Brilliant! – Page 22

Rat Rods!!!

Posted on June 1, 2024June 1, 2024 by Mike

Via WeirdDave, this may not be the entire reason why Twitter video exists, but it’s for damn sure and certain one of the best.

pic.twitter.com/HZEcoLVn8w

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf)

May 31, 2024

In case you’re unsure of exactly what you’re seeing here, what it is is real science, by and for real people (and, well, rats), not government-owned eggheads in labs coats afflicted by a grossly over-inflated sense of their own importance. I’ve watched this four times already, and I know I ain’t done watching it yet—probably never will be, in all honesty. This guy’s dad is a pure-tee genius. I just can’t stop laughing.

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Moar Verdict fallout

Posted on May 31, 2024May 31, 2024 by Mike

Leave it to the ever-brilliant CatTurd to hit the Vichy GOpers with it like a brickbat to the kisser. It’s another damnable “Read more…” Tweet, so I’ll just skip the embedding and cut straight to the transcription chase.

Catturd ™

@catturd2

Dear Republican Party

@GOP

…

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Ukraine.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Israel.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about GAZA.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Taiwan.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about any other country except the USA, you America-last war pigs.

The fascist Democrat Party has completely destroyed our country from within, we have a wide open border, and they’re shitting on the Constitution while you spineless, coward losers get rich on insider trading, rage tweet, and talk about your “principles.”

They’re literally arresting their political opponents and their lawyers and having kangaroo communists show trials – and you pitiful, worthless losers are doing absolutely nothing.

If you don’t have balls to fight for freedom – RESIGN!!!

At this late date, there’s little if any point to wagging my fingers in anybody’s face concerning the fact that the GOPe’s notorious unwillingness to show fight isn’t due to any lack of balls, but to the fact that they’re actually complicit. No matter; CatTurd’s general sentiment here remains valid, and the point is still worth making. Updates to follow…

Update! Our blog-bud Aesop brings the pain, bruise, and agony (to quote the inimitable American Dream, Dusty Rhodes) perfectly.

The meaning of today’s verdict is actually quite simple:

The Democrat Party hereby announces that they have formally seceded from the United States Of America.

This announcement, therefore, makes them nothing less, at best, than seditious criminals and rebellious traitors, and as such, liable to hanging or shooting on sight, wherever and whenever found, top to bottom, and coast to coast.

The only open question is not any longer whether there will be an open, shooting civil war, but when it will commence being a range with the firing line fully open in both directions.

That’s not an incitement to anyone, nor intended as any such thing; it’s merely a statement of facts.

Whether the nation rises up as one and purges the rot, or doesn’t, there is an immutable Truth smacking us all in the face:

America That Once Was Is

ABSOLUTELY IRRETRIEVABLY OVER.

It didn’t die of natural causes.

The Democratic Party Killed It.

All that remains to be seen, from now going forward, is whether We, the People, have the stones to hold them and their members accountable for the murder, round them up, and begin the mass hangings or shootings on sight such a calculated and treasonous criminal act demands.

If not, this was the moment when we began our irreversible slide into being Amerizuela, with all the trimmings, for years to decades.

Absitively, posolutely, indubitably so. You don’t have to like it, and when it comes right down to the nut-cutting, you really, really shouldn’t. You DO have to admit the inescapable truth of it, and disport yourselves accordingly.

And speaking of the Best Dressed Man in Wrestling, well, what the hey.

Y’know, I watched Dusty wrestle for years until his retirement from the ring, whereupon he joined Mean Gene Okerlund in the WCW broadcast booth as a blow-by-blow announcer, and I swear I think he was actually more entertaining on the mic than he was in the squared circle. Which, y’know, is really saying something.

Updated update! Don Surber, too, knows the score.

Of course they will send him to prison
Of course they convicted him. There is no justice in New York City. The Mafia proved that a century ago when it bought off the judges. The corruption runs deep and putrid in the city that never sleeps. Alvin the Chipmunk Bragg ran for prosecutor on a platform of letting criminals run rampant and bringing Donald Trump down. No one should be surprised by the 34 cries of guilty by a jury of liberal sheep.

New Yorkers love living in swill. They brag about their swill city and its diversity and rightly so.

There are black victims of violent crime. There are white victims of violent crime. There are Asian victims of violent crime. There are Hispanic victims of violent crime. There are Jewish victims of violent crime.

New Yorkers laugh and mock the victims because the city sides with the bad guys. Criminals no longer have to post bail. Businessmen who take out loans and repay them with interest, however, must post millions of dollars in bond to appeal a ridiculous verdict.

The clean and relatively crime-free city that Rudy Giuliani bequeathed to New Yorkers has gone back to rot.

New Yorkers are responsible for this. This is the life they chose. They elect the corrupt and communistic.

Judge Juan Merchan does their bidding because most New Yorkers hate decency and they hate the rule of law. This is a city that honors a career criminal and drug addict — George Floyd — while making the author of the Declaration of Independence a pariah.

All perfectly true and accurate, no argument to make from here, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that though: nowadays, it applies not just to NYC alone, Don. Not by a long yard, it don’t. Surber waxes even more depressingly prophetic from there, before finally collapsing in an exhausted heap on the old reliable standby. To wit:

Judge Merchan deliberately gave Trump a trial riddled with errors that demand an appellate court to overturn him.

That won’t happen because everyone knows John Roberts is a pawn of the deep state and the trio of justices that Trump appointed to the high court fear the mob will go after their kids and their loved ones. That fear is well-founded. Why would a lower appellate court even take the case on?

Judge Merchan will put Trump in prison. He has to or the DNC’s checks to his daughter won’t clear the bank.

The state will proceed to confiscate all of Trump’s property — including Mar-a-Lago which will trigger a decades-long legal battle between Florida and New York, which will end when Floridians foolishly elect a Democrat governor.

The only hope the nation has left is to elect Trump president on November 5.

Dude, SRSLY?!? All the power, all the Überstadt muscle being flexed, the unabashed, in-your-face lawlessness and brazen criminality, extending from the Oval Office all the way down to the most benighted, semi-sentient shitlib NYC juror—yet somehow, some way, you think Trump is going to win the next sure-to-be-rigged “election”? Sorry—agreeable though it is to idly imagine, I still just can’t quite see it happening; as comforting fantasies go, it’s the pure, the blushful Hoppocrene. If that truly IS the only hope we have left, then in practical terms we have no hope at all.

Update to the updated update! It occurs to me that, even now, “What next?” is the wrong question. What Real Americans need to be asking themselves (and each other) is, “Okay, what the hell are we gonna do about this shit?” Think proactive, not reactive, people. Although defense might sometimes forestall defeat, it’s offense that wins the game. That mindset has been axiomatic with every great football coach since Vince Lombardi, every great general since at least George Patton.

One of the primary reasons the Confederacy’s Robert E Lee believed deep in his soul that his breakaway nation was foredoomed to ultimate defeat was the various cold, implacable realities that forced him and his boss President Jeff Davis to adopt the strategic defensive, rather than the offensive they both greatly preferred. The two great men discussed this very issue many times over the course of the war; neither of them was happy about it, but they never managed to find a way around their dilemna.

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Are we not entertained?

Posted on May 26, 2024May 26, 2024 by Mike

Trump beards the Libertarian lion in his den, hilarity ensues. Gotta give the man full props, he’s one feisty, pugnacious sumbitch.

Trump Was Booed Relentlessly at the LNC, Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing for Him
Donald Trump had a “We’re no longer in Kansas” moment on Saturday night. The former president attended the Libertarian National Convention in a bid to convince that small segment of American voters that he was their best bet in November, and let’s just say the crowd wasn’t exactly friendly.

From beginning to end, Trump was booed relentlessly during his speech, though he had a few applause lines, specifically surrounding a prospective pardon of Ross Ulbricht. Overall, though, the scene was chaotic despite the best efforts of Trump supporters like Mike Lee to calm things down.

Here’s a bit of what it sounded like, and in a twist that may surprise some people, I’m going to explain why this was a good thing for Trump.

There are two ways to respond to this if you’re a supporter of Donald Trump. One is to take the approach Monica Crowley did, which is to just outright mislead people about what happened.

One night President Trump has the Bronx cheering for him.

The next night he has the Libertarians going wild for him.

He’s expanding MAGA in unbelievable ways.

Absolute legend.

Okay, I have to say, that’s just pathetic right there. Downright despicable, even. Onwards.

The other approach is to tell the truth because the truth is much cooler than the North Korean-style “Everyone loved him” claims. Let me explain.

Yes, Trump was booed over and over, but so what? I would posit most people prefer a candidate who is willing to go into a hostile environment, speak to those who disagree with him, and keep his composure in the process. During the first clip above, as the crowd showed its disapproval, Trump cracked a smile and kept hitting his points. That’s the best way to handle a situation like that.

Compare that to Joe Biden, who often gets flustered and lashes out in the face of hecklers, telling them “not to jump” or challenging audience members to push-up contests. It’s weird and unappealing, and it’s a product of the president having skin so thin that it’s translucent.

Agreed, right down the line. Judging from Trump having acquitted himself with such aplomb and good humor, as well as Libertarian national committee chair Angela McCardle having done likewise as evidenced below, I’d say the only one who came out of the whole brouhaha looking like a total chump was…guess who.

Both Joe Biden and Trump were invited, but it was Trump who accepted, in a historic move.

“For the first time ever, a former president addressed the Libertarian Party. It was a rowdy crowd but we’re grateful for Pres. Trump’s time, and excited to make history,” said Libertarian national committee chair Angela McArdle after the speech in a statement.

One wonders if a president would do that again, given the mixed and rowdy nature of the reception.

But perhaps the best capper for the event was the reaction from McArdle after the Biden-Harris HQ account — which is the campaign’s official rapid response account — tried to mock Trump and the reception he got. McArdle just leveled them.

And Ms McCardle did that little thing, too.

You didn’t even show up. You have zero credibility. https://t.co/Z6fnhThitH

— Angela McArdle (@angela4LNCChair)

May 26, 2024

So how does one deal effectively with a slippery, slimery sleaze-orrhoid PropPol like Pedaux Jaux, then? Well, you don’t take one single, solitary ounce worth of shit off his senile, basement-dwelling ass, for starters. He opens his yap, you slap it the fuck SHUT—no delay, no fuss, no muss, no mercy, each and every time, without fail. Here endeth the lesson.

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The Bicycle Menace

Posted on May 26, 2024May 26, 2024 by Mike

An oldie but goldie from the late, lamented PJ O’Rourke, via Ed Driscoll.

A Cool and Logical Analysis of the Bicycle Menace
And an Examination of the Actions Necessary to License, Regulate, or Abolish Entirely This Dreadful Peril on our Roads

Our nation is afflicted with a plague of bicycles. Everywhere the public right-of-way is glutted with whirring, unbalanced contraptions of rubber, wire, and cheap steel pipe. Riders of these flimsy appliances pay no heed to stop signs or red lights. They dart from between parked cars, dash along double yellow lines, and whiz through crosswalks right over the toes of law-abiding citizens like me.

In the cities, every lamppost, tree, and street sign is disfigured by a bicycle slathered in chains and locks. And elevators must be shared with the cycling faddist so attached to his “moron’s bath-chair” that he has to take it with him everywhere he goes.

In the country, one cannot drive around a curve or over the crest of a hill without encountering a gaggle of huffing bicyclers spread across the road in suicidal phalanx.

Even the wilderness is not safe from infestation, as there is now such a thing as an off-road bicycle and a horrible sport called “bicycle-cross.”

The ungainly geometry and primitive mechanicals of the bicycle are an offense to the eye. The grimy and perspiring riders of the bicycle are an offense to the nose. And the very existence of the bicycle is an offense to reason and wisdom.

PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS WHICH MAY BE MARSHALED AGAINST BICYCLES

1. Bicycles are childish
Bicycles have their proper place, and that place is under small boys delivering evening papers. Insofar as children are too short to see over the dashboards of cars and too small to keep motorcycles upright at intersections, bicycles are suitable vehicles for them. But what are we to make of an adult in a suit and tie pedaling his way to work? Are we to assume he still delivers newspapers for a living? If not, do we want a doctor, lawyer, or business executive who plays with toys? St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, 13:11, said, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.” He did not say, “When I became a man, I put away childish things and got more elaborate and expensive childish things from France and Japan.”

Considering the image projected, bicycling commuters might as well propel themselves to the office with one knee in a red Radio Flyer wagon.

2. Bicycles are undignified
A certain childishness is, no doubt, excusable. But going about in public with one’s head between one’s knees and one’s rump protruding in the air is nobody’s idea of acceptable behavior.

It is impossible for an adult to sit on a bicycle without looking the fool. There is a type of woman, in particular, who should never assume the bicycling posture. This is the woman of ample proportions. Standing on her own feet she is a figure to admire-classical in her beauty and a symbol, throughout history, of sensuality, maternal virtue, and plenty. Mounted on a bicycle, she is a laughingstock.

In a world where loss of human dignity is such a grave and all-pervading issue, what can we say about people who voluntarily relinquish all of theirs and go around looking at best like Quixote on Rosinante and more often like something in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade? Can such people be trusted? Is a person with so little self-respect likely to have any respect for you?

3. Bicycles are unsafe
Bicycles are top-heavy, have poor brakes, and provide no protection to their riders. Bicycles are also made up of many hard and sharp components which, in collision, can do grave damage to people and the paint finish on automobiles. Bicycles are dangerous things.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong, per se, with dangerous things. Speedboats, racecars, fine shotguns, whiskey, and love are all very dangerous. Bicycles, however, are dangerous without being any fun. You can’t shoot pheasants with a bicycle or water-ski behind it or go 150 miles an hour or even mix it with soda and ice. And the idea of getting romantic on top of a bicycle is alarming. All you can do with one of these ten-speed sink traps is grow tired and sore and fall off it.

Being dangerous without being fun puts bicycles in a category with open-heart surgery, the war in Vietnam, the South Bronx, and divorce. Sensible people do all that they can to avoid such things as these.

4. Bicycles are un-American
We are a nation that worships speed and power. And for good reason. Without power we would still be part of England and everybody would be out of work. And if it weren’t for speed, it would take us all months to fly to L.A., get involved in the movie business, and become rich and famous.

Bicycles are too slow and impuissant for a country like ours. They belong in Czechoslovakia…

5. I don’t like the kind of people who ride bicycles
At least I think I don’t. I don’t actually know anyone who rides a bicycle. But the people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

I apologize if I have the wrong impression. It may be that bicycle riders are all members of the New York Stock Exchange, Methodist bishops, retired Marine Corps drill instructors, and other solid citizens. However, the fact that they cycle around in broad daylight making themselves look like idiots indicates that they’re crazy anyway and should be confined just the same.

The list goes on from there, all perfectly true and accurate to the nth detail, finishing out with perhaps my personal favorite, Number 7 (“Bicycles are good exercise”), although Number 5 is pretty damned good too. Then PJ realizes that the Bicycle Menace is another of those felicitous problems that, eventually, solve themselves.

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A bargain at ANY price

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Mike

You can’t take the skies from me.

Rocket Report: SpaceX focused on Starship reentry; Firefly may be for sale
Firefly may be up for sale. Firefly Aerospace investors are considering a sale that could value the closely held rocket and Moon lander maker at about $1.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. The rocket company’s primary owner, AE Industrial Partners, is working with an adviser on “strategic options” for Firefly. Neither AE nor Firefly commented to Bloomberg about the potential sale. AE invested $75 million into Texas-based Firefly as part of a series B financing round in 2022. The firm made a subsequent investment in its Series C round in November 2023.

Launches and landers … Now more than a decade old and with a history of financial struggles, Firefly has emerged as one of the apparent winners in the small launch race in the United States. The company’s Alpha rocket has now launched four times since its unsuccessful debut in September 2021, and it is due to fly a Venture Class Launch Services 2 mission for NASA in the coming weeks. Firefly also aims to launch its Blue Ghost spacecraft to the moon later this year and is working on an orbital transfer vehicle.

Butbutbutwait—you mean you aren’t talking about…dammit, I thought you meant…you shoulda told…oh, to hell with it.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

(Via Insty)

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Rockin’ da blues

Posted on May 26, 2024May 27, 2024 by Mike

Today was a guitar-lesson day here at stately Hendrix manor, wherein I started young Zachary out on a Jimmy Reed tune—“Honest I Do,” by name —plus a little theory to back it all up. Now I’m down a blues rabbit hole, inducing me to share witchy’all a righteous cop from everyone’s favorite tall but brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning example of a placental mammal.

Yes, yes, it’s Kenny Wayne. Hey, I figger everybody’s already heard the Jimmy Reed stuff by now, right?

Update! For Bear Claw Chris.

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When baseball was by-God BASEBALL

Posted on May 24, 2024May 24, 2024 by Mike

Via WeirdDave.

pic.twitter.com/o2qVlmRsLp

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf)

May 25, 2024

Now, THAT’s how ya fucking DO it! I think it entirely safe to say that that pitcher’s mellow was well and truly harshed. Hey, who says baseball isn’t a contact sport?

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Kelly’s hot streak continues

Posted on May 23, 2024May 23, 2024 by Mike

Megyn Kelly looks better than ever: beautiful, unflappable, and self-assured. She’s doing her own thing her own way as host of her independent SiriusXM show, and damned if she ain’t kicking ass and taking names too. You go, girl! This time out, it’s dissembling shitlib sad-sack Bill Maher—who I freely admit does get something right once in a rare while—with his (turkey) neck on MK’s chopping block.

Megyn Kelly Brutally Fact Checks Bill Maher’s Left Wing Talking Points to His Face
For a while now, I’ve been willing to give left-wing comedian Bill Maher a lot of credit when he criticizes the radical left. He’s challenged left-wing orthodoxy enough that it’s actually newsworthy and important when he does. But at heart, he’s still a leftist who, as he proved in an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show” on SiriusXM on Tuesday, still lets his rabid anti-Trumpism cloud his judgment.

During the show, while talking about the 2024 election and the choice between Biden and Trump, Maher argued that “you have to respect who wins an election or else you don’t have the kind of country we’ve always had before.”

To which Kelly pointed out, “Hillary Clinton, of course, is the original election denier. I’m sure you voted for her in ’16.”

“Well, she’s not an election denier,” Maher insisted.

“She absolutely was the OG election denier,” Kelly retorted.

“First of all, she came out before the sun had risen to concede the election to Trump,” Maher pushed back, as if that matters.

“And then spent the next four years saying he was illegitimate, he was an illegitimate president,” Kelly pointed out.

“Okay, well, first of all, she didn’t say he was an illegitimate,” Maher claimed.

“Yes, she did,”

“Tell me exactly what she said,” Maher challenged.

“She said those exact words repeatedly.”

Megyn Kelly, is, of course correct.

Which Miz Megyn proved without further ado, via running a video montage of Her Herness!!!™ saying/doing exactly what Kelly said she did. Maher being Maher, he continued to waffle, weasel, and worm around weakly for another few seconds, splitting any available semantic hair he thought Megyn might let him get away with while his interlocutor blandly affixed the latest scalp to her battle-belt. Poor, luckless Maher’s ordeal only got worse from there, with Megyn savagely eviscerating him on a new topic, leaving him sweaty, flushed, and plainly wishing he was anywhere else by the end of the festivities. Watch the vid; mere text just doesn’t do it justice.

I like her, I must say; like good bourbon, she only improves with age, and seems to have really come into her own of late. It’s a damned shame about her pointless (and apparently ongoing) kerfuffle with Trump in 2015, but hey, whatchagonnado, I suppose. I could be all wet, and probably am, but it looks to me as if Trump gets a kick out of baiting Kelly now and again, almost like he’s doing it for his own entertainment. Certainly, there’s no shortage of fat, juicy shitlib targets I’d prefer to see him go after, instead of burning ammo taking potshots towards the Right.

Then again, he’s done that all along; what the hey, Trump’s gonna Trump. Too, it’s not as if Kelly hasn’t gotten a few things back-asswards and wrong herself, although to the best of my knowledge she promptly acknowledges and corrects the error once the lightbulb has finally clicked on—which, as a journalist, is no more nor less than her professional obligation, any personal scruples aside. All just part of the process, I reckon. Trump would be punching far below his weight in going after a trifling anklebiter like Bill Maher, granted. But that in no way suggests that Kelly’s skillful smackdown wasn’t worthwhile.

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First legit, confirmed UFO photo released!

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Mike

Oddly, it appears to be in USAF livery.

Just joshin’, that’s one of the first shots of the new B21 in flight. The Chair Farce has dubbed its new play-purty the “Raider,” which demonstrates their recent propensity for missing the boat on naming-convention matters. I mean, seriously: they dropped the ball on calling Space Force “Starfleet” already, and they shoulda dubbed the B21 the “Foo Fighter” if you ask me. Further deets on the aircraft perusable here.

All my wisecrackery aside, I recollect watching the old (!!) B2 Spirit do a cpl-three fly-bys at an air show some years back, and hand to God that thing might as well have been a UFO its own self. Cool as it was for its day, though, this new hoopty is WAAAAY slicker, sleeker, and more spooky-looking than the B2 ever was.

(Via Stephen Green)

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“You married a dude?”

Posted on May 22, 2024May 22, 2024 by Mike

When a psychotic murderer makes more sense than one of the two (2, supposedly) dominant political parties, you know the country’s in one hell of a sorry state.

pic.twitter.com/HyYX503S3L

— Fight With Memes (@fightwithmemes)

May 18, 2024

Via Irish.

Update! Since Barry says he hasn’t seen it, here’s a few more simply incredible scenes from one of the greatest Hollywood movies ever made.

What a fucking movie, eh?

Updated update! A little more background info on NCFOM, for anybody else who may not have seen it yet.

No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-Western crime thriller film written, directed, produced and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, the film is set in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film revisits the themes of fate, conscience, and circumstance that the Coen brothers had explored in the films Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), and Fargo (1996). The film follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a Vietnam War veteran and welder who stumbles upon a large sum of money in the desert; Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman who is sent to recover the money; and Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a sheriff investigating the crime. The film also stars Kelly Macdonald as Moss’s wife, Carla Jean, and Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells, a bounty hunter seeking Moss and the return of the $2 million.

No Country for Old Men premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 19. The film became a commercial success, grossing $171 million worldwide against the budget of $25 million. Critics praised the Coens’ direction and screenplay and Bardem’s performance, and the film won 76 awards from 109 nominations from multiple organizations; it won four awards at the 80th Academy Awards (including Best Picture), three British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), and two Golden Globes. The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the Year, and the National Board of Review selected it as the best of 2007. It is one of only four Western films ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (the others being Cimarron in 1931, Dances with Wolves in 1990, and Unforgiven in 1992).

No Country for Old Men was considered one of the best films of 2007, and many regard it as the Coen brothers’ best film. As of December 2021, various sources had recognized it as one of the best films of the 2000s, and as one of the best films of the 21st century. The Guardian‘s John Patterson wrote: “the Coens’ technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors”, and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that it is “a new career peak for the Coen brothers” and “as entertaining as hell”.

No argument from me, with any of it. So what the heck are you waiting for, anyhow?

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Another one they aren’t making any more of these days

Posted on May 18, 2024May 18, 2024 by Mike

That would be gifted actor, horseman, Marine veteran, Hollywood stuntman, ranch hand, jazz singer, blacksmith, and world-champion poker player Wilford Brimley.

Anthony Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934 – August 1, 2020) was an American actor. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and working odd jobs in the 1950s, Brimley started working as an extra and stuntman in Western films in the late 1960s. He became an established character actor in the 1970s and 1980s in films such as The China Syndrome (1979), The Thing (1982), Tender Mercies (1983), The Natural (1984), and Cocoon (1985). Brimley was known for playing characters at times much older than his age. He was the long-term face of American television advertisements for the Quaker Oats Company. He also promoted diabetes education and appeared in related television commercials for Liberty Medical, a role for which he became an Internet meme.

Brimley joined the Marines in 1953 and served in the Aleutian Islands for three years. He also worked as a bodyguard for businessman Howard Hughes as well as a ranch hand, wrangler, and blacksmith. He then began shoeing horses for film and television. At the behest of his close friend and fellow actor Robert Duvall, he began acting in the 1960s as a riding extra and stunt man in westerns. In 1979, he told the Los Angeles Times that the most he ever earned in a year as an actor was $20,000. He had no formal training as an actor, and his first experience in acting in front of a live audience was in a theater group at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater.

His first credited feature film performance was in The China Syndrome (1979) as Ted Spindler, a friend and coworker of plant shift supervisor Jack Godell (portrayed by Jack Lemmon). That same year, he appeared in the Robert Redford/Jane Fonda feature film “The Electric Horseman” cast as simply “The Farmer” while assisting Redford and Fonda’s characters evade troopers while transporting the horse in a cattle hauler. Later, Brimley made a brief but pivotal appearance in Absence of Malice (1981) as the curmudgeonly, outspoken Assistant Attorney General James A. Wells. In the movie The Thing (1982) he played the role of Blair, a biologist among a group of men at an American research station in Antarctica who encounter a dangerous alien that can perfectly imitate other organisms.

Brimley’s close friend Robert Duvall (who also appeared in The Natural) was instrumental in securing for him the role of Harry in Tender Mercies (1983). Duvall, who had not been getting along with director Bruce Beresford, wanted “somebody down here that’s on my side, somebody that I can relate to.” Beresford felt Brimley was too old for the part but eventually agreed to the casting. Brimley, like Duvall, clashed with the director; during one instance when Beresford tried to advise Brimley on how Harry would behave, Duvall recalled Brimley responding: “Now look, let me tell you something, I’m Harry. Harry’s not over there, Harry’s not over here. Until you fire me or get another actor, I’m Harry, and whatever I do is fine ’cause I’m Harry.”

It was Brimley’s showstopper star-turn as AAG James J Wells (not James A Wells, as Wiki erroneously has it above) in Absence of Malice that sent me down the Wilford Brimley rabbit hole today, after re-watching Brimley’s riveting performance on YewToob. Interesting thing about the apparent James J/James A flub: Brimley’s character may very well have been James A in the script (don’t know, didn’t check), judging from what appears to be his momentary hesitation when giving his name as James J in the AoM final cut:

Note ye well that Mr Brimley, a relatively unknown bit-player-cum-character actor at the time, just walked in, sat down, riffled some papers, opened his mouth, and proceeded to steal the entire film from screen titans Paul Newman and Sally Field, without so much as breaking a sweat. By God, that there is what you call acting, bub. Ahh, but how very typical of Wilford Brimley: Kurt Russell, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon—running scenes with all of these fine actors and many more, he refused to be intimidated or overawed, nonchalantly holding his own with all those marquee names, making it look not just easy, but effortless.

More rich, buttery Brimley goodness from AoM:

One more time:

Over the years I must’ve seen Absence of Malice about, oh, I dunno, forty or fifty times—enough that I’ve long since had every word of Brimley’s dazzling five minutes or so of screentime towards the end down by heart, anyway—and still ain’t no way tired of the flick. If you’ve never seen the movie, I urge you with all my heart not to let another sun go down before you rectify that gap in your cinematic education. They ain’t making movies like Absence of Malice anymore, nor actors like Wilford Brimley, nor sturdy, versatile, by-God American men like him, for that matter.

Anybody else thinking, as I just was, that the AAG Wells character, in fact pretty much all the G-men in the above climactic scenes, represents another long-gone American totem: the competent, reasonable, and trustworthy public servant? Not to mention Sally Fields’ newspaper reporter, who, although she lost her way temporarily and compromised her professional ethics in pursuit of a red-hot scoop, nonetheless proves herself to be basically decent in the end, deeply regretful for betraying her integrity and resolved that she will NOT let it happen again.

As Wells says of the DA ensnared in Michael Gallagher’s clever trap: “Yeah, he’s a nice guy, he just forgot about the rules.” When the dust has settled, the wayward but basically well-meaning are chastened, the corrupt and malifecent made to face serious consequences, and AAG Wells has somebody’s ass in his briefcase, as promised.

Today, though, is there anyone left among us so naive, so unworldly, that he seriously expects such unflagging virtuousness from his “public servants,” even in a fictional movie? Yep, the past is a different country all right.

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At long, long last

Posted on May 17, 2024May 17, 2024 by Mike

Ordinarily I’d hold onto this little gem to run it on a Monday or Wednesday, but it’s so damned good I just can’t control myself any longer. Ladeez ‘n’ gennamuns ’n’ sheeit, coming to you direct from WRSA’s Friday roundup, without further ado, embellishment, or delay, feast your eyes upon…the Meeeeme of the Centurrrrryyyy!!!

Heh. How ya like THEM apples? No need to crowd or jostle, folks, there’s plenty of room for all to have a good, close look at this rarest of specimens, never before displayed in captivity until this most special, once in a lifetime event.

Actually, I’m kinda ashamed I didn’t think of it myself.

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Quote of the day week month year decade century millenium

Posted on May 17, 2024May 17, 2024 by Mike

“The left has the ability to understand reason and the law about as well as my spoon understands the difference between mint chocolate chip and rocky road.

“Presenting them with facts and evidence on gun control is met with remarks about penis size. Talking about case law is like banging your head against a wall. Talking simply won’t work with them.“

Which is EXACTLY why we need to stop even bothering to pretend to try; it wastes your time, and annoys the pig. The one, the only language they understand is violence, of the “swift and blinding” variety. So be it, then. Govern yourselves—or, y’know, not—accordingly.

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Dicks!

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Mike

Hey, if the shoe fits…

Someone pulled up outside the Trump trial in a UHaul and released tons of pink balloons of male genitalia with the faces of DA Alvin Bragg, Judge Merchan, and Jack Smith on them: pic.twitter.com/YGoHL8yvPv

— TheBlaze (@theblaze)

May 16, 2024

‘Nuff said on THAT.

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Constitutional course of instruction

Posted on May 14, 2024 by Mike

Roth Renegade discovers one of Porretto’s favorites, the uncompromising champion of human liberty Lysander Spooner.

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the Constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind any body but themselves.

It cannot be said that the Constitution formed “the people of the United States,” for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of “the people” as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as “we,” nor as “people,” nor as “ourselves.” Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any “posterity.” It supposes itself to have, and speaks of itself as having, perpetual existence, as a single individuality.

Moreover, no body of men, existing at any one time, have the power to create a perpetual corporation. A corporation can become practically perpetual only by the voluntary accession of new members, as the old ones die off. But for this voluntary accession of new members, the corporation necessarily dies with the death of those who originally composed it.

Legally speaking, therefore, there is, in the Constitution, nothing that professes or attempts to bind the “posterity” of those who establish it.

S’truth, strange though it may sound to contemporary ears; no less august a personage than Thomas Jefferson himself implicitly affirmed this thesis years before, with these stirring words:

God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.

The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state.

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

Bold mine, and a hearty amen to that.

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