Dealer's choice

Movie recommendation for Old Dog, Bottle Rocket.

It's been so long since I've seen that movie that I don't recall a single thing about it except that it introduced the Wilson boys, Luke and Owen.  I think they had a hand in writing and producing it too, but that's all I recall.  It wasn't bad, but not memorable either.  Maybe it has aged well, or I have, and it's time for another viewing.

Bottle Rocket was recommended to me by the guy at the local Mom & Pop video store.  That was one of the great things about those little places; if business was slow you had time to talk about films, acting, and directing.  The video guy developed a good sense of what you would like and based his recommendations on what he had seen and also the opinions of his other customers.  He was always asking, "Well, what did you think?"  This is very similar to the recommendations made by Netflix, Amazon, and others but it was word of mouth and not word of machine.  Unless I rate the movies my viewing history is meaningless.  I've bailed out on plenty of movies after twenty minutes, not that they were necessarily bad but because I wasn't engaged or interested.  They might have been good but I will never know, although I have given some films a second chance at a later date.

-----

Immigration is a sticky issue and it seems to me that the conversation is skewed against Mexicans in particular, probably because of the numbers and the long border.  But most of the folks are coming here to work and not suck at the public teat.  I don't think I've ever seen a Mexican panhandler but I've seen plenty of Mexican laborers, kitchen workers, busboys, and yard workers doing the low status (and low paying) jobs that US citizens tend to avoid.  Splitting up families and putting children in cages is not a good response to immigration problems but maybe we're just too cheap to come up with a better solution.

-----

It looks like the dog & pony show in Singapore went off without a hitch, relatively speaking, but I don't know what the long term results, if any, will be.  I think some deals may have been made under the table, such as "You start to play nicely and the US will pull out of South Korea and maybe Japan."  And let's not forget the alluring power of the almighty dollar.  North Korea could use a few golf courses.

-----

I've been reading about the great American artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge.  Who's that, you ask?  You've seen his work, maybe admired it, but never knew who made it. His best known work is "A Friend in Need," otherwise known as "Dogs Playing Poker."  Say what you will, his work has stood the test of time.