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It is no secret that Hollywood is out of ideas. Superhero movies are great, but there are about a million of them out there now. Star Trek has had more films than the average fan can keep track of. Romances are repetitive. Murder mysteries are repetitive. We all long for something new.
And then along comes reality. No matter how it ends, the war in Ukraine has provided plots for lots of new films. People like real life stories. People like war films, too, and the reason Hollywood has been a bit slow in making them is that in every war for the last half century, the American’s have been the bad guys. Right now, the Russian’s are the bad guys and the whole world is in love with Ukraine.
Just look at all the stories that could be made into movies:
A band of gypsies in a south Ukrainian village steal a Russian tank. It’s a heist movie, it’s the downtrodden among the downtrodden rising up heroically. Also, it’s set in the Roma community, so the music will be great and there will be lots of sexy women. Key ingredients in any Hollywood blockbuster.
The engineer who blew up a bridge, and himself in the process, to stop the Russians from getting across. Think of ‘A Bridge Too Far,’ The Bridge Over The River Kwai,’ ‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri’ and other great war movies with ‘Bridge’ in the title.
Speaking of hot women, what about Miss Ukraine of 2015, Anastasia Lenna, joining up to fight. In fact, I have seen a whole lot of pictures of hot Ukrainian women in uniform. That could be a whole series.
Or, a biopic of Vitaly Kitchko. World heavyweight champ so the first half of the movie is him battling through the ranks to make it as a boxer, like Rocky (and his brother on the same career path, like the Venus and Serena Williams of boxing), and then he gets elected mayor of Kiev, and then he goes to war, valiantly defending his home town.
Or, indeed, Volodomyr Zelensky. That would be the most meta biopic ever. Like Ronald Reagan, he was an actor before becoming president. He starred in such movies as “Love in the Big City,” “Love in the Big City 2,” and “Love in the Big City 3,” but is most famous for his starring role in a very popular TV series “Servant of the People” in which he portrays a fictional Ukrainian president. Now, as president, he has donned the uniform (famously responding to an American offer of sanctuary with “I need ammunition. Not a ride.”) and is inspiring the resistance.
There are many more. The baby born in the Metro. The brewery that donated so many bottles for the making of Molotov Cocktails. The two Russian soldiers who ran out of gas so went to the local police for help. (that one’s a comedy)
Get cranking, Hollywood. The public is hungry.

I’ve read quite a few books by J.K. Rowling now. In addition to the Harry Potter books, which made her deservedly famous and wealthy, and for which she will always be remembered no matter how many books she writes, I’ve read The Casual Vacancy (an interesting novel dealing with class differences in modern England), a couple of the Cormoran Strike mysteries (if you like detective stories, they are pretty good – nothing that really changed the genre or anything, but I liked the plucky female sidekick), and, most recently, after perusing the shelves of the woefully small English section at Prague’s beautiful central library, the one with the infinity tower of books at the entrance, The Ickabog.
Now, The Ickabog is very definitely a children’s book, aimed at a much younger audience than Harry Potter was. That’s O.K. I enjoy reading children’s books. It’s a genre to itself, and contains some brilliant literature. The Ickabog is, indeed, brilliant.
It has the kind of message that you’d expect from a children’s book. Kindness begets kindness, the truth will set you free, all children are loved, etc…
It begins in a happy, pleasant kingdom which has a vain and foolish king, whose treacherous, sycophantic advisors turn the place into a dystopian hellhole in an amazingly brief span of time, but the good guys win, of course, in the end, and there are happy endings all around.
There was one thing I especially liked about it and which proved to me that Rowling is not only a brilliant author but an all around good person, a real world Daisy Dovetail (the heroine of the book), no matter what anybody says.
The book is illustrated by children from around the world, who responded to a contest. The illustrations are, of course, childlike, but they are very good. In addition to illustrating the story, they add a bit of diversity to it. It was a bit of a gimmick, I suppose, but one which worked beautifully and gave many children a real part in a book which will live forever.

Well, to all of my friends who said Putin would invade Ukraine: you were right, I was wrong. I think it’s totally a bonehead move on Putin’s part, he gains absolutely nothing from this. Even if Russia was to totally re-assert dominance over Ukraine, it would not benefit Russia economically or politically. Ukraine is far more valuable to them as a friendly trading partner than as a hostile entity which requires a permanent (and expensive) occupying force.
That’s what I said about Crimea, as well. It’s obvious that Vladimir Putin and I don’t think alike.
I wish this had been settled by talking, and not escalated to this point, but none of the belligerent parties seemed interested in that. Still, I think the U.S. should stay the hell out. U.S. history over the last few decades has been one of making bad situations much, much worse. Biden is talking about sanctions now, which I’m actually kind of relieved to hear because it may be an indicator he isn’t going to commit to an actual war with Russia. Still, sanctions (against the makers of the Nordstream pipeline) raise the question: what does this all have to do with Hunter Biden, and oil, and Burisma?
As to what action the rest of Europe should take, all I can say is that at this point in time all countries in central and western Europe, but especially countries like the Czech Republic, and Poland, and Slovakia, should be as welcoming as possible to any Ukrainians who want to get out, and as generous as possible with emergency supplies for those who remain. I mean like food and medicine. Not guns.

Rolling Stone ran an article with the headline “Joe Rogan Seems to have Disappeared from Spotify,” and I saw that on Facebook. So, the first thing I did was to go to Spotify and check and, lo and behold, Joe Rogan is still there and I started listening to the first podcast on the list.
Then, I went back and left a snarky “Nope, still there” comment. Well, some people on the thread were defending Rolling Stone, saying that if I’d bothered to read the article (which, they were right, I hadn’t) I would have realized that it was a technical glitch and everything was back up again.
Does that let Rolling Stone off the hook? Legally, I’m sure it does, that covers their ass. I mean “Seems to Have” is vague enough it can mean anything. But I, personally, am not letting Rolling Stone off the hook so easily. They knew what their headline sounded like, they know that lots of people (like me. Not proud of that, but it’s true. So much stuff out there to read and react to, so little time) don’t always read the articles, and they know that controversy sells.
Anyway, I started listening to the first podcast, which was some guy talking about Covid. I guess Rogan’s doing his penance, but to tell the truth, I am sick of all covid related conversation. I’m just bored with it. So, I changed to the next podcast, in which Rogan’s guest is a comedian I didn’t know, Joey Diaz. They are smoking pot, telling fart jokes, talking about favorite restaurants and comedy clubs, MMA fighting, Joey’s knee operation, whether it’s better to live in New Jersey or New York and, for some reason, the difference between chimpanzee births and human births.
That’s the Joe Rogan I like.

Who knows what goes on in the mind of Mark Zuckerberg? I sure do not but, since he is a public figure and, unlike the Kardashians or many other public figures, very important to all of our lives in a very real way, I’m going to go ahead and speculate.
It looks as if his big Metaverse project isn’t quite making the splash he hoped it would, and I suppose that’s a pity. The world needs a really good, new site. This just doesn’t appear to be it. I suspect (and, admittedly, my knowledge of Mark Zuckerberg is mostly based on having seen “The Social Network”) that the problem is that Mark Zuckerberg, who is undoubtedly a computer genius, struck it rich with one big idea, and doesn’t actually have another one. He’s a computer whiz, but he’s not great with people, and that makes him, in some ways, a bad businessman.
Now, he has announced that he wants all of his employees to be known as ‘Metamates.’ That does not actually address any of his problems, and it’s the kind of dick idea some middle management type who has to say or do something just to remain relevant would come up with. It’s not such a super snazzy nickname that it’s going to suddenly endear him to the whole world, and it’s kind of insulting to his employees.
The best thing Mark Zuckerberg could do, for the world in general, for Facebook, and for himself, most of all, would be to just step down, hand over control, and let Facebook evolve in whatever direction it evolves.