Voting Matters

Early voting has started for the May 6th election. I'll have to do it this weekend but it's still hard to find any information on candidates in local elections. School board elections are supposed to be nonpartisan, but how do you find out who's a transphobic nutjob trying to ban books and censor history? Only a few candidates have websites, and/or answer questions for the League of Women Voters' guide, so it's hard to actually know how they will act on the school board. It seems like Patriot Mobile is the rightwing PAC funding shitty candidates, but I can't find any listing for the election I actually vote in.

I don't want to elect a rightwing lunatic to a City Council position either. At the very least, I want to vote out anybody who voted against a bus system and who proudly brings this up at every election. "If we had voted for the bus, then we wouldn't have this, and this.." It's not something to be proud of, you idiot. So we didn't get the bus then; what's stopping us from trying to get a bus deal now? Is it you, you fucking idiot?

Meanwhile a longtime election administrator in Tarrant County has resigned due to the Republican judge undermining him and alleging voter fraud. If the election system was so corrupt, then why did you accept the results of your own damn election, huh? *sigh* Texas politics is so disheartening, but we gotta keep fighting.

Edited to Add a news link that came too late for early voting, which is not helpful at all for voters.

Hypernostalgia

Movies seem to be all about nostalgia lately, whether it's for video games or music or sports of a previous era. I've never played any Mario Brothers, so I didn't want to see that movie. That didn't leave much choice among the remaining options. I used to watch the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon as a kid, but never played the game, so I wasn't interested in the movie, when it was clear that the characters had no relation to the TV show. I didn't feel like getting into another blockbuster franchise either. But reviews said it was fun and that Hugh Grant was the villain, so I tried it, at least to see Rege Jean Page as the Paladin. It was all right, but mostly the characters were meh, and the movie was so long. It seemed to drag, and the quest became meandering. Hugh Grant is a bad guy, but he's not the main villain; he's a secondary villain on the way to the Big Bad, like he was in the recent Operation Fortune.

The Paladin character was supercool, like a heroic knight who could do no wrong, but he was only there for part of the quest. I liked that the main characters were friends/co-parents, rather than love interests, and there was a cool cameo of the TV show characters in one scene. But otherwise, the plot was overshadowed by the jokey tone. Overall I didn't care for it.

So then I tried the movie Air, even though I don't care about sports or Nike. I find the whole "sneaker culture" strange and crazy to spend so much on shoes. Still, Air got good reviews and had Jason Bateman in a non-douchey role as a marketing exec. The drama was interesting, but the movie was stuffed full of 1980s songs. Like every two minutes another tune would start. I love the '80s but this was too much. Annoying and distracting in fact. It's okay to sometimes end the scene on silence, or even an instrumental score, instead of a pop tune. If you want to make a jukebox movie, make one. Don't stuff it into a different movie about sports and marketing. Viola Davis was good, as expected.

It just made me more excited for Chevalier when I saw a trailer for it. Hope that will be better than this lackluster fare.

Barbie Mania

Passover has begun so apparently Easter is this weekend, and the usual "faith" movies are out. I was hoping to see Chevalier, but apparently it doesn't arrive in my area until April 20th.

Thankfully the new Barbie trailer is out, showing more shots of Barbieland as well as a glimpse of the real world. It's so pink, and Barbie has feet permanently stuck in high-heel position, just like the dolls! I was right when I guessed that there are multiple Barbies and Kens. They also released character posters, and apparently a Barbie Selfie generator so people can put in their own selfies or celebrity photos into posters. It's fun, though concerning that everything is becoming AI.

The elections in Wisconsin and Chicago were good this week, but there was bad news in North Carolina, when a Democrat suddenly switched parties. At least Trump got arraigned.