Random Thoughts: 1950 Census Has Been Released!

Tweets from April, 2022:

• 2022-04-01: 1950 Census has been released! Woot for everyone over 72.
• 2022-04-02: "In 2019, Mike Tyson said on Joe Rogan's podcast that, ever since smoking toad, he's 'never been the same.' " If there's a straight line with more openings for a punchline than this one, I haven't seen it.
• 2022-04-04: The Bubble (2022): Judd Apatow comedy about making a movie in a pandemic quarantine. The bubble's isolation eventually cracks everyone. Pokes fun at actors, directors, producers, social media influencers, (crew escapes unscathed), all with characters immediately forgettable. C-
• 2022-04-04: I just got an email from Trump that I can't figure out. "Friend, This has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. As THE TOP donor, I've texted you 3000% more. Do you want to stay on top?" Then it says, "CONTRIBUTION STATUS: PENDING. DEADLINE: IMMEDIATELY."
  Is he losing it?
• 2022-04-04: Steve Brown has a job with DMN copy-and-pasting developers' press releases into the newspaper. Nice work if you can get it.

After the jump, more random thoughts.

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• 2022-04-05: Apollo 10 1/2 (2022): Richard Linklater's animated look back at his childhood near the Johnson Space Center during the moon landing. No plot; mostly nostalgic references to a kid's life in the 1960s (TV, games, technology, school, food). Baby Boomers should love it. C+
• 2022-04-05: An under-appreciated benefit: "Unions appear to be an important source of political information for their members, potentially helping voters to focus on real policy issues as opposed to, say, the existential threat posed by woke Disney."
• 2022-04-06: The Tourist (TV 2022): After a car accident, a man wakes up in the Australian outback with amnesia. As he pieces his life back together, the more he learns, the less he likes. Just the right mix of mystery and thriller...and burrito. LSD does too much of the storytelling. B+
• 2022-04-07: It's not just Trump. Mitch McConnell is the Republican leader in the United States Senate. And he says putting a pistol to your wife's head and saying "I'm going to blow your f***ing brains out" doesn't disqualify a candidate in the party's eyes.
• 2022-04-08: Peacemaker (TV 2022): Superhero comedy. John Cena from Suicide Squad saves Earth from an alien invasion of body-snatching butterflies. Mostly silly, stupid behavior that always implausibly works out in the end. Best part might be the title sequence's TikTok dance. C+
• 2022-04-09: One of many Trump fundraising emails: "We activated a 1000%-IMPACT for YOU ONLY." Assuming the "for you only" bit is a lie, I suspect the "1000%" is also a lie. At the rate the match is going up, email by email, by 2024 he'll be promising a "million% match."
• 2022-04-11: Saudi investment firm gives billions to Jared Kushner. Quid pro quo? In 2023, expect the incoming Republican Congress to hold hearings...on Hunter Biden.
• 2022-04-11: I received a fundraising pitch from DJT Jr with the subject line, "Get the GOLD." Not used ironically, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's laughing at his donors behind their backs.
• 2022-04-11: I remember the old old stadium where outfield tickets cost $5 for adults, $2 for kids, and they'd give you a free Coke if you pledged not to drink and drive. For $14, a family of four could attend a MLB game and get two Cokes and, on bat night, 2 bats. No better deal in sports.
• 2022-04-12: Yellowstone - S01 (TV 2018): Soap opera on a scenic ranch in Montana. Aging patriarch. Four rebelling children, all really just wanting to please daddy. King Lear on the frontier? I wish. A grab bag of plot predicaments, cliched dialog, and one-note acting. Pretty scenery. D+
• 2022-04-14: Twitter just served me an ad for PhytoGen cottonseed. Is this the least effective ad buy in history? Suburban Dallas homeowners who never even tweet about gardening don't grow cotton. Oops. Now I have a tweet with the word "gardening" in it. Bring it, Twitter.
• 2022-04-14: After Richardson gets its project for artworks on traffic control boxes underway, let's consider this idea next.
• 2022-04-18: How gullible are you if you believe this? Latest Trump email: "I have something BIG to share with you. I've NEVER done this before. I recorded a TOP SECRET VIDEO MESSAGE, and I told my team that I want YOU to see it FIRST. This message is only intended for my TOP supporters."
• 2022-04-20: Satire: at a time when Floridians by law "can't say gay," much less "trans," this banned math book brazenly teaches about the "Transitive Property of Equality." ... Impressionable minds are taught about the "transformation of functions."
• 2022-04-21: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022): An Asian-American woman with a strained family life and a failing laundromat has a midlife crisis. Then at an IRS audit she gets sucked into the multiverse. Another problem or her salvation? Weird, wonderful and an hour too long. B-
• 2022-04-22: Richardson's Cajun Corner: A Vietnamese Seafood Speakeasy Hiding on the Flip Side | Dallas Observer
• 2022-04-23: All the Old Knives (2022): Spy thriller that lacks thrills. No gun fights, no car chases, no explosions. Still, it offers a satisfying, if implausible, mystery as Chris Pine searches for the mole inside the CIA and suspects his old flame, Thandiwe Newton. C+
• 2022-04-24: Somebody Somewhere (TV 2022): Breakout hit for Bridget Everett. Sitcom about a woman in a midlife crisis who returns home to Manhattan, Kansas. Show doesn't make the residents there the butt of the jokes. Instead, it's sweet, sensitive, and real. And sometimes funny, too. B+
• 2022-04-24: Trump's last two fundraising emails tell a story, just in the subject lines. "I'm about to step onto the rally stage." And, then, "Disappointing."
• 2022-04-25: I fear I might.
• 2022-04-25: Nextdoor: "Needing Help - A friend leaving our house last night left his gun, Sig Sauer 40 Caliber on the top of his car and drove off - heading North on Central Expressway to Stacy Road and it fell off somewhere on his route. If anyone finds, please let me know. Thanks!"
• 2022-04-27: In a universe where Gladiator didn't win Best Picture, that's an offensive foul.
• 2022-04-27: Trump is a LOSER. I know, I know, he claims election fraud. That doesn't change the fact that he's in Mar-a-Lago, not the White House. He controlled the Presidency, Senate, SCOTUS, and he still got outplayed. He let the Dems oust him. He's a LOSER. Change my mind.
• 2022-04-27: "Why on earth would we hitch our wagons again to a crybaby sore loser who lost the popular vote twice, lost the House, lost the Senate, and lost the White House, and so on?" said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia.
• 2022-04-28: The Northman (2022): Based on Viking myth. Amleth seeks to avenge death of his father by his uncle. Sound familiar? Substitute Hamlet and you know the key plot points. Full of savagery, blood and gore. Authentic looking throughout, but I never got invested in the characters. B-
• 2022-04-28: "We have even heard them ask each other, 'What is CRT'?" Said another neighbor, "I feel like if you are going to protest, know your subject at the very least."
• 2022-04-28: When Rod Dreher makes a gaffe, he clams up and refuses to explain himself. And by gaffe, I mean accidentally speak the truth.
• 2022-04-29: Psst. Don't tell Florida but math classes in their schools are taught with non-binary, Arabic numerals.