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deletedJan 4
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Speaking of sitting and suffering - I seem to remember that Gandhi in theatres had an INTERMISSION.

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deletedJan 4
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"Battle Beyond the Stars" is awesome just for the incredible collection of talent that Corman assembled for it.

https://pureblather.com/2017/10/11/battle-beyond-the-stars/

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The 3 1/2 hours of The Seven Samurai goes by so fast. I thought it would be daunting, but it was not in the least.

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FWIW the image quality of the new “Seven Samurai” 4K release is amazing.

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Come on, you can't tease us like that... Which actress are you hypothesizing?

I haven't seen the movie but from trailer and clips I'll guess Nicole Kidman?

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Jan 4Liked by Craig Calcaterra

As a Brit, it's depressing and incredulous seeing the US fall down every pit fall that happened to the UK with regards to gambling. Nothing has been learnt which while entirely believable is still a gut punch to one who struggled with it in the past and found solace in Baseball as a sport where betting wasn't in your face every 30 seconds.

For those who want a more long form here's my tale and a explanation of the UK scene.

https://batflipsandnerds.com/2023/09/28/warning-from-a-small-island-the-effect-of-sports-gambling-in-the-uk/

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Unfortunately the only people who learned anything are those who make the rules and have seen how easy it is to vacuum money out of bettors' wallets.

I'm sorry you had to deal with that, a gambling addiction is insidious.

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Thanks for this, and good on your friend for noticing that you were wading into dangerous waters. I haven’t followed MLB since 2018, for a whole host of Manfred-related reasons, but the sport’s complete surrender to gambling interests pretty much ensures that I will never go back.

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Not a one of those movies interests me. Instead I was watching Mr. Monk's Last Case. I am not ashamed of my rather middlebrow tastes. But it's clear that when Peacock made that movie, they knew there are people who like Oscar quality movies, and people who like OCD detectives from fifteen years ago. (It does what it says on the tin, though it's kind of a mess and some of it is really not well done. But Shalhoub is as good as ever.)

So why is paying hush money a crime? I asked that when Trump paid off Stormy Daniels and I ask that now. No, I don't approve of such behavior since it usually goes with worse things. And have no sympathy for a mother who would accept money to look the other way. But should that make it illegal, especially if no crime was committed?

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deletedJan 4
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Oh, not shrugging at that. Just trying to understand the law. But good point beyond what Craig the shyster said.

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Hush money is legal when it's simply a matter of paying for someone's silence. It's generally illegal if the thing about which one is buying silence is a crime. It helps and furthers the crime by virtue of it making it less likely that the crime will be discovered. Think of it as something slightly different but akin to disposing of evidence. It is not illegal to throw a clothes iron into the East River (well, it may be littering). It IS illegal, however, to throw a knife that was used in a stabbing in the East River.

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Added: the money paid to Stormy Daniels wasn't paying to cover up a crime, just cover up ethically absurd behavior. It would have been morally sketchy but legal to pay for Ms. Clifford's silence. But ... Trump via Cohen were shuffling money between accounts, including campaign accounts. Misuse and non-disclosure of campaign funds is one of the crimes for which Cohen pled, not paying hush money as such.

Zero idea how the Dominican Republic would approach anything involving Franco or a hypothetical payment like Trump's.

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Technically speaking, didn't Trump offer to pay Daniels for sex? Last I checked, that was still illegal. Assuming, of course, that he paid up.

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Jan 4·edited Jan 4

Allegedly yes he paid for sex which, at least in the states in which I am admitted (not including NY) is illegal. But (a) that hasn't been charged (b) almost never is (cf. Epstein discussion above), and (c) is distinct from the hush money question you asked.

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Not from the story (hers) that I read. There was an implication that Trump would help her career in exchange for sex. And her paid her to not talk about the sex. But I don’t think there was an exchange of sex for money or equivalent.

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Trump, aside from never paying what he owes if he can avoid it to anyone, seems like the sort of man who would never ever admit that he had to pay for sex. (For the record, I favor the legalization of sex work, so think there is nothing wrong with what Terry Pratchett called negotiable affection. My issue as ever is with Trump.)

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Shouldn't it be reported as income, too?

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Probably, but ... I made a promise to god that if she allowed me to pass the tax section of the bar exam that I would never practice tax law. She kept her end of the deal, so I feel obligated to do so too.

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I saw this reply to my comment in my email and thought this somehow related to me and my wife seeing Iron Claw.

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The term you are looking for is witness tampering. A witness has no obligation in the US to report a crime but in Napoleonic law they do. I was whatever the opposite of a gunner was but I A starred Comparative Con Law because I was the only person in the class who read French so I didn't have to rely on secondary sources.

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Absolutely love Monk. I have been a huge fan since it's inception. I'm sure the fact my OCD is incredibly mild compared to his plays a role.

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It's always amusing to me how fans are oblivious to how fine the line is between a Ric Flair "woo!" and a Lt. Dangle "woo!" Not unlike the meme of "September" segueing from trumpets to recorders.

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I’ve been binging that new HBO series The Bookie, and it’s incredible. I’m usually laughing too hard to care about how cringy some of the dialogue can get. I did think there was a very powerful moment where (minor spoilers) the father (who is a bookie) tries to bond with his nerdy gamer son while watching football, and the father says he’ll double the son’s $1 if the red team wins. If the other team loses, the son gives his dollar to the dad (plus vig!).

The son pretty much asks what the fun is in that, and the dad says for three hours, you’re in for an experience. And that to me is what makes gambling so fun and dangerous. I love the thrill of betting $1.50 to win $2.75 on the under. I would be too stressed to enjoy it if I bet $150 to win $275!

I’m pro-legal gambling and I’m pro-responsible gambling. It’s getting worse. ESPN and news sites will only tell you about the winners. They won’t tell you that A) the guy who rode a four-leg parlay to winning a 250K bet an obscene amount of money, and B) he probably had the money to bet it and not feel the dent.

TL;DR: Watch The Bookie, but don’t spoil the ending in the comments. I have three eps left.

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Those parlays and other big wins are like the lottery. Someone did win $800M (in Shohei math) the other day. They don’t talk about the millions of people like me who lost $20 (or much more).

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Harking back to yesterday's Jamesapalooza (and probably redundant as it's not really a secret): in a Welcome to Wrexham episode (think it's S1E10), the central figure is a police person who happens to be the daughter of one of the James' musicians. It's just mentioned in passing, and doesn't play any part in the episode, just immediately thought of Craig when I saw that.

(As an aside, some of the episodes, the ones centering on the town and the people and what the club means to it/them, are really really great. Also, the inside stuff on all the side things a football club has to deal with is really eye opening)

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deletedJan 4
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Columbus -- well, Franklin County, Ohio -- has some WILD thematic street names within subdivisions. There's one with streets named Nike, Reebok, Avia, Asics, Pony, etc. There's one that has names like Cabernet, Zinfandel, etc. It's wild.

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deletedJan 4
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At least those are unoffensive. I've seen Chattel, Heritage, Plantation, Legacy, Tradition...

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Oh yikes.

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founding

What’s so wild about that? I love living on America Runs on Dunkin’ Drive!

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Somewhere in Boston a Dunkin' marketing executive is asking how much the city wants to rename Ted Williams Way...

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Austin has a neighborhood of towns in Connecticut. It's quite amusing that Enfield Road is the major road through that area and Hartford is little side street. Or maybe that's just me.

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That reminds me of the time the local grocery store decided it would be "fun" to name all the aisles after local streets. But apparently by pulling names out of a hat or something because there was no order to them whatsoever making it completely useless even for everyone who lived right there.

Also, a fun neighborhood is just south of the University of New Mexico, which has most of the Ivy League, most of the seven sisters, Stanford, and Tulane Sts.

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Our neighborhood grocery did that too. It used the streets in the correct order and direction (the aisles ran east-west and used the east-west streets in north-south order). The problem was these were not real busy cross-streets that everyone knew. Unless you lived on Linwood, you probably would have never noticed it was between Howe and Barner. After a remodel, the aisles were quietly changed to numbers.

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My aunt and uncle had a cabin near the beach, and all the streets were named after clams.

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I knew I remembered a meme about a Seinfield subdivision in South Carolina: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ayjshUsTAiGWzWGb6

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My parents live in a neighborhood where the streets are named after famous actors from the mid-20th century.

Also, if you want some really fun street names, zoom in on a map of Columbia, MD. A lot of them aren't even, like, "street" or "lane" or "way" or "court".

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deletedJan 4
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An extended stay, even.

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In my little town there is a subdivision with street names like Garvey, Koufax, Podres, Sax, Osteen, Newcombe, Karros Pt, Snider lane, Green lane, Tracey lane, butler lane and finally Russell lane.

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deletedJan 4
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Afraid not, the one named after Jim Tracey is really odd to me….oh, forgot. There’s a Pizza and a Hershiser.

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As an English major, I felt some things when I found myself on Conan Doyle Road while driving to pick up a friend in Naperville, IL. His parents had moved to a new subdivision called The Ashbury, which includes streets named after Keats, Boswell, Shaw, Lawrence, Shakespeare, and many other authors that few of the accountants, marketers, and middle-management flunkies living there were familiar with....

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Yeah, the cop who is the partner of one of the Wrexham super fans is the daughter of James drummer David Baynton-Power.

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Jan 4Liked by Craig Calcaterra

Korean names are easy to understand if they are written correctly. The correct syntax in this case is Go Woo-suk, ie Go is his family name. Just like Son Heung-min: family name Son. Sometimes it is written Heung-min Son, or Woo-suk Go but either way there is a hyphenated first name and a separate family name. The problems start, as you identify, when the hyphen is omitted. Then confusion abounds...

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deletedJan 4
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The neighbors across the street from us when we lived in Beckley, West Virginia were the Wang family. They came to America from Korea in the late 70s when the sons, who were my age, were little. They all had normal Korean names but the mom, wanting them to assimilate more, decided they would all get American first names to go with Wang. The sons -- Bill and Chris -- rarely if ever used their American names by the time they were in high school, insisting on their birth names, Won and (I think) Eun (I was friends with Won). The father, however, was very, very proud of his newish American first name and loudly introduced himself to my dad when we moved in.

"Hi, I'm Harry Wang!"

I wish I was making that up. More to the point, Won wished that wasn't true, because EVERYONE would ask him "hey, how's Harry Wang doin'?"

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That really sounds like Harry was leaning hard into a dad joke. Like the Daniel Day-Lewis method acting of dad jokes.

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There's a fun story out there how DDL and PTA just cackled together over the phone once they figured out the character name of Reynolds Woodcock, so you might be on to something.

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On the plus side, it did make his name very easy to remember!

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I'm confused: is the product that Ric Flair is peddling called Coin (or Coin!) or Wooooo (or Wooooo!)? I know I could answer that question by clicking on the links, but how stupid does he think we are?

Oh...

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Birthday thoughts on a cold winter's morning ...

It's a shame that we aren't in Spring Training yet. Otherwise, ATL could get a discount on birthday cakes. New acquisition Reynaldo Lopez (1994) joins closer Raisel Iglesias (1990) and backup outfielder Kevin Pillar (1989) on the celebratory list. I know the odds of 2 people out of 26 having the same birthday are surprisingly high. I wonder what the math says about 3 out of 26.

Kris Bryant is only 32. But that 2016 season sure seems like a long time ago. I was only one among many that thought the Cubs had a chance for a mini-dynasty. But their time near the top was briefer than their time giving out World Series rings to anyone who has ever sung Take Me Out or has ivy in their yard. The Rockies will be paying him $27m per year to provide veteran presence through 2028. My recommendation to Kris: spend some of that at Deviation, a bar within walking distance of Coors field where they do classic cocktails right. My recommendation for Coffee Posters: find a link to the YouTube of Greg Maddux, as a television sound man slash BP pitcher pranking Bryant.

Ted Wood (1967) only had a - ahem - cup of coffee in the majors. But with that name, I'm assuming a long career in porn followed shortly after.

Why did Daryl Boston (1963) never play for the Red Sox?

Herman Franks (1914) managed the Giants and Cubs in the 60s and 70s. The former did well, but not quite as well as a team with Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Perry, Cepeda, and other solid players should have. Then there is the cheating: he played a key role in the sign stealing scandal under Coogan's Bluff that was well written in Joshua Prager's "The Echoing Green."

Another manager of note shares a birthday. Charlie Manuel turns 80 today. Happy birthday to the Philly Phave!

And yet one more manager. It is now ancient history, but Ozzie Vitt was the red arse who caused his Indians team to revolt leading to the "Cleveland Crybabies" stories of the 1940 season. It certainly wasn't the last nail in the coffin of the true in-your-face manager as folks like Durocher and Martin successfully and Rader & Rapp unsuccessfully long postdated Vitt, but it was one of the first notable incidents.

Vitt's other claim to fame was as more of a bystander: he was hit in the head by a Walter Johnson pitch and lay unconscious for several minutes before being help off the field. It is said that after that, Johnson never again threw inside.

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If you can navigate the paywall, here is a great story about how Charlie Manuel is recovering his speech after a stroke through the power of baseball.

https://theathletic.com/5162492/2024/01/02/charlie-manuel-health-philadelphia-phillies/?source=pulsenewsletter&campaign=8641752

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I think I saw yesterday that the Athletic is now available on Apple News, if that helps.

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This is fantastic content. Keep it up (you know, if you want to)!

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Thanks. It is mostly just a way for me to remember some players without forcing it through the lens of the Hall of Fame debates. Plus (TMI warning) a way to spend a bit of time in my smallest room after coffee and before breakfast.

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After his first two years (rookie of the year, MVP) I thought Bryant was on his way to the Hall of Fame. Even after a couple of bad or injured seasons, I thought he’d pick back up and be on track.

Now he’s far, far removed from his last good season and he seems almost certain to me a guy who was pretty good in his 20s and not much after.

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I can't believe you didn't drop the link for me to improve my Billionaire Brain Waves. As a smart geek in school, kids used to tease me that I might zap them with my Brain Waves. Apparently they were not of the Billionaire flavor as I continue to labor daily at my boring job.

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Now a smaller non-billionaire hippocampus is one more thing for me to be self-conscious about.

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I actually looked up "small hippocampus" and found that it was related to dementia. The medical websites said that physical and mental exercises help grow your hippocampus. So, that's your new path to wealth and prosperity! ;-)

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bsky-social-denky-qvqpz blooski code up for grabs.

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I have a couple Bluesky codes, too:

bsky-social-pmoto-vd7av

bsky-social-wcpq5-vltwr

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founding

If we’re sharing:

bsky-social-yln2n-m3aeu

bsky-social-xafyc-xzjxh

bsky-social-gpqol-eeyt5

bsky-social-zpq25-ix6a2

bsky-social-hn7oo-y6772

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Here's some more:

bsky-social-5e6zq-ispwk

bsky-social-yyx5c-f2u6n

bsky-social-gvzb4-e6q23

bsky-social-vu7s4-hqqc4

bsky-social-3zjwt-p2q43

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I have long suspected that VS was at least partially a place of ALLEGED trafficking. Especially of Eastern European models.

Also gambling companies can go to hell.

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May December is brilliant but probably not for all. Todd Haynes is at or near the top of best American directors of his generation - Safe, Poison, Carol, Superstar, Far from Heaven, etc - and May December is on that level. What he's accomplished working with Julianne Moore across films is amazing. If it's in your area, see Godzilla Minus One. I've grown a little tired of the recent wave of monster updates but went to this because I had heard only great things. I'm glad I went. I was completely surprised that it was a period film and essentially a retelling of the Godzilla story against the end of WWII back drop. Not a Hollywood film, it's a Japanese production made for about $15 million but the FX are great. It's been so popular I've read they plan to release a B/W version.

Also, one film that might give Maestro a run for its smoking money is Good Evening and Good Luck. I think Murrow had cigarettes in both hands.

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Godzilla Minus One was so, so good.

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I just saw the original - not nearly as big a fan as Old Gator, but who is? - in part so I can appreciate Minus One when I see it.

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