I know that I keep saying that I can’t allow myself to get excited because I might jinx the team but I’m going to take the risk. If they start losing, I’ll go back to not getting excited. I’ll fight the jinx. I think I can beat it.
For now, the Rangers are 44-42. We’re only one game up on the Mariners so we can’t afford to get cocky. But I’m finally feeling good about this season! The only question right now is whether or not we’re going to sweep this series against the Guardians. Go Rangers! I’m cheering for you!
Alright, let’s talk about Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’m telling you right now, if you’ve never given this song a proper listen, you are missing out on one of the most genuine, heartfelt pieces of music ever put to tape. It’s got this almost hypnotic, slow-burning groove that just pulls you in from the very first note. This isn’t just a song; it’s a conversation with your own soul, or maybe with a wiser voice you wish you’d listened to more often. I’m convinced this tune is a masterpiece, and I’m gonna tell you why you need to stop what you’re doing and really hear it.
So the secret sauce behind it all? The story. Ronnie Van Zant wrote this song based on the wisdom his own grandmother and Gary Rossington’s mother passed on, and man, does that authenticity shine through. It’s the most honest “mama’s advice” song you’ll ever hear—like your mom sat you down and told you, “Take your time, don’t live too fast,” and “Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold.” It cuts straight through all the noise and modern BS and gets right to the core of what actually matters: being satisfied with who you are and what you love. It’s a simple message, sure, but that’s the whole point. It’s the kind of wisdom that feels like a warm hug, and even if you think you’re too cool for that kind of stuff, I bet my last dollar it’ll hit you right in the chest.
And then there’s the guitar solo. The whole band is locked in, building this beautiful tension, and when that moment hits, it is pure magic. The solo is played by the incredible Gary Rossington (RIP to a true legend), and it starts around the 3:37 mark. It’s not about shredding a million notes a second; it’s about pure, raw emotion. It’s like the guitar is crying out all the feelings the words can’t quite capture. It soars, it wails, and it takes you on this perfect journey before gently landing you back into the final, heartfelt verses. Honestly, the song’s whole structure just sets you up perfectly for this release—it’s one of the most satisfying moments in classic rock history.
Look, I know a lot of people are all about the big anthems like Free Bird or Sweet Home Alabama, and those are great in their own right. But Simple Man is different. It’s the song that shows you Skynyrd’s beating heart. It’s the quiet, introspective masterpiece in a catalog full of rowdy bangers. So do yourself a favor: put on some headphones, find a quiet spot, and let Simple Man wash over you from start to finish. You can thank me later, because this isn’t just a tune you hear—it’s a feeling you experience.
Simple Man
Mama told me when I was young “Come sit beside me, my only son And listen closely to what I say And if you do this it’ll help you some sunny day”
“Oh, take your time, don’t live too fast Troubles will come and they will pass You’ll find a woman and you’ll find love And don’t forget, son, there is someone up above”
“And be a simple kind of man Oh, be something you love and understand Baby be a simple kind of man Oh, won’t you do this for me, son, if you can”
“Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold All that you need is in your soul And you can do this, oh baby, if you try All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied”
“And be a simple kind of man Oh, be something you love and understand Baby be a simple kind of man Oh, won’t you do this for me, son, if you can”
Oh yes, I will
[guitar solo @3:37]
“Boy, don’t you worry, you’ll find yourself Follow your heart and nothing else And you can do this, oh baby, if you try All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied”
“And be a simple kind of man Oh, be something you love and understand Baby be a simple kind of man Oh, won’t you do this for me, son, if you can”
Baby, be a simple, be a simple man Oh, be something you love and understand Baby, be a simple kind of man+
There are films that entertain, films that impress, and then there are films that simply break you. Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata and released by Studio Ghibli in 1988, belongs firmly to that final category. It is one of the most devastating pieces of cinema ever committed to screen — animated or otherwise — and its power has not dimmed a single watt in the decades since its release. If anything, it has only grown heavier with time, which says something quietly terrible about the state of the world we keep building and destroying.
The film is an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical short story of the same name written by Akiyuki Nosaka, first published in 1967. Nosaka drew directly from his own traumatic experience as a child survivor of the American firebombing of Kobe and Nishinomiya during the final months of World War II. He lost his adopted younger sister, Keiko, to malnutrition during that period, and spent much of the rest of his life consumed by guilt over her death — guilt that he transformed into literature as a form of personal penance. The story, and by extension Takahata’s film, is not simply a war narrative. It is a confession. That emotional honesty is what gives Grave of the Fireflies its extraordinary moral weight and separates it from more conventional wartime dramas.
The story follows two siblings—fourteen-year-old Seita and his four-year-old sister Setsuko—who are left to fend for themselves in the ruins of wartime Japan after their mother is killed in an air raid. Their father is away serving in the Imperial Navy, and the children initially take refuge with a distant aunt whose cold pragmatism and growing resentment become as suffocating as the war itself. Eventually, Seita takes Setsuko, and the two retreat to a small abandoned shelter near a lake, where they attempt to survive on dwindling resources. What follows is a story of extraordinary love between two children set against the backdrop of a society collapsing under the weight of its own catastrophic choices. Takahata makes no political speeches; he does not need to. The tragedy unfolds with quiet, terrible inevitability, and the film’s opening scene—in which we learn from the outset that Seita does not survive—ensures that every fleeting moment of joy between the siblings is shadowed by grief already lodged in our chests.
It is worth pausing on the animation itself, because Grave of the Fireflies is a masterwork of the form. Takahata consistently pushed back against the notion that animation was a lesser medium suited only to fantasy or comedy, and here he uses it to render the physical reality of war with extraordinary specificity: the blistering heat of an air raid reflected in Setsuko’s wide eyes, the sickly pallor of a malnourished child’s skin, the gentle glow of fireflies against the blue-black darkness of a summer night. Studio Ghibli’s artists create a version of wartime Japan that feels tactile and achingly real, and the deliberate contrast between the natural beauty of the countryside and the devastation wrought by human violence is one of the film’s most quietly devastating achievements. The fireflies themselves—insects that glow brilliantly for a short time and then die—function as one of cinema’s most elegantly constructed symbols, one the film earns rather than imposes.
Grave of the Fireflies occupies a unique and important place in the history of how anime has been received in the West. For decades, Western audiences and critics tended to treat animation as a genre rather than a medium—something inherently juvenile, made for children, and incapable of the emotional or artistic range associated with live-action film. Anime, with its distinct visual language, was often doubly dismissed as too foreign, too strange, or too cartoonish. The arrival of Studio Ghibli films in Western markets—and Grave of the Fireflies in particular—fundamentally challenged that assumption. Here was an animated film that dealt with death, starvation, grief, and moral ambiguity with more unflinching honesty than most of Hollywood’s prestigious war dramas. Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars, famously described it as one of the greatest war films ever made—a statement that helped elevate not just the film but animation’s broader cultural status. Grave of the Fireflies helped pave the way for deeper Western critical engagement with anime as a serious art form, a conversation that continued through works like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Spirited Away, and persists into the present era of global anime fandom. Without Takahata’s film insisting on animation’s capacity for genuine tragedy, that shift might have taken far longer.
The film also complicates some of the West’s more self-flattering narratives about World War II. Grave of the Fireflies does not engage with questions of who started the war or who was morally right; it simply shows two Japanese children dying slowly in the wreckage of American bombing campaigns and asks the viewer to sit with that reality. This is not a film that endorses Japanese imperialism or absolves the government whose war Seita and Setsuko ultimately suffer from. Instead, it refuses to let civilian suffering disappear behind the abstractions of historical victory. That refusal has made it an uncomfortable but essential work in discussions about the human cost of war.
One cannot watch Grave of the Fireflies today and remain complacent about the news cycles documenting conflicts around the world. The images of starving children in Gaza, orphaned families in Ukraine, and displaced populations in Sudan are a visceral, real-world echo of Seita and Setsuko’s plight. The film acts as a powerful antidote to the desensitization that can occur in a world numb to constant tragedy. When we scroll past headlines or see statistics of casualties, we are abstracting suffering. The film refuses to let us do that. The reality of malnutrition and starvation is put on screen in a way that feels almost too intimate to watch, from Setsuko’s distended belly to the sores that form on her skin. The film forces a confrontation with the fact that war’s “collateral damage” is not a number, but millions of individual, human stories—stories of children robbed of their childhood, their innocence, and ultimately, their lives, just like Setsuko and Seita. The cyclical nature of conflict means that for every generation, there is a new set of children living out this same tragedy, and the film’s refusal to offer easy catharsis or redemption makes it an enduring, uncomfortable mirror.
Grave of the Fireflies is not an easy film to recommend in the conventional sense. It is not something one watches for enjoyment, and it offers no catharsis in the traditional Hollywood mold—no heroic sacrifice redeemed, no peace restored, no comforting resolution. What it offers instead is something rarer and more valuable: witness. It is a film that confronts the true cost of war and refuses to look away, doing so through animation with a grace and rigor that should permanently dispel any lingering notion that the medium cannot carry the full weight of human experience. Nearly four decades after its release, Grave of the Fireflies remains one of the most important films ever made—a eulogy for two children, and by extension, for every child the world has failed to protect.
Let’s be real for a second: Swordfish is not a good movie. It’s not even a particularly competent one. The plot is a Rube Goldberg machine of logical fallacies, the dialogue sounds like it was written by a teenager who just discovered Ayn Rand and energy drinks, and the central “hacking” sequences are so technologically absurd they’d make a Best Buy geek squad member spit out their Mountain Dew. And yet, here we are, nearly a quarter-century later, still talking about this 2001 techno-thriller with a weird mix of scorn and affection. That’s the magic of Swordfish—it is the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush, a headache-inducing, neon-lit, logic-defying blast of early-2000s excess that somehow earned a cult following precisely because of its flaws, not in spite of them. This is the movie where John Travolta wears a soul patch, quotes Thomas Jefferson, and chews scenery like it’s his last meal on death row, all while Halle Berry casually drops the most gratuitous topless scene in mainstream cinema history and Hugh Jackman pretends to crack Pentagon firewalls with a laptop from a moving van. It’s trash, sure, but it’s gloriously, unapologetically, big-budget trash, and that’s exactly why we can’t look away.
The premise, if you can call it that, is pure pulp madness. We are introduced to Gabriel Shear, played by Travolta with a level of hammy zeal that borders on performance art, a suave super-villain who leads a shadowy, off-the-books FBI black-ops cell that apparently operates with zero oversight and unlimited resources. Or is he a rogue agent? Or a master criminal? The film never quite decides, and honestly, it doesn’t care. What matters is that Gabriel has a plan to steal nine billion dollars from a government slush fund to finance his global war on terrorism—because, you know, post-9/11 vibes were still cooking in the editing bay when this came out, and the script was clearly written during a very caffeinated weekend. To pull off this digital heist, he needs the world’s best hacker, a man who can crack any firewall with a few furious keystrokes and a 3D visual interface that looks like a rave at MIT. Enter Stanley Jobson, played by Hugh Jackman, who was fresh off X-Men and clearly just happy to be there. Stanley is a former prodigy who got busted for writing a virus, lost his daughter to his vindictive ex-wife, and now spends his days in a rusted-out RV, presumably regretting his life choices. Gabriel offers him a deal: help with the hack, get ten million dollars, and win back his kid. It’s the kind of high-stakes, low-emotion motivation that drives every action movie protagonist, but Jackman sells it with a weary charm that makes you root for him despite the sheer idiocy of his situation.
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room—actually, let’s talk about Halle Berry. Her character, Ginger, is Gabriel’s sleek, deadly associate, and she exists in the film to look stunning, deliver cryptic warnings, and, most famously, get paid a then-record $500,000 to appear topless for a scene that has absolutely zero bearing on the plot. The moment is iconic for all the wrong reasons: it’s gratuitous, it’s abrupt, and it’s pure, uncut early-2000s exploitation filmmaking. Berry later admitted she only did it because the studio offered her a huge pay bump, and honestly, that transactional honesty makes the scene even more legendary. It’s not art; it’s a contractual obligation, and yet it became the film’s most enduring watermark. Every time Swordfish comes up in conversation, you can bet your bottom dollar someone will mention “that Halle Berry scene” before they mention the plot, the action, or even John Travolta’s terrifyingly sleek haircut. That’s the level of cinematic legacy we’re dealing with here—a film remembered more for a single shot than for its entire narrative structure. And because Ginger is just Gabriel’s operative, not a spurned lover or a damsel in distress for Stanley, the scene feels even more disconnected—it’s pure spectacle for spectacle’s sake, which in a movie this unhinged, feels oddly honest.
Speaking of unhinged, let’s properly set the record straight on that opening scene, because it’s arguably the film’s single smartest moment—and the biggest bait-and-switch. The movie kicks off not with an explosion, but with a tense, quiet café confrontation where Gabriel has already gotten the drop on Stanley and FBI agent J.T. Roberts, played by Don Cheadle with his trademark weary exasperation. Instead of a generic threat, Gabriel calmly orders a drink and launches into a rambling, passionate dissertation on Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, using Al Pacino’s desperate bank robber Sonny Wortzik as his case study. He points out how that film manipulated audiences into sympathizing with a criminal, how the so-called “good guys” were portrayed as incompetent or antagonistic, and how the entire construct of heroes and villains is just a narrative shell game. It’s a genuinely clever piece of meta-commentary that immediately signals this movie’s winking, self-aware ambition—Gabriel is essentially telling Stanley, Roberts, and the audience that we’re all about to be played, that our allegiances will be toyed with, and that morality in this universe is strictly situational. Travolta delivers it with such gleeful, unhinged conviction, sipping his coffee while holding two men at gunpoint, that you almost forget you’re watching a movie that will immediately abandon that intellectual nuance for car chases and slow-motion explosions. The famous bus detonation actually comes later, during the opening credits sequence, serving as pure stylistic overkill that sets the bombastic tone for everything that follows. That café scene is the film’s thesis statement—too bad the rest of the movie is a B-minus student trying to write an A-plus paper.
The actual heist sequence involves Stanley hacking into a government mainframe using a wireless laptop from a moving van, while Gabriel’s team engages in a firefight with SWAT teams that feels like a Call of Duty cutscene. The climax features a helicopter dangling a massive chain through a skyscraper’s glass windows, which is visually stunning and physically impossible, but who cares? The movie moves at such a breakneck pace that you don’t have time to ask questions—you’re too busy watching Travolta fire two handguns while smirking like he just told the world’s greatest dad joke. The dialogue is another highlight in this carnival of cheese. Travolta delivers lines like “It’s not about the money; it’s about the message” with the gravitas of a Shakespearean actor, while Jackman counters with whiny retorts that sound like they were workshopped in a writers’ room full of Red Bull. Cheadle spends most of the film looking like he desperately wants to transfer to a different movie, and honestly, he’s the audience surrogate—the one guy who realizes how bonkers everything is but is powerless to stop it. The plot twists are telegraphed from a mile away, and the final reveal that Gabriel might have been a covert government asset all along is so half-baked it feels like an afterthought. Yet, none of this matters. Swordfish is not a film you dissect; it’s a film you surrender to. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a rollercoaster that’s slightly off its rails—terrifying, thrilling, and you’re not entirely sure you’ll survive, but you’re grinning the whole way down.
Why has Swordfish become a cult hit? Simple: it’s the perfect guilty pleasure. It came out in that sweet spot of the summer movie season where studios threw insane budgets at anything with a cool title and a poster with shiny fonts. It’s a time capsule of post-millennial anxiety, when we were terrified of hackers and fascinated by sleek, amoral anti-heroes. The film’s ludicrous premise—secret FBI shadow cells running black-bag ops funded by digital theft—plays like a fever dream of libertarian fan fiction, but it’s sold with such straight-faced conviction that you can’t help but admire its chutzpah. Travolta’s performance alone is worth the price of admission; he’s clearly having the time of his life, twirling his metaphorical mustache and delivering philosophical diatribes between sips of espresso and bursts of gunfire. He elevates the material from forgettable schlock to memorable camp, and that’s a rare skill. Meanwhile, Berry’s Ginger isn’t given much to work with beyond cool stares and that one shocking moment, but she owns every second of screen time, making you wish the script had actually bothered to make her a three-dimensional character instead of a human prop. And Cheadle, bless him, plays Agent Roberts with such grounded frustration that he becomes the audience’s anchor in a sea of absurdity.
Moreover, Swordfish understands the first rule of summer blockbusters: never let logic get in the way of a good time. The hacking scenes are laughable—Stanley types at lightning speed, bypassing encryption in seconds while 3D grids spin around him like a screensaver from 1998. The action is over-the-top, the explosions are massive, and the body count is ridiculous. But it’s all in service of that visceral, popcorn-munching rush that defines the genre. You don’t watch Swordfish for a coherent narrative; you watch it for the sheer audacity of its existence. It’s a movie that dares to ask, “What if we paid Halle Berry half a million dollars to take her top off, put John Travolta in a bad wig, let Hugh Jackman pretend he understands PHP, made Don Cheadle play the straight man to all this chaos, and opened the whole thing with a pretentious café debate about Dog Day Afternoon?” And the answer, gloriously, is a cult classic that we’ll be arguing about for decades. It’s dumb, it’s dated, and it’s utterly irresistible. Even its theatrical one-sheet—with Travolta, Berry, Jackman and Cheadle sitting—looks less like a movie poster and more like the cover art for an alt-rock band about to drop its angsty sophomore album. So fire up your DVD player, crank the volume, and let the entropy wash over you—because Swordfish is, and always will be, the definitive summer guilty pleasure.
Several states voted on Tuesday. Everyone was able to quickly count their votes …. except for California. Poor Spencer Pratt. I would have voted for him but it doesn’t look like he’s going to be the next mayor of Los Angeles. With each new update, he’s falling behind and it looks like the whiny commie no one took seriously will be in the run-off instead. It’s funny how this always happens in the state that takes over a month to count the votes. That said, it could also be argued that the results coming out of Los Angeles are a reminder that getting attention online doesn’t necessarily translate into votes on the ground. There’s a lesson there for us all.
The Facts of Life (Tubi)
I was having a panic attack on Wednesday night so I calmed myself down by watching random episodes of this slightly cringey 80s comedy. I ended up getting the theme song stuck in my head. If you hear them from your brother, better clear them with your mother….
The Hillside Strangler (HBOMax)
Yet another serial killer documentary. Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono killed a still undetermined number of women in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Bianchi claimed that he had a second personality that was responsible for the murders. Fortunately, the jury did not believe him and he is currently serving a life sentence. Buono died in prison. Good riddance.
Impact x Nightline (Hulu)
This week, I watched an episode about the heart-breaking Kristen Smart case. Though Paul Flores has (after 20+ years) finally been convinced of murdering Smart, her body has yet to be recovered. I cannot imagine the pain that Smart’s family has been put through. This is actually a case that I’ve been following for a while, even before it became the subject of podcasts. It’s not just that Paul Flores murdered Kristen. It’s that he was so damn cocky about it. He really thought he would get away with it.
Susan Smith: Sex Behind Bars (Reelz)
This short documentary about Susan Smith, a young mother who drowned her children and then tried to blame it on an imaginary black carjacker, and the sexual affairs that she had with two correctional officers in prison was exploitive and icky. And yet, I watched it. So, shame on me.
Todd (Zach Galligan) is married to Emily (Krista Errickson), who was previously involved with Todd’s brother, Berke (Michael Bowen). When Berke comes by for a visit, he discovers that Emily is cheating on Todd with Darcy (Luca Bercovici). A confrontation between Emily, Berke, and Darcy ends with Darcy dead. While covering up the murder, Emily is also plotting to take all of Todd’s money for herself. David Warner appears as the therapist who struggles to keep straight who is double-crossing who.
In the 90s, where could you see the lead of Gremlins being betrayed by both his sexy wife and his no-good brother? Where, in the 90s, could you see the star of Hello Larry try to reboot her career as a Kathleen Turner film fatale? Where, in the 90s, could you see the man who would one day play Buck in Kill Bill playing Zach Galligan’s long-haired brother? Only on Cinemax!
Mortal Passions was an attempt to do a modern noir and it has all of the expected tropes, from the clueless husband to the morally gray relative to the wife who is planning on betraying everyone. Krista Errickson is sexy and dangerous as Emily, ruthlessly plotting Todd’s downfall while walking around in lingerie. Errickson’s femme fatale is never as clever as she thinks she is but fortunately, for her, all the men around her are idiots. Galligan and Bowen are both believable as two of the most easily manipulated people that you’ll ever meet. And then there’s David Warner, phoning it in and getting away with it because he’s David Warner.
Mortal Passions is Late Night Cinemax at its trashiest best!
On this date, 40 years ago, Top Gun was released and the movie changed forever.
From the opening shot, Top Gun captured the attention of audiences who understood that, though the film’s script may have been full of cliches and though the movie was basically just a remake of the old service moves of the late 30s and 40s, it didn’t matter because jets are freaking cool.
And that opening scene is today’s scene that I love!
At an Oregon high school, Rich Donato (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the most popular adult on campus. He defies the school’s no music rule by dancing in the cafeteria. He keeps discipline in the hallways and he counsels the school’s most troubled students. He’s the adult that all the students come to for advice. He’s the adult who everyone looks to as being a life coach. However, Rich is not a teacher or a guidance counselor. Instead, he’s just a custodian and handyman. Rich is smart but he never graduated high school. He doesn’t even have a G.E.D.
That becomes a problem when the school board announces that all employees of the district are now required to have, at the very least, a GED. If Rich can’t take and pass the GED test in 30 days, Rich will lose his job. Rich fails the test the first time he takes it but wife and the students at the school come together to try to help him pass. Along the way, the special education teacher (Joan Chen) diagnoses Rich as having both ADD and dyslexia, helping to explain why Rich always had trouble in school. Even though their parents say that Rich is just a janitor and not worth the trouble, the school’s students never stop believing in him.
Made for television, In A Class Of His Own is based on a true story. It takes a typical “inspiring” approach to the material, which means there’s nothing surprising about this movie. Everyone likes Rich, even the principal (Tom McBeath) who wishes that Rich would stop dancing in the cafeteria. Luckily, Lou Diamond Phillips is likable as Rich and his performance suggests that he truly cared about the film’s message. And it’s a good message! If you have a dream, don’t give up. And don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Through the Shattered Lens 