Like It Or Lump It: "Reacher" Season Two

  

Welcome to our feature "Like It Or Lump It" which reviews shows that appear the various streaming services.

When I was a teenager, there was a movie called "Billy Jack."   Billy Jack was a guy who would stroll into town and kick Republicans. They needed kicking because they were not nice to the hippie school teacher or the kids that went to the hippie high school.  I think. It has been over fifty years since I've seen "Billy Jack."

The point is that "Billy Jack" was a popular movie, and people liked seeing Billy Jack kick people who needed kicking.

"Reacher"on Amazon Plus is like "Billy Jack" except Reacher punches people regardless of political affiliation. 

Jack Reacher is a former Army MP who travels the countryside looking for people who need punching and delivers the punching. 

He's not a "hit man" (ha!). Nobody asks him to come to town and whoop up on people.  He strolls into town and notices that a bunch of people need the FIST OF JUSTICE, which he happily supplies.

Reacher is a massive man with six-pack abs and muscles on top of muscles.  He's basically a walking refrigerator.

The first season of "Reacher" finds him in Margrave, Georgia, which don't bother looking for on a map because it doesn't exist. For a place that is fictional, it was really corrupt. Spoiler alert! Reacher cleans out the town while becoming best pals with Oscar, the chief of detectives. 

Reacher even finds love in the arms of a blonde policewoman named Roscoe, which is a hoot because if this were an authentic Georgia policewoman, her name would have been Darlene.

Other facts about Reacher:  He likes jazz and was in Margrave to begin with to find out what happened to Margrave's famous jazz musician, Blind Lemon Jello. Shows like "Reacher" and "Bosch" use the love of jazz music to show how "deep" the character is. But let's be honest: how many people do you know listen to jazz?

Reacher travels light and buys his clothes at Goodwill-type shops OFF THE RACK.  How he can do this, I don't know. 

Season Two of "Reacher" begins with a man thrown out of a helicopter. The man was in Reacher's particular MP unit in the Army. There are several flashbacks where we see Major Reacher and his unit punching various Army personnel in severe need of punching.

It turns out that this man was part of a company that wanted to sell weapons to various countries that want to kill people.  The head of security for this company used to be a Terminator, which I thought would have raised a red flag during the hiring process.

There's a New York City cop who is the last honest cop in New York. He's a tough guy, but his heart is in the right place.

Reacher has two female co-stars who both can kick butt and take a stab wound in the arm.  Reacher has love moments with one of them, in which Reacher takes HIS shirt off.  You should skip this part because it will trigger your inferiority complex.

I liked Season Two of "Reacher" better than Season One.   Some of that is my bias against shows set in the South when it is pretty apparent nobody involved in the show has ever been in the South except to change planes in Atlanta.

Season Two had some comic moments, which helped it out. You have to level out some of the intense drama and punching with some jokes and quips.

My criticism is in the last episode, Reacher hops on a helicopter that is taking off by grabbing and holding on to its landing gear.   I don't care how crunches you can do I don't think that is possible.

Language: Many bad words but not quite at "Sopranos" level.

Violence: A lot of punching, kicking, shooting, and explosions.

Sex: Implied. Jack and the hot girl from the unit have a thing going on.

Plot:  Easy to follow, but doesn't make a lot of sense.

Unbelievable Parts:  The helicopter scene, Jack's ability to quickly set up LLCs for his sidekicks, and his ability to buy off the rack.

You never see:  Jack working out.  I guess he got his muscles from the muscle store.

Verdict: Like it!

2024: Sophie's Election

 

"Sophie's choice refers to an extremely difficult decision a person has to make. It describes a situation where no outcome is preferable over the other".

 

 
I watched President Biden's press conference last week.

It came on at 8:00 in the evening.  I don't know when reruns of "Matlock" are on, but I bet it is before 8:00.

He held it to respond to Special Counsel Robert Hur's decision not to recommend President Biden to be indicted for mishandling classified documents.

Hur's report described The President as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."  Supposedly, The President did not remember the years he was Vice President or the year his son died.

To prove Hur was full of malarkey, the President said, “As you know, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in,” Biden said in response to a question about Israel’s war against Hamas. “I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate.” 

The Sisi in this sentence is the President of Egypt, not Mexico, but you must hand it to Biden. He got Mexico to open the gate.

All in all, it was an awful moment for Biden.  He yelled at a reporter from CNN for having the nerve to repeat polling data showing voters are concerned about Biden's age.  He said, “That is your judgment, that is not the judgment [for] the press.”  

Just for the record, on Thursday night, the NBC news poll showed 76% are concerned about Biden's age. On Sunday, that became 85%.  That's not a judgment by the press.

It got so bad that CNN even fact-checked The President.  They fact-checked a Democrat.  Let that sink in.

The next day on my Facebook post, I said the press conference was a train wreck in a dumpster fire during a poop storm.  I was being nice.

I posted several weeks ago about how Biden's age problem reminded me of an episode of "Newhart" where a man brings "the world's smallest horse" to show the audience of "Vermont Today."

Newhart asks the man, "How do you know that's the world's smallest horse?"  The man answered, "Look at him."

I don't know how you could have watched Biden's press conference and not see an infirmed elderly man.  Look at him.

Biden has two things going for him.  One, Vice President Harris doesn't seem ready for prime time.  If she were, there would be Democratic leaders meeting with the President like the Republicans did with Nixon in '74. Two,  Biden's 2024 opponent will be Donald Trump.

Trump is four years younger than Biden, but he seems more energetic because he acts like a baboon.

If Biden is unfit for office due to age, Trump is unsuitable due to temperament.  Trump thinks the country is his privately held firm that he can order around to his liking. It's not.  He has to use persuasion, which to Trump means making up a nickname.

So America has a choice. On one hand, you have somebody you would take the keys of the car away from if he was your dad. On the other, we have a man you wouldn't want your mother, daughter, or ex-wife to date.

Biden needs a boat load of Prevagen.  "Now where did I put those nuclear codes?"

Trump needs an exorcism.  What he said about John McCain years ago was inexcusable. He brought McCain up a few weeks ago, noting McCain could not raise his hands over his head.  McCain couldn't do that because the North Vietnamese were torturing him while Trump was in Manhattan trying to avoid the Clap.

This past week, Trump said about Nikki Haley's husband: “Where’s her husband? Oh, 'he’s away, he’s away.’ What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone."

Haley's husband is a South Carolina National Guard member and has been deployed to Africa.

What are we going to do? 

A Super Romance

 

 

In case you haven't heard, Taylor Swift, Time Magazine's Person of The Year 2023, is dating future song subject Travis Kelce.  Kelce plays for the Kansas City Chiefs and is the favorite receiver of quarterback Patrick Mahomes.  Kelce is so important he not only dates Swift, who is a billionaire, but is also in State Farm commercials.

(I like the State Farm commercials, but seeing a State Farm agent hanging out at a football practice field is weird.)

Swift has transcended into a part of pop culture where we must be reminded how important she is every few minutes.  

Since I'm not a 14-year-old girl, I haven't paid that much attention to Taylor Swift.   I'm not as bad as William F. Buckley, who commented on the death of Jerry Garcia that if he ever heard a Grateful Dead song, he wasn't aware of it. I know three of her songs: "Tears On My Guitar," "Shake It Off," and "Anti-Hero."

 That's it. Sorry, I'll do better next pop superhero.

Somehow, and I need clarification, when this all began, Swift and Kelce started dating each other. Swift started showing up at Kansas City home games wearing Kansas City swag like Kelce gave her his letterman jacket.

 I mean, I have a hard time believing both of them were on Tinder (that's still a thing, right?), and one day, they swiped right and met for coffee. One thing led to another, and soon Ta-Ta was sitting next to Tra-Tra's mother at football games.

"What up? I saw your profile. I'm a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs and I have a couple of Super Bowl rings. Additionally, I can introduce you to Jake from State Farm so you can combine your home and auto."

"Yeah, I'm a billionaire, and I write songs better than Joni Mitchell. Plus, if you into red lipstick, that's my jam."

Of course, this means we must see Taylor on TV and her reaction to anything Travis does on the field.  This means we see Taylor a lot and sports commentary like "I wonder what Taylor thought about that holding call".

As Triumph the Insult Comic Dog would say, it was the perfect storm for me to poop on.  Overexposed pop princess falls for meathead football player.  The jokes practically write themselves.

Of course, my fellow travelers on the Right have to come in and ruin everything by wondering, out loud, that the Taylor-Kelce hookup was some sort of "psyop" by the Biden campaign. Does anyone really believe the Biden campaign is that smart?

One podcaster, Mike Crispi, wrote on X (Twitter)about this romance: "All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and 'endorses' Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield. It's all been an op since day one."

I'm not sure Mike has actually ever watched football, but Kelce couldn't come out during halftime since his team is playing. But if this did happen, he can proudly say he called it first.

For years, Swift avoided politics because the mean girls thought politics was icky.  But she has for the past several years commented on political issues and always for Democrats, surprise, surprise.

Some people have other theories about conservative attacks on Swift.

Professor Joan Donavan says, "Amongst the right wing, because she is getting older and hasn't had children and whatnot, she's less seen as the traditional 'wifey' material."  In broad terms, Taylor Swift represents older, independent women who do not need male support to have a career, to self-determine where they're going."

First of all, who says "Amongst" anymore?

Secondly, I didn't know she didn't have any "whatnots."  At the big conservative meetings, we look at all the celebrities to ensure they have whatnots.

Some have suggested we ought to celebrate that Taylor and Travis "found love." Fine. Yippie. Famous people have found love.  I would be more receptive to it if Travis was on the taxi squad and Taylor was singing backup for Adele.

 

Goodbye, S.I.

 

 

George Harrison said all things must pass, but I didn't think he included Sports Illustrated magazine, which pulled the plug last week.

Sports Illustrated was simply the best sports magazine ever.  Sure, the others were good, but S.I. had it all. Good writing and excellent photographs, and in February, they had girls in bathing suits.

They had writers like Tex Maule, who loved the NFL as much as he hated the AFL.  He thought Randy Johnson (the first starting quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons) was a better quarterback than Bob Griese.  History does not show that.

However, Maule could write. He said this about a fight he covered between Muhammad Ali and Ernest Terrell:  "It was a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty."

They had Dan Jenkins.  He wrote over 500 articles for S.I., including a piece that introduced us to the world of an Illinois college student named Dick Butkus.

Jenkins wrote the book Semi-Tough, which is, in my humble opinion, the funniest book ever written about pro football.

Jenkins also said, "Archie Griffin won the Heisman twice, and he didn't deserve it once."  I have used a variation of that line for years.

I could go on and on. Frank Deford. Ron Fimrite. Rick Reilly. All of them could write, and all of them wrote well.

Sports Illustrated was the king when it came to sports photography.  The pictures they published captured the moment. It was the literal thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

At one time, pro football ended in mid-January, and it would be another month until Spring Training.  S.I. developed their "Swimsuit" edition to fill in the time between. 

Kids, you have no idea what big deal it became.

First of all, having a sports magazine publishing pictures of women in skimpy bathing suits seems kind of off, but you know, boys like looking at pictures of women in skimpy bathing suits.

Secondly, as time progressed, the "bathing suits" were only bathing suits in the technical sense. I never saw a girl wearing a bathing suit S.I. published because it usually showed the model's hindquarters and sometimes all of the upper part of the torso.  That was a big deal to a fourteen-year-old boy in the South. 

Once, S.I. had a model named Cheryl Tiegs. She was super.

One of her bathing suits was mesh. I never saw a girl wear a mesh bathing suit. As we said in the library at Wheeler High School, you saw everything.  By the way, Cheryl Tiegs is now 76 years old.

Well, with time, the internet came, and people stopped reading magazines. You couldn't give away enough football phones to get people to buy a subscription to the magazine.

Sports Illustrated began making odd decisions to get people to buy their magazine. The cover girl for the swimsuit issue a few years back was, as we say, husky. Last year's cover girl wasn't technically a girl, at least in the total physical sense. 

Their last Sportsperson Of The Year was Deion Sanders who lead the Colorado Buffaloes to a 4-8 record. That's when I should have known S.I. was going down.

It is sad that future generations won't look forward to Thursday for the weekly Sports Illustrated.  But hopefully, some of us boomers have kept copies for those coming behind us. Just don't tell your mother and grandmother which ones you find because one of them might have the pictures Cheryl Tiegs and her mesh bathing suit.

 

Never Enough

 

 

One of the things everybody has to admit about college is that it matters a great deal where someone graduates from college because there are college graduates from other schools than the one you graduated from.

Some people don't go to the large state schools. They go to the smaller state schools that the people at the large state schools call "Directional."  This means the school's name has a "direction" in it.  Southern Mississippi is one (Jimmy Buffett and two of my high school teachers, Mr. Hines and Miss Love, graduated from there.)

 I didn't know this was a big deal until I heard some of the people at the larger state schools crack wise of the Directional Schools.

Of course, I have never done this. I am a graduate of Kennesaw State University. That means my diploma has the word "Kennesaw" on it. I can't make fun of anyone else's school unless they are total dorks like Georgia Tech graduates. But even then, I don't make fun of their degree. I make fun of them because they are dorks. Plus, and I am legally obligated to say this, Georgia Tech has graduated more astronauts than Kennesaw State.

I bring this up because of Harvard University.

Everybody knows Harvard University is the leading university in America.  The alumni of this institution include Henry Kissinger, the Unabomber, and Thurston Howell, III.

All the intelligent and rich people go to Harvard, and a Harvard degree guarantees a job where you can wear an ascot and drink a martini at your desk.

Recently, Hamas invaded Israel. They killed and raped. They took hostages, which are still there.

You would think Harvard University would be where students would protest Hamas.  No, the students protested Israel and threatened Jewish students.

The president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, was called to testify in a congressional hearing about the apparent anti-semitism on campus. Dr. Gay hemmed and hawed about it, stating she would have to see the context of someone punching a student in a yamaka.

You will note I am adding quotation marks to the following sentence from The New Yorker.

"In early December, the activist Christopher Rufo published allegations about Gay in his newsletter, including instances of missing citations and verbatim copying of other scholars' writing without the use of quotation marks or attribution. In the following weeks, more apparent instances of plagiarism piled up."

 

This caused a big scandal because, and I am speaking as a Kennesaw State history graduate, nothing will get you into more trouble than missing citations and copying other works verbatim without quotation marks.

 

I found my senior paper about Gerald Ford.  I wrote:  

"Gerald Ford" was the "President Of The United States" (Encyclopedia Britannica).*

 

I made a B+ on the paper because my professor said he didn't believe there was a student paper ever written that deserved an A.  No, I'm not bitter.**

Christoper Rufo is a graduate of Harvard.  Wait, make that Harvard Extension School.

 

Harvard Extension School is the Online Harvard.  It is a way for people to obtain a degree from Harvard without having to live in Boston and spend billions of dollars for a degree.

 

Of course, people took to X and noted that Rufo isn't a graduate of the real Harvard, but instead of the online Harvard, like there was a difference.

The problem is what Harvard says about Harvard Extension School.

"Our degrees and certificates are adorned with the Harvard insignia. Earning a credential from us means enjoying the best of a world-class Harvard education, and the weight of that reputation and lineage on your resume. You’ll have access to our world-class libraries, walk at University Commencement along with students from other Harvard schools, and become members of the Harvard Alumni Association."

My son's brother-in-law is taking classes from the Harvard Extension School.  That's the first time I ever heard of it.

I have recently discovered that a high school chum is a recent Harvard Extension School graduate.  I asked him about it. 

He said. "I thought it was great. It is the same classes that regular Harvard people take. Overall, a great experience with the best professors in the world."

Eventually, the people on X who belittled the Harvard Extension School returned and had to do an Emily Litella and say, "Never mind."

But to paraphrase Rosanne Rosannadanna, it just goes to show you that even a Harvard diploma doesn't satisfy some people.

 

 

*I must note that my buddy Greg Marshall actually opened the door for Gerald Ford one time.  He has also met Jimmy Buffett. Greg, not Gerald Ford, although Gerald and Betty probably visited Margaritaville a few times.

 

** Yes, I am.

 

The Future

 

Here we are in 2024! We are waiting to see what the new year will hold. I have some predictions.

The most important: Taylor Swift will not marry Travis Kelce. But she will write a song about him and OMG HOW SAD IS THIS SONG AND WHAT A RAT TRAVIS WAS TO TAY-TAY, YOU GUYS.

The Atlanta Falcons will hem and haw and not fire their head coach because, well, he just moved in and everything. 

There will be a new Tik-Tok craze that will sweep the nation, and by nation, I mean young people. It will be stupid and potentially dangerous. 

Somebody will use the term "fur babies," which will get on my nerves.

When discussing College Football, a Georgia Tech graduate will mention how many astronauts graduated from Georgia Tech and how many felons graduated from Georgia.

Trump will announce that he is picking himself as his running mate.  When told he cannot do that, he will post on his Truth Social that this is the kind of WITCH HUNT and ELECTION INTERFERENCE HE'S BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR THE PAST EIGHT YEARS.

President Biden will mumble.

When you see the movie that wins The Oscar for Best Movie, you will not like it.

Speaking of movies, soon, movie theatres will offer financing to see a movie. EZ PAYMENTS!

The Atlanta Braves will make the playoffs and lose in the first round.  

President Biden will win the nomination of the Democratic Party. His acceptance speech will be about how bad MAGA is and how the economy is doing well, and you should buy electric cars because of climate change, and somebody get me some ice cream because it tastes so good. 

Somebody will ask you: "Is it hot enough for you?"

Former President Clinton will say that he doesn't like young girls. Instead, he likes the brainy know-it-all types with cankles that don't know how to laugh. 

 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West, Joe Manchin, and Larry Hogan will be blamed for the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.

You will look at Netflix, Amazon, Peacock, and all the other streaming services for something to watch. You will give up and watch a rerun of "Friends."

 

Speaking of the streaming services, you will run across a detective show that features a detective who doesn't play by the rules.  He likes to kick butt and chew gum and guess what?  He just ran out of Hubba Bubba. But he's very intelligent. How do you know?  Because he listens to JAZZ.

A famous Rock star will pass away.

 

I will turn 65 years old this year.  I think I could pass at being 63 years old. I know when I pick up my grandson, I will make a noise like "oomph".

 

 

 

2023: A Swift Year

 

 

We stand at the precipice of another year and look back at 2023, a year best described as the Aaron Rodgers of years.   It goes out on the field, with great hoopla, and falls over after four plays with a knee injury which doctors describe as "really bad", especially for a four-hundred-year old quarterback.

It was the type of year that Time magazine, pronounced Taylor Swift the "Person Of The Year."  (Not to be outdone, Sports Illustrated deemed Deion Sanders, coach of the University of Colorado Buffaloes, as "Sportsman Of The Year" for winning four whole games.)

Prompting Swift's "Person Of The Year" selection was her concert tour, which sold a billion tickets despite her look as a skinny pale girl that trowels on a ton of red lipstick.

Time Magazine said, "Swift’s accomplishments as an artist—culturally, critically, and commercially—are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point so shut up, nobody cares about your Boomer music anymore. As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Boxcar Willie; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, and Ray Stevens whose song  'The Streak' still cracks us up." *

President Biden finished the year with a 39 percent approval rating-up from 37 percent in November.  Things are looking up for President Joe who is a vigorous man that sometimes can even remember he lives.

This following is the truth.  When a nut attacked a private school in Nashville, the whole country waited for our kind, elderly, fatherly President to console a nation,which he did by explaining how much he likes ice cream.

Why is President Biden so unpopular?  I don't know, a seven-dollar bag of Doritos?

This is how bad it is for President Biden. His polling shows he is trailing former President Trump, a man who is such a threat to democracy that he must be kept off the ballot in Colorado.

President Trump is running against several others for the Republican party's nomination. His opponents are (I've included the Trumpster's reaction) Ron DeSantis (We don't like his shoes), Nikki Haley (A southern fried Hillary Clinton), Chris Christie (Boy, is he fat), and something called "Vivek."

Nobody has been able to get any traction on Trump because he is being indicted almost weekly, which has caused the opposite of the intended effect by making Trump more popular.  Trump is a parking ticket away from winning a landslide victory.

For the tenth year in a row, I didn't see won the movie that won The Academy Award for Best Picture. However, I did see the TV show "Suits," and it introduced me to something called "Mudding," in which a person lays in a tub of mud.

Bud Light made the worst marketing decision in years when it reached out to an "influencer" who is a male but whose pronoun is Audrey Hepburn.

The Kansas City Chiefs won their second Super Bowl behind the leadership of quarterback Taylor Swift, who is dating the "tight end" Travis Kelce, who has a brother who plays on the Philadelphia Eagles.  Things are complicated in the NFL.

The Atlanta Braves had the best team in baseball, but they didn't make it to the World Series because that's what Atlanta teams do, but hey they won The World Series two years ago.  Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers for 14 Kabillion Gazllion Dollars.

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, changed the name of Twitter to "X Used To Be Known As Twitter".

The worst thing that happened in 2023 was the Hamas attack on Israel, which killed 1200 Israelis in one day. The second worst thing is our best and the brightest young people who attend our best and brightest colleges became big Hamas fans. But don't worry. The administration of these schools will protect Jewish students.  Hahahahahahahaha. I kid, I kid. First senior leadership at all of the fine institutions must investigate the context in which the antisemitism took place.

The best thing that happened in 2023 was the arrival of Rowan Elliot Manis, my grandson. He is well on his way to becoming something I have never been: Tall.

 

* Okay, maybe I added some to this quote.