jersey, and throughout the day, you see the edge of the hurricane come in from the east. Apparently, it ended up being visible from Minnesota (a weather person I know said you could see the edge from the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River).
This is terrifying when you think about it. Ghosts and goblins don't scare me. Nature terrifies me. Nature ALWAYS wins!
Finally tonight might be the scariest video yet! Jon Stewart, on his weekly podcast, talked with Professor Geoffrey Hinton from the University of Toronto about AI. The first half of this video is a great explanation of what exactly AI is, and why it makes standard computing look like a calculator from 1975.
The second part is the scary part. Hinton talks about how, really, it is already too late to stop AI and how it is already, in some cases, exceeding human beings. The potential for good is undeniable, but the VERY REAL threat of danger is also undeniable, whether by evil people deciding to wipe a portion of the population out, or AI itself evolving past a point of any ability to control.
Hi all! For all of those who have started reading these posts recently, I usually don't feature sports clips too often, but for the 2nd time in 3 weeks, the main one today has to do with baseball.
With the World Series here (Nothing against the Dodgers. I actually like the Dodgers, but nothing would make me happier than watching Toronto win. Trump would lose it!), let's revisit the greatest World Series ever played, 1991, Twins versus Braves.
I don't just say this because I am a recently suffering Twins fan, but because it actually was the best World Series of all time. I watched all of these games in the middle of the night in Germany. I was stationed there in the military. My roommate Ben and I were the ONLY Twins fans there. So many of the military guys were rooting for Atlanta.
Great pitching, great hitting, great fielding, and the greatest call of a sports play of all time ("We'll see you tomorrow night!"). This series had everything, but don't take my word for it. The Jolly Olive has a breakdown of why exactly this is the best, and it might be a long time before we see another World Series that matches it.
Also tonight, Mystery Science Theater 3000. I do feature them from time to time, and this video was linked to a story in the Minnesota Racket about the early days of the show.
This video is 6 hours of PURE GOLD! Pod People, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Space Mutiny, and The Final Sacrifice could be the four best episodes of the show, period. This video is about the most quoted episodes, and they deliver.
Pick any place in this video and start watching. Enjoy!
Have a great weekend! Make sure you get your flu shot and the latest COVID vaccine too.
Alison Hammond might end up being the person to save us all.
If you're not familiar with Alison, for us here in the US, she is one of the hosts of the Great British Bake Off, a show I HIGHLY recommend. Not only because it's a warm, happy hug in a world where everything is broken glass and razor blades, but because Alison is so damn funny as the host. A shout-out to the VERY entertaining Noel Fielding, who co-hosts with her (seriously, more shows with both of them would be so nice!), but Alison is so funny and unrestrained in her interactions.
I mentioned how much we love Alison to a friend, and they said, "Did you ever see her interview with Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling about Blade Runner 2049?" No, we hadn't. Alison is also a co-host on This Morning, a morning entertainment/talk/news show on ITV in England, and she was interviewing the two stars about the movie. Harrison Ford is usually so gruff, but Alison gets both him and Ryan absolutely rolling. This is sensational. It's warmth for dark, cold days.
On a more serious note, we owe John Oliver a debt of gratitude. Not only does he expose the worst of the worst on his sensational Last Week Tonight, but occasionally he does real journalism and exposes a truth that's hiding in front of our faces.
This last week, John had a full segment on Bari Weiss becoming the new head of news at CBS. Not only does he point out she is kind of weird, extremely full of herself, and grossly unqualified for the job she now inherits, what he really does is expose the way the far-Right is hiding their agents and agendas right in front of our very eyes.
Weiss has often presented herself as a person who should be liberal but is not afraid to disagree with the left, but at the same time, she seems to be pushing a haphazard, kinda-MAGA agenda with her news coverage. The Free Press, her "news" outlet she ran before this new gig, was purchased for an amount that seems to grossly overvalue what The Free Press was actually worth, and she is not reporting to the head of CBS broadcasting, but rather to the owner, wealthy billionaire and Trump supporter himself, Larry Ellison.
What Oliver shows us is that, as much as Weiss and her wildly incompetent crew at The Free Press scream about political agendas seeping into news coverage of outlets they no longer work for (New York Times, NPR), they themselves eagerly and proudly insert THEIR political ideology into their news coverage (the story on starving Palestinian children alone tells you a lot about who these horrible people really are).
This is where we are at today. The Right has its unapologetic far-right media outlets (Fox, OAN, NewsMax, Sinclair), but now they're also starting to create a new kind of right-wing news outlet, one that still presents the news with a very pro-Right narrative and agenda, but packaged as "courageous" journalists, bitter and wronged because they were supposedly hurt by those big, mean liberals, when in truth they are only screaming those things to hide their true agenda.
One final funny thing for the week. I still think Community Calendar on The Late Show is one of my favorite bits they've done. Last night, they returned to Minooka, Illinois, with Nick Offerman for their latest Community Calendar!
Make sure to stay up to date on your vaccinations, including the latest COVID ones.
A few seasonal things to get to. With baseball's playoffs heating up, and with the Twins nowhere near them, it's time to revisit the World Series Championship. NOT the 1991 series, one of the best series ever played, but rather the forgotten championship, 1987. That was such a ragtag team, which really underwhelmed all season long, but when it came to the playoffs, they all clicked perfectly.
This video from 3-0 Greenlight claims the 87 Twins as the Worst Team to ever win the series. I highly disagree with that, but they were insanely unlikely champions. He also brings up the litany of allegations about the team cheating at the Metrodome. They weren't cheating. If anything, they were playing on artificial grass on top of concrete, which was so different than most of the other fields. A grounder up the middle moved a lot faster there. That might have been an unfair advantage, but since the MLB allowed the field, that was more of a league problem.
Staying with sports, with the Vikings on their bye week, let's go back to 1998 and the Randy Moss coming out Party that was the Week 5 Monday Night game between the unbeaten Packers and the unbeaten Vikings.
Played in Green Bay, where the Packers hadn't lost a game since 1995, what happened was absolute domination. Randy Moss was so damn good, and when Cris Carter is your second option, there is nothing the other teams could do.
98/99 was the Vikings' year, but Denny Green's mismanagement of the NFC Championship game and one missed field goal cost the Vikings their one guaranteed Championship. They were undoubtedly the best team in football that year.
Finally, tonight, maybe because I was searching for more on the Chicago mobsters I learned about on the Chicago Crime Tour I took, I had this video pop up in my timeline. It runs down how exactly all of the major crime bosses in New York and Chicago..."retired."
There was not a lot of long-term career advancement in the mob. (Apparently you will have to click through and watch this one on YouTube as well).
This week, we begin with an Honest Trailer from Screen Junkies. I really liked the Fantastic Four movie, but like every movie, Screen Junkies must rip it to shreds. To be fair, this is the best version of the Fantastic Four, period, but the bar was pretty low.
We also have not checked in with Joe Scott lately. His channel is always a top-notch source of great and interesting videos.
A long one today, so enjoy in moderation over time. Here is a collection of strange tales from history for you to enjoy! The ones on the Victorian Era are so weird.
Finally, tonight, ICE tried to arrest a bicyclist in Chicago, and they ended up looking like fools. Every time I watch this, I see something else that makes me chuckle (Cowboy hat guy???). I initially said it looked like a modern version of the Keystone Cops, but then I decided an even better outcome would be if someone put the Yakety Sax song from Benny Hill underneath the action. It's damn near perfect. Enjoy the chase on a loop. These guys are their own worst enemy.
Have a great weekend, everyone. Make sure to get your flu shot and your COVID shots!
