BSR

I guess the "couple" could claim that they haven't been dating long, but even with that story, the chances of getting tripped up are uncomfortably high (at least for my pain threshold). That is a tangled web I'd rather not weave.

I finally got around to seeing Bros. The reviews on this thread and elsewhere set my expectations so low that I actually ended up liking it. That's not to say, however, that I thought it was a good movie. I went into it with a touch of animus against Billy Eichner after he blamed the bomb at the box office on homophobia. It's called personal responsibility, pal, a concept you should have learned decades ago. I don't get these narcissists who reflexively blame their failures on everyone but themselves, like when the female Ghostbusters cast blamed sexism for their bomb. Nope, in both cases, the movie sucked. I disagree that Eichner played the "typical" New Yorker, stereotypical more like. Either/or, I can't say I particularly liked the character or Eichner as an actor. Same difference perhaps, because I'm pretty sure Eichner was simply playing himself. The museum board also grated on me. While I do appreciate the ability to laugh at oneself, the lines and the actors' delivery came off as way too forced. It all felt like a desperate stand-up comedian trying way too hard to be funny, so he ends up just being cringe. It wasn't all bad, of course. I was pleasantly surprised by Luke McFarlane and his character. I wasn't a fan before because I didn't care for him in Brothers and Sisters, but he was great in this. I also loved the guest stars Harvey Fierstein and Debra Messing (even though I couldn't stand her on Will & Grace). And I loved the scenes in beautiful Provincetown. Does P-town really look that postcard-perfect? The movie's best scene was the one toward the end with Eichner and his straight female friend, where she talks him into trying again. They were two normal people having a conversation that sounded like the way real people speak. If the movie had done a lot more of that, as opposed to trying waaaaay too hard, I would have liked Bros a lot more than I did. PS: they should film an alternate ending as a bonus extra for DVD/blu-ray, one in which McFarlane ditches Eichnar and all his high-strung neuroses to run off with the hunky high school hockey crush.

The French sports daily L'Équipe was the first to report that Novak Djokovic had surgery this morning to repair his torn meniscus. Wow, just 1 day after diagnosis! Novak had an elbow injury in the 2nd half of 2016 and all of 2017, but decided on surgery in early 2018 only after exhausting all natural healing options for those 18 months. None of that kumbaya sh*t this time, LOL. I'm guessing that part of this change in mentality is due to Novak's desperation to have one last chance at Olympic gold. Recovery time will be ~3 weeks, which all but kills his chances of playing Wimbledon. In 2021, Taylor Fritz also tore his meniscus at Roland Garros but recovered from surgery in just 3 weeks and was able to play Wimbledon, although he was a lot younger then (just 23) than Novak is now (37!). Also, Fritz was just looking to play some matches & win some prize money whereas Novak enters a Slam only if he thinks he can win it. While shut out of Wimbledon, Novak should be good to go for the Paris Olympics, where the tennis starts on July 27. He's been very open & vocal about just how much he wants that gold medal. Hey, at least he still has a chance.

I think all men with great legs should wear shorts this short. Bring back the 80s! By the way, this is Nourdin Batán, a Spanish actor of Moroccan descent. He transformed his body by doing crossfit. Helluva difference between the before and after!

Sounds fun, but your report of all the smoke really turns me off. I absolutely HATE smoke: makes me feel like I'm gonna cough up a lung, not to mention it makes my eyes water, your clothes reek, your hair (what's left of mine, at least). UGH! Oh wait, cute sexy guys full Monty? One with his manhood pointing due north better than a compass?? Yuppers, just added Lucky's to my bucket list.

I think @Vegas_Millennial's comments were more sociological than political, and for what it's worth, I agree with him. People's social circles aren't necessarily composed of people exactly like them, but far more often than not, one's friends are at least similar. Rich people have rich friends. If you asked the Fortune 400 how many of them have a friend on food stamps, I'd bet my bottom dollar that number is zero (OK, maybe 1, always an exception). Jocks hang out with jocks, artists hang out with artists, musicians with musicians, and (as I can attest) Filipinos hang out with Filipinos, even those who speak perfect English and have been in the US for decades tend to have mostly Filipino friends. If you're completely closed off to associating with someone different from yourself, I agree that's an unhealthy attitude, but jocks with jocks & musicians with musicians is just human nature. Of course, plenty of immigrants learn and even master English, but a certain percentage does not. Sometimes that's age -- English proficiency for citizenship is waived for 65+. Sometimes it's because between working full time (sometimes 2-3 jobs) and raising kids and taking care of a house, an immigrant just doesn't have the time & energy. And in some cases, they simply don't want to. A friend who runs an immigrant-services nonprofit says a lot of immigrants didn't really want to come here but did anyway because they feared they would literally die in their home country. Since they have every intention of returning, even some who have spent a decade+ in the US, they don't really want to learn English because to them that would be admitting that their dream of returning to their home country will never happen. The exact number of immigrants who don't speak English is difficult to pin down because immigrants who don't speak English are often too embarrassed to admit it nor will they respond to a survey in an unfamiliar language. But with a bit of googling, I found that 8.3% of US residents lack proficiency in English (hard data from the US Census), and 1-3% lack even basic knowledge (an estimate based on US Census data because getting an exact number is impossible). Small percentages but millions of immigrants. Hey, there's a reason California prints voting ballots in 30+ languages.

It's not just American. I met a group of Brits who had retired in Marbella but none of them had even a basic level in Spanish. Their social circles are all fellow Brits or Europeans who speak excellent English. All the locals they deal with speak English, and for the occasional situation when that's not the case, it's easy & cheap to hire a translator. This group I ran into is hardly the exception on Spain's Mediterranean coast, where plenty of expats have established English-speaking communities. It goes beyond the anglosphere as well. Plenty of long-time US residents do not speak English at a functional level. That's why the California driver's exam can be taken in 32 different languages.

I'm not that bothered that he had to withdraw from Roland Garros because he was never going to win it anyway. But I do worry that he'll have to miss Wimbledon, where he does have a decent chance. If it's a bad tear, he might even miss the Olympics. If he does miss the Paris Olympics, ouch! because Novak desperately wants that gold medal, and this summer is his last chance. Roland Garros is guaranteed to crown a first-time men's singles champion because none of the guys left in the draw has won the title. My pick is Sinner, with Alcaraz a strong number 2. I'll be surprised if either Ruud or Zverev takes it, and I'll keel over if de Miñaur hoists the trophy.

He uses "Latinx" in his ad. That's all I need to know. Hard pass.

Does the real Leo look better or worse than the photos in the ad?

I have to wonder just how serious this FBI+DHS warning is. Do they think there's an uncomfortably high chance of a terrorist attack? Or is the likelihood low but not zero, and the warning is more of a cover-their-ass move?

Interesting comments about wealth inequality, but it's still laughable to blame the wealth gap for the explosion in shoplifting. If the vast gulf between rich & poor triggered skyrocketing theft, then we would see it all over the country. Instead, we see it mostly in just a few cities, ones which not coincidentally coddle criminals instead of punishing them. If your local DA believes that cash bail is racist and that criminals are actually victims, expect your local pharmacy to lock up the shampoo. Miami's gap between rich and poor is wider than most. Billionaires and centimillionaires from around the globe own 2nd (3rd? 4th?) homes, $multimillion part-time pads, while so many Miami residents work low-paying service sector jobs. Where are the flash mobs of thieves, the locked-up Hot Pockets, the lucite cases? Nope, none of that sh*t, because Miami actually sends thieves to jail. You obviously have some passionate opinions about wealth inequality. You should start up a separate thread about it instead of trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

I get your point, even if I don't necessarily agree. But can you prove that this greater gap between the top 10-20% and the rest is what causes this explosion of shoplifting?

Today's crisis is costing retailers $billions and forcing them to resort to locking hair dye up in lucite cases. Can you provide any stats as to how widespread it was in the 80s? I'm sure it did happen, but I'm guessing the problem was more isolated cases vs. today's epidemic, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

So cut it in half. $2.2 billion is still a sh*t-ton of shoplifting. And if you watch the video, none of the thieves is stealing bread to feed their families, LOL.

NY lost $4.4 billion to shoplifting in 2022. The shoplifting crisis is real, not some overblown trending topic. Your theory about fewer security guards is a possibility, I guess, but in all the discussion of this explosion in shoplifting, I've never seen anyone cite that as a cause. Can you back up your claim? I do agree that the shoplifting crisis is very much a localized phenomenon. It's not nationwide, just in cities with soft-on-crime policies. Once people figured out that they could steal all they wanted and get away with it, shoplifting exploded.

Has income inequality gotten even worse? Perhaps, although the gap between the Vanderbilts & Carnegies and the millions of immigrants who came to NYC with just the shirts on their backs was a helluva stretch. Please note that there was no Section 8, Medicaid, or food stamps in the Gilded Age. Back in the day, the poor literally starved. Blaming the very recent explosion of shoplifting on income inequality is bullsh*t that might play well in ivory tower sociology departments, but nobody in the real world is buying it.

What a steaming pile of cowplop. Huge wealth inequality has plagued NYC for decades, even centuries, yet this explosion of shoplifting is quite recent. Toothpaste wasn't locked up in 2019. I think the root cause is a lot simpler: if you can steal and get away with it, you're going to keep stealing. Hey, it's a heckuva lot easier than working for a living. No alarm clock, no boss, waaaaay better pay, choose your own hours, and best of all: no jail! Back in 2022, just 327 individuals were responsible for ~30% of NYC's shoplifting arrests, yet despite their brazen recidivism, most of these super-repeat offenders were still free as a bird instead of behind bars. What changed? In 2019, a no-bail policy for nonviolent offenders was established. City DAs with abysmal conviction rates see criminals, even those who commit violent crimes, as "victims." These policies create a sense of lawlessness in which criminals are like kids in a (free) candy store.

Since you follow his social media, do you know how old his Rentmen photos are? I pity the poor client who thinks he's getting the guy in the RM ad, only to open the door and see the guy in the photo you posted above. Yikes, helluva difference.

My hobby is languages. As I've mentioned in other threads, I watch a lot of Spanish TV & movies. Every day without fail, I watch something in Spanish even if it's just a 10-minute YT video. Some days, it's hours of binging. I learned Spanish in Salamanca decades ago, but it got woefully rusty until I discovered Spanish TV via Internet a ~decade ago. My speaking ability is actually (far) better now than it was at the end of my year in Salamanca, and my listening comprehension is at least 10x better. I also picked up French again after a 4+ decade break in study. Yikes, more rust than the remains of the Titanic! I've been doing Duolingo for only 6 weeks, but least I haven't skipped a day so far. My goal is to be able to watch French series & movies on Netflix without English subtitles. That's a long way off, but hey, the longest journey begins with the first step. And last, I watch YT videos in my original but forgotten native tongue, Tagalog (Filipino). Unfortunately, my parents didn't know that you could raise kids bilingual and were very worried that I wouldn't learn English. As soon as I picked up English in kindergarten, they stopped speaking Tagalog at home. But I still understand it OK and was delighted to find a few great YT channels in Tagalog: one about Filipino history, one by a guy dedicated to reviving the Spanish language in the Philippines, and one hilarious cooking channel by a super-campy gay guy. Interesting note: I can watch Tagalog YT vids at 1.5x speed just like almost every video in English despite very limited vocabulary (my vocabulary in Spanish must be 20x my Tagalog). I can watch Spanish vids at 1.5x also, but it requires so much concentration that I'm mentally exhausted after 5 minutes. Learning a language as a child must set in your brain in a way that adult learning simply can't match, no matter how much effort you put in.

The IRS assumes a tip income and collects taxes on 9% of the total checks for a server, 10% of the meter total for taxi drivers. Mind you, in most parts of the country, servers & cab drivers make more than 9-10% in tips, but there are a few areas where it could be that low or (eek!) less.

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize that Park MGM's casino was nonsmoking (haven't been there since it was the old Monte Carlo). I thought the Westin made a mistake when they made the whole property nonsmoking (brand-wide policy) except the casino. They could have marketed themselves as the only nonsmoking casino in Las Vegas, but perhaps that was too avant-garde a notion when they opened back in 2003. I stayed there in late 2003 and remember being a mite annoyed that they advertised heavily as a nonsmoking property, yet you could smell the stench of smoke every time you went in & out of the hotel. Gambling revenue could not have been that significant given how small the casino was (less than 300 machines, only 10 tables). When a new owner took over after a foreclosure, they got rid of the casino, and all accompanying smoke, entirely.