I think we can take clown two ways, as the guy in the funny suit at the circus and as some guy we think of as incompetent as in that guy is a clown. I don't know if the scene itself is funny ha ha. Certainly not the first time you see it when your sympathy is with the guy being threatened and the way it develops from what at first seems a little misunderstanding to a threat on the guy's life. Later on we see Pesci kill some poor schlub on a whim. Those mobsters from Goodfellas were not noble warriors as in The Godfather, they were more like violent jerks, who gloried in their jerkness because nobody dared oppose them, note the guy who owned the restaurant. Pesci was one of the bigger jerks in the mob and eventually the mob kills him because he is too much of a jerk.
The guy in the other clip is an inscrutable killer. He has half a mind to kill that storekeeper, which is hard to tell if the storekeeper knows that, it seems like he has an inkling. His flipping the coin is almost like a casual act of mercy, he is given a 50-50 chance, though if it had been tails you know he would have killed him.
Rereading the above I can understand Beagles' point, why do we want to watch movies about people like that? I don't know, just do. It beats watching the hero punch out the villain in the old warehouse down by the river.
I've mentioned earlier how I used to hang around the magazine stand in the student union bookstore. It was mostly leftist rags,but among them was this shiny little mag called American Opinion which seemed to see a whole different world than every else saw. One of the things they believed was that those American warships in the Taiwan Strait were not there to protect Taiwan from Red China, but to protect Red China from Taiwan because if the freedom loving folks of the latter should land on the beaches of the former the people there would rise up and depose their red masters. Why would America want to prevent that from happening? Because our government was being run by commies. American Opinion was the organ of the John Birch Society.
We don't call it Red Russia, we don't call it Red Cuba, we didn't call it Red Albania. But I have to admit Red China has a ring. The East is Red. From my years of tending bar in a Chinese restaurant i can tell you that the Chinese love red.
And now everything is changed because Dump has fired those Tomahawks. Nunes recusing himself and the nuclear option deployed you will have to turn to the second page of the newspaper to read about. At the moment it is still a symbolic gesture but you have to imagine the thrill Dump had pushing that button. There probably isn't an actual button, but I wouldn't be surprised if his people mocked one up for him. Now he is a war president. I wonder if he is measuring himself for some kind of Dump uniform with lots of braid and medals, and a big big hat, bigger than the North Korean's the better to stare them down with.
I believe it was tricky Dick or maybe his kraut sidekick who first developed the theory that it was a good thing to have the enemy think you are a little bit crazy. Certainly Dump has that going for him.
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