:rofl_200::rofl_200::rofl_200:It looks awesomely horrible. Just as action movies are intended. I'll be catching it in the theaters for sure.
What a combo-Ahu-nuld & Johnny Knoxville! Great laughs, plenty of heavies to hiss-at & boo, prob'ly some eye-candy...and chases, crashes, and unusual ways for people to be 'terminated,' all in 120 minutes of mindless violent entertainment. No cures for toxic warming, no adorable pets who cross continents to find their masters, no chick-flick sentimentality, just plenty of testosterone-appealing action, and guns.
Apart from that opener this week, (?) I saw a movie late at night that made me uncomfortable. It was a Adrien Brody movie where he plays a substitute teacher, I think in Queens, not-sure about the borough, but it isn't Scarsdale! It's Detachment, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683526/
and having served in the trenches as a substitute teacher as-well-as a full-time public high school science educator in FL, before getting-smart and moving onto college education, after retiring from fire-rescue, this was a movie that had lots of true depictions of what can happen on a daily basis in the school system. The back story about the adolescent hooker he saves from the Mean Streets is too-formulaic, and there is none of the Jim Belushi-riding-a-metric-cruiser-down-the-staircase antics from his high school teacher movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093780/ , or the Tom Berenger as-a-teacher violence set in Miami's public high schools http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117774/ but in the end, it has a lot of credence for me, from having 'been-there, done-that.' (or-not, as I wouldn't use my VMax in the hallways) Anyway, there were many instances where what occurs makes you want to lash-out, and the bad kids would want nothing-better than to see a teacher get fired, sued, and maybe go to jail because they defended themselves against the type of crap shown in the movie. Teaching is no picnic, it takes a special person to do what they can do, and to take the abuse that comes their way from both sides.
And now, "hand-me the soapbox." Seeing that a certain faction of the legislature is all-for gutting the middle-class of jobs with benefits, and seeing as-how teaching is one of the last strongholds of organized labor, when did working as an education professional put a target on the back of those who work there, to deny them security in employment, a pension, and safety in the workplace? If the local tea-partiers don't demand an end to contracturally-obligated wages and benefits, maybe a crazed gunman will put you out of your misery. Ask the teachers in WI and MI about their lives right-now. That's-all. :damn angry:
Zack, it's a movie thread, it's in the Burn-Out Pit. "Anything-goes..." But, I can understand your contention. If the mod wants to cut & past this away into its own topic, have-at-it.
Ouchez, are you criticizing an ambitious individual who makes life-choices anyone can make, given similar college-based education? First, I am not a 'double-dipper' in the state pension system! And, just so you know, I am management, I sign pay requisitions for over 100 people who report to me and run a program which trains first-responders whose everyday job, once they are hired, puts them in harm's way constantly. Not like a Ranger in Fallujah, but every day you get to go home is a good day.
I liked Eraser too.......................Tom.
Yeah, that rail-gun was a very cool weapon!
Let's see, graduate from college at 22, start as an educator, retire after 30 years at 52/53, SS retirement age is 66 for many of the Boomers, 13/14 more years to go...how-many of those retirees are going to go to work again? Most of them, I would say, because they are wanting to prepare better for retirement at 66. So, they choose another line of work, or do something like tutoring (set your own hours, take-off when you want, be your own boss). Not many people stop work altogether until they begin to collect Soc. Sec. I will work full-time to at least then, & probably several years more, as I am motivated.
Pensions are the cause of all our problems? I argue that it's the financial markets, and their toxic lending practices among other issues like dissolving companies and costing American workers jobs while sending our jobs overseas where people make $1/hr. or less. When the companies sell sneakers which cost them less than $10 to manufacture, pay royalties to some overpaid athlete, and to distribute, and we buy them at those ridiculous prices, often $150+, who is being taken-advantage of? The worker who lost his/her job in the American shoe co., the American consumer who is duped into buying them, or the Asian worker in an unsafe manufacturing environment working for subsistence wages? New England used to have shoe manufacturing as a regional manufactured product distributed throughout the country, try and find one now.
As for athletes, how-many are signing contracts in the tens of millions of $$$, and then the team owners tell the community, "build us a new stadium w/your taxpayer $$$ or we will pack-up and leave?" Didn't Alex. Rodriguez sign a contract for over a quarter of a billion dollars? Ask the people in Baltimore how they feel about the Colts owner Robert Irsay going to Indianapolis! Or the NYC baseball fans in Brooklyn about the "LA Dodgers?" Or Houston Oilers fans about the "Tennessee Titans?" Locally in Miami, Stephen Ross who owns the NFL Dolphins, is proposing that the local governments give him most of the $400,000,000 he is proposing to spend to improve and renovate their stadium, which along w/the team, is owned by Ross. The stadium was originally-built by Joe Robbie, one of the original investors in the Dolphins when they were an expansion team which played in the Miami Orange Bowl, a pre-WW II sports venue. The Orange Bowl was replaced by what was then-called, appropriately, "Joe Robbie Stadium" in the early 1980's, paid-for and built by Joe Robbie himself w/NO government $$! The cost was a bit-over $80,000,000. He financed it by selling long-term lease rights to luxurious 'skyboxes,' an ingenious business model he developed and implemented, which changed the way professional sports teams are able to obtain money. Before Robbie, there were only a few luxury boxes per stadium, Robbie changed that to ring upper levels of the stadium w/rows of them, and then to demand long-term leases, which was made-possible by corporate laws which made such financial agreements possible by generous tax code write-offs. Hey, my stadium box is a "business expense!" Enjoy the local sports team instead of paying the $$ in taxes!
American Big Business is rife w/examples of the community getting screwed by the owners because, "hey, it's 'just business!'" From giving loans to people who never should have qualified for the dwelling they bought, to 'churning' brokerage accounts, to IPO's for ethereal stocks based on some dubious service on the internet instead of a 'bricks & mortar' industry processing raw materials into saleable products, to the brokerage firms taking huge commissions to sell the stocks or bonds to preferred customers first, screw the smaller investor, who has no-access to the actual IPO, and then dumping the stock ASAP after the mandatory waiting period because they know it's all a high-stakes 'shell-game,' these are the villains you should be railing-against! As for your own backyard, how-about GM closing MI plants to move manufacturing to the Sun Belt in places like AL and NC/SC? Sure, their choice, I guess the communities like Flint, Saginaw, Detroit, Wyoming, Orion, Pontiac, Livonia, Willow Run MI, Indianapolis IN and Columbus OH should be happy they had several generations of quality middle-class jobs which allowed them to send their children to college and to own their own homes, and to buy a new car every several years, own > one car/family, and take vacations every year! Obviously it's always the fault of the damned unions which caused the Boards of Directors to minimize investments in new products and technology, fail to embrace total quality management, a product of one of the technological geniuses of the 20th century, W Edwards Deming, (the Japanese did after WW II & look how it worked-out for them) and to not invest in new tooling and manufacturing processes while delivering to the upper management exhorbitant yearly bonuses and salaries!
You want to point a finger, and wave it, direct it at the people who control the money, not the average wage-earners. The fact that you actually blame unions for the ruination of the economy is a perfect example of how-well the Big Business spin-meisters are able to disseminate their misdirection away from the people who make these decisions on a daily basis in the financial markets and multinational industries which continue to do the absolute minimum required in compliance which is a great business model, as-long as you can stay in business.
Henry Ford was reviled by other industrialists in the first decades of the 20th century. Why? He decided to pay manufacturing workers $5/day! Unheard-of wages! And, he founded the Bank of Detroit to make it possible for workers to buy his vehicles and to afford to buy homes.
Alan Fuerstein, owner of Malden Mills (Polartec fabric) in Lawrence MA (third-generation family ownership), after a 1995 factory fire, chose to re-build the factory there, and to pay workers during the time the factory was being reconstructed! He could have taken his insurance $$ and bailed-on the community, but he made an ethical decision which unfortunately cost him control of the business down-the-road. Still, his is another example of enlightened business owners investing in the communities where they are, rather than selling-off the assets and moving production to Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, or China.
Ask the people who worked for Eastern Airlines, Continental or Pan-Am how they feel about peole like Frank Lorenzo, the airline co. owner whose own airline employees refused to fly him! How's that for guts, and voting with your beliefs? My wife was a Pan-Am flight employee. Lorenzo took the Eastern airlines reservation system, System One, and moved it to his regional airline, TX Air, and the compensation for this important component, also-used by other major carriers, because it was the best tool (valued at up-to $1 billion)? One dollar! Then he used bankruptcy laws (since-changed because of him) to cancel collective-bargaining agreements (also since-changed) and to begin paying his employees half of their prior compensation, and stripped benefits! Yeah, a real paragon of management virtues!
So blaming the unions for the economic dowfall of the country and particularly your local governments is like trying to cross the desert and shooting your pack mule carrying your food and water because you didn't properly secure the load, it shifted, and dumped onto the ground. "Someone's gonna pay!" Just make-sure you are holding the appropriate person or culpable-party responsible, and not from listening to the populist conservative spin-doctors who seek to divert blame from those who actually control the $$$.
Are unions blameless? Certainly-not. But, have management members had-to tighten their belts and undergo wages and bonus reductions (and these days, how-many union worker 'bonus' plans are there?) to the extent of the members of the rank-&-file? Not to the same extent, as a % of their salary/total compensation. FYI, disclosure: in the last week, I received notice that my compensation is being decreased 5% annually, and I am in management.
I know, I know, it's "the workers," not the management's practices and money management.:confused2:
I'm flatterd you quoted me, but you just could have said, "huh?"
"I'll be back.":rofl_200:
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