This spooky season I recently watched Something Wicked This Way Comes with a group of friends. It's a 1983 Disney movie based an old Ray Bradbury book.
I had heard about it online a lot this month, how some had called it the "scariest Disney movie of all time" and how it had a small cult following. Considering The Halloween Tree is one of my favorite Halloween specials, also done by Bradbury, I figured it give it a run this spooky season.
It's about a small town in the seemingly early 1900s and how a mysterious figure named Mr. Dark comes to town with his "pandemonium carnival." It's supposed to appear as a classic carnival, but Mr. Darks true ambition to feed off the fear of the towns people. He does so by granting their greatest wish, only to have some horrific twist to it, akin to a monkeys paw.
Two boys named Jim and Will find out this secret, causing Dark to pursue them. Will's father is a much older man, with a bad heart, and a fear of death.
In the best moment of the movie, Mr. Dark offers to make him young again in exchange for his son. He starts offers to make him 30, then slowly tearing out pages of a book, he keeps counting up, shorting the time he would offer the old man. The old man doesn't accept his offer, yet doesn't rebuff him, showing that while he wouldn't do it, he did strongly consider it.
The father worrying throughout the movie he was a weak old man and couldn't be there for his son gave up youth again for him. Then continued to come through and ultimately save his son in the end of the movie.
This is such a rare thing in movies nowadays and shows the great divide between the generation that made this film and film makers today.
Father's in films today are fully develop and almost casted aside for how background they can be. Older films like this, show how even old men can grow, change, and have deep character development.
Not only that, but this film shows true temptation and how a real human being would react to it. The will it takes to refuse the thing you want the most, to protect the one you love the most.
It's such a rare thing to see in film today and how much more life some older media has to it in comparison. Some of these older films hold onto pieces of great story telling that almost appear to be lost in today's age.
Pritzker is the creepy old man your parents warned you about.
Toenes retweeted
Now that the Red Baron employee has been identified and the GoFundMe has been verified, I’ll post it
I truly hope you can find it in your heart to give. I don’t do these very often, I don’t want to bilk my followers for every bleeding heart sob story on the internet
But I’m not going to let a guy doing everything he can to do it the right way for his family get shafted
If you can donate, do it. It’s a good cause. Maybe we can pay this guy’s mortgage off and give him and his family a vacation somewhere
gofundme.com/f/support-a-har…
I’ve been red pilled, black pilled, white pilled, clear pilled. All the pills.
I don’t even know which one this is, but it’s one of the strongest ones I’ve had in a long long time. The desperation in his voice. You can see the sight of his kids in his eyes when he says he’s supposed to be home with them. You can see the math he’s doing in his head as he calculates how much money he has left, and how much he needs for his mortgage, and when it’s due.
What the hell is the American dream anymore? Is this what it’s about? Is there anyone who would say this guy isn’t working his ass off? For what? So that 25% of his income can go to a government that wastes it on a bunch of shit he didn’t vote for? Subsidizing the food he stocks grocery stores with for people who don’t work a 1,000th of how hard he works to buy groceries with EBT cards that he pays for, which then drives up the cost of groceries for him and his family that he pays for out of his paycheck because he’s doing it the right way.
This entire system is shit. It’s shit. There is no nicer way to put it. It is dog. shit.
This guy should be working a 9-5 at a job that gives him dignity so that he can be at home with his kids at a decent time. Instead he’s some jerk off’s content. His stressed out, end of his rope reaction is some asshole’s income.
This is bleak stuff. Absolutely bleak.
Toenes retweeted
The Star Wars prequels are back in the public consciousness lately, so I wanted to talk about how much Palpatine’s rise to power is one of the greatest villain arcs of all time.
When it comes to the prequels, so many people naturally focus on Anakin’s journey towards the Dark Side, the flaws of the Jedi Order, or the general controversy of how different generations either love or hate the trilogy. But I really think a vastly overlooked topic is the plot surrounding the disintegration of the Galactic Republic and Palpatine’s eventual triumph at the end of Revenge of the Sith.
This is a man who manufactures crisis after crisis to first depose the previous Supreme Chancellor, wins a sympathy vote to succeed him, orchestrates a civil war where he’s secretly in control of both sides, and ultimately uses the conflict to wipe out his political rivals, overthrow the political order they had created thousands of years earlier, and convert the very Galactic Republic that the Jedi had once defended against the Sith into a Galactic Empire ruled by the Sith themselves.
It’s genius writing, overlooked by a combination of fandom controversies regarding the films themselves and the fact that Anakin, Obi Wan, and Padme usually overshadow Palpatine in the prequels.
The fact that the Jedi spent millennia fighting the Sith on the battlefield, only to allow them to secretly hijack their own Republic and then weaponize it against them when Order 66 comes down proves that the Sith are the true political realists of the galaxy, while the Jedi are the metaphysical liberals attempting to abolish politics itself.
But politics can’t ever be abolished.
The tragedy of the prequels is that the Jedi essentially promise a galaxy without conflict, and by the time conflict inevitably reappears after a postwar consensus that has lasted a thousand years, they’ve lost the ability to deal with it.
Toenes retweeted
Bo French is basically as close as you’ll get to a “rise from the ashes” guy. Publicly calling for 100 million deportations. Yet groypers still won’t vote for him because Fuentes (a functional Democrat) would not have an audience if our problems were solved and he couldn’t complain online anymore.
Toenes retweeted
🚨New: Mickey’s Christmas Carol will air on ABC for the first time since 2003 on November 25th (Wednesday Night)
Toenes retweeted
Local law enforcement are playing an increasing role in mass deportations.
More than 29,000 officers have now been deputized by ICE under the 287(g) task force model, which has grown from 0 to 1,965 agencies under Trump. Monthly arrests through 287(g) have grown over 2,100%.
ALT https://www.fwd.us/news/287g-task-force-multiplied/?utm_source=constantcontact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=287g&utm_term=&utm_content= Map and arrest chart is from FWD.us Agreements chart is mine
The Uma troon situation is so close to Milo Yiannopoulos', it's almost laughable.
They both overstayed their visa, then went to an airport expecting zero issues.
Then they both got arrested and posted some extremely dramatized version of the story where ICE was "abusive" to them.
If you're a foreigner in America, do not overstay your welcome.
Toenes retweeted
The 287(g) program was created in 1996, and the Task Force Model began in 2006, yet Obama terminated it in 2012 to prevent interior enforcement.
Trump revived it in 2025, now these Task Force Model agreements are spreading across the country to arrest illegal aliens every day.
Toenes retweeted
ugly tranny overstayed his visa and is surprised he got treated like a criminal for committing a crime LOL
Genuinely disturbing news - my friend Clara, who you might know as the Super Creek at Trackside, was abducted by ICE at the Rochester Airport on her way home from Uma week. Please read and share her story: facebook.com/share/18Rmm5SHK…
"ICE is conducting one of the biggest spy operations on left-wing activists in history."
#BREAKING: ICE is conducting one of the biggest spy operations on left-wing activists in history.