Bernie dropping out of the race feels liberating. I don’t have to care about the election anymore. I can free up some space in my mind for other things. I shall pay no mind to the usual suspects already trotting out the old “blame the voter” routine they’ve been doing for the past 20 years. Sorry your “electable” candidate sucks ass but it’s not my problem, haha. I feel no obligation to vote for the party of austerity and means-testing that was sending voters out to their deaths. I can sit back and watch the debates – assuming there’ll be debates – without worrying about “my” candidate and just enjoy the grotesque spectacle of two senile dipshits squabbling about The Debt as the world continues to burn. A month ago, I felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and despair as I continued to work during the pandemic, but now I feel free.

THINGS I’VE BEEN ENJOYING LATELY

• Austin Powers in For Your Pussy Only – My Australian amigo Ryan Dell wrote this very funny script where Austin Powers and Dr. Evil compete in the Democratic primary. I feel a little chagrined that he knows all this minutiae about US politics while I don’t even know who the king of Australia is
   
• Fail Safe – Seen as the “straight” version of Dr. Strangelove. The scenes where the Air Force guys try to reassure a visiting congressman that everything’s perfectly normal, this happens all the time etc. only to slowly realize that things are NOT normal felt especially eerie with virus news in the background.
   
• Mr. Boop – Great comic about being married to Betty Boop
   
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Channeling my fear and grief into hunting down eggs for Bunny Day FTW.

*desperately trying to avoid thinking about my imminent death voice* I think Disney+ does a poor job with the original theatrical shorts… there’s not a lot there to begin and the ones that they do have are just scattered throughout the service. It would be cool if they were organized in one place and you could just watch every available Disney short in chronological order without futzing around with a Wikipedia article. Maybe there should be a hub for shorts like there is for movies and series. Hopefully someday they’ll even add the Simpsons shorts from The Tracey Ullman Show, the Oswald shorts, and the Alice Comedies. Here’s hoping HBO Max does a better job with the Looney Tunes shorts.

Washington Post: Trump’s corporatist response to coronavirus shows no concern for national debt

A trillion here, a trillion there and soon you’re talking real money.

The national debt has surged from $20 trillion to $23 trillion since President Trump took office, even though the economy was at or near full employment, despite his campaign promises in 2016 to eliminate it altogether if he’s elected to two terms.

The Trump administration outlined a $1 trillion stimulus plan on Wednesday to respond to the pandemic, including $500 billion in cash payments to individuals and $300 billion toward helping small businesses, as well as $50 billion for bailing out airlines and $150 billion for other unspecified sectors. This will likely include hospitality, in which the president has a significant personal financial stake.

Mutant wearing a lanyard and a gas mask tip-toeing around the corpses littering the streets of Forbidden Quadrant X (formerly Alexandria, Virginia): Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the debt?!?

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY

It’s disappointing when you find out some 90s alternative cartoonist or 00s blogger has normie centrist politics

Mallard Fillmore Watch

3/09/2020

Mallard Fillmore has been in reruns since the start of the year (if not earlier) and as of yesterday there’s a replacement… er… substitute artist. That font looks atrocious, Mallard Fillmore should always be hand-lettered. I don’t know what’s going on but I sincerely hope Bruce Tinsley is able to return.

 Whenever I saw Chris Matthews he always seemed like an easily-flustered baby man who’d never been in front of a camera before, even though he’d been on TV for like 30 years. Good riddance!

SAN BERNARDINO IN FILM

• Mister America
• The Founder
• Cars (mentioned)
• Inland Empire (possibly, haven’t actually seen it)

• The New York Times endorsement thing was so goddamn funny. There’s like 40 minutes of the editorial board asking the candidates probing questions and then discussing their valid concerns and it’s all leading up to this punchline, where everybody writes down their top two choices and there were a whole lot of Bookers and Klobuchars in the mix. I laughed out loud. And then the kicker, they endorse two people! The only way it could get more Centrist Pundit Brained is if they encouraged people to write in John McCain.
• This is not to say that their The Weekly show is bad. The episode about Eddie Gallagher is worth watching.
• Anyway, once again I’ve added a gallery of pictures I made over the past year for 2019.
• I’ve also updated my gallery of Pictures of Presidents Using Computers.

FILMS I WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2019

I made a goal of watching more movies because I felt a bit guilty watching so few movies the previous year. I started keeping track in a Word document and I figured I’d post it here because, hey, free content. The Criterion Channel has been a fantastic service, sign up if you can if you haven’t already.

01. Iron Man 2
02. Sorry To Bother You
03. FYRE FRAUD
04. I Confess
05. Downsizing
06. A Star is Born (1954)
07. His Girl Friday
08. Vice
09. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
10. Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show
11. Role Models
12. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
13. Batman Returns
14. Eighth Grade
15. Mikey and Nicky
16. Shazam!
17. The Kid
18. Knock Down the House
19. Safety Last!
20. Persona
21. Mulholland Dr.
22. Detective Pikachu
23. Paths of Glory
24. The Red Balloon (short)
25. White Mane (short)
26. A Fistful of Dollars
27. The Thief of Bagdad
28. For A Few Dollars More
29. Gaslight
30. The Founder
31. Watership Down
32. Isle of Dogs
33. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion
34. Where Is the Friend’s House?
35. Marwencol
36. The Man Who Fell To Earth
37. Time Bandits
38. Girlfriends
39. The African Queen
40. Solar Walk (short)
41. For All Mankind
42. Mother (1996)
43. Bottle Rocket
44. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
45. Speed Racer
46. Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling
47. My Best Fiend
48. True Stories
49. Police Story
50. Police Story 2
51. JFK
52. Harlan County USA
53. Invader Zim: Enter The Florpus
54. Stalag 17
55. Escape From New York
56. The Wrong Man (1956)
57. Eyes Wide Shut
58. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
59. Mobius (short)
60. Aelita: Queen of Mars
61. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
62. House
63. Begone Dull Care (short)
64. The Burden (short)
65. Coda (short)
66. A Chairy Tale (short)
67. Weekends (short)
68. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
69. H.O.T.S.
70. The Blob (1956)
71. Woyzeck
72. The Gates of Heaven
73. Fantastic Planet
74. Cobra Verde
75. Nosferatu the Vampyre
76. Kes
77. Le samouraï
78. The Land That Time Forgot (MST3K)
79. Time After Time
80. 12 Angry Men
81. Meet Me in St. Louis
82. F for Fake
83. Tron
84. Diamantino
85. Superman
86. Avengers: Endgame
87. Taxi Driver
88. Terms of Endearment
89. Frozen 2
90. Little Monsters
91. My Night At Maud’s
92. Miracle on 34th Street
93. The Italian Job (1969)
94. The Phantom Carriage

Pardoned war criminal Eddie Gallagher and his wife have an Instagram and a merch store

thanks to George Zimmerman "celebrity child murderer" is now a phrase we have to get used to i guess

— Deck the Bobs ☃️ (@bobservo) February 3, 2014

DISNEY+ THOUGHTS

• It has a nice understated layout that is far superior to Netflix because it doesn’t autoplay a trailer every time you try to navigate a menu.
• Don’t care about the Han and Greedo scene. What’s more egregrious to me is the scene that occurs shortly after where Han has essentially the same conversation with Jabba and steps on his tail in a rather Poochie-like manner.
• The Mandolorian was good. The whole thing about how Mandalorians are based around Boba Fett’s design but the Fetts weren’t actually Mandalorian reminds of how Donkey Kong isn’t actually the Donkey Kong from Donkey Kong, it’s his grandson or whatever. Just needlessly weird lore.
• Most of the complaints I’ve seen are about The Simpsons being presented in the wrong aspect ratio which could’ve been easily prevented had the people in charge remembered the same thing happening five years ago when FXX launched Simpsons World. Nobody learns anything!

Fox press release:

In a special Thanksgiving edition of “Treehouse of Horror,” the Simpsons are forced to face various Thanksgiving nightmares, including the first Thanksgiving, an A.I. mishap and a dangerous space mission complicated by a sentient cranberry sauce in the all-new “Thanksgiving of Horror” episode of THE SIMPSONS airing Sunday, Nov. 24 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (SI-3017) (TV-14 L, V)

Once again, one of my joke Simpsons episodes hath become reality