Like a good neighbor . . .

So why does my neighbor, who doesn't work, have to mow his lawn on Sunday morning at 8:30am? Motherf*cker is home all week long and could take care of that rat's nest any time during the week when folks aren't home. Why at the break of dawn on Sunday?!

Its a rhetorical question. Just one of those things that drives me nuts. This is when I wish I was my father -- all 6'3" of him, with just enough of that hint of deadly menace below the surface that when he told his neighbors something, they didn't argue with him.

*sigh* Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

Ariel Winter still confused about clothing sizes

Ariel Winter went out to lunch the other day in Studio City and threw on the appropriate duds for a tragically hip teenager in Hollywood these days. And in what could easily become a daily thing for online celeb blogs, young Ariel seemed to misjudge exactly how short her shorts were:

I'm tempted not to give her the benefit of the doubt here, because as I said, this is becoming a regular occurrence with this gal. Hey, its her butt hanging out there, not mine (and boy you're lucky about that . . . heh), but I got a kick out of her last minute attempt to demure-ize her appearance going into the restaurant. Sorry hon, you can't pull hard enough on those to cover up:

Here's something we don't see enough of . . .

Natalie Portman looking like a normal girl in cute little shorts:

You hardly ever run across pictures of Natalie Portman out and about in daily life. Usually she's at some premiere or event or something wearing a completely unflattering designer gown of some kind. Nice to see that she dresses like a normal gal when she's just walking around the park and stuff.

Also nice to be reminded, that since she eschews the overtly sexy roles, we tend to forget that she keeps herself in pretty good shape:

How long before this chick is working for the Clinton campaign too?

As you probably know, earlier this week, Wikileaks produced a ton of e-mails proving what most reasonable people already knew -- Debbie Wasserman Shultz was running the DNC as a political machine for the Clintons. Specifically, working to torpedo the upstart Sanders campaign and protect Hillary from any suggestion of wrongdoing or culpability in inconvenient things like Bengazi and such.

After her humiliating removal from her position as head of the DNC, Debbie Downer was quickly offered a new job -- with the Clinton campaign. So basically nothing changed for her.

Now today, we get news that prosecutors have dismissed the last of the Freddie Gray trials, effectively ending self-aggrandizing fame whore racist Maryland State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's attempt to enrich herself at the expense of six innocent police officers.

Since the Dems went to great lengths to get the moms of career criminals to attend the Dem convention and speak to the statistically unprovable lie of marauding cops slaughtering innocent young black men by the hundreds each day, I won't be surprised to see Mosby turn up on the Clinton campaign in short order.

Birds of a feather, and all that.

San Diego ComicCon is right around the corner, and you know what that means . . .

My favorite attention hungry redhead is getting her costumes ready. Let's see what she's got for us this year:

First up, we have some sort of ad hoc Star Wars get up. She's got a Darth Vader helmet there. Not sure where this one is going:

Ahhh . . . the old standby . . . Princess Leia slave girl outfit. Maitland's a bit fuller in figure than she's been in years past. Walking around in this outfit might lead to some interesting moments. IfyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkthatyoudo:

Okay, we're going to try the Leeloo costume again. She made a run at this one last year and it turned out a bit crappy. Looks closer to the movie costume this time and see my comment above about trying to walk around in this outfit:

Yeah, this is basically what I'm talking about . . . a bit of the old free the nipple which I believe is frowned upon as the San Diego convention. Conservatives are banned from Twitter, but not bare bosoms. Ain't the internet wonderful?

I got nothing here. You? It's green and see through (always a plus), but what . . . a LOTR elf or something? *shakes head*

Update: Ahh, I see, it's a Logan's Run outfit. Why didn't I see that before? *facepalm*

I'm surprised she isn't rocking the Harley Quinn outfit or perhaps Lara Croft (they're rebooting it with teenie actress Alicia Vikander, so no big bewbs). And with a movie Wonder Woman and a television Super Girl . . . there's plenty of other sexy outfits to go for.

We'll see what she comes up with and if it's anything amazing, I'll definitely post it here.

Trailers for a couple of movies that might be fun

I just ran across this trailer today, having no idea they were even making another sequel in the XXX movie series:

The original XXX was a brilliant conceit -- pointing out the anachronistic idea of the tuxedoed spy in today's gritty guttural world. And a more subtle approach -- why train a spy for years to do all these amazing stunts when it's easier to take a stunt man and just put a gun in his hands and turn him loose?

The original XXX was a jumping off point for all these high-octane action movies that are now common place and Vin Diesel was just the right guy for the role. He didn't take himself or the role too seriously. He did an admirable job of looking like a world class stunt guy thrust into a life or death situation he had never experienced before. The movie also had the added plus of the always slightly off-kilter Asia Argento co-starring.

The original still has one of my favorite movie lines that I've only managed to work into a conversation once. When Xander Cage (Diesel) is first introduced to Argento's character in a bar, she offers him a drink. He accepts and asks for the drink on ice telling her she can chip a piece off her heart . . . if she can find it.

Fabulous!

The sequel to the original stunk for a lot of reasons, most notably the casting of the portly and unathletic Ice Cube as the new XXX. Cube can scowl and grimace until the cows come home and he's so absurdly un-threatening and unconvincing it made the movie even more unbelievable. Also the film's makers decided that the XXX moniker was going to be a generic title given to any agent at any time, leaving them the freedom to constantly recast the role as they pleased. That didn't work out so well.

So we have the original Xander Cage back in action and the trailer looks sufficiently awesome to hopefully be a hit. I actually like Diesel as an actor. Loved the first Pitch Black and the third installment, Riddick, wasn't all that bad. So hopefully he's got another decent flick for him here.

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Next we have yet another remake of The Magnificent Seven, this time starring Denzel Washington:

The other trailers for this movie point out that it is directed by the same guy, Antoine Fuqua, who did Training Day and The Equalizer, both top-notch films starring Denzel. The Equalizer is, of course, a remake in its own right of the television series starring Edward Woodward. It's playing on cable now (the movie, that is), and if you haven't seen it, you should check it out. It's quite good.

Anyway, I'm liking the casting of this current remake of the remake of the old Kurosawa classic The Seven Samurai. I don't hate on Chris Pratt like some critics do (I'm looking at you John Nolte), and there's also Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio (who I'd really like to see drop a few pounds and come back to Criminal Intent for a season) among others. Some chick named Haley Bennett plays the damsel in this version. She looks vaguely familiar but probably because she bears some resemblance to Jennifer Lawrence.

Like the XXX trailer above, this looks sufficiently action-y and Fuqua has shown a knack to make pretty edgy films, so I think I might definitely try to catch this one in the theaters when it comes out.

On a side note -- there's another version of this trailer set to the old Animals tune House of the Rising Sun. It's pretty awesome. And now that I'm typing this, I wonder if the song's a nod to the original Kurosawa flick. That's pretty meta.

Let them say it more eloquently than I can

Jonah Goldberg:

No, the convention was a failure before it even began. Because most of us have only known political conventions as stage-managed infomercials, we’ve come to think that’s their actual purpose: to throw a grand party for the candidate who won the most delegates. But conventions predate that function by more than a century.

The goal wasn’t to pick a candidate whom a bare majority or slim plurality of delegates loved and a large minority couldn’t stand. It was to find the candidate most acceptable to the most people.

That’s the original purpose of conventions: to find the candidate the party could unify around. Since the rise of the modern primary system, we switched to the practice of putting it all up for a vote. Whoever gets a majority of delegates in primary elections is the nominee. This wasn’t a problem most years because all of the candidates were ultimately acceptable to the party. People grumbled about this or that candidate (I certainly did), but there was no #NeverDole or #NeverRomney movement.

This time is different. Countless leading Republicans skipped this convention, including all of the living previous nominees, save for Bob Dole. Most delegates in attendance have made their peace with Donald Trump, but a very large number have not. The Trump boosters think this is all sour grapes, and that’s an understandable reaction. What they can’t (or won’t) see is that Trump is viewed by many conservatives as an imposter and hijacker.

The TV cameras may show a lot of excited delegates cheering Trump on the floor. What the cameras can’t show is the discontent represented by those who refused to attend in the first place.

David French:

Ideas matter, and supporting Trump means advancing ideas I find not just wrong, but destructive. I’ve defended the unborn my entire career; he praises Planned Parenthood. I believe that marriage is a sacred covenant between husband and wife; he’s a serial adulterer. I believe America should lead the world in defense not just of its territorial integrity but also of civilization itself; he would retreat into glorified isolationism. I believe that free trade has made America more prosperous and enriched the lives of its citizens; he threatens to start ruinous economic conflicts. I believe that a core American value is that we can and must judge our citizens by the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their families’ roots; he attacks a federal judge because of his parents’ Mexican heritage.

Character matters, too, and supporting Trump means elevating a man of low morals, which is the last thing our nation needs. I believe men should strive to be honest; Trump lies habitually. I believe men should treat women with respect; he mocks any woman who opposes him or challenges him. I believe in treating opponents fairly; he calls them names and spreads the most vile rumors about their families. I believe that public officials should be intellectually curious, striving to know more about the world; Trump is aggressively ignorant, paying far more attention to poll numbers and press clippings than to the issues he’d confront in the Oval Office.

The conservative movement is invested in the long game — our own “long march” through American cultural institutions. It is not worth throwing away years of influence for the sake of four months of intraparty peace. When Trump crashes and burns — and he will, either on the trail or in the Oval Office — Americans won’t look to his partisans and defenders to rebuild from the wreckage. They’ll seek other voices. For the sake of the nation, it’s vital that those other voices are both conservative and untainted by alliance or association with the newly minted Republican nominee for president.

Much better than one of my I shouldn't be posting angry posts when it comes to this election cycle.

The Republican Party that I knew is officially dead to me

In a triumph for the establishment Republicans, Donald Trump got the necessary delegates to be named the party's candidate for the 2016 election.

The convention rules committee squashed any dissent with underhanded and shameful parliamentary maneuvering so that the candidate with the support of only 30-35% of the voting public is now the party's candidate.

So for the record, we have a life-long progressive Democrat running for President on the Republican ticket. A self-aggrandizing, vulgar, misogynistic bully who represents everything distasteful in American culture is now the avatar for conservatism in this country.

I don't want to hear what a nice guy Reince Preibus is and he's just being a party loyalist. I don't want to hear excuses about the pundits and writers and bloggers and television talking heads and how they're just doing what they can to keep Hillary out of the White House.

Hey assholes?! Mission Fail! Okay?! This f*cking bozo isn't going to come close to winning this election. It's going to be a brutal smackdown that will embolden and empower the progressive/socialist/democrat party in this country for decades.

You opinion makers on the right -- you f*cked the entire country over with your stupidity and cowardly acquiescence to a dim bulb bully.

You last generation Republican stars -- Newt, Sarah, Huck, Rove, et. al., just get the f*ck out! We don't need or want you and your famewhore sellout asses. Get lost!

And when your spray-tan idol gets crushed in the general election, don't go pointing fingers at me. I told you a long time ago I wouldn't vote for this bozo. You had every chance to get a decent honorable conservative at the top of the ticket and you backed down like John Boehner on steroids.

You screwed this up. Don't make excuses, at least man up and admit you cost us this election. But then what am I saying? I'm expecting these cowards to have some honor. They just proved they have none.

Ariel Winter is keepin' it classy too

Remember back earlier this year, when Ariel Winter was an awkward 18 year old trying to come to terms with her breast reduction surgery and a doughy full-figured physique? My how times have changed. The much more comfortable in her own skin Ms. Winter went to something called The Nice Guy in a pair of ripped short shorts, a nearly see-though top and f*ck me boots.

Daddy's little girl, indeed.

For the record, that Daddy's little girl remark was in reference to a fairly demure picture she posted to Instagram of her and her father. Like I've said many times before . . . so glad I had a boy. If I saw images of my little girl showing her ass like this to the world, I'd probably have a heart attack:

Courtney Stodden keepin' it classy while pregnant

Courtney Stodden is pregnant and setting aside the creepiness of how all that works out between her and almost 60 year old Doug Hutchinson, she's starting to make the rounds showing off her baby bump and enjoying the freedom of dressing like this because being pregnant is one of those get out of jail free cards when it comes to clothing these days.

Actually the outfit isn't all that bizarre, especially for Court, but she's barely showing and yet she's walking around with her jeans unbuttoned like she can't get pants to fit her properly.

Oh well.

And just because I have it, here's the modest and demure Ms. Stodden at a Valentine's Day party earlier this year dishing out her usual epic sideboob action:

Rule 5 Sunday -- Elizabeth Marxs, part two

It has been difficult these last months to do any serious blogging. The world, this country . . . everything that has been going on . . . it's relentless and happening constantly. Everytime I get an idea or think about something I'd like to put online, something else, often something terrible, happens and I think -- got to talk about that first. The result is that I'm constantly resetting my thought and nothing is getting written down.

*sigh*

Well, anyway . . . I'll endeavor to do better. In the meantime, enjoy this series of some early modeling work by my favorite Texas beauty Elizabeth Marxs:

*click on the thumbnails for full-sized images*

Rule 5 Sunday suggested by this.

Hat tips:
Jake Finnegan
The Daley Gator
The Classic Liberal
Say Anything Blog
Proof Positive
American Power
Reaganite Republican
Goodstuff's Cyber World

What part of NeverTrump do they not understand?

Reince Preibus calls me a "sore loser." With the demise of the ill-conceived #Freethedelegates movement, Trump has been high-stepping and tweeting his yuge victory over those who refuse to bend a knee to his pyrrhic victory in the primary.

Sorry boys, you haven't won sh*t in my opinion.

Depending on how you look at the numbers, anywhere from 60-65% of Republican voters want anyone other than Donald Trump as their candidate for President in this election. The voters have spoken Reince . . . it is you who isn't listening.

And now the Vichy Right is signaling their best moment yet as Trump has tagged Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

Ummm . . . yeah . . .

Pence's record as a politician isn't exactly giving me the warm and fuzzies. In fact, what probably endears him to the spineless bloggers and pundits supporting Trump is that Pence hasn't seen a fight he wasn't willing to slink away from. He avoided running for the both the Senate and this year's Presidency because he would have had to fight his way in. If the field wasn't cleared for him, he wasn't going to enter a battle where he wasn't guaranteed a victory.

And am I the only one who remembers how Pence f*cked Ted Cruz in the primaries this year? Kasich either had won or was going to win Ohio, Trump wasn't inevitable yet . . . Cruz desperately needed a ringing endorsement from a prominent Republican and a big win in a state. Indiana looked ripe for the taking, all Cruz needed was Pence's endorsement. He got nothing. Finally, at the eleventh hour and 59 minutes, Pence came out with a "Oh yeah, Ted Cruz . . . yeah, he's better than a pointed stick in the eye" endorsement, and down went Cruz to a humiliating defeat that paved the way for the mess we're in now.

I believe it was earlier a year and a half ago that Pence signed a religious freedom bill for Indiana and then immediately walked it back because LBGT activists began grumbling about it.

And now mere days into his role as Trump's conservative shield, Pence is backing away from his decades long support of NAFTA, saying that the world's best deal negotiator (Trump . . . *belly laugh*) should be allowed to redo the agreement.

Something tells me that had John Boehner still been in politics, Trump would have picked him. Pence is the perfect associate for Trump and the spineless cowards of the Vichy Right -- he says all the right things and checks all the right boxes, but will back down or swap positions on any and all policies/values/beliefs without hesitation.

Yep, a real dream team these two.

So, no . . . I'm still not voting for this trainwreck of a ticket. You idiots created it, you own it. Have fun.

Back when the primaries were just starting, I believe I wrote something here about the fact that Trump doesn't actually want the job as President and would probably, should he win, be the first President in history to voluntarily step down from the job before his term was up. Well, now I'm seeing this same thought from some in the professional pundit class. Way to be on the ball, guys.

Anyway, they're saying that with Pence on the ticket, if/when Trump steps down, we'd have a solid conservative in the White House. Wut?! See everything I've written above. And there's more to dislike about Pence. I wouldn't have voted for him for President if he had been running and I'm not down at all with this back door way of getting someone into the White House. Can you imagine the precedent that would set? That alone is enough of a reason not to vote for this team in the election.

I would be more agreeable to a coup at the convention than something like that. And is that a possibility? There is some wonder about Cruz agreeing to speak. I know he's dead set against the idea of a Clinton Presidency. But he's just as dead set against Trump. He was very adept at wrangling delegates and working behind the scenes to garner delegate support. Would he risk fracturing the party to give the 60-65% of Republican voters another candidate to support in the general election?

I don't think Trump will come close to victory in November. I don't know about where you live, but down here in Florida, Hillary's campaign is taking Charles Krauthammer's advice and is simply splicing together Trump's various idiotic statements and playing them on television over a graphic saying Trump's too dangerous to be allowed in the White House. It's damning and I imagine will prove very effective in swaying undecided and independents come November.

Would the defeat in November be any worse if Cruz wrests the nomination away from Trump, alienates some or all of Trump's supporters, and makes a run as the Republican nominee?

I don't know. But what I do know is that we can't allow either Hillary or Trump to become President of the United States.

#StillNeverTrump

Taylor Swift may have opted for a boob job

Taylor Swift was spotted out last week, I think, going to a Selena Gomez concert with new beau Tom Hiddleston. Swifty was sporting what looked like a new fashion accessory -- a full enough bosom to suggest a boob job as opposed to simply a push-up bra:

It seemed pretty obvious to me, but oddly enough, I haven't seen anyone else commenting about it on the various celeb blogs. Not that I spend an inordinate amount of time perusing them, just sort of a drive-by thing. But still . . .

Anyway, it's a holiday weekend and Swifty's at the beach with her posse and Hiddles, and either she's really committed to faking everyone out about upgrading her chestal region, or it is seeming more apparent she's had some work done:

I've heard (don't ask) that doctor's recommend that women who undergo breast implants wear full support for a time period to allow the body to adjust to the new weight in the bosom. It will be interesting to see what's what when she's ready to break out the saucy wear for her new boyfriend.

And btw, points to Hiddles for getting Taylor out of the Disney princess wear and into something a bit more adult. Finally.

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And speaking of Taylor's posse, here's the gang posing in the surf:

I was able to make out one of the Haddad sisters and Ryan Reynolds in the back with his pregnant wife Blake Lively in there too. Blake's still trying to pour herself into her pre-pregnancy bikinis which is becoming problematic as she's a deep breath away from a major wardrobe malfunction here:

I know it's all trendy these days to have women parading around in the third trimester wearing clothes that simply don't get it done. But Blake's a celebrity and she's going to get pap'd everywhere. Perhaps it's time to dial up the modesty a bit before she's on the front page of every celeb blog in the world with a major exposure.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th to my one or two loyal readers. I've got a bit to say on this patriotic holiday, but I've got to get out before the sun gets too high and get my car waxed. So I'll check back in later. Here's some pretty gals sharing their holiday spirit with you in the meantime. Enjoy:

Carla Gugino aging far better than fine wine

Actually that's an unfair comparison as a great many things and people in this world are not aging as well as the lovely and sexy Ms. Gugino.

In her mid-fourties, Carla looks better than many actresses half her age and pretty much all of the actresses near her age. She's made a sturdy career out of supporting characters in movies and television. Her one starring role in TV, the short-lived Karen Sisco was, well . . . short-lived. More's the pity, but it's not like she's starving for work -- a talented, scandal-free actress that looks great in front of the camera will always have work. At least I hope she will.

The pics here are from something called Sharp Magazine, and she is, indeed, looking sharp here: