Happy St Patrick's Day!

Happy St Patrick's Day to one and all and anyone visiting the Trooper York blog today. I know all of us are stuck at home because of this bogus coronavirus bullshit. I never thought that the Irish would be such pussies as to cancel the parade but things have gone to shit and there is no coming back. You know they found a snake in Ireland last week. You know they allow abortions there now. So it is all of a piece.

I have made many Paddy's day posts over the years and you can see all of them if you click on the tags. If you delve into the comments you will see a bunch of people who used to comment here but have moved on for one reason or another. Some of them are at Lem's and some have just wandered off somewhere else. Just like a bar.

I used to hang out at bars every day. Catch a lunch at the Quiet Man. Late night dinner at O"Lunney's while Junior from the Soprano's would sing Italian songs. Saturday night at Cousins to listen to Jazz. Hanging at the Last Exit with the younger crowd when I got to be an old bastard. Tons of bars. Tons of drinks. Tons of good times. Tons of crappy ones.

Paddy's Day was always crazy. It was the day when all of the idiots would come out of the wood work and get drunk and make a mess. The best description of Saint Patrick's Day is by that asshole Dennis Leary who said St Patrick's day is when a steroid using apprentice plumber from Long Island wants to kick your ass because you sat on his Jet's jacket. That just about sums it up.

We are spending Paddy's day at home. I made corn beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots. Not a beer in the house. Still we are relatively healthy and doing the best we can. I hope that youse guys can say the same.

Happy St Patrick's!

If you want to see a cool new movie....

Check out "Chef" which should be for free on Netflicks and pretty cheap on pay per view. It was written, directed and stars Jon Favreau who seems to have been locked in a bakery since he made "Swingers." I feel for this guy because he is like me and he loves to eat. So he made this great movie where you can actually see him making food. He is establishing a relationship with his son as he drives his food truck across the country after he got fired. He was fired after an epic blow out with a blogger and it was really cool.

What is different is you see the mundane issuses of running a restaruant. Getting produce. Changing the menu. Instructing the staff. The conflict between the front of the house (finance) and the Kitchen. It is really good.

Five stars from me.

Plus it has the chick with big tits from Modern Family and some great Music. Worth a look see.

"A Walk Among the Tombstones" is dead to me.

To pick up the discussion in another thread blake said he would recommend "A Walk Among the Tombstones" as a current movie I might enjoy. Here is his review in his own fine blog "The Bit Maelstrom."

As I had mentioned I thought this adaptation of Lawrence Block's novel was horrible but then that's me. I am generally pissed at movie adaptations because they almost always suck. Especially detective or crime novels which always lose their tone or feeling when transcribed to the screen.

Here are the problems with this adaptation. The essence of Matt Scudder in the Block novels is his alcoholism. It is a presence in the books. It really got short shrift here. The keep a lot of the set ups from the book but they are just poorly executed. The only thing they did right was the "origin story" you know where he got bit by the radioactive spider. In this case it was when his errant bullet killed Estrellita Rivera in Washington Heights after a bar shoot out. That part was well done. As Pete mentions in the comments at Blake's joint the character of TJ was really misplayed. He was much more resourceful in the books and helps Scudder with Computer hackers who get him the phone numbers. They really should have made it a period piece instead of trying to update it to the year 2000. All in all it is a misfire.

Not as bad as the last translation of a Scudder book into the movies. That was an abortion called "Eight Million Ways to Die" starring Jeff Bridges made in 1986. In that they move the scene to LA instead of New York. It is just about the worst adaptation I have ever seen from book to movie.

It really pisses me off when they kill a good book like this. I mean I have seen some great adaptations lately. The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are two examples of exemplary translations from book to screen. An even better example is "Justified" where they really captured Elmore Leonard's sensibility. You don't care about the details when they get the feel right. But if they can't capture the sensibility then you start to nitpick. Or at least I do.

A real misfire. I am just ecstatic that they did not make my favorite Scudder book "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes." At least I have that to hold on too while I watch TV.

Happy BIrthday Blake

Hey I didn't want to miss the birthday of another one of my original commenters.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLAKE!

Many happy returns of the day dude!

Smile when you say that partner.

Just sayn'

So Blake was 100% right.....again

No not when he posted those naked photo's of Darcy. That was uncalled for dude.

No he was right about Leah Remini and her dispute with Scientology. It seems that she filed a missing persons report with the LAPD about the wife of the leader of the religion. The cops shut it down and said that they had talked to the "missing person" in the last two days and this was all a publicity stunt. It looks like Leah is just drumming up interest for her upcoming book and nothing much more.

It's a shame. It was a cunning stunt when she should concentrate on being a stunning cunt. Or something.

I just wanted to say that Blake was 100% right. I should never dispute him in Hollywood stuff. I mean I didn't believe him when he told me that Sophia Vergara was a chick with a dick but hey...he knows his stuff.

Blake knows that position....but now it is on a milk carton

It looks like Leah Remini is raising the stakes on her fight with the Scientologists. She filed a missing persons report on the wife of the leader of the religion. That is pretty serious. They cops will now have to investigate. This is real world shit not play acting.

Speaking of play acting did you ever watch the "Mentalist." They have a subsidiary character played by Malcolm McDowell who is the head of a religion sort of like Scientology. The whole premise of the show is that Simon Baker is a phony psychic who turns his abilities over to the cops when his family is murdered by this serial killer called Red John. The last six years have been a big tease and they have chased this Red John guy. Well they announced that Red John will be one of seven different characters we have met in the last six years and one of them is this McDowell character. If he is the serial killer who heads a cult it will be a definite dis on Scientology.

I just hope they don't ask Leah Remini to get involved.

When they throw you out why do they have to keep talking about you?

No I am not talking about the Evil Blogger Lady doing post after post about her commenters.

I am talking about Leah Remini and her getting the boot from Scientology.

It seems that they are threatening to reveal her secrets that she revealed in her "auditing" sessions which were kind of like confession for these new age assholes. They have done this before with other apostates.

It's a lot like what Meade did when they threw everybody out of TOP and they all congregated at Lem's joint. He couldn't leave it alone. If they really felt the way they said they felt they would have kept their distance and let it go. But Needy Meady had to jump right in and start duking it out with everyone which caused problems with people who might not have been all that pissed off to begin with. He definitely showed who he really is and I think that was a revelation for a lot of people. Most of youse guys already knew he was a dick.

If the Scientologist start this shit they might lose more adherents and more stuff might come out. I understand why they are pushing Leah out. I mean she is not hot stuff anymore and they want to go with more high profile people. Sometimes you just need to let people go and not worry about it. It is best for everyone.

But some people never learn.

Blake shows his stuff....

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on Firefox, through a singularly dreary tract of the Internet, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Althouse. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the blog, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere blog, and the simple Amazon portal features of the domain—upon the bleak links—upon the vacant eye-like vlogs—upon a few rank commenters—and upon a few desultory "Let's take a closer look at" posts—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Althouse? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Leah Remini is even hotter now that she is not a fruitcake!

This story takes us back to the murky origins of the Trooper York blog where blake and I had many discussion about how hot Leah Remini was and his adventures in meeting her at his favorite coffee shop.

Now Leah has dropped out of Scientology and decided to become normal. Or they pushed her out because she wasn't making the big bucks anymore.

You very seldom see an actress star in more than one successful sitcom. I mean Mary Tyler Moore, Barbara Eden and Elizabeth Montgomery couldn't do it so you don't think Leah could. The Scientologist assholes proably figured the same thing so they are going on to the next big thing. Maybe one of the Two Not So Broke Girls or something.

It's funny how we go back in a circle.

Blake knows that position.

He is also knows that Lea Remini is hot.

Blake tells it like it is......and I have to agree

Our good buddy Blake recently posted a great little speil that I found both illuminating and true...


Almost every online community I've ever been a part of, or even examined in retrospect for historical purposes, has ultimately dissolved. Of those that are still around, most are spiraling the drain. As someone who's been online now for over 20 years(!), it's kind of interesting to me to examine why, and also why there are a few that persist.

The simplest answer to why could probably be reduced to: It's just too big a pain in the ass to maintain. There's not a lot of money in it most of the time. Most of the time, there's no money at all. But I've seen this happen on CompuServe in the pre-web days, too, where genuine income streams were given up rather than put up with the hassle.

But hassles—serious ones, anyway—don't just arise. They're created.

And it always unfolds the same way. There is always (at least) one person who is at cross-purposes with the community. You could call them "trolls" but that's not really comprehensive enough a word. "Traitor" would be a good word, even though they often wouldn't see themselves that way, like Benedict Arnold, or someone who's trying to save the community from itself.

I was in one community where a person like that came in with about five others and systematically and cruelly mocked the regulars. The owner decided "free speech" and those people managed to drive off almost everyone who had made that place their home for years. Most of the locusts, as I envisioned them, left pretty soon after that, including the main troll who managed to offend the owner. trounce the rules, etc., enough to be ejected.

That was a particularly dramatic example. Usually, the treasonous ones are subtler, because in most cases the person who owns the community will defend overt attacks, and people will naturally bind together and fight off interlopers. So, they're covert.

The most insidious ones can foment trouble without ever being fingered. Or even better, for a community's destruction, they can become a bone of contention around which people side. Best of all is if they can fracture a community along principled lines. "Free speech" is a popular one. "I don't want to hang out in a place where we aren't free to post pictures of dismembered babies!"

The people who are like this can be hard to spot, especially if you're guileless. They present a picture of trammeled innocence. They were just minding their own business when baseless attacks were suddenly leveled.

It's never a regular dispute, where people blow up, and then they either get over it (or they leave): A slight is never forgotten, and is always repaid, and repaid, and repaid. Slowly but surely the troll drains the fun out of the community while increasing the burden on the community owner. It's not a wonder that online communities eventually dissolve, but they stay together for any length of time.

Probably the key characteristic of community traitor is a complete inability to communicate. Nothing ever, ever gets in. And they're good at faking it—pretending to respond, like a super-advanced Eliza program—but there's never any real indication that anything ever permeates to their being. (The essence of receiving communication is to be changed by it, after all.)

This isn't true just for online communities of course.

Which brings me to the ones that I've seen thrive: They're all united around a real world purpose. Technical matters, religion, a genuine craft, something that both requires an effort to be a part of and has a put-up-or-shut-up aspect.

In the purely virtual, we hang to imagined threads. No exactly imagined, but really co-created. The community exists because we say it does. We have shared values in some fashion. But our understanding of those values is imperfect, and all it takes to shred a virtual community is someone to come in and push the boundaries of that understanding, to point out the weaknesses, and to drive people to those corners.

It's a shame but I've seen it happen so many times over the years I'm practically inured to it. I think if I were going to start an online community now, I'd do it around an activity. Like, I don't know, bowling

Blake doesn't get it....

blake said...

Also, that chick everyone's so ga-ga about...Joan Holloway? Hendricks? She's hyooge by Hollywood/Fashion standards. Size 14 at least. 30" waist, again, at least. She could eat Marilyn.

And she don't look nothin' like the female athletes with similar height/weight stats.

Seriously?

Unforgiven Part 1

Little Bill Daggett: You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.
Will Munny: That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned just because he was wearing a hoodie.

Allie gets it

AllieOop said...

Whaaaat? Titus wishes me dead?! Say it ain't so Titus.

No I didn't think you were snubbing me, just busy. So Troop does some creative editing? Ah, now I get it.

By the way I have decided to quit my job and go to work for the Rick Santorum campaign. He is my kind of guy. He likes dogs too! Maybe a little too much but still.

And he has a pretty mouth.

You don't say o_O.

Hey I rented a flick to watch in the back while they are filming!

I have to amuse myself somehow.

Blake knows that position. Just sayn'

Whose that girl with the bath cap on?

She is a couger town without pity now but she was hot stuff back in the day.

And blake even confessed that he had never heard of her!

Whose that girl?

I would rather check out the babe with the one eye and the three breasts!

blake said...I'm sure it's not your thing, Troop, but Matt Groening's post-"Simpsons" show "Futurama" has all the Presidents featured as heads in jars, as fodder for various jokes. Clinton comes on Leela, and Ford says "Don't mind him, ma'am, he gets this way around meaty women." Or George Washington (or Jefferson?) saying "Thou robots really cracketh me up."Nixon, on the other hand, has a central role, as he's run for President of Earth and won. And he's a recurring villainous character.On the commentary, Groening (who is about your age) says something like "I was so mad at Nixon in the '70s! But if I'd known 30 years later I'd still be getting such use out of him..."The Nixon stuff's hit-and-miss, though. The show has been brilliant but the last episodes I've seen relied heavily on really hacky leftist concepts (environmentalism, evil corporations, women's rights).A shame, really.

I would just watch it for the robot sex with the chick with one eye and three breasts.

Blake is a slut.

Amanada Blake that is. Well she played one in Gunsmoke. The earlier ones in black and white.

I have about the first two seasons on DVD which I bought from the Gunsmoke film of the month club. It is really pretty great. It has great guest stars like Charles Bronson and Bette Davis and Bruce Dern and Steve Forest.

The characters are very different. Later in the show run Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake) gets a lot more respectable but in these early episodes it is pretty clear that she is a whore. She is free and easy with her attentions and Matt Dillon is leery of her because she is so slutty. After a while she gets more respectable and at the end of her run it was like she was a nun or something instead a saloon whore like Trixie from "Deadwood."

But I like it better when Blake was a slut. Just sayn.

Commenter Memories Number 101: Blake reprises his gratuitous bathtub scene

Because it is a new year and it is time for a bath. Just sayn'

Yvonne a know whose who?

Hey it takes a Lotta Love!