Best Pictures

Hey Friends,

If you're tired of eating food and celebrating all the time, then you've come to the right place. It's January, and that means it's time to get back to work.

Happy New Year! Let's get 2024 started.

I, for one, have a lot to look forward to this year. Because, after all, I don't have to wear lifts to surpass six feet, and I have half my retirement in forever stamps.

This is the week when everyone talks up the movies nominated for Best Picture, and thankfully, 2023 has been a good year for movies.

Many predict the biggest awards will be a Barbenheimer standoff, referring to the pair of movies Oppenheimer and Barbie, who, after sharing a premier weekend, don't have the same luxury with the awards. Rumor has it Christopher Nolan is willing to pass the award for Oppenheimer over to Barbie just to avoid a lecture monologue from America Ferrera, and we know from experience it would make him cry.

A recent addition to the list is the new film about Leonard Bernstein, best known for his mention in the REM song “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It,” who is now profiled in the biopic Maestro, directed by Bradley Cooper and also on-screen opposite Carrie Mulligan.

The movie Poor Things can't afford to lose after what it costs to put Emma Stone in a lead role. But if the movie keeps performing as it has in the first weeks of its limited release, expect the studio and Emma Stone as producer to be anything but poor things.

Martin Scorsese's Killers of The Flower Moon stars Leonardo DiCaprio (49) and Lily Gladstone (37), which many say could snag Dicaprio the Oscar for best actor because of his impressive performance dating someone so close to his age. Critics rave about Lily Gladstone's performance, though, playing an Osage tribe member in the 1920s. They say if Dicaprio gets the Oscar, it won't be the first thing a white man has taken from a Native American.

I plan to watch all ten movies nominated for Best Picture before the Oscars on March 10th.

Until then...

Let's get to The News.

Hot Takes

Week 01 of 2024

Claudine Gay?

If that headline is a question, I'd say the answer is no. I think she's just clean and neat. But Claudine is now looking to downsize to a more affordable pair of glasses since she'll no longer be in the big office after this week. When she resigned as Harvard's president, she blamed "racial animus," which is how I describe spicy red sauce on my tacos, because my southern American friends know I can't handle the taco truth.

In Claudine's case, it would have been apropos if she had said she was pushed out because she was a Gay (not in the way you're thinking, but neither is the racial animus if we're being honest with each other). Ms. Gay faced increased scrutiny over multiple accusations of plagiarism and an unsettling testimony before Congress that called into question Harvard's approach to addressing anti-semitism on its campus.

According to reports, in her letter of resignation, she signed off as "President Richard Nixon," which may have been an error, but a copy-and-paste error like that is likely to get her more criticism, considering a previous Richard Nixon was famously anti-semitic. (more)

Ep-stain

This week, records regarding the John Doe Boys linked to Henry Epstein were unsealed, including Donald Trump, revealing that in some cases, the term "Doe" actually was a reference to his large, soft, dough-like belly – and to that, I say, nice try being discreet, we already know Trump was an Epstein fan and filthy private jet regular.

Others revealed include Bill Clinton, who says he severed ties with Epstein a decade earlier and didn’t know he had committed crimes, and also said he "...did not have sex with that woman — Miss Lewinsky." For the record, at least one of those statements could be true. The Former President is not being accused of any wrongdoing.

The list of Pedofile associates also includes billionaire Les Wexner, who will not be donating to Harvard because they don't do enough to prevent bad people from doing bad things. Les is the businessman behind Victoria’s Secret, however, he denies Epstein was one of them. (more)

Iran like Hell

Roughly 84 people were killed in a blast near fallen military leader Qasam Soleimani's grave. The Islamic State took responsibility for the attack yesterday, taking the spotlight off of Israel, which is, in most cases, blamed for everything if possible.

One person in the crowd, when asked about their response to the blast, said, "I ran," but translators are still trying to clear up if that was a noun or a verb – basically, it was chaos. The attack is being called an act of terror and also really inconvenient because Iran has been a little busy trying to focus on their own plots to blow people up – quite busy if you count their proxies, such as the Houthi rebels ravaging our Amazon shipments in the Red Sea (Houthis people think they are, amiright?!).

It's hard for us basic Americans to understand all this, but evidently, the Islamic State considers Iran a lost cause and considers it their mission to kill apostate Muslims, which includes all the Shiites in Iran, to whom the martyrs call out "c'mere you lil' Shiite!!" before igniting themselves into retirement. (more)

Iowan Update

The Iowa Caucuses take place on January 15th, one week from this coming Monday, which means this site has just become more midwestern than ever. Ramaswamy, who has no chance of winning, says, "We have a strong chance of winning!" and explains that he built a billion-dollar fortune by making stuff up and that he was confident this week in Iowa would be no different. It turns out Donald Trump still remains 50-plus points ahead of every other candidate, and understandably, Trump has more experience making stuff up, including that he won the last election.

The battle for second place currently rests between Nikki Haley and Ron Desantis, both sitting in the 11-12% range in average polls, but the one thing holding them back, besides the color of their skin (the base likes orange), is not knowing the cause of the Civil War – Ron, because he made it almost illegal in Florida to teach race issues in schools and Nikki,... well, she got caught in a gaff, on the topic this past week. (more)

Menendez

When Bob first said, "Where's the beef?" he wasn't looking for a Wendy's sandwich. It was code for greasing his palms. This week, Bob is facing additional charges in his indictment for corruption and bribery. He started the process by getting into the beef meat business with Qatar and then expanded to bag loads of gold bars shoveled into his house in exchange for influencing the Foreign Relations Committee he chairs – and eventually real estate deals worth millions of dollars. Menendez is scheduled to stand trial in May. (more)

Crime Families

This week, House Democrats revealed that Donald Trump received nearly $8 million from foreign entities, a reminder of how sneaky the Biden Crime Family is if they can funnel foreign money directly into Donald Trump's account while Republicans struggled to prove their impeachment case against him. Thankfully, Trump has submitted a brief arguing that Presidents should receive "absolute immunity," which means that if a judge agrees, Biden would be immune too, and his impeachment inquiry is no longer valid. Since Presidents can't be guilty of crimes, and the two will likely be head to head in the next election, perhaps we just wait to see who wins with the voters and who forgets they were running. (more)

That's it for this week!

Remember: There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's The Lorem Ipsum. Why not share a copy with your friends?

Have a great weekend!

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