This is why I’m not a romantic

I was trying to think of romantic dates to go on with my wife, and I came up with a brilliant idea: I should take her out to Shakey’s Pizza. That was our standard destination back in the 1970s, go out to Shakey’s, sit in a booth with a pineapple pizza and a diet coke, and talk for hours. Yeah, that’s the ticket, an evening of nostalgia and sentiment and good memories.

One problem, though. When we weren’t looking, the entire chain shriveled up and died. There’s a cluster of them still alive in Southern California, and apparently they’re thriving in the Philippines, but none in Minnesota, and only one left in Washington state, in Pasco. Near as I can tell even the old location in Kent, WA has been replaced with a Chuck E. Cheese. I guess I’ll just sit at home, looking dour. See, this is why old people have a reputation for crankiness.

What do the teenagers do nowadays on a Saturday night? What did you do, once upon a time?

Second thoughts on Verity

Last night, I did another shift as theater projectionist, and sat through the movie Verity a second time. We had another evening of light duty, as only 4 people showed up, and two of them had free passes, so I sat through the whole thing.

It was so much worse than I thought. This was an incompetent piece of film making.

I was criticized in my original review for saying that Dakota Johnson can’t act, and that she spent “the entire movie looking vaguely stunned,” but that was a plot point that was mentioned multiple times! The opening (and entirely superfluous and irrelevant to the plot) scene was Johnson getting splashed with blood from an auto accident in front of her, to which she responded with complete equanimity. She later tells Josh Hartnett that she’s been told she has “resting bored face”. She responds to every horrific thing in the movie with utter passivity.

But the worst is the plot, and I’ll have to give away spoilers here, so it’s below the fold.

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Nokoomis Nibii Equay

This is a statue that graces our central campus mall.

Commissioned by Puncky ’73 and Mary Soehren Heppner ’76, this statue, an older woman with two young children at her sides, was created by Duane “Dewey” Goodwin, Anishinaabe, on the campus mall site during the summer of 2018. The Heppner’s intention for the statue is to honor the past, present, and future of the Native American people whose ancestors attended the boarding school that once stood on the land of the University of Minnesota Morris campus. In an artist statement, Goodin writes, “The sculpture symbolizes the [journey] of the Native American, from a traditional people to an assimilated, but still proud, people. We have endured colonization, retaining our most valued traditions—our identity, language, ceremonies, and arts.”

I mention it since today is Indigenous People’s Day. We aren’t getting the day off, though, so we’ll all have to celebrate it privately.

Should fraternities be shut down?

The Guardian asks, “Fraternities are the most likely place for US campus rapes. Should they be shut down?“

What a stupid question. YES.

It’s a lengthy article that goes through all the problems with the fraternity system — the alcoholism, the hazing deaths (two annually!), the rapes. I kept reading for the positive reasons, and they give a few. One is the threats.

“All the Greek alumni would have pitchforks, and it would be a whole debacle rather than kind of letting this play out in the press and then just going back to business,” said Lucy Taylor, a University of Maryland graduate and the creator of the podcast Snapped about the sordid history of fraternities and sororities.

Another is a variant of that threat.

“When you get rid of Greek life, you get rid of some of the most passionate people that cared about the school, right? And so why would someone like that donate to the school if the school is eliminating something that was a key part of their time at Cornell?” he said.

This is similar to the argument in favor of college sports, and ultimately it’s all about money. Fraternities and sports are orthogonal to the function of universities and education, and they should only be tolerated as long as they don’t interfere with the education students are supposed to be there for.

No good reasons for frats are given other than platitudes from North American Interfraternity Conference, a trade association of fraternities.

Hillary Brewer, the organization’s chief communications officer, did not respond to a question about whether sexual misconduct is pervasive at fraternities but stated in an email that they “are an accelerator for success in college and beyond. They create lifelong connections to the campus, community and friends.”

You don’t need frats to make connections and friends, especially not since the connections are with the kind of people who favor elitism, abuse, and misbehavior.

Shut them all down.

A dismal season for movies

As usual, I’ve been running the projector for the local theater

Last night was the dull horror of Verity, a movie based on a potboiler by Colleen Hoover. It’s had a low level of attendance for the past week, but it does tap into an unusual audience: women’s book clubs. It’s fair that that audience should be served, and Hoover is apparently an extremely successful author, but it’s unfortunate that they are so poorly represented. The movie has a dark and twisty plot that bored me far too quickly, but it’s greatest flaw that its star is…Dakota Johnson. The woman cannot act. She spends the entire movie looking vaguely stunned, just as she does in every movie I’ve ever seen featuring her. Anne Hathaway is also in it, but she spends the first half imitating Johnson by playing a brain-damaged paralyzed accident victim.

We had two ticket-paying attendees last night.

The other movie playing last night was Heart of the Beast. It’s a dog movie. It also features Brad Pitt and an unbelievable plot. Brad is flying a private plane over the Alaskan wilderness with his loyal and brave military dog, when he has a massive heart attack and crashes his plane into a lake, 60 miles from civilization.

He has to dive deep into the frigid lake to salvage his camping supplies. He and the dog then have to hike through rugged terrain, fighting of the occasional grizzly bear and wolf pack, falling into a whitewater stream, breaking his arm, getting gnawed on by wolves, and, like Dakota Johnson, never changing his expression. Did I mention that the inciting incident was a massive heart attack? Rather than going into intensive care, he instead must stoically battle against a savage wilderness with his dog pal. It was a long slog for both Brad Pitt and the audience.

Attendance: 0.

I blame the movie studios. These are dull, formulaic movies that are also poorly marketed. I knew nothing about either before pushing the button to put them on the screen: Verity was dependent on the popularity of a book in a niche market, and Heart of the Beast was a movie about a dog, and that’s all you need to know (not that there was much deeper in it than that).

I think the one bright spot this time of year is the free Saturday matinees, when we show old, familiar spooky movies and make all our profit on popcorn and candy sales — and we also get an audience of appreciative families. Digging up old hits is a more productive use of the theater than showing the poor fare the studios are dumping on us.

And look! Today you can get firetruck rides!

Oppression works!

The Washington Post announces that the Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’.

Young teenagers are less likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual than they were a few years ago, according to a new analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The decline is particularly striking among ninth-grade girls, according to Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who published her analysis of the 2025 data on her Substack “Generation Tech.” In 2021, 30 percent of ninth-grade girls identified as lesbian or bisexual. Last year, 17 percent did.

“It really does look like a free fall,” Twenge said. “But what’s causing it is unclear.”

OK. I don’t have a prior commitment to how many ninth-grade girls would be lesbian or bisexual; I would hope that 100% of them are happy being whoever they want to be. It’s weird, though, that conservatives are pumping their fists at the news.

Online, conservative activists celebrated the news as a win brought on by the Donald Trump administration.

Amazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID, Terry Schilling, the head of the American Principles Project, wrote on X.

Wow, Terry, are you happy that more 15 year old girls are declaring themselves heterosexual? That’s kind of creepy. Also are you really cheering on cuts to education and USAID?

My first reaction was doubt: it’s in the Washington Post, Jeff Bezo’s bought and paid for propaganda outlet. I begin with some mistrust of that newspaper.

My second reaction was, the CDC? Really? The institution that has been savagely cut and politicized? I think the Republican hacks who have taken over would only allow information that favors conservative biases to be released. Last year the former head of vaccines there resigned over funding cuts and criticisms of the science by political apparatchiks. It’s not a happy place right now.

But at least the WaPo includes some more sober assessment.

Jody Herman, senior scholar at the Williams Institute, a research center at UCLA on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, questioned whether the data revealed a meaningful shift in behavior.

“The study doesn’t provide confidence intervals to determine whether the differences are actually significant,” she wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “The narrative around a decline in LGBT identity among youth has been around for a while now. We’ll continue to look at trends over time in our work, but the evidence provided so far for a decline leaves more questions than answers.”

But let’s assume the observation is accurate, that fewer ninth-grade girls identify as lesbian. The real question is why.

Are teenagers actually becoming straight again? That makes no sense. These are individuals who are in the process of discovering their sexuality; it’s not as if ten year olds were biased towards gayness and then ‘straightened up’ when they were 15. This is a shift in the proportion of a cohort. It’s more that a cohort that has always been shifting and changing are showing a gradual firming up of their commitment to heterosexuality, which has always been the case. I personally went from a general indifference to sex in early adolescence to a solid preference by the time I was in high school. This observation of percentages is not significant.

A better explanation is that we’re currently living in a state of intolerance and bigotry.

“They probably are just keeping it to themselves bc Republicans are fucking crazy,” was one theory posted to X.

“The chances are more likely that, rather than ‘becoming straight,’ people don’t feel as safe identifying themselves again,” came another.

I favor the “Republicans are fucking crazy” theory myself. This is not a good time to honestly express yourself, because the fucking crazy Republicans are running roughshod over schools, education, and science. Be safe. Keep your feelings close to your chest until you get a chance to shut these fools down. But don’t be afraid to be who you are in private.

Does he lie about everything?

The President is shit-talking Minnesota again. He really hates us.

The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.
Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Somali immigrants are a tiny minority here, the ones I’ve met have all been good citizens, and no, I can look out the window and read the local newspapers and see a generally small amount of Violence, Murder, and Mayhem. As for our governor, that’s just projection — we all know which executive is raking in billions from corruption, and who has handed out billions to his own children. I think the only person viewing Minnesotans as “weak and stupid” is the guy whose brownshirts were run out of town by our resistance.

Do MAGAs actually believe what’s coming out of Trump’s colon? I’m sure some of them do, but a lot are beginning to resist. Did you know that Ben Shapiro’s hack propaganda company, the Daily Wire, is trying to make a tasteless pro-ICE movie in Montana?

The film blends a fictionalized depiction of the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis in January with a narrative centered on armed shopkeepers defending a store from Antifa rioters, including dialogue in the script referencing “rooftop Koreans” firing from a grocery store roof.

The cinematic tension on set was quickly mirrored by real-world friction in downtown Livingston, where residents began staging demonstrations against the production over its controversial themes, unannounced gun-toting stunts and street closures disrupting local businesses and organizations.

There is no way they could make such a movie in Minnesota, so they’re filming in Montana…and Montanans are having none of it. I am aware that Montana citizens have a strong independent streak, but they also tend to be conservative, and they’re protesting ICE propaganda.

I will be interested to see how the Daily Wire can turn a scene involving black-clad masked men with guns against unarmed citizens into a heroic representation of ICE. Probably by lying a lot, like any Republican.