MISIDENTIFIED TREES, MISPRONOUNCED TOWNS & DUMMIES

We don’t have cable or regular TV, but we do have access to our local live CBS affiliate, KIRO (aka channel 7 as I grew up knowing it) via our Paramount subscription through Amazon Prime Video. So every so often I try to watch the news that way to see what mainstream priorities and coverage of stuff looks and sounds like these days. There are a couple of super hot blondes on it. Like I think I’ve got it bad for the weather”girl” (man I grew up with some bullshit, didn’t I?). But I digress …

Here’s the thing; I hate it when the local news doesn’t know local things that every local person should know. ESPECIALLY if they want any credibility as a source of reliable, factual information.

Growing up the thing that would drive us nuts was when they’d pronounce “Duvall” (a small town neighbor just north of our even smaller town) incorrectly. They’d pronounce it like the actor Robert Duvall, with the emphasis on the last syllable (doov-ALL). But people who grew up in Duvall and Monroe and our town all pronounce it DOO-vall.

That wasn’t the only one they’d mispronounce (and we do have some doozies in Washington, like Seiku, Sequim and Puyallup) and maybe they’ve gotten better about it (and/or enough new people from California have taken over and overruled everyone pronouncing things the old local ways), but yeah … annoying.

So anyway, I’m watching the news the other night about our big windstorm(s) and apparently it’s a news-worthy phenomenon these days that LEAVES COME DOWN off trees in the fall, especially when the wind blows (who knew?!?). And when you overdevelop land like people have been doing and cut down so many trees that only a few are left exposed to the brunt of the wind, TREES FALL DOWN.

So the news people visit houses that trees have fallen on, like this one guy in Woodinville, and they show a downed FIR tree, and with an ominous voice say “... like this PINE TREE” (emphasis is my own) but it’s a fucking FIR tree not a PINE TREE omg why would anyone trust any shit that you’re saying.

We do have pine trees in Washington, but mostly in Western Washington they are FIR trees. People just -- ugh. It’s like the only evergreen tree they know the name of is PINE but man they are so different. You can’t learn to identify and distinguish between even the top three or five (fir, cedar, spruce, hemlock, pine)?

How do these people GET these jobs?!? Like oh “your source for LOCAL news and nonsense” you don’t even know what the most common plants are here and you can’t tell the difference between one kind of salmon and another, one kind of crab and another, a mussel from a clam? How is anyone supposed to trust your expertise in local matters?

Oh yeah, it’s not about expertise or reality or truth … it’s about spoon-feeding people what the most people want to hear: that nature encroacheth on your little enormous senseless grotesque immodest poorly-built boxes of ticky-tacky. That rain ruins your alcoholic weekends on the water terrorizing orcas with your sea-doos and destroying any peace and quiet with your reckless motorboating.

No wonder these dumb fuckers are always on TV and social media complaining about the rain like ohhh wow what a disappointment PRECIPITATION instead of sunshine. Move back to California. Set yourselves on fucking fire. Go to that shithole of corruption and brutality that is Arizona. Get the fuck out of here, dummies. The FIR trees need RAIN, not more houses to fall on. The trees aren’t the ones threatening your houses … your houses are threatening the trees. Get some birth control. Leave some forestland. Go away, you lazy simple-minded non-learners.

Sorry I got a little off track here. I just kind of lose my mind when I think of neighbors who are like "I hope we cut all the trees down around here so our gutters won't be clogged anymore by pine needles". Except they are FIR needles, and you are a dumb ass regardless.

Fisting Tarantino with Righteous Fury

 I actually loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm one of the few people who did. Except for that shitty scene shitting on Bruce Lee. And the super limp Playboy Mansion party scene. Overall, though, I felt there was a lot of heart, redemption, and cathartic kindness served in the movie by rewriting one of the most brutally sad true Hollywood stories of all time. I didn't even mind that Tarantino, like the foot wanker he is, had an Aussie portray Sharon Tate, and of course jammed her luscious feet in our faces. I still felt like it really humanized her in a way the obsessive and gross tragedy porn surrounding her murder since then has always made even worse. So much sick wanker salt in the Sharon Tate wound.

Still, I was glad to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar express how shitty Tarantino's insulting depiction of Bruce Lee was. Glad to see SOMEONE set the record straight for people who are too young to remember him and what an enormous hero, teacher, entertainer, and more he was (and still is) for so so so many people. Hopeful that people recognize that Tarantino might know a lot of trivia and have stolen a lot from kung fu movies made by actual originators, but he isn't a fucking authority on every single thing that ever happened in film and on TV. I hoped fans would know that some people (ex. BRUCE LEE) were making movies decades before he was, and under much more pressure from all kinds of crazy scary directions and with less bankrolling than some snot-nosed video store clerk got through complicity with the serial rapist we know is Harvey Weinstein. SOME people were making movies they also starred in where THEY actually weren't just some shit-acting ugly-faced foul-mouthed cameo, but WERE HOT, PHYSICALLY IMPRESSIVE, AND HAD AN AGENDA OF LIBERATION.

When my friend and I talked about this troubling aspect of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, my friend said he believed that Tarantino wasn't really disrespecting Bruce Lee, but just depicting him through the eyes of Brad Pitt's jealous character immersed in a fantasy.

But nope. Here we just found out via Tarantino trying to impress shithole Joe Rogan that ... nah. Quentin says we should all "suck a dick" if we have a problem with his treatment of Bruce Lee, insisting that his portrayal was ACCURATE. He insists,

"Bruce had no respect for American stuntmen, he was always hitting them with his feet. It’s called tagging when you hit a stuntman for real. He was always tagging them with his feet and his fist and it got to the point where they would refuse to work with Bruce. He had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen. It was probably just like, ‘Oh they’re just not good enough. They are pussies. I want to make it look real!’ But stuntmen don’t like that. That’s unprofessional."

Hey, Quentin ... you want to know what's "unprofessional" and DIRECTLY RELATED TO ACTUALLY SHITTING ON STUNTMEN ON SET??

YOU ALMOST KILLED UMA THURMAN, making she (who is NOT a stuntman) do her own stunts in a totally unsafe car on an unsafe road while your stunt coordinator was suspiciously not even aware it was going to happen, and for years was complicit in covering it up. But you're shitting on Bruce Lee for "tagging"? In, what, the sixties and early seventies? But you did this to Uma decades later when the whole industry KNOWS BETTER? You can do more than suck a dick, shithole ... you can take a big fist up your ass straight out your mouth, asshole. If you want to talk with expert authority about someone doing "unprofessional" stunt shit on set, talk about that. And don't ever open your fucking mouth about anything else when you weren't even there until you've made amends for that. Which you never have, you rich SHITHOLE bastard.

Tarantino bad-mouthing BRUCE LEE as having "NOTHING BUT DISRESPECT FOR AMERICAN STUNTMEN"? Pretty sure Tarantino is using the word "American" when he really means white. Tarantino who put DAVID CARRADINE -- the white guy who knew zero martial arts but was given Kung Fu and the role of a Shaolin monk instead of Bruce Lee -- in those ass-of-Carradine-kissing Kill Bill movies.

I am actually grateful for Tarantino clearing up any doubt we had about his fetishization of people (and feet, which is pretty hot and not problematic but SUPER RIDICULOUS how he denies it and shows he does not have the capacity to be honest about his motivation when it's harmless sexy fun OR when it's actually a really big fucking deal like when traumatizing actors so he can wank to extreme caricatures of the BBC/big black dicks and N-words he's obsessed with); the man is dishonest. Amazing movies, but he is dishonest and puts people in extreme life-threatening jeopardy, traumatizes and injures them.

It is SO IMPORTANT to him to perpetuate his fantasy perception of Bruce Lee as LESS than the great (and good) person, athlete, and legend that he was / is willing to shit on his survivors. It would be bad enough if it were "just" his daughter, but IT IS NOT. You cannot pretend to have respect for "American stuntmen" and the movies and true real life tragedies or even the whole fucking WEST COAST of this country when you shit on the legend of Bruce Lee in such a disdainful, selfish, hypocritical way REPEATEDLY. So unnecessarily. Because you want to climb inside Joe Rogen's hateful ass for treats and approval?

When faced with this obvious truth (everything Tarantino does is done FIRST AND FOREMOST for his own self-serving wank, and for sure is not in service to healing a wound in the American psyche) I have to accept that the things I defended in and celebrated about Once Upon a Time are just my fantasies of wanting to be able to enjoy Tarantino's movies on the big screen without acknowledging how he really only cares about himself.

So yeah .. GREAT ... I hear where you're coming from, Quentin; you like Kung Fu just enough to steal from it and to not pay any respects but to actually TEAR DOWN the man who brought that here -- the whole REASON you got to see any of that on TV growing up -- it was HIM *NOT YOU*, but NOT AS MUCH as you want to be Brad Pitt's bitch boy cocksucker. There is a hierarchy of dicks Tarantino's mouth gets wet for, and the real reason he puts Bruce Lee down is because in his richly detailed land of of dearly-beloved stereotypes and fetish fantasies, Bruce's Chinese cock wouldn't be able to stretch out Quentin's thirsty BIG WHITE BITCH MOUTH. That's his real problem right there.

I may be in the immediate throes of very black and white thinking here so soon after reading his shitty words and may soften up SOMEWHAT to accept ... it can be both black and white (although it is never EVER just a muddle of fucking GREY IN THE MIDDLE with Tarantino no matter what your scorecard looks like after the final bell ... the best will be BOTH black and white).