Asimov, Vonnegut, & Wendy’s: I For One Welcome Our Robot Overlords

Last week saw an announcement from fast food chain Wendy’s that they’d be rolling out some 6,000 “self-service kiosks” in their restaurants. This follows rulings in California and New York that would gradually raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 an hour, and as you might imagine the connection has not been lost on people.

Of course, when I say “people”, I mean the ranks of bougie suburbanites who have been gleefully cackling over Wendy’s decision. It is these folks who I’d like to address directly today.

<Ahem>

****. You.

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Seriously, what kind of demented, spiteful people are you?

After decades of stagnant wages and crippling poverty. After years of broken promises and betrayals by their supposed liberal representatives. After months and months of fighting and campaigning finally the poor have a victory.

And your response to Wendy’s giving their jobs to robots is “Serves ’em right?”

Did I say **** you yet?

Well, **** you.

You guys sound like mustache-twirling caricatures from some turn-of-the-century political cartoon.

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“Oh I say, my dear Montressor- that’ll show those filthy proles! Now let us adjourn to the smoking room for cigars and brandy!”

Livable wages?

What are they going to ask for next? An eight-hour work day? Paid lunches and sick leave?

Only for all your cantankerous whinging, you’re probably not some festering slumlord or monocled oil-tycoon. So why are you bent out of shape? Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S5E22 “And the Big Gamble”: A TV Review

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An obvious part of my excitement for tonight’s season finale was the fact that it affords me a break from reviewing this show weekly, which is much appreciated given how busy my life has been lately. As far as the actual content of the episode there was finally finding out if Max and Randy have a future, with getting to see more Asian characters appear on the show [which I only realized when putting together the header image above] trailing far behind.

Let’s just say that I’m glad I wasn’t particularly excited about the latter. To get that out of the way before really digging into the plot points 2 Broke Girls continues to be so bad at dealing with racial minorities, particularly when it comes to Asians. This is particularly surprising when taking into account how many have been featured lately, at least in comparison to other groups. In this season alone we had a flamboyantly gay hotel manager in LA [Alec Mapa] and an anal-obsessed realtor [Camille Chen], both of whom had a decent amount of lines and screentime as side characters go.

While it is very fair to say that the majority of bit parts on 2 Broke Girls don’t allow for much more than a few quick, cheap laughs, regardless of race, the problem becomes noticeable when focusing on the main cast. Han Lee is the only Asian character among them, and can be summed up in a single word: pathetic. He exists to be the butt of every joke, and when every other Asian face can be boiled down to “dramatic” and “really likes anal sex” the optics don’t look too great.

Joining those two is Hwang Hwang, a Korean gangster played by Jimmie Saito. He’s meant to be a threat to Han’s well-being but never actually feels dangerous, and after watching his demo reel sounds like the director told him to play it up, and then just kept repeating that over and over and over again. Anyway. This show not doing well with race. Not exactly news. Continue reading

Why I Know “I’ll Be Back” to Watching 90’s Action Movies When I Have Kids

I came to the 90’s action party late.

Sure, I watched a few Arnie movies as a kid, but those were the blatantly child-friendly movies. I’m talking Kindergarten Cop and Jingle All The Way, fun romps to be sure, but nothing to prepare me for the awakening I had last year.

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It all began when John convinced me to watch his favourite films from the 90’s (and a few from the 80’s). I decided to indulge my husband’s nostalgia. How was I to know it would end in an movie obsession that would leave me with a classic-action-movie-sized hole, never to be filled? I’ve had a hard time identifying what it is about these action movies that is still so appealing, so I thought I’d write a post trying to figure it out.

They’re Intensely Optimistic

I recently watched SicarioIt was an intense action (/crime/thriller) flick that follows the story of Kate Macer “an idealistic FBI agent [who] is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico”. While it was certainly a thought-provoking and well-executed film, it was also reeeaaaalllllllllyyy depressing.

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Have you ever noticed that? Some of the “best” films out there also happen to be the ones that leave you feeling like you’ve been punched in the gut. Perhaps it’s the gritty realism of contemporary films that sets them apart from previous action films, but that realism also prevents them from being a true escape from real-world troubles.

If you go back and watch almost any 90’s action movie you can go into it knowing your protagonist won’t come out of his adventure emotionally scarred. Instead, you know he’ll just rampage across your screen, kicking butt and taking names.

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With an endless amount of bullets.

Continue reading

The Year of Living Anarchically

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Nobody had bothered to vote.

That, at least, was the common consensus.

There were those who had claimed to. A couple thousand from either of the big parties. A couple hundred from the smaller ones. But when pressed for proof, they quickly fell silent, muttering this or that about phantom polling stations or mysterious ballots.

The real truth of the matter seemed to be that, on the first week of November, no one had showed up. Election officials sat in trailers in empty parking lots, quiet school gyms, and libraries. They certainly hadn’t heard anything about any lost registrations.

The news tried to make something of it.

“Leaderless in Washington.”

“American Anarchy.”

“Un-Election 2016.”

There was 24-hour coverage. Updates every fifteen minutes. Special segments by Shep Smith and Christiane Amanpour. Withering editorials by Anthony Zurcher. Investigations by Glen Greenwald. Don Lemon asked if aliens could have done it and Alex Jones declared that the aliens were just a clever distraction.

All of it faded when someone asked if they had voted. Continue reading

How Hollywood is Foretelling the Future While Still Falling on the Wrong Side of History

No one wants to be “on the wrong side of history”.

No one wants to be wrong, period, and even those of us who raise their hackles at being described as “progressive” fear that those words, when leveled against them, might come true. To hear that phrase is to be threatened, told that you’re a dinosaur; except without any of the perks like monstrous size and claws and teeth, more the being pushed out by newer lifeforms and soon to be extinct. The message is, essentially, to keep up or be left behind.

To be asked whether you want to be “on the wrong side of history” is only hypothetical as far as what your choice will be. That the world will actually be changing is not the question; it’s being stated as a direct fact.

Almost two years ago to the day I wrote about film producer Avi Arad, who has been responsible for the past five [an absurd amount even for me, who considers him my favourite superhero] Spider-Man films. In particular I called attention to his response regarding whether the White Peter Parker would always be the one donning the webbed tights [“Absolutely”] and his response to whether or not the lack of diversity in comic book movies an issue [emphasis mine]:

“But I think we are finally becoming more of one world, and you’re going to see more and more diversity in the selection of characters. [. . .] It’s all going to change. I think sometimes we consciously look at it. We would love to have a superhero, we would love Marvel to create a superhero — We can create villains, but we’d love to have a Chinese superhero with something that is really interesting and how they got here, and what is their issue, and so on. But it’s coming. And it’s inevitable. It’s really inevitable. But it didn’t come naturally to comics in the days that no one was aware that there were actually other countries and other people.

aviaradkenjenningsI prefaced that article with a short bit of fiction in which Arad awakens in a cold sweat, realizing that the world he had once foretold had finally come to pass. By saying that these changes are “inevitable” he acknowledges that they are the impending future. By stating in direct terms that as long as he’s involved Spider-Man will never be Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino teen who has carried the title for years now, he both outlines the two camps [those who will, and won’t, be on the wrong side of history] and which side he will find himself in. Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S5E21 “And the Ten Inches”: A TV Review

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It’s weird to type the words “home stretch” without having my mind wander to how the the Raptors are doing in the NBA playoffs. To stick with illustrations involving my hometown’s professional sports team it doesn’t matter if the Raps beat the Miami Heat tonight, tying things up 1-1, since the goal is actually [and I’ll admit, implausibly] winning the entire thing. In a similar fashion it doesn’t actually matter if 2 Broke Girls delivered a spectacular episode or crashed and burned comedically [as per usual, it landed somewhere in the middle] since it’s the season finale that will [or won’t] draw audiences back this fall.

Choosing not to waste time on filler like last week’s episode, “And the Ten Inches” begins to actually move forward with the Dessert Bar idea that Max came up with four episodes ago. Construction is actually underway on what was once Max’s Homemade Cupcakes, with their first hiccup being that there’s definitely not enough room for both the bar and seating [more on that in “The Title Refers To” section below].  Continue reading