Tag: Kevin Costner

Born January 1955: Simmons, Costner, Roberts

SCOTUS

Among the famous folks turning 70 this month are Rowan Atkinson, who played Mr. Bean (6th) and coach Tom Izzo (30th).

9th – J. K. Simmons, American actor, born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He’s the epitome of the working actor. I’ve seen/heard him in The Cider House Rules (1999); Thank You For Smoking (2005); as the dad in Juno (2007); Up In The Air (2009); voicing Ford Pines in eight episodes of Gravity Falls (2015-2016); voicing the mayor in Zootopia (2016); La La Land (2016); and playing William Frawley in Being the Ricardos (2021), for which he received an Oscar nomination.

But I know him best from about 50 episodes of the various Law & Order shows (1994-2010), playing the shrink Emil Skoda; as J. Jonah Jameson in a half dozen Spider-Man movies (2002-2023); in 109 episodes of The Closer (2005-2012),  playing Assistant Police Chief Will Pope; and his Oscar-winning performance as the harsh music instructor in Whiplash (2014).

Also, for several years, he was the guy in the  Farmer’s Insurance commercials, such as Sesame Street, lawnmower, and the recent sleigh insurance. Here he is in Guys and Dolls (1992). 

KC

19th – Kevin Costner, Jan 18, American actor, born in Los Angeles, California. Of the movies of his I’ve seen, he starred in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves  (1991); JFK (1991), McFarland, USA (2015), and Message In A Bottle (2016). He’s also significant in Hidden Figures (2016).

He won Best Director and Picture and was nominated for Best Actor in Dances With Wolves (1990).

But it’s two baseball movies, released in consecutive years, for which I think of him the most.  Bull Durham   (1988) is a great movie about the minor leagues. But Field of Dreams (1989) is a bit of hokum that makes me cry EVERY SINGLE TIME, not always in the same place.

One other film he was in: The Big Chill  (1983). “‘We shot this whole flashback … in Atlanta, and we shot it first, when we’re all together in our college days,’ [Jeff] Goldblum said… ‘Then we saw the movie, and for one reason or another, they decided not to use it,’ Goldblum said. ‘But [Costner] was wonderful.'”

CJ

Jan 27 J- John G Roberts, 17th Chief Justice of the United States, born in Buffalo, New York. From here: He “is expressing concerns about the growing disregard for the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of major rulings expected in 2025. In his year-end report, Roberts emphasized the importance of maintaining judicial independence, urging that court decisions be honored regardless of their political implications.

“‘Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings,’ Roberts wrote. ‘These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected. Judicial independence is worth preserving.'”

I agree with that last sentence. But many of the rulings of the Roberts Court, starting with Shelby County v. Holder (2013), in which  Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled “unconstitutional, and its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance. “

Then, in  Trump v. United States (2024), “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” But “unofficial acts” is so vague as to be meaningless. 

Both of the cases, BTW, were written by the Chief Justice. I’d love to see some “judicial independence.”

The Scenario

Hair in my food?

I found this at something called Monday Mayhem, only the URL spells it “mahem”. Whatever. It’s rather like Sunday Stealing except the lists tend to be shorter. I thought this one from January was rather interesting.

1. You see a strange car pull up to your neighbor’s house every day at lunchtime. You accidentally glance into the window of the house and notice that your ‘happily married neighbor’ is fooling around! What do you do?

Well, it depends very much on my relationship with the neighbor and the neighbor’s spouse. It might be that I would do absolutely nothing at all if I didn’t know them well. If the one fooling around was my friend, I probably would mention it to him/her. If the neighbor’s spouse was my friend, I would almost certainly mention it, not to my friend, at least initially, but to the cheating spouse, with a recommendation to end the affair; whether I told my friend would depend on the actions of the person “fooling around”.

2. You are at the mall and a mom with really annoying screaming little kids is walking in front of you. She goes to give her kids a quarter for the giant gumball machine and she accidentally drops a $10 bill and doesn’t realize it. What do you do?

Say, “Hey lady, you dropped something!” Don’t know how the noisy kids factor into this. Right is right.

3. You get an email from a candy company telling you that they will send you 6 pounds of delicious chocolate if you blog about their product. When you get the product and try it you realize that it is the worst chocolate that you have ever tasted. What do you do?

It’d be one of two things: 1) I just don’t write anything at all, especially if it’s a small company, or 2) I write a negative review, probably filled with qualifiers such as “unfortunately, I found the candy pretty much inedible. I have to wonder: was this just a bad, or tainted batch, or is this what they sell regularly? If the latter, I can’t imagine long-term success.”

4. Texting while driving is one of the most dangerous and annoying things someone could do. Yet, what would you do if you were driving and listening to the radio when the announcer says that he will give $10,000 to the first person with your name that texts a message to him?

Well, assuming I actually knew where my cellphone was, if I were driving, I’d pull over at the first opportunity.

5. You’ve been invited to your boss’s house for a dinner party. It’s dark out and there is poor lighting when you get there. As soon as you get inside you realize that you have stepped in dog poop and you have tracked into your boss’s house. What do you do?

Well, it would depend on whether it was the boss’s dog. If it was, I’d say, “I’m afraid I just stepped into some dog poop” without specifying. Conversely, if I knew for sure it WASN’T my boss’s dog, I’d launch into a tirade about people who don’t curb their pets.

6. You are at a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive. You’ve waited nearly 30 minutes since the moment you placed your order when your food finally shows up. There is a hair on the top of the food. Do you send it back and wait another 30 minutes or do you deal?

I send it back and leave, paying for the drinks and salad already consumed. All the restaurant studies suggest it is the experience, not the quality of the food, that makes the most impact on whether one has a good or poor dining experience. Another half-hour wait would make it a poor dining experience, no matter how good the food was.

7. If you had the power to do so, what would be the one question that you would like to ask anyone who reads this?

Why do they call it “reality television” when the circumstances are so artificial, anything but real?
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Exene Cervenka of the band X co-directed Bad Day (1986), a “20-minute, silent, black & white western to pay tribute to the early days of the one-reel westerns,” starting John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (Blasters), Chris D (Flesh Eaters), Kevin Costner (yes, that Kevin Costner), “now available for digital download on a pay-what-you-will basis…a portion of the proceeds from the film are going to Gulf Coast aid organizations.”

 

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