Poor Rambo Goldstein. All armed up and no one to shoot.

Most oft-repeated phrase in America today: “Sorry kids, no more sleepovers at the Trotters’ house.”

Paranoia strikes derp.

Speaking of Mr. TL2-s, I wonder if he has weighed in yet on the batshit insanity that was Alex Jones on Piers Morgan’s show last night. On the one hand, rabid gun nut defending his right to own semi-autos with 50-round clips THAT ARE NOT ASSAULT WEAPONS THANK YOU VERY MUCH LIBTARDS. On the other hand, unhinged ranter blaming mass shootings on some of the very same SSRI-reuptake-inhibiting “murder pills” that Mr. TL2-s himself has very publicly admitted to taking. If we’re lucky, the cognitive dissonance will cause an incapacitating stroke and we’ll never have to hear from him again.

Only in wingnut land could making an elementary school a gun-free zone be considered “controversial.”

Do you know the difference between an automatic weapon and a semi-automatic weapon? Do your public statements reflect that difference?

Grrrr, if I have to hear one more asshole snarkily ask this question. Because it really matters when you’re firing a 30-round clip into a crowd of trapped and terrified 6-year-olds.

Suicide squad! Commit…suicide!

I actually got into an argument on Twitter with Goldstein on Sunday night in which he was screaming about Obama “politicizing” the tragedy to push his anti-gun policy agenda. I opined that I thought any gun-control legislation in the near future would be driven less by Obama’s political opportunism and more by the twenty 6-year-olds who had just been machine-gunned to death. Goldstein’s response was to snicker that I “don’t know a thing about weapons…he used a semi-auto.” Which I’m sure would be of great comfort to the families of the dead. And that was perhaps the least ridiculous of his unhinged bullshit. Guy is a loon.

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/11/08/mitt-romney-planned-boston-harbor-fireworks-show-that-was-scotched-election-loss/qmgtVKPq4zNnDyb9FbLWeJ/story.html

I read on the Boston Globe’s site that the Romney campaign had to cancel the fireworks display they had planned to set off over Boston Harbor when he won. Fucking fireworks? Over the largest city in a state you just lost by 23%? Yeah yeah, that would not have mattered if he had won Ohio, but still. As Bill Clinton might say, that takes some brass.

The voters also re-affirmed the results of the historic Tea Party election of 2010, returning Republicans to power in the House of Representatives.

Er, yes, but the Dems did pick up seats in both the House and Senate. Considering the gerrymandering that went on in many GOP-controlled state legislatures after the 2010 Census, that is a pretty notable development with regard to the House. But as the people say, keep fucking that chicken, Joel.

The hell with Tom Wolfe, tell me more about this nympho librarian.

Meh, just so long as Breitbart is still dead.

And while you’re at it, you might tell us why you think he’ll even TRY, since, when he had those big congressional margins, he laid down for the republicans like a cur dog.

Oh Lawdy Lawd, another one of those “LBJ would have put Nelson’s nuts in a vise until he got what he wanted” arguments. Do tell us all how the magical Senate fairies did not tell Obama where the pixie dust was and now we’re stuck without a public option. And remember to show your work.

If I’m not mistaken, Conor lives in L.A. Which means he can afford the protest vote, since Romney has zero chance in California. But he can’t just say that, of course. He has to go all Deep Thoughts and wisely stroke his chin because he’s such a damn sage.

Plus I have zero faith whatsoever that an alleged civil libertarian like Johnson or even Ron Paul would actually be able to get the entire national security and military bureaucracies to actually stop all the violations they claim they would stop the minute they take the oath of office, but that’s me, I’m a cynic.

Also the Obamas have yet to make a statement about how happy they are that Ann Romney was not hurt when her plane caught fire. IMPEACH!

And actually, I just read up on this a little more carefully, and the numbers are all getting released on Monday anyway. The studio just is not announcing Saturday and Sunday numbers as they roll in today and tomorrow. So I think this is more Hollywood.com and Paul Dergarabedian (that dude has been around forever) patting the studios on the back, not the studios themselves doing it.

It really doesn’t. The numbers will be reported eventually, for posterity, when some of the emotions of the moment settle down. All the studios share that info with each other, and even if WB wanted to, there is no way they can keep the numbers secret forever. Like I said, independent outfits track them as well as the studios. As for the Breitbarters, nuts as they are, I bet the studio and perhaps the theater chain as well (Cinemark) do set up some sort of fund to help the survivors. The legal department might be thinking about lawsuits already, but they are not going to suppress the opening weekend take just on the off chance they have to go in front of a jury years down the road.

I honestly don’t think so, and it would be moot anyway. Box office numbers are also tracked by a couple of independent outfits, and that data is available to other studios. WB could massage the numbers a little, try to make them look a little higher (which they probably would have done anyway), but they wouldn’t hide them completely just to avoid the embarrassment. Believe me, they have had high-profile movies under-perform badly enough on opening weekend. You make your excuses in the press Monday morning and move on.

No, these are unusual circumstances, and much as it pains me to admit it because I hate that place, they probably genuinely believe that it would be crass (or at least look crass) to put out press releases about these numbers.

While I am by no means defending the Hollywood execs here, I’ll say this: years ago I worked in the theatrical distribution group at Warner Brothers (the group that handles collecting all the money from theaters when a movie opens) and a move like this is probably about the best one could expect from these folks in such a short time. Considering the records for an opening weekend that Dark Knight Rises was expected to set, and since distribution execs live to gloat over setting such records, for them to give it up even for one weekend is kind of a big deal in that world.

I’ve also read that the studio has been working overtime to re-edit quite a few TV spots for DKR and to yank the trailer for Gangster Squad, which has a scene in which gangsters with tommy guns shoot up a crowd at a movie theater. Again, these seem like obvious moves, but when you’ve got several thousand prints of a trailer attached to several thousand prints of a movie all over the country, it’s a lot of work in a very short amount of time while under a lot of pressure, and you might be damaging future profits for that movie by taking its trailer out of circulation on a big weekend. I remember working on a team that had to pull the trailer for Collateral Damage (featuring a terrorist bomb killing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife and kid) the day after 9/11, and the execs were calling us about every ten minutes to confirm we had pulled it from every theater in the country. So the studio is not just contenting itself with this box office numbers reporting thing.

And that’s the first and last time I will probably ever defend Warner Brothers for anything.