When Ray Liotta died recently it made everyone remember what an excellent actor he was: many people reference Goodfellas, a 1990 movie directed by Martin Scorsese, in which Liotta played the role of real life Mafioso Henry Hill.
Some internet comment sections came alive with dancing, sprinting debates about What's the best Mafia movie, Goodfellas or The Godfather...?
Someone wrote,
"The Godfather is an opera, Goodfellas is a rock n roll show."
In remembrance, I've been re-watching Goodfellas. The voice-over narration that flows throughout the film is a big part of its appeal, imo -- it gives continuity and atmosphere, and intimacy. Very effective.
At the beginning -- "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." That line stays with you. It cracks open the mind-set, right at the start.
Describing why the life of a "gangster" looked so attractive to a young boy growing up in Brooklyn during the 1950s, the narrator tells us that, as a gangster, "...you could do whatever you wanted -- you could double-park in front of a fire hydrant and not get a ticket!"
During my life, I've had goals -- but -- double-parking in front of a fire hydrant has never been one of them.
I don't understand these people....
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Also, don't understand Uvalde police. From news stories I've read and listened to, it sounds like Uvalde, Texas, has two police groups -- general police, and school police. The question-dodging, responsibility-ducking, press-avoiding Pete Arredondo seems to have been chief of the school police.
On the day of the murder rampage at Uvalde's school, one of the policemen who arrived at the school didn't have his radio, he says.
You always have to have your radio.
And also, I wondered, -- there were a bunch of police there, outside the school, harassing the parents who were trying to save their children; surely one, or several, of these policemen had their radios...?
These excuses are so weak.
These folks seem feckless.
Not only - not doing their job, but actually doing the opposite of their job.
Appalling.
They stood around outside; some of them went in and stood around in a hallway -- doing what? Waiting for the murderer to kill more people?
Children trapped in those classrooms were calling 911, asking for help.
Some injured children and teachers were lying there, dying, for over an hour. I cannot fathom what the excuse would be, for that, unless -- this thought did come into my mind -- not an "excuse," but a reason:
I wonder if police are going to sort of "protest" against their own lives being put in danger due to proliferation of assault weapons, and their protest will be unannounced, they will just communicate it by --
letting the public be killed, every time -- just stay outside and let it happen.
Then employ their "wait out the news cycle" strategy -- hide until the public forgets. Or even if public does not forget, no harm no foul -- they still get taxpayer-funded salaries, retirement, pensions, with no one getting fired or suspended-without-pay. Kind of -- Free Money.
The internet comment noted here in yesterday's post: "Seems like the officers get their lack of courage from the leadership" -- it's my view that many local police and other officials across this country now think they can get away with anything, because they see U.S. Congress getting away with whatever they want -- taking bribes that have been legalized by Supreme Court's approval of Citizens United, etc., and etc.
Public servants thinking only of themselves and their egos and "careers," possessing the emotional maturity of a juvenile delinquent -- We have to stop electing the worst people on the planet to public office.
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