|
|
|
December 28, 2006
So Tower Records finally closed its doors a couple days before Christmas. I was there in early December and it was a sad sight to behold. They had brought out a bunch of old overstock, and there were huge gaps in all the racks. It was kind of like the episode where Kirk winds up in an empty Enterprise and tries to figure out what happened.
Oh, and there is a teaser trailer available for Live Free Or Die Hard, the upcoming fourth installment in the vaunted action series, to be released for the July 4th holiday. The last time I checked, composer Michael Kamen was dead and director John McTiernan was about to be sentenced by a federal judge, so I'm not exactly sure how this one is going to qualify as a Die Hard movie from behind the camera. Moreover, I don't believe that the pretty boy who directed the atrocious Underworld, who is married to Kate Beckinsale, can possibly do this series justice. Add to that the woeful casting of the "Mac" guy from the obnoxious Mac/PC commericals, and a plot about internet terrorists, and Bruce Willis' ridiculous, continued support for the Iraq war, and I doubt that I will even show up to see it. December 15, 2006 December 11, 2006  It's that time of year again! August is the highlight of the 2007 RNC calendar, an item that a promotional email from the GOP promises is "going fast." December 06, 2006  I went to a big protest today at Foley Square in Manhattan, and I was expecting to a find a mixed crowd of people upset about the recent killing in Queens of 23-year-old Sean Bell, who was not armed when plainclothes cops unleashed a 50-shot barrage of bullets at his car in the early morning hours of November 25th. Bell was killed, on the day of his wedding no less, and two of his friends were injured. Accounts of the incident vary wildly, with cops saying that Bell's car "rammed" the (unmarked) police vehicle and/or threatened to strike an officer. Survivors say officers didn't identify themselves or issue any warning before they opened fire. Also, in a detail straight out of Cop Land, there was a bunch of predictable nonsense in the Post about a mystery "fourth man" who purportedly had a weapon. By any rubric, though, it seems like there were some typical trigger-happy police hijinks, which in New York always seem to result in the deaths of unarmed black men. To me, this is something that should be of great concern to the general public. But the general public was not on view at today's protest. We had a bunch of conspiracy theorists, International ANSWER-type pipe-dream Communists, people wanting to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, people handing out extreme leftist literature, and others who really left a bad taste in my mouth. Even though I support some of these ideas and the freedom of these people to explore them, I can't help but think that Sean Bell would be much more concerned with prosecuting the policemen who killed him and reforming police procedures than having The Militant and Workers World handed out in his name. Just like Bloomberg, I think any time the cops are shooting 50 bullets at someone who isn't shooting back, it's "excessive." It's not a cause that Milosevic-loving International ANSWER needs to stick its discredited nose in. |
