Oh, no. On the same day that Cat. 5 Hurricane Mariatargets Puerto Rico after destroying Dominica, on the same day that President Donald Trumpunloads on “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-Un at the United Nations, we get reports of a powerful 7.1 Richter scale earthquake hitting in the vicinity of none other than Mexico City. This comes on the heels of that other more powerful quake that hit Mexico not long ago.
This weekend, IT took the top domestic box office again with a haul of $60 million, but the story really was the debacle for Darren Aronofsky’s effort “mother!“, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. It bombed completely at the box office with a low $7.5 million haul thanks in no small measure to some epic-bad word of mouth.
Audiences were turned off so completely by the storyline — an arthouse-y horror-psychological thriller with heavy religious overtones and lots of violence, apparently — that this movie sunk to a CinemaScore of “F”. You cannot get much lower than that, folks, in measuring audience reaction.
What is odd is this is completely at odds with critics’ reactions. According to Rotten Tomatoes, this movie is at 69 percent! That’s 69 percent of film critics claiming they liked this movie and recommend you go and see it. Yet the audience’s reaction is more like a zero percent!
I could not put a finger on why the audience reaction was so extreme. And quite honestly, I don’t want to head to the cinema to find out, because this sure doesn’t look like my kind of movie anyway.
All of North America is surely fed up with all these hurricanes that have been hitting. Right now Hurricane Jose is way out in the ocean but there is concern it could maybe impact the Northeast USA later this week.
Also, Maria has just formed in the Atlantic as a Cat. 1 and could hit the same places in the Caribbean that got slammed already by Irma, including Puerto Rico. And it could be a Cat. 3 storm by then!
So, folks, it is another depressing week of news here at News from Nowhere. I guess the latest bad news has been this Tube terrorist attack at Parsons Green that is yet again the work of Isis. Two arrests have been made and the threat level has now been lowered from “critical”.
Anyway, it is more for people in the world to think about, in addition to North Korea’s usual antics and all the rest of it.
As for our friends in the “Upset States of America”, they have had another one of their usual weeks with everyone getting offended by everyone. Business as usual.
The big news earlier this week had to do with ESPN hosts injecting themselves into politics again as one of their hosts Jemele Hilltrashed Donald Trump on Twitter, as she Tweeted out “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists“. Trump supporters demanded Hill be fired for these outrageous comments, but instead ESPN gave Hill a slap on the wrist — and allowed her to keep her job.
Then came the even more outrageous news that ESPN veteran Linda Cohnwas suspended for going on the radio in April and saying ESPN overpaid for sports rights and pointing to politics as a reason for the ratings decline. She’s right! But for some reason, speaking the truth gets you suspended by ESPN while hurling slurs at the President gets you off scot-free. It almost seems like a double-standard at work.
But really, all outrageousness aside, the point Travis seems to be making is a valid one: that freedom of speech really is under attack in the USA, and that there is a double-standard. A good example has been what has gone on for months on end at ESPN, with conservative voices being muzzled while liberals get to rant and rave all the time, to the disgust of sports fans tuning in.
More proof the USA is still crazy: the culture wars are still on! Berkeley was, as usual, the scene of the crime yet again this week, except this time a conservative voice actually was allowed to get a word in, for a change.
“Thanks to Antifa, and the supposed anti-Fascist brigade, for exposing what the radical Left truly is; all of America is watching because you guys are so stupid. It’s horrifying, I am grateful, and you can all go to hell, you pathetic, lying, stupid jackasses.”
This speech went ahead amid massive security — $600,000 was spent on protecting Shapiro, apparently — as well as massive Antifa protests outside. These Antifa crazies were accusing Shapiro of being a white supremacist, of being a Trump supporter, of being a fascist, the usual slurs. Anyway, this is more proof of how freedom of speech is under attack in the USA. A speech by a conservative is enough to spark a big panic.
The real problem is it’s “all politics all the time” in America right now. Of course, a week ago we had the Miss America Pageant which was won by Miss North Dakota for the first time in its history — but not before judges put finalists through the ringer in the interview segment, by posing plenty of hot-button questions that encouraged contestants to slam the President.
Isn’t America fed up yet with all this civil unrest? You would think one night would be enough. Also, I understand Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new book out on “what happened” in the election, in which she blames everyone for her defeat.
Finally, the Emmys go tonight and it promises to be yet another all-politics left-fest. Such is life in America. No matter where you turn, there is no way to avoid getting politics shoved down your throat whether you like it or not.
That’s all I feel like saying about all this U.S.A. nonsense for now.
I am at home, following the social media reaction to this Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin title fight for the WBA-WBC-IBF middleweight boxing title.
And unlike that Mayweather-McGregor quasi-WWE circus act we got recently, this is the real deal: a real fight for a real title. Unfortunately, I’m too cheap to spring for the pay-per-view as usual, and too lazy to leave the house, so I’m spending my evening looking at Twitter while watching the UFC on TV. Live results here.
As you know I was at UFC 215. Even though the main event Johnson vs. Borg had to be scrapped and replaced, I resisted the urge to demand a refund from Dana White and went to Edmonton anyway.
Heck, I figured I might as well go, just to see what the new Rogers Place was all about. After being there I have to say: Saskatoon, you need to do something about SaskTel Centre. Rogers Place really does put that venue and most other arenas to shame.
As for the fights: the replacement main event, the title fight between Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko, went the distance with Nunes winning in a split decision. It was actually far more boring than you might think, given the razor-thin outcome.
A lot of people thought this was a controversial result and that Shevchenko somehow got robbed, but the reality is Shevchenko did nothing to earn the title. If she had simply bothered to land some blows, she would have won the fight. Instead, both fighters did nothing for most of the 25 minutes. These two spent the entire fight basically dancing around one another, like it was Dancing with the Stars or something. The fans were so frustrated by what they were seeing in the Octagon that they were booing at the end of every round!
At one point, this so-called sellout crowd (there were a few empty seats in there) even broke out into chants of “Let’s Go Oilers” because this fight had no action to speak of. Only in the fifth and final round, when Nunes started landing some blows, did it get even remotely interesting.
Then, finally, when Bruce Buffer announced Nunes was the winner, the fans booed again — just for the heck of it.
Anyway, despite all the problems with the card, the Edmonton fans were generally enthusiastic about the UFC being in their city. What is remarkable is that this UFC event drew as many people as it did on the same night that the Edmonton Eskimos were playing across town in front of a big crowd, against the Calgary Stampeders.
As an aside: why the heck is it that in order to see some true major league sport I always have to drive for miles on end — whether it’s been for UFC or auto racing, or Major League Baseball (Minnesota Twins, Colorado Rockies)(!). I’m sorry, but I’m exhausted from the driving I had to do this weekend, and I really am fed up with constantly hitting the road to see any of the major sports/entertainment options that I’m interested in.
Anyway, it was a good weekend – it got my mind off of the hurricane. I also think this will have to be my last long road trip for a while.
I don’t know about you, but there is only so much storm disaster news I can take. So, instead, here is the box office news: the scary, creepy-clown IT movie opened to a September/October domestic record of $123 million! This is also an R-rated horror movie record!
This haul really is unheard of for this time of year, which usually ranks among the worst times for movie box office because so many people are going back to school/work or spending their weekends attending football games. This weekend gross is particularly remarkable because almost the entire state of Florida as well as much of Puerto Rico were out of commission due to Hurricane Irma evacuations and power blackouts. And yet this movie still made $123 million! What a performance this is.
That tells you something about how much people wanted to be frightened at the movies. I guess what’s happening in the world right now isn’t frightening enough.
Hi, folks. I am spending my Sunday afternoon at home, flipping between the NFL and YouTube live streams of Hurricane Irmamaking landfall in southwest Florida. After all the devastation seen elsewhere, the American networks are treating this storm like it’s the coming of the Apocalypse.
Also, I will provide a report at some point of my trip to Edmonton to see UFC 215 last night, but I think that will have to wait until later.
Welcome to tonight’s News from Nowhere. As has been the case for the last several days in a row, hurricane news dominates yet again as Irma gets ready to sock Florida some time this weekend.
The news is the eye of this storm will likely miss Miami. Unfortunately, it looks like the Florida Keys, Naples and Ft. Myers are going to be in the bullseye now — and even worse yet, it looks like this will be a Cat. 5 storm when it hits the Keys. The whole Keys now look like they will be blown apart by this storm. Bad news.
As for tonight, this storm is now over top of Cuba and is back to being Cat. 5. with 160 mph winds. It sounds like the tourism companies have been spending the last 24 hours scrambling to get their clients out of Cuba’s hurricane zone. I’ve been tuning in these Cuban radio stations right now, trying to decipher what they are saying in Spanish, and it’s basically nonstop hurricane coverage there.
Sadly, it looks like the popular resort of Cayo Coco is going to take a direct hit, so that is very depressing news for Cayo Coco fans. Varadero, though, sounds like it won’t get roughed up quite as badly. We’ll see.
So that is the weather news for tonight. Cheery stuff. Now here is a look at the other, more happier news going on:
How about some good movie box office news, for a change? After a dreadful August that put the exclamation point on a generally awful box office summer for Hollywood studios, it looks like Stephen King’sIT is going to scare up a big opening weekend, with a haul of upwards of $75-to-$100 million, according to estimates.
And there is more good movie news: the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival is now on.
I gotta say it again: I love the supermodels. I guess the big recent news from the modeling world is who’s been named to walk the runway at this fall’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in Shanghai, China. A look at the lucky Angels here.
And in more news about gorgeous and talented women: the Miss America Pageant is this Sunday in Atlantic City.
This UFC 215 event in Edmonton tomorrow night at Rogers Place has taken a major, major hit right at the top of the card. Demetrious Johnson was all set to go for his UFC-record 11th title defence against Ray Borg, but Borg has come down with a viral illness and is ruled unfit to fight, so the fight is off!! Aargh!
Now, instead of Johnson vs. Borg, the main event is Amanda Nunes v. Valentina Shevchenko 2, a fight which was meant to happen a while ago but which also got called off when Nunes pulled out. Well, folks, this particular fight had better go ahead this time, or else every fight fan in Edmonton will be mad.
This adds to the UFC’s litany of woes in hosting fights up here in Canada, and particularly adds to their woes in hosting fights in Alberta, where their UFC 149 event in Calgary is still remembered to this day as being one of their all-time worst in history.
Of course, this UFC Edmonton card is already under a cloud to begin with after former UFC fighter Tim Haguedied this year in, get this, a boxing match in Edmonton. So even though this was boxing and had nothing to do with the UFC, all the news reports said “MMA”, so all of MMA in Alberta is under a microscope now because of this. The inquiry into his death won’t be done until after the UFC leaves town now.
Anyway, we shall see how this event goes tomorrow. Please, no more problems.
I’ve been following Hurricane Irma as it has made its way through the Caribbean. Good grief, folks, just look at all the pictures the Daily Mail posted of the absolute mess that this storm has made. Its 185-mile winds have almost completely flattened Barbuda, and it has flattened St. Martin, and the entire Virgin Islands has been left in bad shape. It hit Richard Branson’s home on Necker Island, with Branson and his staff riding out the hurricane in a storm bunker.
In Puerto Rico, there was less destruction, but the storm still knocked out the power to almost a million people, which explains why I lost the Puerto Rico live feed of their storm coverage on TV. And now the storm is in the process of flattening the Turks and Caicos Islands and the south Bahamas.
Now, Irma is making its way to Florida and the various models are now predicting a direct hit this weekend. Moreover, this is going to impact not just Miami, but the entire state.
I hope folks there in Florida don’t get brave like Richard Branson, and that they realize what an absolute mess this storm has made already. Hopefully, they have gotten the H out of there before all the gas ran out at all the gas stations. This looks like a really bad situation this weekend there.
That is it for now. As for me, I am now going to go back to watching the first NFL game of the season between Kansas City and New England.
This is terrible, folks. Hurricane Irma is now Category 5 and it looks like the island of Barbuda, part of the island nation of Antigua & Barbuda, is about to take a direct hit. I am currently watching the live hurricane coverage from ABS television in Antigua right now on Facebook. It’s a scary situation there. It also sounds as if the island of St. Martin is about to take a direct hit, too, tomorrow.
The worst of it for these places is the people living there cannot simply pack up their belongings, fill up the gas tank and evacuate like they can on the mainland. They’re pretty much stuck there on the island, unless they’ve already flown out.
Looking at the models you have to start worrying about Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and the north coast of Cuba, too, later this week. Heck, that’s where I was two years ago, and now that same place is under a hurricane watch! I know all these major TV news channels like to focus on what Irma might do to the USA, but this really is looking like a big calamity before we even see any damage done to the USA.
I notice this piece at right-leaning Breitbart was gleefully dancing on Hollywood’s grave, talking about how “Hollywood’s problems are permanent and deep“. I’m not so sure about that — a lot of the problems are fixable, in my view. But I do believe Hollywood is out of touch with the masses right now, generally. The political slant is turning lots of people off: at least half the US population, by my estimate. Hollywood needs to quit shoving their liberal politics down people’s throats, and ought to try and concentrate on giving people what they want! Then maybe they might get some more business in the future.
It’s also true what the article says: people really are getting to be more discerning in what they will see, simply because it’s not worth the hassles anymore to go to a cinema and then have it turn into a subpar experience.
Anyway, as I said before, November and December ought to be better. Then again, how many Star Wars and Marvel and DC movies can you stand? Hollywood needs to come up with some fresh ideas, right now.
I guess my real interest is whether the path of this storm impacts any potential winter getaway vacation venues such as Varadero, Cuba. If this hurricane hits Varadero, and it looks like it could, that crosses Cuba off my list for the winter — although, to be honest, I am leaning to Las Vegas anyway for all sorts of reasons, most of them financial.
Oh, good grief, here we go again. There are reports of a 6.3 earthquake out of North Korea and the reason appears to be a nuclear test! Earlier today the North Koreans were bragging that they had a hydrogen bomb they could potentially put on their ICBMs! I’m tuning in the South Korean all-news TV channels and they are freaking out, and I notice US cable news is freaking out as well.
Folks, this is the Labour Day weekend. I want to spend this whole weekend watching football games, in peace and quiet. I don’t need this drama.
Not again!! With everyone in flooded-out south Texas still dealing with the aftermath of Harvey, a new hurricane has formed in recent days in the Atlantic: Irma, which is Cat. 3 and is predicted to get to Cat. 5.
This could be the next dangerous storm for folks to worry about. However, the weather forecasters are cautioning people that it’s too soon to say if this storm will be an actual threat to North America. The storm could end up stay in the ocean, for all we know. Also, they are warning people of phoney maps circulating right now on Facebook that supposedly predict the track of this storm — and claim the track is headed straight to Houston.
Folks, this is total BS at this stage. It is too soon to predict where this storm is headed, we won’t know where it’s headed for another week yet. So all of you need to calm down, already.
Just a reminder to our considerable audience in the Pacific time zone that Sportsnet 650launches on Monday, taking on TSN 1040 and 1410 in the Vancouver market.
Too bad the 650 signal is so terrible, though; you can barely hear it in the Okanagan, where you’re just as likely to hear CKOM Saskatoon on most nights. I guess there is always the Internet.
I notice much of the media commentary on this format change is about “how will TSN radio survive without the rights to the Vancouver Canucks,” who are moving to 650 AM. The tone of this talk is to imply TSN Radio has been decimated, as if hockey is the only sport in Canada!
Personally, I think TSN will be fine. Heck, they’re still broadcasting Lions CFL games, and that’s the most important thing.
As for the NHL, TSN 1040 may not have rights to broadcast the Canucks games, but they still have every right to talk about them. Besides, the Canucks stink these days, so no one cares about them anyway.
This reminds me of my issues trying to watch the National Lacrosse League’s Champions Cup finals game on Twitter back in June, when Twitter inexplicably geoblocked Canadians from watching the game feed. I was boiling mad. So I understand why these fight fans were so upset last Saturday.
Hi, folks. I have been absent from the blog for the last 24 hours or so because I decided I was sick and tired of the real world and the deluge of bad news from places like Texas, and North Korea.
I also decided I was sick and tired of life in Saskatchewan. So last night, I drove to Saskatoon and was out on a date with my hot blonde girlfriend Charlize Theron at the movies.
All right, I confess: I wish she was my girlfriend. Charlize was actually in the movie. Atomic Blonde.
I can definitely recommend it to spy movie fans. Women will like this movie because it’s feminist; guys will like it because Charlize spends 90 percent of the movie absolutely beating up on people and another 10 percent getting naked and having sex with another woman.
I’m sorry, folks, but this is exactly what guys like to see! Sex and violence! Anyway it’s a good way to get your mind off of flooding news.
And if you are interested in Berlin at the end of the Cold War, and the rock music of the time period, that’s another reason to like it. Can you believe 1989 is 28 years ago already? And speaking of the passage of time: Princess Diana died 20 years ago Aug. 31.
It is literally painful to watch the coverage now from all the feeds about the catastrophic flooding in the wake (former) Hurricane Harvey down in south Texas. I am tuning in the live feeds on YouTube and this really is turning into a national emergency there.
Now Houston is getting hit by massive floods due to heavy rains from this storm system that is still on top of Texas, I notice even KHOU TV had to evacuate its own building due to the floods there. Worse yet, a lot of people didn’t evacuate and some deaths are being reported.
And this rain is far from over; the deluge is going to go on even longer. If you are interested in knowing what the forecast for the next few days in that area, here it is.
This is depressing, folks. I’ll keep on following this news as it unfolds.
Well, this is it, the fight that everyone has been waiting for. The hype and the trash-talking is over, the weigh ins have been done and the battle is on as FloydMayweather and Conor McGregor go at it in Las Vegas. That is, assuming neither of these two jokers pull a fast one and get injured right before they walk into the boxing ring – something that has become quite familiar to UFC fans lately.
Even though I claim to be totally uninterested in this fight, the truth is I am lying. I will be at the local casino watching, like everyone else, even though there is no real “title” on the line. (They did, however, make up some silly belt to go to the winner — the “Money Belt.” Fans are promptly ridiculing it as if it was something right out of the WWE.)
What I am finally realizing is this is more than just some big boxing fight, and more than even some quasi-WWE spectacle. This is boxing versus MMA, that’s what this is! It’s the boxing world versus the UFC world, and it’s boxing fans versus UFC fans. So if McGregor somehow wins, it will somehow prove the superiority of that sport. And boxing people are deathly afraid that if Mayweather loses, it will be the “death of boxing”.
In fact, the buildup to this fight has been bizarre. It almost feels like more of a UFC event than a boxing match, to be honest. Dana White is all over the place there, and I notice the usual MMA media, Ariel Helwani and those folks, are there in force covering it.
One thing that surprised a lot of people this week is that the UFC Octagon girls, Arianny and Brittney et. al., are not on the job — as if they were expected to be there.
Of course not, folks, this is a boxing match! It was Corona who got the rights to the ring girls for this, so you’re seeing Corona ring girls all week promoting this thing.
I guess my point is there is little upside to the sport of boxing for holding this fight. All a McGregor victory will do is provide bragging rights and potential business for the UFC. And if Mayweather pounds the heck out of McGregor, as most expect him to do, the critics will simply say “see, I told you so” and declare what a total farce this fight was to begin with. In short, it’s lose-lose for the sport of boxing either way, but the promoters and fighters don’t care because this is all about money.
Anyway, I’ll be watching the fight, but it really doesn’t matter either way who wins. To me, watching this will serve as a good distraction from all the misery going on in the news right now, and a much needed one at that.
Here is a rundown of some of the latest Twitter tweets about Cat. 4 Hurricane Harvey:
NEW: Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as Category 4 storm with max sustained winds of 130 mph as catastrophic flooding is expected. pic.twitter.com/Dq9cc3MZZf
I’ve tuned in CNN tonight hoping they would be up to their usual standard in covering hurricanes, something they have been excellent at doing in the past. Yet tonight, on a night when the biggest hurricane in years is hitting the United States, they cannot get over their obsession with Donald Trump!
Here this panel is, spouting off about Sheriff Joe Arpaio being pardoned and about White House aide Sebastian Gorka departing. Meanwhile, Hurricane Harvey is hitting landfall right now as a category 4 and is threatening to flood the entire south coast of Texas for days, ruining lots of lives.
It’s pretty obvious what the big story is, but it sure seems like this storm is inconveniencing CNN’s attempts at being the 24-hour “all-Trump-bashing all-the-time” channel. At least Fox News seems to be trying to cover this, finally, and I notice MSNBC is finally getting with the program and providing coverage now that big hurricane fan Brian Williams is on the air. You can’t same the same for CNN. They’re still going on and on about Trump.
Folks, I couldn’t give a damn about Donald Trump tonight. We have the entire rest of the year to talk about him. Get back to covering real news, CNN.
Update: Now, Fox News has switched from hurricane news to doing a live interview with Sheriff Joe right now. Aaargh! It’s a sad day when the place to get your news is the Weather Channel.
Another update: Seriously, you are better off tuning in CBSN. They are showing the live feed from channel 6 in Corpus Christi.
The other big story in the world was the destruction of Typhoon Hato, which got the highest-possible severity rating in Hong Kong and ended up killing at least a dozen people, including eight in Macau alone.
I guess the news organizations were too obsessed with Trump to spend a lot of time covering this, but that’s what happened there.
Oh, by the way, there is plenty of bad weather happening. In other weather news, Tropical Storm Harvey could hit the US Gulf coast as a hurricane this weekend.
I really am in no mood to toss up a News from Nowhere column right now, but there is too much craziness going on at the moment. Mainly, this craziness is down there in the “Messed-Up States of America,” aka the USA, led by that maniacal lunatic President Donald Trump.
So he gives this speech on Monday on troop levels in Afghanistan, and then on Tuesday he goes down and gives this half-crazed speech down in Phoenix to his supporters where he once again completely bashed the “Fake News” media, hinted at a pardon for Sheriff Joe, and threatened to tear up NAFTA, among other things.
Once again, this display was enough to outrage the media, with a beside-himself Don Lemon of CNN describing Trump’s speech as a “Total Eclipse of the Facts.”
Meanwhile, all the usual anti-Trump crazies were out on the streets again and there ended up being clashes with police, with the police using pepper spray and the like to disperse these people.
To think that I honestly thought this nonsense in the streets would end when Obama left office. It’s simply more of the same under Trump, and there is no end in sight! What a country, folks. That place is basically off its rocker right now.
And if you want more proof that the USA is off its rocker, look no further than ESPN. In the wake of the mayhem in Charlottesville, ESPN decided their play-by-play guy Robert Lee (who, it should be pointed out, is Asian) should be taken off of a University of Virginia football game assignment and assigned to something else. Why? Because, according to Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage, Lee’s name is too similar to Gen. Robert E. Lee whose statue sparked all the mayhem in Charlottesville to begin with. They were afraid the lefties would be triggered, or that people would notice his name and make jokes or comments about it.
“MSESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Named Robert Lee Off UVa Game To Avoid Offending Idiots,” Travis’s headline stated. Folks in conservative media are having a field day with this latest instance of politically-correct nonsense out of ESPN. This is surely more proof the USA has lost its mind.
Want even more proof yet? The NAACP wants a meeting with the commissioner of the National Football League because quarterback Colin Kaepernick can’t get a gig in the league! They think he is being blackballed because of his bend-on-one-knee politics during the national anthems, and that he is being denied his First Amendment rights!
Uh, ahem, maybe the real reason is because the guy is no good anymore? Anyway, this is more fodder for the USA’s sports radio talk show hosts, who have been wall-to-wall with Kaepernick talk lately.
In other sports news, the Cavs traded Kyrie Irving to the Celtics but got a lot in return, including Isaiah Thomas. So they may have actually helped themselves with this deal. Anyway, this has been yet another story these radio sports talk show hosts have been slobbering over for months. It’s either Kaepernick, or all the drama with the Cavs and with LeBron, and with players like Kyrie Irving wanting out of there. It never fails.
And here is the big news from the UFC, which is trying to hype up this ridiculous Mayweather-McGregor nonsense this week. They had their big press conference today, but this fight/circus has suddenly been upstaged by news that Jon Jonesflunked his in-competition drug test in connection to UFC 214. So now, Jones’ title and his entire future in UFC and MMA are now all up in the air.
So, this was our morning at the paper as we used the old pin-hole-in-aluminum trick to watch the moon take a bite out of the sun during the 2017 Solar Eclipse at around 11:41 a.m.
Other than that, the Eclipse was a bit of a bust where we were — it didn’t get all that dark, and making matters worse, I couldn’t find any of the special glasses you needed to view the Eclipse safely. So I couldn’t stare at the sun like everyone else did.
Also, I tried listening to long-distance AM radio signals that might have bounced off the atmosphere during the Eclipse, but that was also a bust. The conditions just weren’t good enough.
I suppose I needed to be in Carbondale, Illinois or Casper, Wyoming today if I really wanted to experience this event fully. Mainly, I experienced it vicariously by watching all the feeds from the TV networks covering it. TV news people live for this sort of stuff, although I noticed Shepard Smith of Fox News didn’t look too happy to be covering the Eclipse while stuck in a studio.
Anyway, that’s Eclipse 2017 from my vantage point.
(Update:) Below are some of the Tweets that were sent out this morning about the big eclipse.
It just so happened that earlier today I was rummaging around on YouTube looking at old clips of Jerry Lewis from his variety show days in the Sixties, believe it or not. Maybe I subconsciously had Labor Day on the brain, since that holiday isn’t far off.
Anyway, the news has since broken that Lewis has died. Lewis, of Martin and Lewis,Nutty Professor, The Bellboy and MDA telethon fame, was 91.
This comes just a day after news that comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregoryhad died, too. For people in dire need of a good laugh right now, it’s a sad time.
I guess I’m going to be spending the rest of today looking at old MDA Telethon clips. Back to work, tomorrow.
The never-ending revolving door at the White House of Pres. Donald Trump continued again today with news that advisor Steve Bannon has departed — and not on the greatest terms, it seems. He has returned to Breitbart and has pledged to go to war against the people in the White House trying to derail the Trump populist/nationalist agenda. As for the White House itself it is yet again, for the umpteenth time, in chaos.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of Pres. Donald Trump and his whole gong show re: Charlottesville. He is not up to the job of uniting Americans during crisis situations or showing the least bit of moral leadership, and today was yet another example. Anyway, enough of him.
Here is an update on what has been happening at the box office. I guess I should update people on the latest news about Wonder Woman.
News is that Wonder Woman is now on track to win the domestic box office for the summer months, overtaking Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with a haul now estimated at over $400 million. It also is a record haul for a movie with a female director (Patty Jenkins).
In other box office, Annabelle: Creationwon the weekend with a haul of $35 million.
And there is some news from the set of Deadpool 2. The movie starring Ryan Reynolds has been shooting in Vancouver and there was a lot of local excitement about it last week, with lots of TV news coverage about it and so on. Unfortunately, the news is all bad today because a stunt woman has been killed in an on-set motorcycle crash.
My vacation was ruined again when I went on Twitter and saw the news of all the carnage in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a rally full of these disgraceful white supremacists and other Alt-Right idiots turned violent when a maniac plowed a car into a group of people who were opposing what was going on.
Here is some of the Twitter reaction to what went on, below.
Donald Trump mocked Barack Obama for not calling Islamic Terrorism by its name.
Now HE must call White Supremacy Terrorism by its name.
This all happened on the same day the news broke that former NHL coach/executive Bryan Murraydied.
I don’t feel like posting any more tonight. My mood is pretty similar to that of reporter David Akin, who is also trying to be on vacation. His post is a reminder that as bad as the news is today, things could be a lot worse.
On vacation. Checking news. Sad about Bryan Murray. Awful #Charlottesville. Worse Trump response. But no nuclear war yet. So that's good.
I may be out of province at the moment, but even here in the Okanagan I was able to follow the live streaming continuing coverage on CKOM radio of Premier Brad Wall’s announcement that he is retiring, effective when a new leader of the Saskatchewan Party is chosen.
This news comes the same week that the Saskatchewan Party marked the 20th anniversary of its founding, when four Liberal and four PC MLAs left their parties to form the new entity. The party didn’t take power, however, until after Wall became leader.
Honest reaction: this is the end of an era — a great era of life in Saskatchewan. No doubt, Wall will go down as one of the province’s great Premiers, and as one of the most skilled politicians the province has produced, right up there with names such as Diefenbaker, Douglas and the like. Unlike so many other big-name politicians in this province, who’ve seen their careers end in defeat, Wall is getting out while still on top. Good for him.
And now a leadership race is on, but don’t ask me who the next Premier is going to be. This race looks wide open.
