Love the use of Zoetropes for the video. Well done.


Lyrics..

Check the locks and leave the keys
Mouldy bath masked with Febreeze
Something's dead behind the refrigerator
Some poor fuck will deal with it later

I’ve spent the last ten weeks
Squeezing out the sponge of friendships, plugging leaks
I've talked until there's no more to say
I’m going away
I'm leaving LA
I'm leaving LA

And the tourists say
"Please give me the directions to the Hollywood sign
I always dreamt of coming here to see the Hollywood sign"
But on their way back down we'll ask
"Did you have a good time?"
They'll say "it's just some fuckin' letters on a hill"

I wander through the Bronson Caves
One more OK coffee at the Oaks Gourmet
I'll watch the players at the UCB
Trying to improvise their way out of ennui

Walking trails in the creeping dark
Up to the observatory in Griffith Park
There’s too much light for stars anyway
I’m getting out of this place
I'm leaving LA
I’m leaving LA

And the studio executives who never made a thing
Blaming other for their failures, taking credit for their wins
Wiping the blood of dumb artists from their chins
Singing, "kid you oughtn't take it personally"

On Hollywood and Vine a dime-store Spider-Man
Shouting at a stoned Emma Stone, dressed à la La La Land
And in the distance, in both its glorious dimensions
The sign projects its shadow on the hill

Rushing by machine-gunned cops at LAX
Malfunctioning departure board says we're boarding next
Belt off, shoes off, jacket off, hat
Don't need the attitude, but I quite enjoy the subsequent pat-down
And I’m sat down
As the A380 engine roars
Pushed backwards as this tube of monkeys rumbles forwards

I'm looking forward to another twenty hours on a plane
Nothing but shit films and my brain
I've been going slowly insane
I've seen your sport and I don't wanna play
I'm getting out of this place
I'm getting out of this place
I'm leaving LA

And the actors at Gratitude drinking undrinkable juice
And the agents taking ten percent in their sneakers and suits
And the writers in their Teslas trying to punch up Act One
Driving home on the 101 in the relentless fucking sun
And the needy and the greedy and the hopeless and horny
And the deals done on treadmills at ten to six in the morning
And the Captain's on the PA saying "look for the sign!"
But I find it's just some fuckin' letters on a hill
Just some really ugly letters
On a pretty ugly hill

I'm leaving LA
I'm leaving 'ell

That was basically my childhood. Everyone in the neighborhood knew each other. I would go out and play with friends all day, even at night. We used to ride our bikes miles to go to the pool or the store.

I rarely see kids in my neighborhood riding bikes, and if they are, they're only allowed to ride up and down the street right in front of the house.

I feel sorry for kids today having parents that constantly watch them. They're growing up conditioned to always being watched with no freedom.

Just a anecdotal based response: Left my 3 year old, who was asleep buckled in his seat (which he cannot undo), in the car on an overcast day, 68 degrees out, doors locked. I left a second cell phone on monitor, so I could hear him if he woke up. Went in to a strip mall store 50 yards away from the car.
I hear him wake up, so I come out to check on him, and there's some man, apparently having banged on the window to wake him up, looking at me like I was trying to kill him. Apparently took my license plat and called child services, who eventually called me, my wife, my parents, and did a full investigation. I had almost the same experience, but I'm white and privileged so did not get arrested or have my children removed. I'm confident it could have been a lot worse if I was near the poverty line. I also received a similar lecture:
"We recognize that temperature and weather were ok, but do you recognize how unsafe it was to leave him unsupervised?"
"No, I don't. What could have happened? He was secure and unable to come out of the chair, the doors were locked, and he was monitored"
"Well some one could have smashed the window and taken him"
"Really? A stranger abduction, from a locked car, in broad daylight?"
"Well, what about if the police were called, and you were arrested in front of him. Wouldn't that be traumatic?"

And there they are right. And there you have it - the real danger is not any ACTUAL danger, it's our own fear. FDR had it right.

Your video, The Last Video Store | The World's Oldest Video Store, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Not quite as old as Flicks, but Video Universe in Minnesota has been around for 34 years, and still rents out VHS. Delightfully grungy and carries a huge array of titles. Certainly the oldest / longest-running video store I've personally visited, or was aware of prior to watching this video.

It really looks extremely spot-on, other than the movies apparently all being good ones. Real 90's video stores seemed to be about 80% dreck.

I loved that South Park chose to use a song off their debut (best) album, as i thought Van Halen music declined quickly after their first couple records.

On a side note, It was also my first record purchase along with Boston's second album and The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1. Man i had good music taste at thirteen years old I still remember being in the store picking out those albums. A pretty exciting day as i recall. Good memories

This commercial makes me sad.

I remember being too old for the target demographic.

Later, I was sad to realize the owners of this store never understood this "intertubes" fad, and pissed away their chance to become the Amazon of toys. Rather than... Amazon becoming the Amazon of toys.

No sir.
I even mentioned one group in America that never adopted petroleum...Amish...and I would counter your assertion with the fact that most people on earth don't live using oil, they're too poor, not too fortunate. 20-30 years ago, most Chinese had never been in a car or a commercial store bigger than a local vegetable stand.

Both customers and non customers are the victims.
Using (or selling) a product that clearly pollutes the air, land, and sea is immoral.

Yes, it's like our business is predicated on rebuilding wrecked cars overnight which we do by using massive amounts of meth. Sure, our products are death traps, sure, we lied about both our business practices and the safety of our product, sure, our teeth and brains are mush....but our business has been successful and allowed us to have 10 kids (8 on welfare, two adopted out), and if we quit using meth they'll starve and fight over scraps. That's proof meth is good and moral and you're mistaken to think otherwise. Duh.

Yes, we overpopulated, outpacing the planet's ability to support us by far...but instead of coming to terms with that and changing, many think we should just wring the juice out of the planet harder and have more kids. I think those people are narcissistic morons, we don't need more little yous. Sadly, we are well beyond the tipping point, even if no more people are ever born, those alive are enough to finish the biosphere's destruction. Guaranteed if they think like you seem to.

Um, really? Complete collapse of the food web isn't catastrophic?
Wars over hundreds of millions or billions of refugees aren't catastrophic? (odd because the same people who think that are incensed over thousands of Syrians, Africans, and or South and Central American refugees migrating)
Massive food shortage isn't catastrophic?
Loss of most farm land and hundreds of major cities to the sea isn't catastrophic?
Loss of corals, where >25% of ocean species live, and other miniscule organisms that are the base of the ocean food web isn't catastrophic?
Loss of well over 1/2 the producers of O2, and organisms that capture carbon, isn't catastrophic?
Eventual clouds of hydrogen sulfide from the ocean covering the land, poisoning 99%+ of all life isn't catastrophic?
Runaway greenhouse cycles making the planet uninhabitable for thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years isn't catastrophic?
Loss of access to water for billions of people isn't catastrophic?
I think you aren't paying attention to the outcomes here, and may be thinking only of the scenarios estimated for 2030-2050 which themselves are pretty scary, not the unavoidable planetary disaster that comes after the feedback loops are all fully in play. Try looking more long term....and note that every estimate of how fast the cycles collapse/reverse has been vastly under estimated....as two out of hundreds of examples, Greenland is melting faster than it was estimated to melt in 2075....far worse, frozen methane too.

You can reject the science, that doesn't make it wrong. It only makes you the ass who knowingly gambles with the planet's ability to support humans or other higher life forms based on nothing more than denial.

Edit: We are at approximately 1C rise from pre industrial records today, expected to be 1.5C in as little as 11 years. Even the IPCC (typically extremely conservative in their estimates) states that a 2C rise will trigger feedbacks that could exceed 12C. Many are already in full effect, like glacial melting, methane hydrate melting, peat burning, diatom collapse, coral collapse, forest fires, etc. It takes an average of 25 years for what we emit today to be absorbed (assuming the historical absorption cycles remain intact, which they aren't). That means we are likely well past the tipping point where natural cycles take over no matter what we do, and what we're doing is increasing emissions.

An easy way to know how to store produce, or any food for that matter, is to see how your local grocery store keeps them. Their desire is to keep the food as tasty as possible for as long as possible. If they don't refrigerate something, it's for a reason.

Within the last year or so, I've noticed more and more that people refer to me as "Boss." Store clerks, waiters, etc. It seems it's happening more and more and it really annoys me.

So now when someone refers to me as "Boss" I reply, "Oh! Spent some time in the joint I hear.

I'll also say the same thing if I hear someone fart.

Seems they stuck it to themselves.

-----------------------------------------

A viral video making the rounds Monday shows a boy going to extremes to avoid detection by Bend Police.

The video, captured by a home security system, shows a boy running near the driveway of a single-family home on a south Bend cul-de-sac before climbing inside one of the home’s garbage cans and closing the lid. Seconds later, a Bend officer walks by and asks several nearby girls if they saw a boy run by. They say no.

Thirty minutes later, the boy exits the garbage can and runs off, seemingly consequence-free.

But according to Bend Police spokesperson Lt. Juli McConkey, that boy and three others were ultimately contacted at their homes and cited with second-­degree theft for allegedly stealing Pokemon cards from Walmart.

On July 5, Walmart loss prevention staff called the Bend Police Department to report several boys had stolen Pokemon cards from the store in south Bend. The store turned over security footage and still images of the boys that a Bend school resource officer used to identify them.

The boys, between the ages of 13 and 15, were not contacted until Sunday, when Walmart personnel called Bend Police to report the same boys were back in the store and had stolen more Pokemon cards.

Police arrived, but the boys were by then hiding somewhere in the store and playing the card game, McConkey said.

They eventually came out and were spotted by officers. The boys ran, spilling into the surrounding neighborhoods, which is when the home security camera captured one of the boys evading capture.

On Monday, the video had been viewed more than 1 million times.

The Bulletin does not typically identify juvenile criminal suspects or defendants.

— The Bulletin

@newtboy
@BSR

Think of it a bit like this (quote from Wilde)

"...surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not p. 3cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it"
--------------
And allow me to pop this out:
"the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves"
--------------


This is a stark/bleak example. I don't personally agree with it entirely. As I said, I bring cereal for my students and it's there and free and available unless I don't have time to get to the store or unless I myself am out of pocket change to buy extra food.


I don't ENTIRELY disagree though ----> Which is not to say that I agree.

I would say, YES there are structural changes that need to take place, but I also believe that assistance needs to be there to handle some kind of transition period while a problem is realized.

ALL of that being said

Here is a perfect example of a societal ill in our current system that needs to be addressed. It's a disgusting by-product of a structurally unsound student loan system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9NaPDtAmU


Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1017/1017-h/1017-h.htm

Catch everyone who doesn't have a gas can and lighter in their hands. Anyone dumb enough to unambiguously look like an arsonist in a burning building gets a Darwin award posthumously.

Then why ignore the one asking for help to give to one who just looks like they need help? That's not trust, it's judgement. Maybe they're just dirty, not homeless or needy.

Edit: My point is most people don't help homeless or needy people because they think there's a good chance they're going to use the money for something they don't support or that they're not really needy (some panhandlers in SF have reportedly pulled six figure incomes, I knew of one at Stanford that drove to work panhandling in a nice Mercedes.) If you can take the time to buy them a meal of their choosing or what they need in a store, you have control and helped more...on top of treating them like a human being, not a problem or eyesore. Those wanting cash, not help, will refuse.
Yes, I understand it's asking more of people.

Speaking up does not do nothing.

Sometimes reasonable people make mistakes, and when shown the error of their ways, they change.

This is not the case here. Here, a race baiting video is posted by someone with a clear history of racist posts, thoughts, language, and who gives other racists his full support. That must be denounced strongly or others who are like minded or just ignorant might feel emboldened to repeat the racism....as Bob did, repeating the racist comments from YouTube, thinking the sarcasm button shields him from repercussions.

What does nothing is remaining silent or worse, defending the thinly veiled racism. Both of those actions, like ignoring measles or kudzu, allows it to spread and gain traction elsewhere until it's intractable. Nip it in the bud every single time is the only method that helps.


Btw, imo it's a better plan to find that homeless person and buy them a meal, or socks. Take them in a store (or restaurant if they're presentable enough to not bother other patrons), let them buy what they want or need, and pay for it. Yes, you have to interact with them longer and not just drop a bill to feel good about yourself, but the results are much better, and your gift won't be stolen by others or used for drugs. Those just looking for drug money will usually refuse the offer in my experience.