Is there anything worse than blurry pictures of fireworks on the 4th of July?
I don’t know but I do know that I always enjoy taking them. For me, they’re as much a part of the 4th as visiting with family and cooking out. In honor of the 4th, here are some of my favorite blurry fireworks pictures:
Happy Independence Day!
Obviously, this 4th of July is going to be different for a lot of people. For many people, this is probably the angriest Independence Day in my lifetime and I know there’s some people who are even saying that it’ll be our last because America’s on the verge of collapsing. What’s funny, of course, is that I wrote the exact same words last year. And I think that I may have written them the year before that. In fact, I think that there hasn’t been an Independence Day since 2010 in which a large group of people were angry and saying that this one was going to be our last.
It’s gotten so predictable that I’m going to repeat exactly what I wrote last year:
Personally, I don’t think it’ll be our last and I think that, though it may not seem like it today, things will get better. America’s been through tough times before. If most of the people out there knew as much about history as they thought they did, they’d know that.
Now, myself, I have to admit that I love the whole ritual of fireworks. I’m a Texan and I’m probably more of a country girl than even I’m willing to admit. I mean, as sophisticated as I may try to be here on the Shattered Lens, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t own an American flag bikini and if I didn’t kind of get a thrill from the sight of fireworks exploding in the night sky. Of course, if I had to choose between seeing an uncut version of Von Stroheim’s Greed or watching Fireworks, Von Stroheim would probably win out because I love cinema even more than I love fireworks. That said, fireworks are still really cool, especially when you’ve got a bunch of stuffy government types telling you not to set them off.
Anyway, here’s my point. There’s going to be fireworks tonight, whether they’re “legal” or not. A lot of them will probably be set off by drunk idiots in their backyard. People are still recovering from having been locked down for the last few years. There’s a lot of frustration and a lot of people are going to be expressing that frustration by making as much noise as possible. (I don’t blame the people, by the way. I blame government officials who, instead of understanding people’s frustrations and trying to help them deal with them, instead used the entire crisis to act like a bunch of petty authoritarians. A little empathy goes a long way to convincing people to do the right thing.)
So, please, as a favor to me — GET YOUR PETS INSIDE! KEEP THEM INSIDE! Seriously, they’re going to be scared to death. Every 4th of July, our cat hides underneath a bed and refuses to come out until after the fireworks have stopped. Erin and I usually toss one of his kitty toys under there and he’ll usually end up playing with it until he eventually decides to come out. It’s funny. As much as we would worry whenever we saw Doc scramble under the bed, that’s where he feels safe on the 4th of July. I don’t know if it’s the same for dogs but cats are all about finding a safe place. Once they do, they can handle just about anything.
Also, please remember that fireworks may be fun to you and me but they’re not fun for people who have served in war and/or who are suffering from PTSD and who might find them triggering. So, check on your neighbors. Keep them in mind before you go crazy trying to recreate a combat zone in their neighborhood.
“But Lisa, you just said you love fireworks….”
Yes, I do. But I love animals and treating people with consideration even more.
Anyway, stay safe out there! Happy Independence Day from the Shattered Lens!
by Erin Nicole
Trying to take pictures of fireworks is a fool’s errand but I still try to do it every year. Happy 4th of July!
Meow America!
Have a good and safe 4th of July!
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In 2021’s The Manor, Barbara Hershey plays Judith Albright. Once a professional dancer, Judith now works as a dance instructor. Or, at least, she does until she has a sudden stroke at her 70th birthday party. Judith survives the stroke but it’s discovered that she has Parkinson’s disease. Judith decides that it’s time to move into a nursing home. Her grandson, Josh (Nicholas Alexander), disagrees but the rest of Judith’s family thinks that Judith is making the right decision.
At first, the nursing home seems ideal for Judith. The nurses seem to be friendly. The home is actually in a stately old manor and Judith has a nice view of the nearby woods from her room. It’s true that Judith’s roommate seems to think that there’s something sinister happening but Judith (and everyone else) chalks that up to senility. Judith moves into the Manor and even befriends some of the other residents, including Roland (Bruce Davison).
However, it’s not long before Judith starts to suspect that something strange is happening at the Manor. She hears strange noises. There are mysterious deaths. It turns out that not all of the nurses are as friendly as the originally seem. Judith starts to have visions of a strange tree-like creature in her room. When Judith tries to talk to the nursing home’s staff, they dismiss her concerns and condescendingly tell her that she’s just confused. Some of them even threaten her to keep her from making too much trouble. Are they just bad nurses or is there something even worse motivating them? And can Judith discover the Manor’s secret before she becomes the latest victim?
The Manor was the eighth and the last entry in the Welcome to the Blumhouse horror anthology series. Each of the films premiered on Prime, with The Manor dropping on October 8th, 2021. For the most part, the quality of the films featured as a part of Welcome to the Blumhouse were uneven. However, The Manor actually works fairly well. What the film lacks in budget, it makes up for in atmosphere. The nursing home is a truly creepy location and director Axelle Croyon does a good job of creating the feeling that there could be something lurking in every shadow. The scenes were Judith is woken in the night are well-done and the scenes where Judith is told that she is simply confused because she’s elderly are properly infuriating. Barbara Hershey is well-cast as Judith, giving a good performance as someone who is at peace with being in her twilight years but who still isn’t quite ready to give up on life. She is well-matched by Bruce Davison, playing a more ambiguous resident of the nursing home. The ending of The Manor is also a bit unexpected, with Judith making a choice that’s unexpected but which makes sense if you look back over what we’ve learned about her over the course of the film.
In the end, The Manor feels like a modern version of one of those old episodes of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. Yes, the film does teach an important lesson about aging and respecting our elders but, even more importantly, it adds a slightly unexpected twist to give the story a properly macabre conclusion. The Manor is an effective little horror tale and one that gives Barbara Hershey a chance to shine.
The very first color television transmission occurred 94 years ago today, in the UK. Scottish engineer John Logie Baird, the man who built the first television, was also responsible for showing that images could be broadcast in color.
Unfortunately, no footage or record of that 1928 transmission remains. Instead, the earliest surviving color videotape recording is one of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, delivering remarks during the inaugural color broadcast of WRC-TV on May 22nd, 1958. The broadcast began in black-and-white before switching to color after 15 minutes. Of course, only the people who could afford a color television could experience the switch but, at a time when most people still had a black-and-white television and even color films where the exception instead of the rule, this was still many people’s introduction to the idea that television could regularly be viewed in color.
Even Dwight D. Eisenhower was impressed.
Previous Moments In Television History:
Captain America #332 (August, 1987) opens with Captain America, the living symbol of the USA, being summoned to the Pentagon. A group of faceless bureaucrats known as The Commission tell Captain America that it is time for him to become an official agent of the U.S. Government. They argue that Steve Rogers would not even be Captain America if he hadn’t enlisted in the armed forces and been injected with the super soldier formula. It’s time for Steve Rogers to stop acting as a free agent and serve his government. And, if Steve can’t do that, the Commission can find someone to take his place, someone who understands the importance of following orders. Maybe even someone like the Super-Patriot, who is busy fighting a group of terrorists while Steve is at the meeting.
Steve thinks it over and then does the only thing that his conscience will allow.
He quits.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time that Steve Rogers quit being Captain America. In the 1970s, he was so disillusioned to discover that the President was a part of a secret conspiracy that he resigned his commission and briefly called himself The Captain. Eventually, he returned to being Captain America, just as he would do the second time that he quit. After The Commission named recruited Super Patriot to carry the shield, Steve didn’t have much choice but to take it back.
Still, this moment defined what Steve Rogers was all about. He wasn’t about serving the government or enforcing anyone’s particular policy. He was about America and the ideals that he felt it should stand for. And if that meant defying his government, that’s what he would do.
It was a great moment.
Captain America Vol. 1#332 (August, 1987)
“The Choice”
Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:
Welcome to America!
If you’ve ever wanted to experience what it would be like to arrive in America for the first time, Clickhole has had you covered since 2015. In You Arrive In America, you begin the game standing on a boat that is sailing into New York Harbor. Soon, you will dock at Ellis Island and you will have many decisions and opportunities ahead of you.
Will you look at the Statue Liberty?
Will you be able to convince the immigration official that your name really is George Clooney?
Will you get a job at a factory?
Will you head to the tenements or spend the day at Coney Island?
Will you start a family and will they grow up to understand the sacrifices that you made to give them a good life?
How many times will you see Yankees great Yogi Berra?
All these questions and more can be answered by playing You Arrive In America. You Arrive in America uses a Choose Your Own Adventure style of gameplay. Simply click on what you want to do. If you want to look at the ground and do nothing, that’s fine. If you want to get the entire city to join you in chanting, “Let’s go Yankees!,” you can do that too and, as an extra bonus, it will increase your chances of seeing Yogi Berra. The choice is yours. You’ve arrived in America and you can do whatever you want!
After having watched the film version a few hundred times, I figured that it was time for me to sit down and actually read Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.
First published in 1985 (and written when Ellis was only 19 years old and still a college student), Less Than Zero tells the story Clay. Clay is a rich college student who returns home to Los Angeles for winter break. It’s his first time to be back home since starting college and he quickly discovers that all of his old friends are, for the most part, hooked on drugs and self-destruction. Clay’s friend Rip deals drugs and buys underage sex slaves. Clay’s former best friend, Julian, is now a heroin addict who has sex for money. Clay’s other best friend, Trent, is a model who watches snuff films. Meanwhile, Clay’s girlfriend, Blair, isn’t even sure that she likes Clay. Clay goes to therapy and the therapist tries to sell his screenplay. Clay struggles to tell apart his two sisters and he rarely speaks to his mother or his father. He’s haunted by memories of his grandmother slowly dying of cancer. As winter break progresses, Clay finds himself growing more and more alienated from everyone and everything around him. He feels less and less.
I had often heard that the film version was dramatically different from the book but nothing could prepare me for just how different. In the film, Clay is an anti-drug crusader who reacts to everything that he sees in Los Angeles with self-righteous revulsion. In the book, Clay simply doesn’t care. Clay’s narration is written in a flat, minimalist style, one that makes Clay into a dispassionate observer. Over the course of the narrative, there are times that Clay obviously know that he should probably feel something but he just can’t bring himself to do it. Even when he objects to Rip buying a 12 year-old sex slave, Clay doesn’t do anything to stop Rip or to help his victim. Clay is the epitome of someone who has everything but feels nothing. Most of the memorable things that happen in the movie — Julian begging his father for forgiveness and money, Clay and Blair being chased by Rip’s goons, Julian dying in the desert — do not happen in the book. They couldn’t happen in the book because all of those scenes require the characters to have identifiably human reactions to the things that they’re seeing around them.
It’s not necessarily a happy book but, fortunately, it’s also a frequently (if darkly) funny book. Bret Easton Ellis has a good ear for the absurdities of everyday conversation and some of the book’s best moments are the ones that contrast Clay’s lack of a reaction to the frequently weird things being discussed around him. Even more importantly, it’s a short book. Just when you think you can’t take another page of Clay failing to care that everyone around him will probably be dead before they hit 30, the story ends. Ellis writes just enough to let the reader understand Clay’s world and then, mercifully, the reader is allowed to escape.
Just as the movie is definitely a product of its time, the same can be said of the original novel. Reading Less than Zero is a bit like stepping into a time machine. It’s a way to experience the coke-fueled 80s without actually traveling to them.
Through the Shattered Lens 