It’s not dead yet, but it’s about to go on the gurney when the “bring out your dead” guy arrives.
The Supremes have agreed to hear the discrimination suits against Harvard and UNC
“The advocates who first developed the Harvard and UNC lawsuits in 2014 aspired to an eventual battle at the Supreme Court, where affirmative action has been upheld only through fragile one-vote margins.”
Given the new roster on the court, I see no chance for affirmative action to survive. Those one-vote decisions belong to the past. Even Justice Roberts, who often sides with the liberals, has been an opponent of the practice. It’s not just the composition of the court that seems to doom affirmative action. There is also law and that pesky Constitution. I believe that affirmative action is good for society, but it’s difficult to find any legal basis for it.
Take note of these two points:
- “Harvard argued that it considers race in a flexible way that benefits all highly qualified candidates. Its lawyers told the trial court that the college could fill its freshman class entirely with applicants who had perfect test scores and grades, but that it wanted a different mix on campus, a broader range of talent and life experiences.”
- “The lower US courts that ruled for Harvard and the University of North Carolina in the dual-track cases, however, said the programs used race in a sufficiently limited way to fulfill compelling interests in diversity.”
You see what the Harvard defense and the lower court rulings have in common? They have absolutely no basis in law or the Constitution. They are based on social justice arguments rather than the actual pertinent law. What Harvard “wanted” is not the same as what Harvard must do under the law, and “compelling interests in diversity” is a social engineering argument, not a legal one.
On the other hand, the case against Harvard was brought under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits schools receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race. The UNC lawsuit similarly claims Title VI grounds, as well as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law, which covers state institutions. Those are valid legal arguments. Justice Roberts himself famously declared, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
I have mixed feelings about this matter. I believe in the benefits of affirmative action, and even some of America’s prominent conservative voices have agreed with me, but its legal basis has always been tenuous at best, and I believe that the current conservative Supreme Court is highly unlikely to uphold it. If you’re a betting man, the over/under is that six judges will vote against Harvard and UNC.
And it only costs $75.
I’m not up on the current price list in the world of sex workers, but I’m guessing you can probably still smell a real vagina for that price, but it probably won’t smell like, “notes of coconut milk and Damascena roses mixed with raw vanilla, hinoki cypress and hints of toasted cacao.”
It would probably be more accurate to say “new music is killing new music,” but …
“The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market. Even worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking.”
“The declining TV audience for the Grammy show underscores this shift. In 2021, viewership for the ceremony collapsed 53 percent from the previous year—from 18.7 million to 8.8 million. It was the least-watched Grammy broadcast of all time. A decade ago, 40 million people watched the Grammy Awards.”
Kay came very close to major stardom. She has a solid TV resumé, but never really got an important part in an acclaimed film. You know how it is in show biz. Some people get more of a career than they deserve, some get less. Kay probably deserved a little bit better than she got. You might say she is the poor man’s Diane Lane, a capable enough actress who also just happened to be a sexy woman with a good body.
She certainly got out of the gate quickly. She was only 19 when she landed her first big role, starring opposite Bill Holden in a film directed by Clint Eastwood. That’s some big time Hollywood, right there. Later in the 70’s she made some interesting films with stars like Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed, and she was always part of “the beautiful people” spotlight because of her marriage to teen idol David Cassidy. Unfortunately, none of her films were really big winners, either as commercial hits or critical successes, and by 1987-1988 she was reduced to doing grade-B films to keep her movie career alive.
But she is still working today, as she approaches 70. She’s no longer a star, but she’s working.
Captures from a new set of HD clips by the clip master, Aesthete.
January is probably topless, but the picture is framed to hide the best stuff. Nonetheless, what it shows is mighty impressive.
She’s probably getting ready for some tennis with JLH
That pic of Elsa is not recent. She is 45 now, but still hot enough to keep up with her hunky, much younger husband, The Mighty Thor.
Most of the nudity was provided by Rebecca Louise in a flashback sequence.
There is a skinny-dipping scene in which Rebecca Louise is naked with another actress. The closed-captioning identifies this character as “Lisa,” and IMDb says that Lisa was played by Anouk Samuel. While all of that makes sense, I can’t say for certain that the second woman is Anouk because the woman does not seem to be the same one pictured on her IMDb page. That could just be a hair-color issue (the character is a blonde, Anouk is not), and the ID may be correct, but don’t accept it as gospel for now.
Our girl Sydney Sweeney was sexy, but not naked.
She was 42.
.Gif here
Then again, there are so many topless pictures of Miley, I suppose I may have lost it in the shuffle.
She did six nude scenes in this film! Poor Diane. Unlike Anne Heche’s asshole, Diane’s brown eye never got its own song. I guess there weren’t enough light bulbs to make it worth singing about. You’ll note that the director must have realized that the ol’ back door was exposed, because Richard Gere quickly got his hand down to cover it for the rest of the lengthy conversation.
But not quite quickly enough.
From 2017:
Your choices to view this 1982 movie are not great. There are, however, many versions lying around.
IMDb says there is a 97 minute cut, aired theatrically in Europe, which has all the nude scenes. I am not familiar with this and have never run into it, but I did find Italian-dubbed versions of the nude scenes almost twenty years ago on Usenet, and made some decent captures from them.
There is a 135-minute “director’s cut,” which includes no nudity and is also missing many non-nude scenes.
There is a 185-minute version on DVD and Blu-Ray which includes all the nude scenes – without the nudity! I’m not joking about that. I have this version on disk. The sex scenes between Rosanna Arquette and Tommy Lee Jones are exactly the same as in the uncensored version, except that Rosanna’s nudity is covered or cropped.
Believe it or not, there is a full, uncensored version available free on YouTube! It includes every scene – and the nude scenes are actually nude! That sounds good on paper, but I’ve only given you the good news. The bad news is that the quality is not much better than the Rob Lowe sex tape.
Anyway, if you are still interested, it is below. The nudity is found at 46:44, 1:00:46, 1:07:02, and 2:07:22. You have to be patient with that last one. I included about a half-minute of pre-nude action so you could understand the context better.
Oz did some nice collages from the latest non-nude version. He had some decent quality to work with.
And I did my best with the nude scenes from the Italian-dubbed version. As far as I have been able to find, my versions, now some 15 years old, have retained the title of the best nude captures out there. That’s one record I would like to see broken. I’d especially like to see a good version of that scene where Rosanna is on top.
It screened today in the Sundance festival.
Looks like Noomi Rapace maintains her streak.
She’s another Dorian Gray case. She’s 62 but still looks about the same – a combination of good genes and modern science.
I’ll mention in passing that I rewatched this episode recently, and this scene was not in it. It’s another case where various versions exist, like Vikings or Yellowstone or Dream On.
This nudity is nearly lost to posterity. It can only be seen in the full screen version of the film, which is not simple to find.
Way back in the earliest days of the public internet, Graphic Response created a collage from the VHS tape.
All of GR’s works are collected in our members’ area, along with the complete output of Tuna, Aesthete, Oz, Honte, Hankster, Brainscan, The Realist, Johnny Web, Charlie and me. (Johnny Web is also me!)
The performances of both of these women placed among our top nude scenes of 2001. Miner placed 6th, Phillips 19th. That separation doesn’t reflect any difference between their performances other than the fact that Miner was then in demand. (She dropped out of sight for a while when she married Macaulay Culkin.)
The movie is all but forgotten, and these two women are now generally far from the spotlight.
Rachel is still working, but she now auditions in her wheelchair. If I ran into her in the supermarket, I probably wouldn’t recognize her.
I have no idea what Bijou Phillips has been doing since 2014. It’s fun to recall what director James Toback said about her: “Bijou Phillips — you never knew what the fuck she would say or do next. There is no line between her unconscious and her articulation of it and her behavior. She is a genuine psychopath. I say that with affection and admiration, because she’s also incredibly smart and talented, so she knows how to amuse and how to get and hold attention. If she were just a psychopath, you wouldn’t want to use her; you’d just be bored. But she is always kind of amusing and interesting, and if one thing isn’t working she has a good sense of it, and she just starts on something else.”
Rachel Miner
Bijou Phillips
Lea really hasn’t changed much in the last 14 years.
“Under new regulations introduced in Belgium, government workers will be entitled to ignore their bosses if they’re contacted after hours.”
This is true unless there is a disruption in the waffle supply chain. In that case they must take the call. You never know when they may need to release some of the nation’s strategic waffle reserve.
Sometimes these food wars can get ugly. I think we all remember the bleak and unremitting horror of the Toast Wars between France and Texas.
With many of the public figures that we note the passing of, our reaction is “Why did they die so soon?” We may even experience denial or disbelief, and have to read the report at several sources before we consider it credible. Guys like Norm Macdonald and Bob Saget just seemed like they had a lot more laughs left in them, and they even looked too young to die. Even fuckin’ Screech, although we were through with him, seemed to have decades of mileage left on his tires.
That’s not true of Louie. In fact, I thought the opposite when I read the headlines: “How the hell did that guy ever live to be 68?” If you compare him to male celebrities of a comparable generation and body heft, his longevity was downright miraculous. John Candy was just a bit older than Louis, and Chris Farley was a decade younger, but they left us long ago. That said, don’t get me wrong. I loved the guy, as did so many others. He seemed like a kind and gentle soul, and I certainly didn’t want him to die.
I was just surprised that it took so long.
Other inappropriate remarks:
- If the Grim Reaper just had to claim two obese, 70ish guys this week, I guess I was willing to accept Mr. Loaf as one of them, but Louis Anderson would not have been among my choices.
- It is surely a demonstration of the power of cancer, that it could get this guy before he died of heart disease, lung disease or diabetes.