It's easy to spend Memorial Day weekend forgetting what it's all about. Between barbecues, beach trips, and shopping sprees, plenty of distractions that smokescreen Memorial Day's true purpose: To honor and mourn those who died in service of the United States Armed Forces. The holiday was first observed in 1868, and it has been an American tradition ever since. Countless storytellers and filmmakers have paid tribute to our troops, both living and dead. While some movies can feel nauseating in their jingoism, the best of them strike a balance between sweet sentimentality and sharp stricture towards the political forces that trade lives like chess pieces. Directors like Oliver Stone, Clint Eastwood, Edward Zwick, and Steven Spielberg have built careers telling stories that salute the spirit without compromising what it means to live and die in service. |
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Where most Star Wars fans saw a joke, Genevieve O'Reilly saw pain. In the 1983 Star Wars sequel Return of the Jedi, actress Caroline Blakiston played Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma, and one of her most famous lines—"Many Bothans died to bring us this information," referring to the existence of a second Death Star—is spoken with a kind of ethereal detachment. Like a ghost to a crowded room. But with the Reddit peanut gallery, the line's convenient and hurried introduction of the movie's main threat is roasted to no end. After all: Who are Bothans? And how many actually died? But O'Reilly never laughed. "Her sacrifice has many rivers," she tells me. |
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I'm laissez-faire when it comes to what people do with their feet. Shoes off on the plane? Go for it. Sockless with loafers? As god intended. Toe shoes? Hell yeah man, why not. I am, however, particular about formality, respect for those around you. The second you're indoors, or at an establishment that gives more than two pieces of silverware, men's toes gotta be put away. This is tough for me though because I love the beach, and I love going sockless. I was fine with cheap slippers at home and a beat up pair of Vans Classics for the beach, but I really wanted to find something better. Nothing ever looked or felt like I wanted until I found these Sabah Baba mules, the answer to both scenarios. These are the only do-everything summer shoe I've ever found, truly worth their weight in gold. |
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A liquor bottle is etched with an image of President Donald Trump wearing sunglasses—one lens is stars, the other is stripes—and extending two triumphant middle fingers, apparently at you. Or at Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to kill him in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer. The bottle, which retails for $74.99, is labeled "You Missed." Then there's Let's Go Brandon Bourbon, which co-opts the euphemism for "Fuck Joe Biden" that many Trump supporters get so excited about and slaps it on a liquor bottle—except that in this case, the product doesn't (yet?) exist. It's advertised by MAGA Spirits for $43.99, but when you click "Order Now," you're directed to a "Page not found." The same is true of the company's other alleged offerings: Build the Wall Tequila, Sleepy Joe Whiskey, 45 Vodka, Captain Don Rum, and the crown jewel, American Hero Whiskey, Survivor's Reserve ($49.99), whose label bears an image of a bloodied Trump raising his "fight, fight!" fist. |
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At this point, it's just 300-plus years of institutional power against a jumped-up toddler who wants things his way and is willing to break them just so they'll fit in his pocket. From The New York Times: "The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation's oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration's efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president's agenda." This will occasion yet another lawsuit, assuming Harvard stands where it has been standing ever since the White House protection racket came knocking and demanding that it allowed its curriculum to be determined by the assembled brainiacs of the administration. |
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There's an action sequence in the eighth and final Mission: Impossible movie, Final Reckoning, that is so insane, so flat-out fucking bonkers, that it really has to be seen to be believed. Hell, I've seen it and I still don't believe it. And while writing about the scene in question can't possibly do it justice, I'm going to give it a shot here anyway. It arrives a hair past the film's two-hour mark. By this point in the movie, we've already watched Tom Cruise beat the snot out of a thick-necked henchmen with the help of a medieval-looking meat tenderizer. We've seen him turn Popsicle blue from hypothermia after plunging into the freezing waters of the Bering Sea. And we've witnessed him writhing in agony and passing out from the bends after diving thousands of feet to the ocean floor to retrieve some high-tech whatsit from the bowels of a sunken Russian submarine. In other words, his Ethan Hunt has been put through the wringer ... and, in a way, so have we. But Cruise, God bless him, is saving the best for last. |
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