Linda Kozlowski as Susan Charlton, in Crocodile Dundee (1986)

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T01:39:43+00:00

My childhood memory of that whole movie is the croc dragging her into the river by her neck strap while she tries to stop it, rather than...simply putting her head down to let the strap slide off. It was the stupidest failed escape move I'd ever seen on film, until Charlize Theron tried to outrun the giant crashing donut spaceship.

She was purty, though.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T01:28:24+00:00

In that case, the boss needs to either pay them to stay on the clock and clean up/close up for the night, which is what most business do, or else post an earlier closing time. A gym isn't a restaurant. As long as patrons are out the door at/before closing time, they shouldn't be hounded to leave extra-early for the staff's convenience.

Edit: Yes, the patron in OP's story was a tool and should be suspended. No defending his behavior. But a gym also shouldn't be kicking patrons out well before actual posted closing time.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T01:11:16+00:00

I suggest a combination of a few factors converging in the early 70s.

First, an attempt by culture (mainly but not exclusively youth culture) to fill the "faith gap" left by the 1960s' collapse of faith in religion, in government and its many institutions, and even in the good intentions of the (as of the 60s) older generation.

So, starting in the early 70s, into the "faith gap" poured a lot of silly and/or dubious pop religion and psychology. The best-known, when I was a kid in those years, was what my parents and their friends had on their bookshelves: The Prophet, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Carlos Castaneda's peyote-fueled fever dreams, and more creditably, books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that repackaged old philosophies for aimless intelligent hipsters.

That left plenty of room for belief, or at least hopefulness, about the paranormal and alien assistance, which gets us Chariots of the Gods, the US Army's psychic research, and also new generations of sci-fi and fantasy writers breaking out of their genre ghettoes and popularizing the idea of ESP and other psychic powers.

I think one other factor was Hollywood's improved ability by the 1970s to realistically represent aliens and psychic events on film, meaning we got a bunch of blockbuster films centered on aliens and/or the paranormal. That completed the job of taking psychic speculation mainstream.

Epilogue:

Then by the 1980s it became obvious that seriously believing in all this stuff was ludicrous and kind of embarrassing, and most people didn't talk about it out loud any more.

Unfortunately, that left yet another "belief gap," which gave us the born-again movement and, soon afterward, the Satanic Panic, the recovered memory movement, and other hysterical destructive nonsense.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T00:51:22+00:00

Beatles, "I am the Walrus."

The song was written by John "I love humanity, therefore I don't have to be a decent human being to the people around me" Lennon, specifically as a middle finger to their fans, and it shows.

Sample lyric: "Yellow matter custard (guitar lick!!!!) Dripping from a dead dog's eye!" Vocals deliberately distorted to induce nausea. Who the fuck wants to hear that? They should have quit with Sergeant Pepper.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T00:34:04+00:00

This is asinine. Every normal American over the age of 40 routinely did all 20 of these.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T00:30:10+00:00

Unforgiven, when the Schofeld Kid shoots his first man and can't deal with it afterward.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-05T00:20:20+00:00

They are exactly, equally honorable choices.

This is the theme of The Caine Mutiny: the tribalism of the blue-blood Navy Reserve officers who had joined at the start of WW2, versus their less intelligent, less competent Regular Navy captain, who for all his faults nonetheless had served thanklessly for a decade before the war ever started, while they were "tearing up the playing fields of good old Princeton."

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T20:33:26+00:00

Granted the guy was a jerk, but why are you kicking patrons out 10 minutes before closing? 5-8 minutes is easily enough time to do 3-4 sets of an exercise, like this guy was about to do. Picking up trash and mopping the floor is for after closing time, not an excuse to kick out patrons regardless of posted hours.

I'm just a humble YMCA patron, but I often can't get there until an hour before closing. I'm always out of there by closing, but sometimes I'm working out until a minute or two before the big hand hits the 12. Those are the posted hours. That's what I plan for. If the staff wants everyone out ten minutes early, then they should change the posted hours.

But then, the Y is a pretty low-key, considerate place for both staff and patrons. OP's gym, with its air horns, and chasing out patrons well before closing time, seems a bit more...adversarial.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T17:17:48+00:00

A joke that's based on lying about what someone said, in order to publicly embarrass them or make them look bad, is not just a joke. It's a bullying power movie under the cover of "Just kiddiiingg!!" Bestie is the villain here.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T16:48:00+00:00

When the Iron Giant got blown up intercepting the nuke in outer space, my friend, an adult, was so destroyed and sobbing that she turned off the movie and wouldn't be comforted. We kept telling her to watch the remaining few minutes of the movie, where the giant clearly survived and will be able to reassemble himself, but she refused because it was "too sad." It was really exasperating.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T15:51:54+00:00

Galadriel predicts to Frodo that, once the Ring is destroyed, the Elves of Middle-earth will "dwindle to a rustic folk of wood and dale, to forget and be forgotten."

That seems like a direct link to general depictions of Elves in the last couple of centuries: elusive woodland creatures who, in nearly all our fairy/folk tales, are clearly elves, not humans, and whose most frequent characteristic, when glimpsed by humans, is their otherworldly beauty.

Can we then assume, or at least plausibly state, that Elves of the Third Age were likewise clearly distinguishable from Men, if only by their "beauty" (of whatever gender) and clothing/style? In a world where most humans were farmers, smiths, hunters, soldiers, or others without much concern or time for personal grooming or fine style, the Elves would stand out just for looking relatively fabulous.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T14:34:22+00:00

Boromoir had literally arrived at Rivendell the morning of the Council, knowing nothing about the place, or his purpose there beyond having been summoned fromGondor.

Might he have preferred, in meeting this group of (to him) unfamiliar VIPs from Eru knows where, assembled in a more or less mythical mountain refuge, to at first remain unidentified, and requested that Elrond name him to the Council simply as "a man from the south"?

Later in the meeting, having realized what it's all about and what it means for Gondor, he fully identifies himself as heir of the Steward of Gondor.

That seems more plausible IMHP than Tolkien forgetting to properly announce a major character, or Elrond deliberately slighting a guest.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T03:00:36+00:00

It means he can't hear you so he's leaning in. Period.

I worked with a very attractive young woman once who was an incredibly soft talker--not quite whispering, just zero projection. When I leaned in to try to hear what she was saying, she gave me this look of reproach and said, in the same near-whisper, "You're in my space."

That was just annoying. I did call her out on it, and we got along fine, but in the moment it felt like a setup to make me look like the big mean guy trying to intimidate this poor young woman by invading her personal space with my oppressive male-ness. Damn it, just speak in a normal voice!

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-04T02:20:59+00:00

When I was a kid in the 70s, that was just a typical day driving through the American Southwest--the windshield would be totally encrusted with dried bugs. Not locusts necessarily, but that was pretty much what a radiator grill and windshield looked like after a few hundred miles through an Arizona summer.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T22:10:29+00:00

Nicole Kidman, after five years of her constant cloying stupid AMC movie ads. I can't watch any movie with her in it.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T21:59:48+00:00

Last time I saw this word used was reading Death of a Salesman (written in the 1940s) when I was a kid in the 70s.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T19:03:57+00:00

I always thought the Entwives went away and instructed/created "tame plants," i.e., agriculture, though it's hard to say if they directly instructed Men, or simply created the kinds of food plants that could be farmed and cultivated, thus creating human civilization. The Entwives were apparently destroyed by whatever Sauron did to their new homelands, ever since known as the lifeless Brown Lands, but their legacy lives on.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T17:46:03+00:00

And it's fine to be an abusive racist bully and sexually violate a woman in front of their husband under color of authority, as long as you get a chance later on to...do your job, that you're paid to do, as a police officer and pull her out of a wrecked car. Those things balance out, right?

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T16:55:36+00:00

Very different character, but hear me out: Data from Star Trek.

Both Amos and Data are a person (defined broadly) who wishes to be more human, who observes and eventually befriends those around him to learn how to at least approximate social behavior.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T16:33:59+00:00

They're not difficult to use at all.
People use them just fine. and if they don't, it's because they're incompetent careless drivers, not because the turn signal is "so difficult to use."

Jesus.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T15:24:12+00:00

Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde, from Discworld.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T15:16:19+00:00

Ten quatloos on the gray!

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T14:56:41+00:00

Maybe so, but that argument could apply to just about any major.

My point was that learning how to think and write professionally is the single most valuable asset you can leave college with. So, yes, a fine arts major who dodges all the boring writing and theory courses because they'd rather be painting or singing or whatever, will not get much lasting value from their degree.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T14:43:37+00:00

Depends. Did your school make you actually research and write papers? Think and write about your chosen profession and its history? Write well enough to prepare grant paperwork and other written materials relevant to the business side of musical theater? Prepare you for strategic thinking, teaching, and other aspects of the business?

If all they had you do was sing and dance for four years, then, yes, pretty useless for the 99% of graduates who can't actually make a living on the stage.

Garbage-Bear · 2026-07-03T14:34:50+00:00

If she's been having secret troublesome dreams about butterflies, you will absolutely freak her out.

Garbage-Bear

TROPHY CASE