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A Few Photos and Videos from the Tender Bar Shoot in my neighborhood earlier this month with Ben Affleck and George Clooney

Posted: April 24, 2021 by datechguy in culture, entertainment, local, oddities, special events, trade
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There are the people in my neighborhood

One of the interesting things about having part of a movie shot in your neighborhood is the number of people who turn up, both your neighbors who you end up talking to and people from around the area. While I went outside a couple of times my wife spent most of the day outside getting up very early and taking photos and videos with the camera I usually use for interviews (which have been few and far between due to work and COVID although I had a pair of Catholic ones this week, more on that tomorrow). She pretty much shot a bunch of one minute clips and a fair amount of photos till she came home tired around 2 and crashed. The biggest take away I got from them was that despite the better pay a lot of acting, at least in movies which aren’t on the same deadline as a weekly TV show, is that like any other job there is a fair amount of tedious repetition.

Because she took so many shots I’m only uploading a few plus three videos. Be aware that the date on the Camera was set wrong. While the shoot had been scheduled for the 7th it was actually done on the 8th.

There are plenty more but I think this gives the gist of what is going on with the police controlling the crowd and traffic and the guys in charge letting people know when to be quiet etc.

I figured the Diner would have done pretty well with these folks but alas for Ed because there were three different days when the shooting might have taken place his regulars stayed away those days and he only got a quick burst of business when they called lunch the day of the shooting which didn’t make up for it.

Anyways here are the three videos here is one with a shot of their car pulling out

My wife shot a lot of those, didn’t upload the others since they were pretty much the same. DaWife says they did it about five times. Each time they pull out, when Clooney calls cut Affleck backs up and they get ready to do it again.

Here is another shot of Clooney joking with the kid and Affleck before another shot. This would be just visible from my front yard.

And finally here is a 3rd shot of him directing the kid before another shot and then the shot itself. The antique cars were parked in the neighborhood for about a week before the shoot but then again I’m old enough that to me they don’t seem like antiques they’re just the cars I remember from the 70’s. In fact my 1st two cars were a 67 Barracuda and a 75 Buick LeSabre both convertables.

My chief interest in all of these is how the work is actually done as I’m not experienced in it. Granted it’s not work in the sense that my dad worked or that I or my sons or my wife do but it’s work and it takes them away from their homes for long periods of time. Granted it would have been cool to get Clooney to sign the season 1 of ER that I bought my wife 20+ years ago and my son had hoped to get a Batman comic signed by both as they each (Clooney meh, Affleck actually very good) played the role but there was none of that.

And frankly in an age of cancel culture where people are looking to bring down folks for saying or doing the wrong thing the last thing you really want to do is mix with a bunch of strangers with cameras any one of whom might hold a grudge and be looking to get their 15 min of fame by giving you grief. That realization precludes Jimmy Stewart’s old advice to Raquel Welch about fans and autographs these days and must be a pain in the neck, particularly if someone happens to be affable by nature who previously enjoyed meeting the fans.

At least the pay is good.

As I said there are a lot more pictures and a lot more video but they seem too repetitive to upload to youtube and given how close to the vest things have been around here I can’t justify the extra bandwidth charges to put them all up. Feel free to hit DaTipJar to offset those costs.

Race Race and more Race to the Bottom Under the Fedora

Posted: April 23, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Given that LeBron James (surely speaking for the NBA & MLB) objected to a police officer using deadly force to stop a 15 year old black girl from stabbing anther young black girl I’m sure he can take comfort that no such police interference took place in Cincinnati when another 15 year old black girl was able to stab another young black girl to death without police intervention.

Perhaps he can fund her defense on the grounds that it is the it’s the Inalienable right of a person of color to kill another without society interfering?

I’m a bit of an old fashioned guy. I was always under the impression that both the principles of Western Civilization, the US Constutution and scripture demanded that the persons and property of black americans in their neighborhoods deserved the same protection from violence and crime as any other because to coin a phrase “black lives matter”

The Democrat party did not agree with this principle during the days of slavery and Jim Crow and apparently do not believe it in now. Their Klan and slaveholding ancestors would nod in approval.

It’s stories like this which invariably take place in cities that have been ruled by Democrats for decades (the last GOP mayor of Cincinnati left office in 1971 a year after Brooks Robinson practically single handedly denied the Reds a World Series) that make be wonder if stealing elections has been going on right along in these cities as it seems incredible to me that the black community whose people, business and neighborhoods are the primary target of such crime continue to vote for the people who bring this result.

I’m wondering if states even red state decided to let it go as long as it was confined to the specific cities by tact agreement. If so election 2020 proved that was a large mistake.

Of course that last bit is a bit of speculation on my part. It is entirely possible that the black community having been indoctrinated by critical race theory within its community for decades is in fact of the opinion that they would rather suffer murder mayhem within their community rather than have police of any color enforce laws within them.

Ironically that was the same argument that black kings in Africa used to object when the British Navy by the order of the British government forcibly stopped the international African slave trade.

Some things never change.

Finally this was at Althouse (via Glenn) and I think it really makes the point that I was making in section 3 even better than I did:

But seriously here: Except for a weird one-day thing, Minneapolis has had nothing but Democratic mayors dating back to the early sixties. The City Council (per Wiki), which governs the PD, has 12 Democrats and one Green (and that’s it). The Chief (nominated by the mayor, approved by the City Council) is a Black man who has held the post since 2017, and whom you’d have to guess is not a Republican (not because he’s Black, but because he got the job). And I’d guess you’d have to go way back in time to find a Chief who wasn’t Democrat-leaning.So who hires these cops? Who trains them? Who disciplines them? Who provides their rules of engagement? It’s Democrats all the way down.

Put simply all these horrible things and all this so called “racism” is all taking place under the auspicious of the Democrat party, by people appointed by Democrats to be unleased on the Democrat voters that elected them. I can’t help but think of the line from St. Leonard of Port Maurice famous sermon: “Thy Damnation comes from Thee!”

I submit and suggest that this state of exploitation will continue as a long as the black community continues to tolerate it.

MLB Playing Statistical Games on Streaming Viewership or Nobody pulls the wool over the eyes of a Sicilian!

Posted: April 22, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Vinny Gambini: The D.A.’s got to build a case. Building a case is like building a house. Each piece of evidence is just another building block. He wants to make a brick bunker of a building. He wants to use serious, solid-looking bricks, like, like these, right?

Bill: Right.

Vinny Gambini: Let me show you something. [ holds up a playing card] He’s going to show you the bricks. He’ll show you they got straight sides. He’ll show you how they got the right shape. He’ll show them to you in a very special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have. But there’s one thing he’s not gonna show you. [turns the card, so that its edge is toward Billy] When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they’re as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, ’cause you’re innocent. Nobody – I mean nobody – pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

My Cousin Vinny 1992

Before I left to work a couple of days ago I noticed that the left was jumping all over MLB’s bragging about 1.3 Billion minutes of streaming over their first three weeks in order to counter the idea that their political moves are costing viewrs.

The moment I saw them pushing 1.3 billion MINUTES all I could think of was Sir Arnold telling Sir Humphrey how to make a 43% pay raise sound like 6%

1.3 billion minutes sounds like a lot to people who don’t know math because the real question isn’t how many minutes are being streamed, it’s how many people are streaming the games?

If that number was one that sounded good MLB would have led with it. That they did not suggest it’s a problematic number. Since the general public don’t know their math that might not be a problem but alas for MLB longtime baseball fans are used to dealing with stats and numbers because baseball helped teach us. So if we want to find out: How many fans are watching? we can figure that out from what they told us.

Let’s start with those 1,300,000,000 Billion minutes. How many games does that represent? Well a baseball game these days runs about 3 1/2 hours. that’s 210 minutes. add on pregame and postgame and we’re talking say 250 minutes per game. so let’s divide those 1,300,000,000 minutes by 250

1,300,000,000 / 250 = 5,200.000

That sounds like a lot of game but we’re we’re talking during the 1st three weeks of games. As I live in Red Sox Country let’s take the Red Sox as an example. During those first three weeks the Red Sox played 16 games with two games postponed due to rain or threatening conditions so let’s divide that 5,200,000 games viewed by 16

5.200,000 / 16 = 325,000

But let’s remember that the Redsox are only one team. There are 32 teams in MLB and all of those teams are playing. so that means if we want to find out how many people are actually watching these game we have to divide by 16 since 32 teams means 16 games.

325,000 / 16 = 20,312

So from these number we can infer that MLB games are drawing 20,312 fan per game online and remember we based this on the Redsox who had 11% of their games postponed and remember that figure is the number of minutes of MLB TV, that doesn’t count shows about baseball rather than simply games which means that the number of fans per game is likely lower, maybe MUCH lower.

And let’s not forget that MLB.TV isn’t confined to America, so what does that tell us?

It tells us that based on the numbers that they are bragging on with this entire country of over 330,000,000 plus other countries that have access to the MLB to steam they are averaging AT BEST 20,312 fans streaming games so far.

To put that in perspective, one of the worst drawing TV shows on TV is Batwoman from the CW network and their worst ratings draw of this season was 435,000 viewers. That means that based on their own streaming numbers that they are bragging on MLB an organization that has existed for over 120 years with a storied history and franchise in cities all over the country when offering games on their streaming service is being outdrawn by one of the least popular CW shows by a factor of 20.

Of course that doesn’t really produce the headline they were looking for does it, and perhaps they figured people would fall for it but as a fellow Italian once said nobody I mean NOBODY pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini

Five thoughts Under Other Fedora’s: Surber on Welk, Pirates Cove on Features vs Bugs Gateway Pundit on Audits, Granite Grok on Sunlight and Motus AD on it’s lack

Posted: April 21, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Don Surber: Don’t mess with Lawrence Welk:

Welk was a hard-working, intelligent man who ran a music and real estate empire with a fourth-grade education.

In his obituary, The Sun said, “In 1956, ABC-TV broadcast Mr. Welk from coast to coast, and for the ensuing 16 years the Welk show missed only one week — in the aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

“ABC finally dropped the show in 1971, deciding that Mr. Welk’s audience was too old to attract commercial sponsors looking for a more youthful and affluent market. His sponsors at the time reflected Mr. Welk’s demographics: Geritol and Sominex.

“Mr. Welk responded by syndicating his own show, which ultimately was picked up by more than 250 stations around the country — more, even, than had aired his show on ABC.

“The program did not miss a week of air time until weekly production ended in 1982.”

A guy like Welk is a great Danger to the left because he demonstrate the ability to make it not only without a public education but was able to bypass the networks because he through hard work created something that the people wanted.

Pirates Cove talks about the efforts to make it harder for law abiding citizens to defend themselves in Oregon:

opponents say forcing people to keep guns locked up could waste precious moments if they need to defend themselves against armed intruders.

Jim Mischel, of Sheridan, Oregon, described how his wife woke up when he was away one night in 1981. She heard a noise, went to investigate and saw that a man had broken into their home.

She returned to the bedroom and tried to get to a pistol that was in a locked gun box in the nightstand.

“She was unable to get the box unlocked and the pistol out before he got into the bedroom and threatened her with his gun,” Mischel said. “She has never recovered.”

Criminals will know this. They will know that lots of people will comply (why do Dem voters even have guns in places like Portland? Aren’t they anti-gun? Or just anti-gun for Other People?). Law abiding citizens will have a choice: lock the guns up making them almost worthless for home defense, or be a criminal by making sure they are handy. I wonder how much influence the gun storage industry has on this, and other similar, bills.

People unable to defend themselves from armed Democrat Voters thugs is a feature not a bug to those in Oregon.

At Gateway Pundit a point I’ve often made is repeated:

Senator Gray responded to a similar question from Spicer after Spicer said, “you’ll recount the ballots and you’ll get the same number”:

We have a lot of concerned voters who don’t trust the system, so the whole purpose of this verifying to the voters that this system was accurate.   And of course, it is the legislature’s responsibility to deal with election laws.  So if there are any problems, we need to change some statutes and adjust to make sure what we are doing is appropriate.”

Fann then shared this:

Unfortunately and what is interesting is from the get-go it has been nothing but certifying election integrity.  But the fact that we have been pushed back.  They have sued us.  They are threatening to sue us again.  Maricopa County supervisors have done everything in their power to prevent us from doing this and now I’m beginning to wonder why would they not want to prove that their election system works, that it’s perfect.  I don’t understand why we are getting threatened, sued and threatened, when all we want to do is election integrity here.”

People who know their election is above board and honest and want to convince those in doubt should be happy to have an audit confirm it.

People who have stolen an election do not.

Granite Grok notes how sunlight is the best way to change a pols mind particularly on a local level:

The big news was released at the beginning of the meeting. Chairman Ross McLeod announced the Selectmen had decided it was more appropriate to forego their non-public (secret) meeting and choose their forensic analyst in public view at next Monday’s meeting.

That decision was triggered by a considerable amount of public input and addressed concerns that the process should be transparent to reflect legislative intent.

The massive number of emails that were received by Town Hall represented the enormous displeasure of the public.

If you can’t stop the audit of the ballots the next best thing is to play game with the selection process. Thanks to the public these games are over and the first stone of the wall of silence might now come down.

Finally Motus AD’s post on the small risings in the woke land of expensive education ends with an interesting note:

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this little morality play being acted out in real time is the fact that neither the New York Times (America’s Newpaper of Record) [SIC] nor The Washington Post (Democracy Dies In Darkness) have covered either story. Nor have they covered any other stories concerning the ideological takeover of the schools…or media. When you’re part of the cabal you decide all the news that’s fit to print.

Personally I think the more people know about what is happening in the school systems the more likely people will cheer them remaining closed.

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