ecthompsonmd, Author at Where Is The Outrage?

Black Adam – Almost Good

I really wanted to like Black Adam but…

It really wasn’t that good.

There were good parts to this movie but…

So if you combined the movies Sahara, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and National Treasure, you have the opening 15 – 20 minutes of this movie. Then you transition to the A-team portion of the movie (or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if you prefer) when the “superheroes” come together.

Then we get into the good guys battling the bad guys. Of course, we don’t know who is really good and who is really bad for some time.

The Justice League or Justice Gang or Justice Society (stupid name) are kinda a weak group of Superheroes. (I’m not sure exactly what DC comics were thinking.) Hawkman? Way too self-righteous. Cyclone, although beautiful, she is a really, really weak Storm from Marvel Comics. Finally, there is Atom Smasher whose name is better than his Ant-Man powers of growing big. What the heck? It is like all of the DC real superheroes were busy so let’s bring in the 3rd string. Pierce Brosnan and his acting talents are somewhat wasted as Dr. Fate. By the way, there is a 30 second cameo by Henley Winkler. That was fun. I have no idea why he is in the movie but we can go with it.

There are some funny parts and there was some outstanding action sequences.

Back to the meat of the story. There really is no story. There is this magic crown which smart lady, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), translates the ancient language into something that makes absolutely no sense. Let’s just say at the stupid translation. Yet, in an awful plot twist, she was reading the ancient language upside down. This change the meaning of the message completely. I’m sorry, this makes no sense. Yet, in many of the superhero movies, they asked us to suspend reality.

Oh and there is this substance that is powerful and indestructible – Eternium. (Every comic movie seems to have their own super substance. The Mandalorian has beskar. Wolverine had adamantium. Of course, the Black Panther and Wakanda have vibranium.) (Somehow you can mold it into anything that you want, even an airplane which gets destroyed later in the movie.) Yep, it doesn’t make any sense.

Dwayne Johnson continues to be an engaging movie star. He is simply fun to watch. He is massive. He is funny. He is serious, and, in parts, he is actually touching and emotional. Anyway, Black Adam is a fun movie. You do have to suspend reality. You have to overlook several major flaws in the script. If you are able to do all of that then you enjoy this movie. Good Luck and tell them the Man in Black sent you. (too much?)

By ecthompsonmd|2022-11-23T17:34:26-04:00November 22nd, 2022|Movies|0 Comments

Cover of Stuck in the Middle with You

This is a nice cover of Stealers Wheel’s tune – Stuck in the Middle with You.

By ecthompsonmd|2022-11-22T17:12:21-04:00November 22nd, 2022|Fun, General, Music|0 Comments

The Purpose of Government

Many years ago, a conservative friend decided he needed to challenge me. So he asked me one of those popular conservative questions at the time: what does the government do for you? This conversation took place over 30 years ago.

This was an era when conservatives said they would “like to shrink the size of government,” though they never said how small they wanted it to be. In 1986 Ronald Reagan had said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’.” And in 2001 anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said he didn’t want “to abolish government”; he just wanted “to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

So, back to the original question. My friend argued that the government doesn’t do much for the average American. Yes, the government maintains the roads. We get clean water to drink. The government maintains our sewage system, which decreases disease. Finally, the government protects us with our military. In his conservative mind, that’s all the government was good for. But, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, it’s important to note that our government does much more.

We began hearing about a disturbance off the African coast that could develop into a hurricane in mid-September. We knew this because of a sophisticated network of satellites that orbit the earth and give reams of data to the team of meteorologists at the National Weather Service. These meteorologists and other scientists, working for our government, use sophisticated modeling to track and predict the path of this tropical disturbance. This data is then given to the smiling faces on CBS or the Weather Channel.

As the disturbance turned into a tropical depression and a hurricane, we could follow all this in real time. The cyclone slammed into Cuba on Sept. 26-27. We constantly got detailed, sophisticated information as the National Weather Service flew airplanes into this raging hurricane to learn more about it. Twenty-four to 36 hours before landfall, we knew the storm was going to hit the western coast of Florida, somewhere around Fort Myers, as it turned away from the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. We also knew, a day ahead of time, that this was going to be a major hurricane—and sure enough, it hit Florida as a Category 4, with 155-mph winds (at 157 mph a storm becomes Category 5).

By ecthompsonmd|2022-11-06T14:04:20-04:00November 6th, 2022|Domestic Issues|0 Comments