Barbie Movie

I finally saw the Barbie movie!! There was a good Friday night crowd of women and kids dressed in pink. I was going to wear my Barbie shirt, but felt it was too heavy in the heat. I was happy that Simu Liu's Ken seemed to be the main rival to the blonde Ken played by Gosling. So he wasn't just a background guy or in one scene. Michael Cera as Allan seemed slightly more self aware of how ridiculous things were and was surprisingly skilled at fighting. There were songs and dance sequences, and they featured a couple of songs from the 90s, "Closer to Fine" and "Push," which I love. There was feminism and there was meta satire on patriarchy and Mattel. I'll probably see the movie again and try to find a showing with open captions, because I always miss dialogue. I'm glad it's doing good box office numbers.

Meanwhile, Wonkette moved to Substack, so I signed up there. I have a profile there, though I don't know if I'll actually post Notes there or not. Might be a way to post shorter thoughts that don't warrant a blog post, and it would probably be easier to post images there directly from my phone. We'll see. I'm certainly not joining Threads.

Also, the feds are finally ordering Texas to remove all that barbed wire crap from the Rio Grande river. Now if they'll just comply...

P.S. my barbie doll wearing gingham is a coincidence; I dressed her that way before I knew all about Margot Robbie's Barbie featuring gingham so much.

July Heating Up

There are now two Democrats running for Texas Senator, Colin Allred and Roland Gutierrez. I'm initially favoring Allred because he's local to DFW, but we'll see how the primary goes. Whoever wins will run against the odious Ted Cruz.

Some Georgia Democrat is becoming a Republican now. This after the North Carolina Democrat who did the same in April. What is with these party traitors, and also Kyrsten Sinema turning into the opposite of the progressive she was elected as?

Meanwhile, Barbie mania continues in the run up to the movie release next week. A lot of stores have Barbie branded merchandise, or at least hot pink clothes. It's so expensive, though, so I can't really get anything. On the weekend, I saw Joy Ride which was a fun comedy, but it apparently got overshadowed at the box office due to bigger movies.

One of the movie trailers I saw was for A Haunting in Venice, the latest Poirot starring Branagh. How on earth did he mangle Christie's Hallowe'en Party into this seance movie set in Venice rather than England? They've clearly aged up the child characters and added supernatural elements that weren't originally in the story. Well, all the more reason for me not to watch this one, despite the presence of Michelle Yeoh.

Apparently, the Emmy nominations came out yesterday and the awards are tentatively scheduled for September, with possible postponement if the Writers Strike continues, and the actors also strike. Who knows what will happen with the summer press tour too. You know,  Hollywood execs (the AMPTP), you wouldn't need to keep postponing stuff indefinitely if you'd just fucking negotiate a deal!! You're losing big marketing opportunities because you won't pay your writers and actors!

Historical mystery

Meanwhile, I read another Perveen Mistry book called The Bombay Prince, about a college girl's mysterious murder which happened while everyone was distracted by a parade for the Prince of Wales. (This is set during the 1921 royal tour of India.) Edward was meant to placate and thank officials in India for aiding Britain during the Great War, but instead his royal visit brought boycotts and protests from the Indian independence movement. Gandhi called for a strike (hartal) against the British, but unfortunately some mobs started riots in Bombay. Gandhi certainly did not support this violence, calling off the hartal and going on a hunger strike for peace. In the book, many of the people being attacked are Parsi, and so is the murder victim, so there's some question about whether the murder was part of the political unrest. Perveen herself is Parsi too, so we view the violence, fear, and mourning from the Parsi point of view. We see how her family is coping too. I do like Perveen's father supporting her career as a lawyer, even boasting that he might make her a partner in the law firm.

Also, Perveen's love interest Colin Sandringham from the previous book visits Bombay, which is awkward since her family wouldn't approve of a romance. Colin coincidentally went to school with the Prince, so he's invited to attend some royal events with him. I'm not sure I like this part of the story, but it serves to give Colin access to information relevant to solving the murder. Also, Colin comments on Edward's current love for a married woman (she's a few mistresses before Wallis Simpson) and how he relates due to his love for Perveen (who is married but estranged from her abusive husband). It's interesting to get a fictional point of view on historical events, though I don't like viewing young Edward sympathetically. This is still the guy that 15 years later will abdicate, then tour Nazi Germany with his wife, after all. On the other hand, in 1921, Edward was still generally a charming, handsome royal celebrity, so some people back then would have liked and sympathized with him.

Turn Back Time

So the Supreme Court released their final rulings of the year on Friday. The other recent decisions had lulled us into thinking they could be reasonable, but now they've killed affirmative action in colleges, allowed anti-LGBT+ discrimination as free speech, and struck down Biden's student loan relief. So awful, and on the last day of Pride Month! But apparently Biden announced a different way to provide debt relief. I hope it works. I did sign up to the plan but I didn't hear back after it was paused for the court case.

Meanwhile I saw the new Indiana Jones movie last night. It was fun and full of adventure, about a fictionalized Antikythera dial made to aid in time travel; it's like a compass pointing you to a "fissure" storm/place that you can travel through. The goddaughter Helena was an interesting character, and she brought along a streetwise kid as her sidekick. Indy does a lot of stunts, but they still address that he can be slow and achy at his age (and with his history of injuries). So the younger characters get exciting action too as they help. The movie was somewhat long, and I felt they could have cut the Tangier rickshaw & car chase shorter, as well as the underwater dive where I couldn't really see what was happening anyway. If they tightened those scenes up, it would have improved the pace and running time. I read some guy online repeatedly calling the movie "bloodless" but that's wrong. The undercover Nazis in the movie kill 3 or 4 innocent bystanders and friends in almost every location; I was appalled by how many people died, and why Indy didn't say, "We can't risk involving anybody else" after all the casual murders around them. Just because we didn't see some Nazi's face melting off doesn't make the movie bloodless.