Good luck on getting "plugged" and congrats on being "Prez" for the day. That's a lot of work.

Saw this on FB and laughed.

The University of Michigan has canceled a screening of the blockbuster movie “American Sniper” because Muslim student protesters claim the film “sympathizes with a mass killer.”

Feel sorry for regular students at college now. Guess they are either drinking the kool-aid or just ignoring the drama.

Cold and rainy will be replaced by hot, humid, and rainy sometime from May to July. You will be able find plenty of plug ins, Wi Fi and coffee. Boston ran on Dunkins long before the rest of America.

Do you often stay up nights wondering who would win in a rap battle between Star Wars' Princess Leia and Lord of the Rings Galadriel?

Well, wonder no more! Here it is!

Hey, Bob, did ya see this:

Michigan Football will watch "American Sniper"! Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud to be an American & if that offends anybody then so be it!

— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) April 9, 2015

UM caved twice, it looks like, first to cancel the screening, then to put it back on in a different location. What's that joke? You can tell a Michigan man, but you can't tell him much.

I love that as an alternate, Michigan is showing Paddington -- the cartoon about a lovable bear in a raincoat and hat. Yes, supposedly adult college students are going to watch this.

PS I hate war movies, so I don't go to them. But I don't try to stop other people from going to them!

Instapundit links to a George Will piece on overcriminalization.

In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person — "say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon" — and other prosecutors would try to imagine "a plausible crime for which to indict him or her," usually a felony plucked from "the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield." Did the person make "false pretenses on the high seas"? Is he guilty of "injuring a mailbag"?

Injuring a mailbag? I...ah...I got nothing.

Oh, I'm sure quite a few people will go see Paddington, since it seems like more of a date movie than American Sniper.

I guess it's just not reasonable to suggest that those who don't want to see American Sniper simply not see it.

Barry Manilow marries long-time manager Garry Kief in secret ceremony last year.

Barry Manilow? Gay? Who knew? (Besides everyone, I mean.)

But there's a dark side to Michael Bond's lovable bear. I remember reading a couple of Paddington books as a lad, and odious, offensive themes pervade those and doubtless the other volumes.

To start with, the Peruvian bear we're supposed to call Paddington was found, abandoned, in the London train station of the same name. What kind of socioeconomic pressure caused the bear to be deposited in a foreign and hostile country? Why was he taken home by Mr. Brown instead of being returned with dignity to his homeland?

But it gets worse. Why was he forced to sublimate his native identity and assume the mantle of oppressive, Western society? What generated his addiction to orange marmalade, a theme which pervades all the Bond books, which the reader is supposed to delight in?"

The conclusive erasure of the individual we're forced to call Paddington is, finally, the elimination of his birth name. A clearer case of an indigenous ursid being ground beneath the neocolonialist heel would be difficult to conceive. Presenting this crime as "humorous" children's "literature" makes it all the more painful.

I love that as an alternate, Michigan is showing Paddington -- the cartoon about a lovable bear in a raincoat and hat. Yes, supposedly adult college students are going to watch this. ~ Posted by: Amy Alkon at April 9, 2015 6:29 AM

So, it's a Friday night and college students are going to watch a family-friendly movie about a marmalade-eating anthropomorphic English bear because it's safe and non-triggering?

We're doomed.

When the movie's over are they going back to the dorm to slip into their jammies and have some cocoa with little marshmallows?

Seriously, why aren't they out a bars getting drunk and hooking up? At the library studying for that big exam so they can get into medical school? At a coffee shop pretending to like poetry? Booking time on the giant telescope to search for stellar anomalies?

No, they're going to see a children's movie.

They're in college, not nursery school!

Paddington Bear!??

Sheez!

When the movie's over are they going back to the dorm to slip into their jammies and have some cocoa with little marshmallows?

Oh, the scandal!

Seriously, why aren't they out a bars getting drunk and hooking up? At the library studying for that big exam so they can get into medical school? At a coffee shop pretending to like poetry? Booking time on the giant telescope to search for stellar anomalies?
_________________________________

What makes you think they don't do all those other things too?

Besides, plenty of people would argue that 1 and 3 are a waste of time too. (I, for one, think it's painfully sad that "sex-on-the-third-date" is coming to seem like a rule than a choice - how many times has that happened when NEITHER party really wanted it that way but didn't want to seem nerdy? Besides, shouldn't STDs alone - including those that condoms don't prevent that well - be enough of a reason to refuse to have "relationships" like that?)
_____________________________

No, they're going to see a children's movie.

They're in college, not nursery school!

Posted by: Conan the Grammarian at April 9, 2015 11:44 AM
_______________________________

And back in the 1980s, Bill Watterson (creator of "Calvin & Hobbes") was, IIRC, among the top three or so most popular authors among college students.

Maybe they just crave a lighthearted, low-key break from all the studying once in a while?

Once, I worked with the projectionist in college - and the movie shown was "Batman" (1966). It got howls like you wouldn't believe.

How's this for net neutrality?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-broadband-fees-20150409-story.html#page=1

You get that my earlier post was done tongue firmly planted in cheek?

And back in the 1980s, Bill Watterson (creator of "Calvin & Hobbes") was, IIRC, among the top three or so most popular authors among college students. ~ Posted by: lenona at April 9, 2015 2:37 PM

Like it's antecedents, Pogo and Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes was subversive and aimed at grownups, not children - even though children thought it was straight-up funny.

Paddington, on the other hand, is not a subtle satiric observation of the world, it's a children's story.

Once, I worked with the projectionist in college - and the movie shown was "Batman" (1966). It got howls like you wouldn't believe. ~ Posted by: lenona at April 9, 2015 2:37 PM

Batman was camp.

Paddington is not camp.

If no one heard it yet, UMich decided it would go ahead and show American Sniper as originally planned.

You get that my earlier post was done tongue firmly planted in cheek?

Posted by: Conan the Grammarian at April 9, 2015 2:47 PM
_____________________________________

I would have, had it been witty enough or ridiculous enough - but it wasn't. Maybe if you'd said something like "why aren't they out shooting up heroin or other real-adult stuff like that..."

I.e., if a college-age person said what you actually said, it would sound pretty plausible and not a joke. Unfortunately.

The Thinking Cup on Tremont, across the street from the Common. There's also a cool place whose name escapes me across from the Opera House on Washington.

There's Starbucks on the corner of Tremont and Boylston and in the Transportation building.

Then of course there's tea at the Taj or Four Seasons.... :)

Or if you wander towards Newbury there're a bunch of cute street level places

if a college-age person said what you actually said, it would sound pretty plausible and not a joke. Unfortunately. ~ Posted by: lenona at April 10, 2015 8:27 AM

In my defense, it was meant to sound semi-serious and yet carry a "get off my lawn" sarcasm vibe. Hard to transmit that in writing sometimes.

Still, with their insistence on safe rooms and trigger warnings, and having panic attacks at the slightest provocation, one cannot help but cringe at the wussification of our latest generation of young adults.

"Barry Manilow? Gay? Who knew? (Besides everyone, I mean.)

Posted by: Patrick"

Barry Manilow is still alive? I'm old, and it seems like Manilow has writing elevator music forever.

Looking it up in Wikipedia, Manilow is only ten years older than me. His first success was the score for a Broadway musical at age 21; except for child stars and the children of stars, that's a quite young age to earn more than pocket change in show business. This was 1964, the same year as the Beatles' first US tour. I distinctly remember their first appearance on Ed Sullivan, when I was in 6th grade - and then and now, I'd take elevator music in Manilow's style over the Beatles' raucous early work. (They did improve over the next few years.)

So why do I remember when the Beatles started, but not Manilow? It's because the Beatles were distinctly different, while much of Manilow's work is in a style that was around long before he was born. Play the best show tunes of the 1930's, and unless I know otherwise I'll assume it's Manilow...