Good time slot. Decent writing. Good on screen talent (for the most part) surrounding Seinfeld which often helped to fill out the stories. Think of all the guest appearances over the years, lots of quality actors who all grew into their characters.

And its all about the kids bar mitzvah, which in reality does sometimes involve hiring a woman to bang the 13 year old kid to make him a man. What’s more disturbing is in some cases people allegedly use girls (below the age of consent) to do this.

Give it the old Jerry Seinfeld second try, remember you’re never too old to date a 17 year old!

Trains work great in the USA. We didn’t invent them but we’ve sure had our way with them.

• We have thousands of miles of track which ships millions of tons of freight every year.
• We have a system of moving passengers around the country which, while not perfect, still manages to function despite multiple alternatives.
• We have thousands of miles of commuter trains around metropolises that move people to the city and out of the city everyday.
• We have above ground light rail trolleys in some places, though not as many as we once had.
• We have multiple kinds of underground trains; ones that move people through subways and ones that move material out of mines.
• We even have trains that are purely for entertainment value, usually called heritage railroads or tourist trains.
• Oh and lots of airports have a small automatically controlled train that ferries passengers along the terminals.

I’ve seen people keep the wall mounted ones up even after they were no longer usable (these used “pulse” which was phased out around 2000 for “tone” which had been around for a while prior to that but for a decade or so you could chose to keep pulse.)

Yeah she was fun. Shame she didn’t do more stuff. I’d probably blow up my time machine and live with her instead of going back too.

That and the machine itself are the real star of the film. I came across some behind the scenes of the build years ago and it was impressive. The wood deck is all steel painted to look like wood. Since the spinning bits weighed a ton, acrylic and brass, they had to have it be secure. Even the geared computer (forget what it’s called… a baggage computer?) worked. Really impressive prop that doesn’t get enough love. Makes the Pal time machine look like a joke.

Don’t you know you’re suppose to wait till your 35 to date a 17 year old

The core problem is the source material is also boring. Aside from the motivation issues and the fact Wells never even bothers to name the Time Traveller, the whole plot is a bit slow. Sure, the morlocks eating people is creepy but it never manages to get to the horror level like how Jurassic Park or Jaws was able to achieve. You never really felt like they were going to sneak up behind you and slash you or tear you limb from limb.

The changes they made to the story helped: named the character, moved him to New York instead of London, gave him a deep motivation, even the morlocks had a more organized system that was more believable (hunted the Eloi and were controlled telepathically by Jeremy Irons.)

Maybe having more Irons in it would’ve helped but with the plot elements they had to work with it would’ve been tricky. The good thing is they didn’t drag it out, 90 minutes is the proper length. Nowadays they’d try to make it 2 1/2 and it’d be bogged down.

(2002) Time Machine with Guy Pierce and Jeremy Irons

Wasn’t a big hit when it came out and it’ll never be as iconic as the George Pal Time Machine from the 60’s. But the 2003 adaptation has the coolest looking time machine to come around in a while (at the time it was the most expensive prop ever built, might still be but I’m not sure.)

Critics shit on it for not having the cataclysmic event that destroys humanity be global warming. While I’m all for talking about global warming I can kind of understand why they didn’t use that and why they didn’t reuse the 60’s disaster of nuclear war.

But to be fair to the writers their choice to destroying humanity was original, kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke about the elderly crisis we’re currently entering into and the plan is in fact an idea that has been discussed before.

Aside from that the film is pretty solid. In the book by HG Wells and the 60’s film the Time Traveller (doesn’t even have a name) has zero motivation aside from achieving a new scientific advancement. Thats cool and all but modern audiences, having had several successful time travel stories since Wells time, do need a better eureka moment than that. The 2002 film provides a good and believable motivation.

The film also features a believable super-distant future where the human species splits, just like in the original stories. Samantha Mumba is a member of the tribe of humans that live above ground and are technologically ignorant, thought not exactly like the child-like race we see in the 60’s version. They do maintain that there are no old people and why that is.

Samantha Mumba did a great job in her role and while I don’t normally discuss a persons race the fact her father was Zambian and her mother Irish did kind of lean into what a future race of people could look like. She has a distinct look which played to the role.

Orlando Jones makes a couple appearances as a sort of AI librarian. It’s nice to see him in the odd movie role.

Jeremy Irons is the head morlock, the race of humans that stayed underground, and doesn’t disappoint, although his character is more of a cameo.

The film also had a good soundtrack and special effects that features the classic “years passing in seconds” stuff that was iconic from the 60’s film.

But ultimately the film is mostly forgotten to audiences.

Cue incidental music

Bop bop pow pow

Cut to commercial break

Nyet comrade, we have exactly as much humor as our dear leader has ordered us to have.

Putins stupid war accomplishes something positive for a change. He deserves a crown.

Give Putin a crown for exposing that its nothing but Russian bots

Monkey Putin deserves a crown for solving the Russian bot problem

So many members have contacted me to warn that LocalAreaMan is in fact a Russian shill.

Are you mad that your internet got disrupted this week?

To be fair requiring people who have been convicted of a crime by a jury of their peers through a fair and just legal system to do labor isn’t itself a form of slavery. Also worth noting that in some cases prisoners work these jobs to generate income for themselves (usually so they can buy snacks and things from the prison commissary.)

For-profit jails are the exception since such an arrangement encourages false imprisonment but this is more a matter of making sure our legal system operates justly and fairly. Have some places used bogus charges to imprison people to use as labor? Sure, but again we need to make sure that we don’t conflate that with all prisoners doing labor when it’s only some of them. The citizens ensuring that their justice system is working properly and free of corruption is the solution to this.

And we have historical examples of it working to remove corruption. There was a for-profit juvenile detention center that got caught trumping up charges in order to lock up kids which generated more fee’s and money for the jail and they found out the judge who had sentenced the kids was corrupt and working for the company than ran the jail. The individuals who engaged in this were caught, tried and imprisoned and fined millions of dollars for their crimes.

Of course the kids shouldn’t have been scammed like that to begin with. However, I’d remind you that our justice system punishes people who have committed crimes when we can prove it to a jury of our peers. A justice system isn’t designed to prevent crimes, we can try to deter them but thats merely our hope, the actual purpose is to remedy an injustice. While we’d like to not have had kids overly punished for minor crimes (most of the kids had done stuff like getting caught smoking weed and other misdemeanors) whats more important here is that the people who abused our justice system for personal gain were eventually punished for their abuse.

But at the heart of it the majority of prison labor isn’t really slavery. Heck, lots of prisoners enjoy such jobs, not only because it gives them a few bucks but it also gets them out of the monotony of being in prison all day. When done properly it can actually help to rehabilitate some of these prisoners.

Maybe the solution is to enforce the immigration regs and penalize employers who hire undocumented people.

That would be the most effective way, which is why they don’t do it. They need that exploitation to make record profits for themselves and the shareholders.

Supreme court needs to overturn Ford v Dodge Brothers, the case that established that companies are only accountable to their shareholders, since a century later its clear that companies have an obligation to multiple parties and not just the shareholders. A company needs to comply with safety regulations to protect its employees to reduce the risk of having to pay for medical treatment as a result of an injury, paying employees better ensures a higher level of productivity in most cases which itself could be a benefit to the shareholders, companies need to make sure their costumers are happy so they need to offer a quality product that won’t poison them, etc. Plenty of examples of a company having responsibilities to others, in some cases we can argue this practice itself benefits the shareholders and yet we still see corporations believing this antiquated idea that was decided by an ancient court case from an entirely different era.

Then providing some protections for all workers, even the illegal ones, while also passing legislation that prohibits and punishes out-sourcing. Prior to Reagan most undocumented workers were just Mexicans who crossed the border to do seasonal work or a daily routine (maids) for localities near the border, then they’d go home at the end of the day or season. These jobs aren’t really competitive so let them do these things so long as they aren’t hurting people. H1B’s definitely steal good paying jobs, thats why we hear about Indian’s scamming their way into them with fake degrees and certifications. Highly competitive jobs shouldn’t be up for grabs like that.

All these call centers shipped to India that access are personal info is going to bite us in the ass sooner or later. Make it illegal for companies to do that and we’ll see jobs pour back into the USA. No reason not to, a large and stable middle class fuels economic growth.