Saturday, January 19, 2013

Saturday Sitings: Double Dose of Violence Where Russel Crowe Plays Bloomberg and a Touch of Credit Card Fraud

Bloomberg retaliation? Mulgrew says UFT HQ "inundated with city inspectors" this morning. "I would say the mayor is not responding well"  -- Gotham Schools tweet.
Thursday's UFT Delegate Assembly and its aftermath - especially - King Threatens To Strip Title 1 Money From NYC If No Evaluation System Is In By March 1  - put me in the mood for some good old violence.

So my Friday plan hinged on catching Django Unchained at the reasonably close Sheepshead Bay Multiplex but when it was clear I was not making the 12:05 showing and with the next one at 3:40 I ended up aiming for the just opened "Broken City", a tale of a mayor of NYC running for a third term and his major corruption, malfeasance, misuse of power, and arrogance.

In other words, the Michael Bloomberg story, something the NY Times review didn't dare go near. Expect him to hire a private investigator to track Diana Taylor. Or maybe misuse city power to harass people like Mulgrew who become obstacles. Oh, sorry, been there, done that. The key element of the corruption -- the mcguffin -- was a fictional representation of the attempt to sell Suyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village as a way to drive lower middle class people out in order to gentrify the area - and I'm sure Bloomberg had is hand in promoting that. If he could manage it, Manhattan would have a moat around it with missiles aimed at anyone without a high credit rating.

 Well, (spoiler alert) -- it was nice to see the Russel Crowe Bloomberg surrogate being led off in cuffs, something we unfortunately will not get to see, though in Joel Klein's early tenure, the corruption was so clear, I predicted he would one day be taken out of Tweed with his coat over his head. There is still hope, though it may be out of a Rupert Murdoch owned building.

Before I went to the 2PM show I made my daily visit to Home Depot and paid at the self-checkout machine. With the movie starting and me with the biggest tub of popcorn I could find, I ignored the phone call from an 800 number at about 2:15. Later I found out it was Amex fraud alert. Apparently, minutes after I used my card, someone used it to shop at Target and then Kentucky Fried Chicken -- and I would have forgiven them if they has sent over a bucket to the movie to save me from that enormous amount of popcorn (which I finished half way through). How Amex figures that is impressive -- later that night they told me to destroy the card - cest la vie.

Well, after the satisfaction of see Bloomberg got to jail, I managed to make the Django Unchained movie just a few minutes in -- remember the days as kids when you walked into the middle of a movie and sat through a double feature to see the parts you missed --- and there was enough violence to last me 5 Delegate Assemblies.

Well, its off to a gala birthday bash being thrown by the children of Loretta and Gene Prisco, two of the old stalwarts from the 1970s right through to today. So seeing some of the old UFT activists today should be lots of fun. Pics later tonight.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is nice to seeing you really enjoying retirement life...enjoy and have fun..