Omnibus Stupid MFers in the news thread (Part 2)

Young Couple on Photoshoot Jumps 90 Feet From Rail Bridge as Train Arrives

Basically, they decided to walk out onto the trestle, and were caught unawares as a train approached. They jumped off of the 90-foot structure, suffering serious injuries.

Last month, a woman in Mexico City was struck and killed by a train whilst attempting to take a selfie.

While I was surprised by the intensity of Black’s reaction, I think that “the man who helped make him famous” may be overstating Gass’s impact on Black’s career. Tenacious D is certainly a passion project of Black’s, but I’d wager that most people who are familiar with Black and his work know him much more for his films (most of which had nothing to do with Gass) than for anything related to Tenacious D.

This, for sure. Apparently, it’s only “cancel culture” when it happens to a conservative.

I mean, without Tenacious D, he probably wouldn’t have been cast in High Fidelity, which is what started getting him leading roles, and his acting career might never have gone any further than being the “hey it’s that guy” who gets killed at the beginning of a Law & Order episode or does a one-off as the cousin from out of town on a forgettable primetime sitcom.

And if I were a successful actor with a net worth of $50 million and Hollywood told me to throw my best friend from before fame under ths bus, I’d tell them to pound sand even if it does mean Patrick Warburton or someone winds up voicing Bowser in the SMB sequel.

I can understand Black’s reaction (I’ll bet he reacted long before “blowback” occurred), but I hope he stops and thinks about it. Shame to break up a band over that.

Although…
maybe Jack’s been thinking about it for years.

Maybe what Kyle Gass said in public is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what he’s been saying in private. And touring in close quarters with a bandmate who spews hateful comments gets unbearable really fast*.

.

*Cite: Notice that I’m NOT in a band with [redacted names of notorious Pitizens].

And I was looking forward to seeing Cecil and the Nitpickers at a live performance someday.

Besides which, isn’t Black’s own brand kind of built around pushing the envelope? Not as much as, say, Howard Sterns or Andrew Dice Clay, but he’s still got a reputation for being a bit edgy.

But not violent, as far as I know. He’s a strong Biden supporter so it’s probably really just about the threat of violence.

Nah. he may use a lot of dirty words, but his image his less “edgy” and more “silly and fun”. He’s a rock-n-roll clown, and clowns don’t talk about killing people.

Perhaps Jack Black was thinking of what happened to Kathy Griffin (who shared a photo of “a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head” of Donald Trump and was then widely cancelled)?

He’s more Spinal Tap than Sex Pistols.

If a hurricane has just rolled through your town, always remember to shoot at the people working to restore your electricity.

My WAG is that it’s Qanon/MAGA conspiracy theorist nutjobs who are sure these people are installing spy devices or something to sterilize them or whatever.

It’s notable that the article includes no suggestion at all what the motive for this behavior might be. Though a link at the bottom suggests that Gov. Abbott is trying to throw the utility company under the bus for his failure to deal with the hurricane damage. so it’s quite possible they have become a target of MAGA conspiracies.

I hope these lineman start walking off the job. I feel bad for people that have been without power for a week but if they want to get the message across, they’re going to have to show Abbot they’re not willing to put their lives on the line.

That’s the only thing I can think of. The longer the outage remains, the more Abbot can blame the rest of the country for his own grid’s failure.

Nah, there are just a lot of nutjobs across the region. They may also happen to be MAGA conspiracy theorists, but that’s a separate thing. I mean it wouldn’t be Texas if there wasn’t at least a few such incidents where a gun nut threatened a guy just trying to do his/her job.

Abbott doesn’t really have to throw Centerpoint under the bus. Centerpoint (at the corporate level, not the folks doing the real work) really does deserve a lot of blame.

While Centerpoint can be considered a “utility company”, Texas has a system where electricity generation is run by different (private) companies than the ones distributing it and maintaining the grid. Centerpoint is the latter and handles the vast majority of the Houston region, which is why they’re the ones responsible for restoring power. And they’ve been pretty profitable and the stock holders seem satisfied. Almost certainly by finding “cost efficiencies”, i.e. years of underfunding basic line maintenance.

Why this complicated mishmash of private companies doing what would be the work of fewer public utility companies in other states? Because Texas.

That said, Abbott does bear some responsibility since he’s largely appointed the folks who are supposed to oversee Centerpoint along with the other companies doing similar work in other parts of the state. I hate that guy’s guts, but he’s really not responsible for the clownish response by Centerpoint. Just for letting such a ridiculous system continue to exist.

Watchers of “On Patrol: Live” likely already know about the guy with the surname Pancake who had hamsters in his pants.

Police said it all started Tuesday around 3 a.m. with a call about a break-in at a restaurant, but no suspect was found.

About 10 minutes later, police got a call about a break-in at a Petland store. When they arrived, no suspect was anywhere to be found, but multiple cages had been forced open.

While performing a body search, officers discovered glass in Pancake’s pants, along with the four hamsters, which officers initially mistook for gerbils.

“We got the gerbil bandit. He literally had the gerbils in his pants,” an officer can be heard saying on body cam video.

Here’s video from the officer with the scissors:

They don’t have to follow the guidelines to be part of the (a) national grid. They don’t have to worry about inspections, they don’t have to worry about winterizing their equipment etc. What could possibly go wrong?

If it makes you feel any better, I ran across this a few days ago.

Already knew about that. Doesn’t make me feel much better.

What does? The knowledge that there’s no way the Republican Party at a national level would ever make a guy in a wheelchair their candidate for President or Vice-President. He doesn’t have the same sort of insider connections that let him rise in state politics. Every time I think of how that shallow, wannabe macho, bigoted puts its own roadblocks in front of his ambitions, it brings a small smile to my face.

There have been a few people on the board who in the past have mockingly referred to his paraplegia. I tend to think that’s hitting below the belt (in more than one sense) but I understand the sentiment. There aren’t many who deserve it more. It’s like he put a down payment on his karmic debt in advance.

He’s a big fish in a small pond, and that pond doesn’t have a wheelchair ramp to get him out of it.

And I’m not making fun of his inability to walk, I’m pointing out how being in a wheelchair is going to limit him because he’s a Republican. He’s on the bigotry team.

If the bus isn’t full of immigrants, it’s a wasteful use of resources.