#and i was like oh cool i went rollerblading and the only thing preventing me from actually skating was being a dumbass and

[ratatatastic]

awwww pauls talked about his first hurricane experience and how much of a panic he was in shoving his kids into closests with mattresses away from windows and he still gets nervous about hurricanes now but snowstorms are easy lol

[onisiondrama]

(Note 1: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those. Note 2: This is just a summary of Onision / James’ video plus screen shots from his video. I’m not accusing anyone or defending anyone. These are James’ accusations.)

“Onision's Dad: Randy Daniel (Pathological Liar & Child Abuser)” Speaks, December 19, 2020 - SUMMARY PART 1

- James shows the Newsweek article where his father was interviewed. He points out the author / interviewer, Steven Asarch, no longer works for Newsweek (James says he was fired, but idk if he was fired or let go). He says Steven has no integrity and his research is bare minimum. He reads his tweets to Steven and says Steven never replied. He points out Steven replied to someone with 8 followers, but not to himself who has 258k followers. James says Steven is openly defending the statements of a pedophile, his father. - James says he warned everyone about Shane and he was publicly lynched, but he was right. He plays a clip from his old debate with Lucidia about Shane. He says the woman openly defended Shane calling a 6 year old girl’s Instagram as “sexy.” He says you people are crazy and you’ll defend anything he’s against, even if they are pedophiles. - He starts reading from the article. (His dad has a Samoan daughter story.) The article says she is Deborah (Randy’s wife)’s oldest stepdaughter. He says if she’s the oldest, his father either had her before he got with his mom or when he was with his mom, so Randy allegedly cheated on his mom. - He points out the article says “an FBI investigation may have started.” He says if the FBI looked into it remotely, they would see there was no grooming and he was actually sexually extorted by and 18 1/2 year old. He plays clips from this video. [Link is to my summary with screen shots.] - The article says he uses copyright claims about any videos mentioning him. James says that’s not true. You can talk about him all you want, he can’t claim videos where people just talk about him. [As opposed to people who show his clips under Fair Use. 🙄] He shows an email to show what Youtube sends him if they don’t agree with his copyright claim:

- He says anyone who says he falsely copyright claimed them are full of crap because Youtube filters that stuff and reject you if it’s not valid. [That’s a ridiculous argument. Youtube can’t manually review ever single copyright claim they get. That’s impossible. This is only for the false copyright claims they caught.] He says he proved Steven literally just slandered him. He says he already notified Newsweek the article is slanderous and they haven’t taken it down. He has ground to sue Newsweek if he wanted to. - The article says James’ drama eclipsed his own drama and his content blurs the lines between reality and James’ fiction. He says this guy is calling him a liar. [James admits to making fake drama videos all the time. Like the fake meltdown videos, the fake abuse video he made with Shiloh, the fake expose video with Cyr, the fake “I Betrayed My Wife Part x” videos, etc.] - The article says Chris Hansen interviewed 5 women who came forward. He says there were 3, but he never met the other two. He plays more clips from the video I already mentioned. He says none of them were children. - He reads some quotes Randy said about him. He lists things Randy was accused of:

- He says his father violated a child. He says when he asked the person who was violated about it, they changed the subject. That’s how traumatized they were. He says that’s how actual victims act. He says she was 7 at the time and his mom put her in therapy. He says he’s not sure why his mother didn’t go to the police.

- He reads a quote from Deborah where she says James bullies and harasses people who speak out against him. He says you have to defend yourself from slander.

- He says he has no fascination with “young girls” in response to another quote from Deborah. He says he has an 18+ only forum and Discord. He avoids young girls. He says Deborah is married to a pedophile. He says he hasn’t seen Deborah and Randy in 16 years and he hasn’t lived with them since he was 15. He says 2 60-year-olds are crapping on a 15-year-old. - He reacts more to the details of Randy’s relationships with his mom and their kids. He says Randy used to shame him and his sister if they didn’t say “I love you too” back to him over the phone. - James says a family member of his cried in-front of him talking about how they were violated by Randy when James’ mom was sleeping. He says Randy shoved his hand and penetrated the woman. He says the woman had no reason to lie, but Randy is getting clout.

- He says Deborah spanked him like a creep. He says she would lift her hand and set / pat it on his bottom while counting. He says she was groping him on the butt. - He reads Randy wanted to give up. He says Deborah just admitted his father wanted to give up on his three children. He says these people are so dumb. - He says the only thing his father did was send him a request to talk to him on LinkedIn after he stopped talking to Randy. - James says here’s where we get to the big lie. The article says James lived with them when he was 17. James’ big reveal is that he was 15 when he lived with them. He says his dad says he was 17 to make himself look less like a child abuser. He shows his college course transcripts to prove it. He took college courses at a college in Washington state while in high school after he lived with his Father. He shows google maps of his high school and college to prove they were in Washington state. He shows the route he would rollerblade from his high school to his college. He points out the church where behind it he lost his virginity when he was 14. He says his father is a pathological liar and his wife is basically a Lannister. - He says he would play the Nine In Nail song “god is dead and no one cars” to mess with their Christian values. He would go to church with them and was cool about that. (Julia story) - He reads a quote that says he threatened to burn down their house a couple of times. He says their house was really nice and beautiful. He always loved their house. If he could visit the house and not them, that would be preferable. He asks why he would burn down a beautiful house. He says he asked someone he knew for 9 years (probably Kai) if they ever remember him threatening to burn anything down and they said no. - He says he once went to his neighbor because his neighbor was starting crap and filming him. James told his neighbor if something happened to a neighbor, you would want your neighbors to help, like if a house burned down. The neighbor asked if he was threatening to burn his house down. James said no, he meant if your house was damaged and had nowhere to stay, you would want your neighbors to be there for you. He says the neighbor said, “oh, ok.” He says threatening to burn people’s houses down is a crime, but neighbors need to know they need to be there to support each other. He said his neighbor was trying to hurt him, so he told them to knock on his door if they have a problem. Don’t send videos to idiots online. [The neighbor worked for the Fish & Wildlife department for the county and reported James to the county when he saw his using heavy machinery on protected land. People online got the video because it was publicly available on the county website.] James says he was doing yardwork too close to the water and he removed plants that made his kids cry. He swears on his own life he never threatened to burn down a house. - He says he never yelled and called Randy and Deborah names. He only called Deborah an “F-ing B” before Randy started choking him because she prevented him from being with his girlfriend that weekend. He says you know how teenage boys can be about not being able to be with their girlfriend. - He says Randy called the police on him because he didn’t want to eat dinner with them, not because he was yelling and cursing like they said in the article. He says you can probably look up the police report. He gives the location and says it was late 2001. He says he had a smirk on his face when the police showed up because he thought it was so ridiculous. Randy says it was escalating and he was afraid there would be a physical altercation. James says he had just beaten Randy down so bad he looked like a whopped dog. He says Randy looked like he was constantly afraid of him.

[ahouseoflies]

Best Films of 2017, Part III

Part I is right here. Part II is right here. Let’s keep it moving. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES 67. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (Matthew Vaughn)-  Exactly, eerily, as good as the first one. Make a hundred more of these stupid candies and wrap them individually in wax paper. 66. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (Chris Smith)-   As a movie about the effects of fame: 5 stars As a movie about the inherent lie of acting: 4 stars As a movie about making a movie: 2 stars As a well-structured documentary of its own: 1 star 65. The Wall (Doug Liman)- War movies often topple under the weight of their messages, but that's not The Wall's problem. To his credit, Liman is worried about making this a thriller first, even as he's showing off the competency of the soldier at its center. There's no music, and the camera plants you subjectively in Sergeant Issac's field of vision. (The John Cena character is named Shane Matthews, but he ain't even SEC). Even at 80-something minutes, however, the film feels long, telegraphing its way from one plot point to the next, and its dark ending comes off as a too-clever shrug. If your movie is about the war, then make it about the war. If it's using the war as a backdrop, then make it about something. 64. Fist Fight (Richie Keen)- Once you start thinking about its logic on any level, it falls apart. (The whole reason schools are bad is that they can't find good teachers, so why would they be so intent on firing the ones they have?) And it's full of fake problems. (Oh my God, he might not make it to his daughter's talent show in time!) But this worked for me overall. Some jokes fall flat, but there are so many that you can just wait for the next one to land, particularly if it's from the salty mouth of standout Jillian Bell. The script, full of meticulous callbacks, creates a full, satisfying arc for the protagonist as well. 63. Brad’s Status (Mike White)-  A confused movie that is an easy, sort of Italian watch in the way that it so literally spells out its emotions. Even five years ago, this tale of a middle class White man's entitled bellyaching would have been told straight. Now it exists only because it weaves into the narrative people who check the Stiller character's privilege. Because the character's jealousy is communicated so truly and fiercely, it almost seems as if Mike White wants to tell a story but knows he shouldn't. That sounds like faint praise, but it's a fascinating experience. 

62. Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman)- For about an hour, this felt like a movie I had seen before. "Oh, why can't I get it up? I, uh, must have had too many drugs. Definitely not because I'm gay 'cuz I'm not." It was, due to the underplayed performances and the careful composition, better than some versions of that movie, but not by much. Then, the last leg of the film gets mission-focused. Without giving anything away, rather than being just about heterosexual performance, it becomes about homosexual performance and heterosexual performance at the same time. The protagonist is challenging his straight friends within the rules of what they've determined and outside of them. Those layers pile on until the bravura final shot. I just wish it had hooked me sooner. 61. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Macon Blair)-  I preferred the Encyclopedia Brown fumbling at the beginning to the violent consequences at the end, but I realize that's how amateur detective movies work. I probably would complain if the film didn't open up in scale. The story is fairly simple, which, coupled with an assured visual style that is open to mystery, suggests that Macon Blair might have a real future as a director. He's not trying to do too much. Lynskey is absolutely perfect by the way. 60.  Life (Daniel Espinosa)-  Cool enough at the beginning and the end to excuse a few logical missteps in the middle. Still, without giving anything away, I'm recalling a fork in the road in which the film could have gone the easy, dumb way, and it went the more difficult, realistic way. I hadn't seen Espinosa's other movies, but he shows an assured hand here, especially with the rapturous gore. I can't say the same about Ryan Reynolds, who sleepwalks through a role that might as well be called You Know, a Ryan Reynolds Type.   59. The Zookeeper’s Wife (Niki Caro)-  It goes pretty hard for PG-13, and there isn't much wrong with it--the passage of time gets haphazard in the second half maybe. But personally, I think I'm all good on Holocaust stories. 58. Landline (Gillian Robespierre)- It's basically a Woody Allen movie if Woody Allen had an affinity for rollerblades instead of bad jazz. Most of the laughs come from the '90s milieu; in fact, I'm not sure if this movie would even be a comedy without the setting. Despite some of those easy laughs (and some laborious ribbon-tying at the end), the screenplay does a few difficult things well. I'm thinking in particular of a scene in which Falco and Turturro have to confront and punish their daughter. We've already been told that she gets forced into the bad-cop role, and he skates above the fray as the favorite parent. But to actually see that dynamic in action during this scene, which begins with him whispering that the mother is coming, is kind of thrilling. The performances are good: Slate is dialed up to a higher pitch than she was in Obvious Child, and newcomer Abby Quinn comes through when asked to carry long stretches. At first, I wondered why John Turturro had signed up for such a nothing part, but as his arc blossoms in the film's second half to become a quiet MVP. He gets to remind us that no one else can play an unrealized sad sack quite like him. 57. The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)-  I wish I had a unique take on this, but everyone else is right: It's a minor work from great filmmakers. There's some real psychology here--a woman in transition sublimates her upward mobility into a search for truth. And as a mystery, it works fine. But there's a tedium and a distance, despite the usual Dardenne tricks, that keeps it from hitting home. 56. The Glass Castle (Destin Cretton)-  There are too many characters in real life too, I guess. Far less focused than Short Term 12, The Glass Castle is an admirably sincere piece with some powerful sequences, but it gets way out of hand in the last twenty minutes. Recommendations for a movie that finishes with the point "It's okay to hate your dad"? 55. The Disaster Artist (James Franco)- James Franco reveals himself to be a workman-like director, a brilliant actor, and the best real-life brother of all time. Having a James Franco performance like this but giving top billing to Dave Franco is kind of like eating birthday cake but giving top billing to the plate. Playing a clown-fraud like Tommy Wiseau exposes an actor to artifice. Commit too much, and it's a stunt; commit too little, and it's a wink. I don't know exactly how he does it, but James Franco walks the tight-rope precisely. Dave Franco, playing a nineteen-year-old for some of this, is in over his head. If you've ever seen a well-done amateur Shakespeare adaptation, you know the electricity that comes from the company's freedom, when they realize they can do what they want with this supposedly sacrosanct work. So imagine how much fun professionals are in re-staging a work that is objectively terrible. At its worst, The Disaster Artist feels like a trifle. At its best, however, that feeling of putting-on-a-show is what comes across well.

54. Manifesto (Julian Rosenfeldt)- I knew this was various incarnations of Cate Blanchett--a homeless man, a conservative housewife, a broker--performing artistic manifestos. But I didn't know the most clever twist, which is that the manifestos are blended into one another, so that a line of Marx alternates with a line of Tzara with a line of Soupault. That dynamic approach brings to light how confrontational and immature all of these types of writings are, not to mention the collaborative spirit most of those writers had. Your mileage may vary based on your tolerance for intellectual bullshit, but I scratched my chin contentedly. The pairings of the manifestos to the settings are clever, and my favorite was probably a eulogist talking about dadaism at a literal funeral. As artificial as what I'm describing sounds (and yeah, by the eighth or ninth one, you'll check your watch), Blanchett finds an observational truth. The performative posture of a schoolteacher, the pause for fake laughs of a C.E.O., the paper shuffle of a news anchor: She remains the real thing. 53. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler)-  Now that I have taken a shower to wash off the movie's bleak grodiness, I appreciate its solid plotting and grindhouse super-sizing. Like Bone Tomahawk, Zahler's previous film, Brawl in Cell Block 99 takes about an hour to get where it's going. (The inciting incident is technically at 1:08.) I assume the fat is there to develop the protagonist, but I think about twenty minutes could be shaved off. Zahler's rhythms might make for an excellent TV show, but something about that '70s exploitation poster makes me think we won't find out. 52. Columbus (Kogonada)- Columbus wrestles with the balance of information and inspiration. The Cassandra character prevents the Jin character--I'll ignore the gross name symbolism--from looking a date up on his phone because she wants to be able to recall it herself. Earlier than that, the Jin character tries to impress her with knowledge of a building, but she blows him off when he admits that he memorized it from a book he had read earlier in the week. Would that thought be somehow more pure if he had retained it over years? I think that type of calculus is what the film is concerned with, so it makes sense that it centers on architecture, an art of identity as much as it is a science of measurements, an expression as much as it is a utility. If the paragraph above makes it sound as if the movie is up its own ass, running on Sundance fumes through its meth subplot, then you'd be right. I had just enough patience to admire it as a promising debut. 51. The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow)- Colin Trevorrow's best film is always compelling--for different reasons in the compassionate first half than it is as it's careening off the rails in the final third. But it's always compelling. You can't complain about all studio movies being the same, then not appreciate something this fundamentally godless and bizarre. 50. Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)- People rag on the DC Universe films for being too serious and dark, but there's no limit to how dark a movie can go as long as it's balancing that mood with something else. Vogt-Roberts gets that, and Kong: Skull Island is a cut above most of these entertainments because he has a deft handle on tone. The film can get scary because it's so silly and fun at other times. Plus, if you have Jackson, Reilly, and Goodman selling your lines, they can be as dumb as you want. Even if the other sequences never reach its level, the first helicopter setpiece is dope, in part because the actual fighting of the monsters is dynamic. Skull Island is pretty far from Brazil, but Kong's chokes, holds, and throws owe a lot to jiu-jitsu. It seems like a consistent piece of design at least. Can we talk about Tom "The Tight Sweater" Hiddleston though? Vogt-Roberts has no idea how to introduce him properly, but he is an absolute zero in the role that is supposed to be heroic. The script doesn't do him any favors--the American army is taking orders from this British mercenary because...--but he is a vacuum of charisma. He's not dangerous in any way, and his blah blah my dad died backstory is delivered with no conviction. I don't get it. 49. T2: Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)- It's a perfectly pleasant experience to see these characters twenty years later--Boyle has a few nostalgic tricks up his sleeve--but "pleasant" is a backhanded response to something as vibrant and essential as the original.There's a meta-reading of T2 that admits that everyone involved is struggling with the same issues as the characters, but even that is kind of like returning to your middle school and realizing that the basketball rims weren't actually that tall. And how do you mess up the music?

48. Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary)- There are some huge ideas on Brigsby Bear's mind. The weight of nostalgia versus genuine affection is there. Caring versus pitying is there. Then there's the idea that drives it: If you're the only person who appreciates a work, does that diminish it in some way? How important is collective experience to art?Those ideas are suggested by the screenplay by Kyle Mooney and Kevin Costello, but they aren't wrestled with directly. Especially in its structure, Brigsby Bear is more conventional than its mysterious introduction and Mooney's bonkers comedic sensibility would have suggested. 47. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)- Three Billboards flew by for me, and I loved Sam Rockwell's iceberg of a performance. But I was held back by the same elements that hampered Martin McDonagh's other work. There's some profundity lurking in the Harrelson voice-over, and you can't tell me that you didn't get the chills from McDormand's raw scream as her son holds her back from putting out a fire.But it's over-written in the first half--"HOW RESPONSIBLE ARE WE FOR OTHER PEOPLE?" might as well be on a storefront on Main Street. And McDonagh, a real poet of the profane at his best, is so willing to go for the easy joke that he undoes a lot of his own subtlety. Even before the dreadful final five minutes, there's too much plot and too many characters.Perhaps it's an issue of expectations--this would have been a satisfying video store find back in the day, but I'm not sure something so out-of-control should be up for All the Awards.   46. Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadignino)- For me, this is Guadignino's third straight film in which an emotional urgency underneath never quite equals the lush, meticulous, yet inert exterior wrapping. That being said, Chalamet's performance forces nothing, and the character is a uniquely novelistic creation: knowing everything, practicing mystery, but wearing his confusion on his sleeve. Despite an overall shapeless quality, the film brings everything home in the poignant moments near the end. One of those moments is a five-minute "it gets better" speech by Michael Stuhlbarg. By that point I think most of my audience was willing to go there, but I hesitated to buy it. You can't spend two hours being a movie about what isn't said, then switch over to a movie in which everything is laid out on the table. Then again, that's my exact Guadignino problem. 45. Battle of the Sexes (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)- Dayton and Faris show as little tennis as possible because they don't know how to make it look interesting. Carell sleepwalks through his role. There's a lot of "Here's plot point A" type dialogue. We're told about King's dedication to the game, but we aren't really shown it. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a Clinton-Trump allegory, and Dayton-Faris expected Clinton to win like everyone else did. But Battle of the Sexes still goes down smooth, mostly because of the tender love story between Billie Jean King and Marilyn Barnett. In fact, every time the film cut to something else, I wanted more of those women discovering each other. I'm a student of Movie Stardom, so I've given Emma Stone her due as a Movie Star. But this is the first time I forgot I was watching Emma Stone. The scene in which Billie Jean and Marilyn meet is an impressionistic, sensual haircut. Marilyn calls Billie Jean pretty, and based on the complicated reception of that compliment--a stumble but not a stammer--you can tell Billie Jean didn't get that much. As written, King is a strange mixture of inward flailing and outward tenacity, and Stone breaks hearts with it. It's not often that one performance can give a movie a reason to exist, but that's why they play the games. 44. King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword (Guy Ritchie)- It's hard to remember a film more uninterested in its own storytelling, and it's even harder to remember a time when I saw that as a strength. If nothing else, the permanent fast-forward button that Guy Ritchie holds feels like a fresh corrective against other self-serious origin legends. I say "origin," but this movie actually feels like a trilogy unto itself, with the excellent initial twenty-five minutes covering about thirty years at a breathtaking pace. The score, which incorporates human breath, makes that literal. Ritchie fashions King Arthur into a scrappy orphan story, so there's a bit of his underdog imprint, but he also sort of assumes that we know the basics of the King Arthur story and yada-yadas a lot. Merlin gets mentioned only by name, Excalibur never gets named, and Arthur literally cuts in line to pull it out of the stone. By the end some of the visuals look like Killer Instinct for the N64 with a code to turn CGI embers all the way up. But I prefer this to the three-hour version that the studio accountants no doubt expected to receive.

43. War for the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves)- For better or worse, this movie plays for keeps. Aided by Michael Giacchino's second masterpiece of a score (after Up), the film lets the action speak for itself, going for long stretches without any dialogue. It culminates in the exact go-for-broke ending that I keep asking for. But am I the only one who feels a bit of cognitive dissonance with these movies? The audience I saw it with applauded at the end, but it's hard for me to buy in that way for something that is so dour and self-serious while also being goofy. Like, I'm really supposed to learn about the lessons of work camps from CGI apes? The commitment behind the apes' design is admirable--how has this series not won any effects Oscars yet?--but is the storytelling strong enough to transcend those tricks? It's novel, but I'm not sure it's new. Matt Reeves crams the film with Apocalypse Now allusions, and though I was thoroughly entertained, I couldn't help but think this was Apocalypse Now for people who will never see Apocalypse Now.