Is there some characteristic about being a wolf man that would make someone good at basketball?

Or bowling, for that matter?

It’s not terribly realistic how this bad basketball team, turned title contender thanks to the dominance of the werewolf teen, can — with the absence of their star player the wolf who had made all the other players irrelevant during the period of success — overcome a 30 point deficit (or 25 or something) suddenly figure out how to play — with the fat kid making all those shots.

You do see foreshadowing in the final montage, with the repeating song refrain “Win in the End” telling how it all ends — he does, indeed, win in the end.  Curiously coincidental song selections greet the dance — somehow we have a song about a wolf at the dance that Michael J Fox’s character laps up all the attention as a wolf.

As for the sequel — Teen Wolf Too — is there some characteristic about being a wolf man that would make someone good at boxing?

And where is this college where Boxing is King?

Did they ever consider going The Karate Kid route and make the third installment of the Teen Wolf movie with a female protagonist?

It’s actually a little uninteresting in and of itself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory.  She wins a heavily immigrant district at a particularly tumultuous time issue wise against the dull Democratic Party apparatchik.  And in a year where the only clear tealeaves in Democratic primary fights, on equal ground or the rare insurgent victory,  is that women win over men.  She doesn’t represent an obvious path for the party toward winning nationwide, and may just portend trends in the urban core that’d fade out in the suburbs.

The question worth trying to gauge, from historical precedent, whether in some future, Republicans can make some political hay out of her (one of 435 Representatives.)  We see Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck going the “Like the Honest Socialists, don’t like the dishonest ones” route of facile praise (wink wink — jab at more politically vulnerable and careful positioning Claire McCaskill, or… whomever… who are “hiding their true colors” or… something.)  Going with her obvious forebear — Bernie Sanders — any one since 1990 that a Republican won a race anywhere by morphing their opponent with this “Democratic Socialist”?  No, for the most part he fades into eccentric obscurity.  The party has more prominent figures (and likely less liberal) to work with.

Going back further… and clue me in if there’s someone else worth positing… at some point, will a Richard Nixon come out and win an election by “exposing” the voting similarities of his opponent, Jerry Voorhis, with that of Labor Party/ red or pink Wallacite Vito Marcantonio’s?  Oh, who’s to say?  Probably a ways too far from the Cold War.  For the moment, Maxine Waters represents a better boogey woman… even if Ocasio-Cortez largely backs her up (if maybe not specific to the full frontal public confrontation Waters seems to favor).

The next, post-Kennedy Supreme Court will probably find a way to give Roe V Wade — in and of itself, if not allowing for the further state decreed restrictions — a pass.  John Roberts will declare a narrow stare decisis in a 5-4 ruling, before heading over to the concerns of corporate dominance.   Beyond that — well,  as a matter of course, I’d say the recent “Crisis Pregnancy Center” decision — no, they are not required to go against their philosophical mandate and inform women of where the Planned Parenthood is — sounds about right… doesn’t it?

Meantime, the politics of this are fascinating.  Polls show contradictions.  It is this:

 See
62 percent of respondents think the Senate should either confirm or reject Trump’s pick before the midterms.
AND
52 percent of those surveyed said that they hope Kennedy’s replacement on the Court supports access to legal abortion.  29 percent said they hope the Supreme Court’s newest member will reject legal abortion.  About 19 percent had no opinion or said they didn’t know what they wanted.

Maybe they’ve internalized my counter-intuitive forecast?

Hey.  The courts are one reason why Trump was elected — why one parcel of Republicans could go ahead, justify/rationalize/weigh in favor of sticking with Trump.  Meantime, the Democrats’ need to delay until after the election… bring to mind the party’s precarious Senate situation.  The three, or four, vulnerable Democrats over in something oftly termed “Trump Country” may draw straws to decide who off-sets the two wavering Republicans.  And it becomes an irony that the issue, if maybe a little scrambled, that brought Claire McCaskill to re-election six years ago, may just undo her six years later.

A couple decades back.  Kid (13? 14?) runs into comic book store, Mom a step behind him.

He says to the clerk.  “Okay.  I have $3.  What can I buy by Harlan Ellison for $3?”

Clerk says, “Er…? Hm.”

“Like, maybe even a poster even?  I just really want something from Harlan Ellison!”

Eventually the kid (and mom) leave the store disappointed.  The store owner apparently not sure what to do with that request.  It occurs to me later that I could throw at him a reprint of an issue of EC’s Weird Science Fantasy — an adaptation or maybe post-hoc attribute of a Harlan Ellison — sold for a couple bucks.  Whether it feeds the kid’s Harlan Ellison jonesing, speculative.

Noted: an internet ad for a “Vietnam War 50th Anniversary” cap.

Get one before 2024 (or is it 2025?) when the hat is no longer accurate for the moment…

Also advertising: Israel.  Or a travel company for a trip package to Israel.  The ad is just of a hot young woman in a bikini lying on a surf board.  Don’t quite know if the nation is trying to knock some objections some “bros” may have in touring Israel, or if it’s just an automatic filing.

I see in the top fold of either this town or the neighboring town’s weekly newspaper that some organization with the word “Liberty”, or “Freedom”, or “Patriotic” or a combination thereof has a tour of barnyard screenings of a documentary celebrating the trials of triumphs of the Bundy lead Malheur National Wildlife revolt, with some emphasis on the man who was shot as martyr.  (Looking up terms on google, I don’t believe it’s the film that was on PBS, but who knows?)

Sounds moderately interesting in that “interested in what you’re interested” kind of manner — how kitsch, rightwing propaganda of a hazy cause projected against a giant barn…  I could go, but the problem sits that I’m just afraid I’d see my high school yearbook editor there putting on the show who’d then want to sign me up for her newsletter… or something like that.

Actually not dissimilar from my disinclination years back to see the Youth Socialist Party (or some name like that) and a library room showing of “Ten Days that Shook the World”, the John Reed documentary on the Bolshevik Revolution.  Looks interesting enough, but… they’d think they have a recruit to Trotskyism.  (In passing, caught a glimpse of a hero worship frame-shot of Lenin and Trotsky storming into the screen.)