Third Time's A Charm?

 

So perhaps Gus is Pennsylvania's second most famous groundhog, but I think I might be Pennsylvania's second most "accurate" prognosticator.

On January 6th I wrote about Trumps Tweet's and the fact that Twitter had deleted 7 of his last 10 Tweets. Later that afternoon, he'd inspire his devotees to "storm the castle" in an attempted coup of the US Government.

On January 8th I wrote about how Jack Dorsey & Twitter refused to curb Trump's megaphone by taking away this Twitter account. Later, they'd temporarily suspend his account, and ultimately make the suspension permanent.

In no way do I think I influenced any of these things from happening.

But....

The power ball is up to $550 Million.

Odds of winning 1 in 292,201,338.

I'm 1.

Let's see what happens.

Twitter is Fine For Entertainment, But Not News

There is a lot to take issue with in regards to Twitter and its CEO, Jack Dorsey.

They continually refused to curb Donald Trump's megaphone as long as his campaign continued to pour more and more AD revenue into the company during the 2020 Presidential Election. Now that it's over and that faucet has been turned off, the costless "face saving" display of temporarily suspending his account was a no-brainer. Perhaps it should be more permanent. Regardless, to many, this is too little and way too late.

Far more informed and well spoken people can, and will, continue to have this discussion.

But what I want to point out is Twitter's poor use of language.

This is the message you receive when you read through some of Twitter's aggregated Tweets on a certain subject:

For example, right now TED CRUZ is trending in regards to the increased criticism he's facing for his unsubstantiated claim that there was voter fraud in the 2020 Election. This played an enormous part in the riots we saw in the US Capitol on January 6th.

The number of unique Tweets in that aggregated "nest" is 14. FOURTEEN! And worse, they come from 8 different accounts.

There is no way on Earth (*round or flat), that 8 people's thoughts in 14 total Tweets could bring you "up to date" on this subject. Or almost any subject, really!

Sure, if you were trying to...let's say steal a piece of art from the US Capitol, and you accidentally tased yourself resulting in your heart stopping, we could probably cover that in 14 tweets. Hell, I bet I could do it in 1:

Nailed it!

But really how well informed could you possible be on something as intricate and complicated as this issue, or really any issue, facing our nation?

My point is, Twitter is merely entertainment, It is an absolutely atrocious place in which to get your news.

Please read newspapers. Yes, you can read their online sites, but you should be paying for it! 

Rather than saying, "Dammit, I used up my 5 free articles this month," please pay for well researched, and meticulously vetted information. Not from some stupid limerick written by a guy who really only joined Twitter to tell dick jokes and sometimes posts rants when his anger boils over.





(*And it's round, dummies - you're up to date)

Spelling Bee - A Lifetime Original

I'm not going to pretend that I didn't get super excited midway through and think this show might become a real thing!

But alas, no one has yet committed.

I am a bit surprised it didn't get just a little bit more traction:

I guess to get any real notice on Twitter, you have to be a cartoony evil billionaire who's constantly putting our planet in peril.

Well, at least Anna Faris liked it.

Seriously, you think she'd play the voice of the agent?

(as seen on twitter.com/YourHeroKevin)

mis·di·rec·tion/misdəˈrekSHən/

Donald Trump: Oh man! The walls are closing in around me. This Russian thing won't go away. Soon they'll know the truth and then I'm done! What can I do to throw the public off the scent?

(TWEETS)

Donald Trump: My work is done here.

Our Next State of the Union Will Be Tweeted

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution stipulates that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” 

Nowhere is it stated that the President has to publicly deliver their SOTU to Congress. It may be written. Which begs this question:

Will Donald Trump Tweet his State of the Union address?

Technically, he could.

Obviously, we're talking about a year from now. So a lot of things could happen. But it's not something that is as far fetched as it might first sound. A few tidbits about the history of the State of the Union (because we all love us some tidbits!)

The first State of the Union was delivered to Congress by the first President of the United States, George Washington. Washington delivered his speech in person on January 8th, 1790. Being the first SOTU address, you'd assume it was possibly one of the longest. After all, there was an awful lot of "state" to discuss, after a war and declaration of our independence and such. Well...not even close! At 1089 words long, it was the shortest SOTU to date. Washington would go on to deliver, in person, all eight of his addresses to Congress. Washington's successor, John Adams would also deliver all of his in person. However, as a one term President, he'd only get to do it on half as many occasions.

Thomas Jefferson, a gifted scribe, but generally accepted poor public speaker, would instead choose to send his SOTU to Congress in written form. A tradition that continued until over a hundred years later (1913), when Woodrow Wilson once again addressed Congress in person.

From that point on, it varied with most Presidents preferring to address Congress in person. In fact, the last President to send their speech in writing was Jimmy Carter in 1981. And at 33,667 words, who could blame him! This also happened to be the longest State of the Union in history. So, back to Mr. Trump. Let's say he decides to Tweet his speech to Congress. Could he do it? We all know he could. After all, firing off a "tweetstorm" seems to be the standard 10-forecast with him.

But I mean, could he do it, legally?

While I'm not a Constitutional scholar (our current President is, let's keep HIM!), it could be argued that Tweeting would fulfill the requirement to "...give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union." I'm certain Mr. Trump would judge every one of his tweets as necessary and suggest Tweeting is in fact, the most expedient method of delivery.

But how would he do it?

Let's discount the fact that he could probably Tweet throughout the year and call that a "State of the Union," under the lax definition of "time to time."

Instead let's breakdown what it would look like if he picked one night in January of 2018 to send a hailstorm of Tweets.

First off, how many Tweets would it require?

As mentioned above States of the Union have varied in length from 1089 to 33,667 words!

That's a ton! And even before that, Twitter limits each Tweet to 140 characters, not words.

So we're going to have to get a little creative with our math and take a couple leaps of faith (two things Republicans LOVE to do!)

According to Peter Norvig, a computer scientist (as well as the Director of research at Google)

The average is 4.79 letters per word, and 80% are between 2 and 7 letters long.

This breakdown includes words that are often reused in sentences, like "and" or "the" etc. This seems perfect for our assessment as Tweets are often repetitive. Also, most people Tweeting know how to use "shorthand" writing to allow for minimal character usage. So we'll round up to 5. Then, we'll even add another to our number since Luminoso, an artificial-intelligence analytics company, once determined Trump's most used words were "disaster," "NAFTA," and "border." Which average out to closer to 6.

Also his favorite word is six letters, "Donald."

According to StateoftheUnion.onetwothree.net, they have tracked 230 speeches.
*Though, some of which admittedly are not official "States of the Union," but rather speeches given at the start of a President's administration. This has been the practice since Reagan took office in 1981.

So 230 speeches with 1,770,245 words (only 27,802 are unique words - I guess there really aren't any new ideas). This brings us to 7696.7 words on average.

Far be it from me to label Mr. Trump average (or normal for that matter), so we'll go ahead and bump his up to 7800 words. This is almost 500 words longer than President Obama's longest address, so this should make Trump fans happy (as if anything ever could).

7800 words x 6 letters/characters per word = 46800 characters.

That alone would be 334 Tweets (It's like me watching an awards show!)

BUT WAIT! We're not done. 

Those are just Tweets without being addressed to anyone. These need to be address to Congress. Here's the rub: Congress doesn't have a Twitter account. Oh sure, each Congress Person does...some more than 1 account. And then different caucuses and subgroups have them...but there isn't a @Congress account. At least not one without this warning:

Tweeting too many dickpics, right?

So instead, we're going to have to use a hashtag. #CONGRESS takes up 9 characters (including the number sign), so let's fine something shorter. How about #SOTU? 5 characters, but that means it's going to be used 334 times bumping up the actual number of tweets needed. So in the art of this deal let's do this:

334 x 5 = 1675
46800 + 1675 = 48475
48475 \ 140 = 347 

THAT'S 347 TWEETS!

So there you have it. 347 Tweets could be the next State of the Union address by the soon to be President of the United States. An address which was once written (8 times) by the same man of careful composition who wrote our Declaration of Independence.

"But Kevin! Donald Trump would never miss out on the face time he gets with The State of the Union."

Really?
You think he'd pass up being the #FIRST person to give the State of the Union in such a unique way?

Besides, how else can he properly displace his love for Vladimir Putin than by Tweeting this gem in the middle of his stately address?

We'll know next January.

Mounting Evidence that Donald Trump is Biff Tannen

There's a rumor that has been going around the internet that Donald Trump is in fact Biff Tannen from the future. The nemesis of Marty McFly from Back to the Future. This isn't a fringe thing, there are a lot of sources:

Like This One
And This One
And This One
And EVEN This One

Google itself will automatically suggested Donald Trump as it's first suggestion if you start to type "Biff Tannen" into the search engine.

Hell, even Bob Gale, BTTF's writer confirmed he used Trump as his "inspiration" for the warped character.

But Biff is a fictitious character, right?

THIS is a Tweet that was sent out by Trump today for Cinco de Mayo. Sure it just seems like typical political pandering by a guy who has promised to build a wall between the US and Mexico.

But take a closer look at the photograph he Tweeted.

Specifically at the book on his desk...

See it?

No?

How about now:

Look familiar?

How about this:

CLICK for more info.

That's right, Grays Sports Almanac!

HOLY SHIT!
Donald Trump IS Biff Tannen! 

And what's worse, he's flaunting it!

Twitter To The Rescue!

Have you ever lost your cell phone or your wallet or both and become overwhelmed with rage? HULK SMASH sort of rage?

What are you to do?

Well if you're famous, you can tweet about it, in hopes that your fan base will step up and save the day.

And that's just what smashing Hulk star Mark Ruffalo did during Winter Storm Jonas.

(I could totally write for US Weekly...is that still a thing? And yes, I know saying "Hulk star" is technically incorrect as Ruffalo wasn't in a "Hulk" move, but rather played the Hulk in various movies...but even with that indiscretion my future with US Weekly should be secure)

I like Ruffalo, and am glad things worked out for him. But it got me thinking, are there other celebrities who have used their fame to help their "cause"?

Let's explore:

And The Oscar Goes To...Hot Tub Time Machine 2

Recently I have been suffering from a crisis of conscience. In my desire to create, I have become less and less interested in “deconstructing” other people’s work. Meaning, I no longer feel like “talking shit” on McG (among others).  I just no longer enjoy criticizing. So much so, that I have put a temporary distance between myself and the hate platform known as Social Media.

Facebook, the racism “metal detector.” (ß Okay, apparently I don’t mind criticizing Mark Zuckerberg’s work).

I used to LOVE to watch events such as award shows and Tweet pretty much everything that comes to my mind (grammar be damned and spelling errors aplenty). It was like being in a writer’s room with the potential of 1000s of other writers. The thing is, that writer’s room is getting more and more crowded all the time. It seems everyone has decided to add Live Tweeting to their resume in the past couple of years.

After Tweeting the Grammy’s I felt rather empty (fill in “terrible state of music joke” and then make sure to tell the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn). I also realized I wasted almost 4 hours of my life watching something I knew I had predisposed myself to hating, which of course fueled my vitriolic Tweets.

Since the Grammy’s left me feeling so low, I decided to watch the Saturday Night Live 40^th Anniversary broadcast while barely glancing at my phone. I found I enjoyed it because I wasn't hunting and pecking all of the flaws I saw during a 3 and a half hour live event (how could there NOT be a few?)

Then, a couple of days before the Oscars I started to think, “Should I even watch them this year?”

I wasn't nominated for anything (again). So what was the draw for me?

“Don’t you love movies?”

Of course I do. I loved movies SOOOO much, that I wasted tens of thousands of my parent dollars going to film school (I finally work in the field – THANKS Mom & Dad). But what do the Oscars have to do with movies? Wouldn't it make MORE sense to actually go SEE a movie during the Oscars?

So I watched the opening number to the Oscars. I thought it was very nice. Then I decided to turn off the TV and go see a movie.

What to see?

I had seen a lot of the nominated films already throughout the year. I wasn't looking for anything super deep, just something to sit and be entertained. Perhaps a comedy? I looked to see what was playing nearby.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2. Of course! Why not? I LOVED the first Hot Tub Time Machine. And I equally love Adam Scott. This is a home run, right?

editor’s note:  it wasn't. More like a broken bat single into right field during Spring Training without any runners on base…but hey, it’s in the ball park

Another editor’s note:  I realize the previous editor’s note is in complete conflict to the argument above, however it was written AFTER the rest of the piece…SPOILERS!

  

But alas, this story isn't about HTTM2. It’s about the experience of trying to GET there.

Over the past month, the East Coast is been bombarded at night with subfreezing temperatures. So much so, that the city of Boston has all but put out a hit on a weather predicting rodent who resides in Pennsylvania, and South Carolina has incarcerated one of Disney’s newest and “coolest”characters.

The temperatures during the day, rise high enough to melt the endless barrage of snow that has been piling up, and then freeze all over the roads at night. So my usual 10 minute drive to the movie theater took about 20 minutes, and included as much sliding as pleading with Isaac Newton to keep my car from staying in motion through red lights.

I finally got to the theater and parked.

I had NO idea what kind of crowds the theaters would draw during the Oscars. Would it be like the movies at Christmas in 2014? Everybodypiles into the car to swamp the theaters. Or would it be like the movies at Christmas in 1994? A secret kept by the few who knew how easy it was to get in and out with plenty of arm room.

I walked in to the AMC Theater and a heavier Man in a cardigan, who doesn't look like he passes up a lot of cookies, and a young Woman on a headset were behind the counter. The Woman was having a conversation with someone on the headset. The Man was looking at her as I approached them.

The Man, never taking his eyes off of the Woman said, “Can I help you?”

I waited a beat, wondering, “Is he talking to her or me?” The beat went on too long so I asked, “Excuse me?”

He finally turns his gaze towards me and repeated, this time in a less than sincere tone, “Can I help you?”

“Oh. Yes, I’d like 1 ticket to Hot Tub Time Machine 2, please.”

“Sold out.”

“Really?”

“Yes. In fact everything is sold out.”

“Oh, Wow!” I guess the Oscars has become the new Christmas.

I was very surprised. I thanked them and walked out the door.

Towards the parking lot.

Where my car was parked.

In the amazingly…

unfilled…

parking lot.

Carpooling perhaps?

Something seemed “off.” So I pulled out my phone. I went to Fandango. I typed in the movie and theater. This particular theater (AMC Painters 9 Unit 0598 as listed on my eventual ticket), is one of those new fandangled “Dine-in” theaters. Which means you can pick your actual seat when you purchase your ticket online. So I opened the seating chart and realized the parking lot wasn't the only thing that was empty.

When this Man said “sold out,” was he commenting on ME for NOT watching the Oscars?

I bought my ticket from Fandango and got this message:

So far, the automated computer response had been kinder to me than 2 actual people.

I turned around and went back in the theater. I was in full view of Man and Woman the entire time I stood outside. When I turned around, they must have realized what I had done.

“Oh, we just had a returned ticket.” Said Woman.

“That’s convenient, ‘cause I just bought one.” Said Me.

“They shouldn’t be selling any more tickets! They need to update the system.” Said Man. To Woman. While looking at Me.

Okay…it’s now occurred to me, he might have been a faulty robot who enjoys cardigans and cookies.

They ripped my ticket and I was on my way.

Those are some sexy nails, am I right ladies?

I walked into the theater half expecting it to be packed with patrons having to sit on the floor because of a computer error that continued to sell tickets to a sold out show. Instead, 1 minute before the previews were to begin, I asked the ONLY other person in the theater if he too was told the show was “Sold Out.” He said, “No, but the 7pm was.” Having this info means this guy either came to the 7 and was turned away, or attempted to buy tickets online for the 7pm and had to do the 9pm instead. From this I deducted he also bypassed the purchasing from Man-o-bot and WomanLady.

I took a picture of the empty theater.

Having taken a photo in the theater, I'm sure I'm on an F.B.I. watch list for pirating movies now.

It should be noted that during the previews another couple came in and sat a few rows behind me. I’ll wager a guess that they too bought their tickets from Fandango before coming.

This would be an excellent time to tell you that according to Box Office Mojo, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 made $5,963,324 in its opening weekend. That is NOT a good number. And yet, it could have been higher, had the 100+ seat theater I was sitting in, not been “sold out.”

I don’t tend to complain. I worked in retail for 15 years, and I get that things happen. But the Man’s unprompted rudeness and the Woman’s lie pissed me off. A LOT! MY CRITICIZING BONE HAS BEEN HEALED!!!

Did the woman think I was so dumb that I wouldn't realize there was only one other person in the theater?

I complained. To the writer’s room.

AKA - I used Twitter to contact AMC Theaters:

I also added the photo I posted above. (Hence the F.B.I. watch list)

Then, the next day, they contacted me...or at least Brien did:

And now we wait…

Well that didn't take long. Hmmm…I can’t help but notice there seems to be no apology of any kind in this response. Perhaps they’ll send it with some free movie tickets or a fruit basket…

See I'm reasonable...

Okay. Not THAT reasonable, I guess...

“Bad info.” So they are simply saying, “Sorry you were lied too, asshole. However, that’s our company policy. It’s just most people don’t actually complain. And why the fuck aren’t you at home watching the Oscars? – Brien”

Also, no fruit basket.

I seem pissed...but I still singled out the service from the wait staff as being excellent. 

Will-fucking-do? Pretty casual Brien.

So, no apology.

No offer of free tickets implying, “We’ll do better next time.”

No fruit basket.

Not even a couple cookie crumbs off RobotDick’s over stretched cardigan.

Sunday night, I realized a few things:

1. I should have stayed in and watched the Oscars

2. I won't be going back to that movie theater  

3. I’m a critical mother fucker! (for example, see review of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 above)