After over 30 years of life on this planet I've come up with a few ideas to a successful and happy life. Additionally 2009 was such a trying year I figured I'd spend 2010 proving and reminding how great life can be!!
After days of media blackout and unconfirmed reports of a bloody, but successful, uprising against Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, David Degner’s photographs provide a view of the aftermath of fighting in Baida, eastern Libya.
All photographs taken Feb. 23, 2011, by David Degner for The Wall Street Journal
In Baida, as in many cities in Libya’s east, flags flew from the era before Gadhafi Wednesday. The days-long fight for Baida began in the first days of anti-Gadhafi protests last week.
Wednesday, a day after the last forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi in eastern Libya were defeated, Baida’s elders met in the town’s assembly hall to begin rebuilding.
Police, witnesses say, initially clashed with protesters in Baida using tear gas and other non-lethal methods. When protests swelled, Col. Gadhafi’s government ordered in reinforcements. Here, anti-Gadhafi protesters demonstrated outside city hall Wednesday.
Local police turned on the soldiers after the soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians. The government forces retreated to Al Abrak Airport, outside of town. Townsmen followed and laid siege to the airport. Here, the remains of a battle are scattered in the terminal.
Baida’s airport, the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the uprising in eastern Libya. For four days, rebels battled forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi and commanded by one of his sons.
Spent bullet casings litter the ground at Al Abrak airport in eastern Libya.
After days of firefights, feints and an ambush on unarmed local sheiks, the regime forces surrendered their hold on the vital local airport Tuesday morning.
Evidence of previous days’ fighting at Al Abrak airport.
Ad hoc local forces—who, like citizens across eastern Libya, became heavily armed as entire army units joined forces with locals and police stations were abandoned—fought off government troops.
Witnesses say locals countered the government helicopters with anti-aircraft machine guns and Kalashnikovs.
Here, civilians displayed the guns and ammunition that they claim to have taken from mercenary soldiers in a fight.
A key challenge facing elders in Baida now is how to rein in the revolutionary zeal of the region’s youth, who are charged with emotion after several days of violent battle culminating in an historic victory.
Wednesday, Masouda al-Alamy, a distinguished professor of animal science at the city’s Omar Mukhtar University, called the meeting of elders to order. “Today, we meet and can speak freely for the first time,” she said. Here, Sheikh Mohamad Darnawi, right, spoke.
Local notables, including tribal sheikhs, university professors and prominent businessmen, met in a domed town meeting hall ringed with green plush seats.
The top items on the agenda at Wednesday’s meeting included forming committees to take charge of security, food and fuel distribution, reopening schools, and collecting weapons pillaged during the protests.
Recently resigned Minister of Justice Mustapha Mohammed Abdul Jalil was given a position of prominence on the dais at Wednesday’s meeting.
Prisoners, who say they are Libyans from Sabah, Tripoli, and Fazan were captured in fighting against anti-Gadhafi forces.
These captured pro-Gadhafi fighters told the photographer they were from Chad, seeming to confirm previous reports that Col. Gadhafi has employed foreign fighters to swell the ranks of his army and put down the uprising against his rule.
A young doctor in Baida hospital shares images he recorded on his cell phone of the dead and wounded from the previous days’ fighting. According to the head of the hospital 63 people died during the uprising and hundreds were wounded, overwhelming this 100 bed regional hospital.
Wounded Libyans recover in Baida hospital.
A view looking out across eastern Libya.
All photographs by David Degner for The Wall Street Journal
In times of economic turmoil, nothing has a calming effect like a few colorful charts. Here are a couple of thought-provoking ones via E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice.
First, originally by Alex Knapp, we have the distribution of wealth in the U.S.:
If it looks like a more dramatic amount of inequality than you are used to seeing, it may be because this is plotting total wealth rather than yearly income. Knapp also points out that the tax system doesn’t really redistribute wealth very much; the top one percent pulls in 19% of the pre-tax income, which after taxes is whittle away to … 17%.
Of course their share is growing with time, courtesy of Mother Jones:
We can compare that reality to what people think it is, and what it should be:
What does it imply that most Americans think the distribution of wealth is much more even than it really is, and would like it to be more even still? By itself, nothing at all. These are just data — descriptions of the world — and science doesn’t imply morality. The data are just useful to keep in mind when we do think about how a just society should be ordered, and what strategies (“share the pain!”) might be most appropriate when thinking about how to recover from our recent economic pratfall.
How many comments do you think we’ll get before someone claims that taxation = slavery? I’m guessing five.
Most people already knew Quentin Tarantino borrowed heavily from the 70s B-movies he grew up on when he was making Kill Bill, but I doubt many of us knew the full extent of it as laid out in this video [created by RobGWilson here]. Mostly because a video like this requires a ridiculous amount of work, and yo, I got stuff to do (*bedazzles cat sweater, nods approvingly*). In any case, it’s interesting. Some of the influences are uncanny to the point that it’s almost disappointing — I admit I didn’t realize the sunglass joke above was a reference to the originalGone in 60 Seconds — others, not so much. I don’t really think you can claim ownership of a shot of someone filling up a syringe, for instance, that just seems obvious. The video’s also a bit bittersweet, with all the shots of the dearly departed David Carradine in his last iconic role. I get a little choked up every time I see him.
(*pantomimes “gag gag, wank wank” to make sure everyone got the joke, smokes pipe*)
The Sandlot is probably my favorite movie. Not my favorite kids’ movie, or my favorite sports movie, but my flat out favorite. I concede that it’s not a technical masterpiece like The Godfather or anything, but Jesus Backflipping Christ do I love it. Conservatively, I’d estimate that I’ve seen it thirty times. I’m capable of having absurdly in-depth, hour-long conversations about it, whether or not the person I am conversing with cares or technically exists. So, yeah, I’m a fan.
The first two Scene Breakdowns I did more or less mocked ridiculously over the top scenes from 3 Ninjas & The Rock. This one will be more of an ooey-gooey lovefest. The scene I picked, “The Challenge,” features the sandlot kids, led by their heavyset catcher Ham Porter, tossing insults back and forth with a group of rich kids before whupping them on the diamond. It is the third part of an incredibly strong four scene grouping, surrounded by Squints kissing Wendy Peffercorn at the pool, the Fourth of July Night Game, and the boys chewing tobacco at the fair and puking everywhere. That is a STRONG 15-20 minutes of movie magic, folks.
Before we get started, for any of you who want to die a little in your soul, there’s this: since it was released in 1993, if it were a person, The Sandlot would be old enough to buy cigarettes.
Guh. Let’s go.
Benny the Jet
The scene starts out with star player Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez (aka Benny, aka Benny The Jet, aka The Hispanic Kid That No One In The Fictional 1962 Town The Movie Is Set In Has Any Issue With Their Kids Associating With) getting caught in a pickle. By this point in the movie, we know two things about Benny: 1) He is the leader of the group, and; 2) He is a blur*. There is no way any of these kids are tagging him out. It’s kind of like this one video game I had as a kid (which I am blanking on now), where you could get caught in a rundown and basically advance a base every time because the computer wasn’t smart enough to stop you. In that way, fat or scrawny kids are a little like crappy old video games
* Note: The actor who played Benny, Mike Vitar, carved out a nice little niche as “dude who’s fast as sh*t in children’s sports movies” for a minute there. Besides playing P.F. Flyer-rocking Benny, he also played lightning fast skater Luis Mendoza in the second and third Mighty Ducks movies**. I have many strong opinions about these films that I won’t get into her-… FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU’RE PUTTING TOGETHER A NATIONAL HOCKEY TEAM AND YOU SIGN UP A KID WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO STOP AND A FORMER FIGURE SKATER AS THOUGH THERE ARE NO OTHER HOCKEY PLAYERS IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY?! GOD! (*spins directly off the planet*)
** Second note: The kid who played pitcher Kenny DeNunez (Brandon Quintin Adams) was also in the Mighty Ducks movies. He was the black kid who always called Adam Banks a cake-eater. Apparently Marie Antoinette references go over big in the Minnesota pee-wee hockey leagues.
Enter the Douche
After Benny gets out of the pickle, we’re introduced to our antagonists: a group of douchey rich kids from the town. You can tell they are douchey and rich because they are wearing uniforms and, for some unknown reason considering the movie takes place in a summer so hot the boys literally just were at the pool cooling off because it was too hot too play baseball, letterman jackets. My working theory is that they were so committed to being douchebags that they wore the jackets despite the weather, just so people knew.
But yeah, it’s about to get heavy.
Every Group Needs A Fat Kid
As we learned from the first Scene Breakdown I did, every group needs a fat guy. They fill a number of important roles in the group dynamic: loudmouth, smelly fart haver, cannonball doer, truffle-shuffler, etc. In The Sandlot, that role is filled by Hamilton “Ham” Porter (center), and brother, he does not disappoint. He and the head douche have a name-calling war that is the verbal equivalent of WWII. And like, WWII, it ends with the good guys dropping a nuclear bomb.
I’ve compiled the insults leveled by both sides in the next few slides.
Phillips
This is Phillips, the head douche. As much as I know I’m supposed to hate him, the fact is I cannot. He doesn’t just steal this scene, he picks it up and runs the hell away with it. Between his inflection, mannerisms, and asides, he acts circles around that fatass Porter. Also, he delivers one of my favorite insults in movie history, below.
His insults, in order:
- It’s easy when you play with a bunch of rejects and a fat kid, Rodriguez.
- I said you shouldn’t even be allowed to touch a baseball. Except for Rodriguez, you’re all an insult to the game.
- We play on a real diamond, Porter. You ain’t good enough to lick the dirt off our cleats.
- Shut up, idiot.
- Scab eater!
- Pus licker
- You eat dog crap for breakfast, geek.
- You bob for apples in the toilet… and you like it!
- Be there, buffalo-butt breath.
Read that second-to-last one again. You bob for apples in the toilet. And you like it. Mother of God it’s perfect. The bobbing for apples in the toilet part is one thing, but the “and you like it” takes it to a whole other level. I want to track down the person responsible for this line and shake their hand, or buy them a drink, or hang around outside their house for like a week without them knowing and go through their trash to try to attain some sort of their “essence” and maybe stab their dog once or twice or something.
Again.
Moving on.
Porter
Porter’s insults:
- What you say, crapface?
- Come on! We’ll take you on right here, right now!
- Watch it, jerk.
- Moron!
- Butt sniffer!
- Fart smeller! (necessary GIF at right)
- You mix your Wheaties with your Mama’s toe jam!
- YOU PLAY BALL LIKE A GIRL!
- Count on it, pee-drinking crapface.
The “You play ball like a girl” line is the one that Hiroshimas the douches. Apparently, that’s the greatest insult you can level at someone in 1962. I’d have been a little more pissed about the bobbing for apples in the toilet, or the mixing my Wheaties with my Mama’s toe jam lines, just because they were more creative, but hey… to each their own.
Serious discussion point: Almost half of the insults Porter throws out would double as good titles for disturbing foreign porn films. Especially “Pee-Drinking Crapface.” Get on it, Germans.
The King of the Doofs
(*clears throat*) HURR DURR HURR
After Porter yells “You play ball like a girl,” we are treated to a shot of this kid. I really have nothing to add besides pointing out what a doof he is. Really.
Anyway, the two sides agree to meet at noon the next day to settle the score on the diamond.
More Fat Shenanigans
As the game begins, we get some more great fat kid trash talking by Porter. Naturally, because he is fat, he is the catcher. He gets in some good zings about them being ugly, or their sisters being naked in the outfield, in a successful attempt to distract them. I like to believe this type of taunting goes on in the majors, too. I can’t think of many things that would make me happier than hearing Carlos Ruiz, catcher for my precious Philadelphia Phillies, telling members of the Mets that if his dog was as ugly as them, he’d shave his butt and tell him to walk backwards.
Three additional thoughts on Ham Porter:
- Am I the only one who pictures Uproxx/Deadspin golden boy Drew Magary as a Porter-like child? Loud-mouthed? Check. Opinionated? Check. Fat and obsessed with scatological name-calling? Check. And I feel pretty confident Drew knew his way around a smore, too.
- As Vince pointed out a while back, the actor who played Porter is now a Scientologist. I thought Scientology was supposed to help your acting career? Dude got ripped off.
- Based on this image from Buzzfeed, he looks almost exactly the same today as he looked eighteen years ago when this movie was made. The kid who played Yeah-Yeah… not so much. Yes, that other guy really is the actor who played Yeah-Yeah.
Michael “Squints” Pallendorous
After the rich douches turn at bat, we get a montage of the sandlot kids calling their shot and hitting frozen ropes all over the field. One thing that always impressed me about this scene was how almost all the kids actually had decent swings. Very few things take me out of a sports movie or TV show faster than the actors looking painfully out of place participating in the sport (*cough*KennyPowers*cough*). And the type of kids that end up acting at age twelve aren’t exactly the type of kids who spend hours batting off a tee to improve their swing plane. So kudos to the producers on that one.
My favorite of the kids in this montage, and my favorite kid in the movie, is the bespectacled gentleman pictured above: Michael “Squints” Pallendorous. Let’s just say that a glasses-wearing, baseball-loving, tall-tale-telling, sex pervert character struck a chord with a young Danger Guerrero. Just look at the way Squints calls his shot. He points to ALL fields with a giant sh*t-eating grin on his face. God I love that kid.
I Googled the actor that played Squints, Chauncey Leopardi, to see what he’s been up to lately, and what he looks like now. I’ve put the images in the next slide, to give you a chance to collect yourselves. Ladies, I’m looking at you here. Set your ladyparts to DEFCON 3. Keep in mind, this is a guy who once looked like this:
Hubba Hubba
Holy yowza, Squints. A goatee? A smoldering expression that seems to be trying to figuratively stick its penis inside the camera? A CIGARETTE?! Well I do declare, Chauncey, you have turned quite the gentleman caller…
(*fans self, blushes*)
(*dramatically raises back of hand to forehead, faints into Squints arms*)
Here’s two more pictures. Note the chest and forearm tattoos. I think if you closely enough, you’ll see the small print on the tattoo on his arm reads, “STOP CALLING ME SQUINTS MOTHERF*CKER I’M A GROWN MAN NOW.” Haha, you’re funny, Squints.
Into the Sunset
The whole scene ends with a home run by Benny, a brief celebration, and the boys leaving the field triumphantly. As in every kids’ movie ever made, the rich douches got their asses handed to them. My favorite part about this scene is that it’s just that — a scene. Most movies would have centered the whole plot around this rich vs. poor, haves vs. have-nots struggle. Instead, it’s just four and a half minutes in the middle of the movie, sandwiched between a scene where one of them pretty much sexually assaults a lifeguard, and another where they all chew tobacco and produce a rather disturbing amount of vomit. You know, kid stuff. That’s what the movie is about — being a kid. And it captures that better than any other movie I remember seeing.
In conclusion, I made this picture of me and Wendy Peffercorn living happily ever after. The end.
Twenty-one years ago, Dubai was a desert. It sprang up seemingly from nothing into the lively and technologically advanced world-class city that it is today. This is just one example of the dramatic speeds with which cities can change, sometimes rendering their skylines virtually unrecognizable within decades.
Given the dramatic, jaw-dropping difference between these two images, you might be tempted to think that the top one was taken sometime in the middle of the 20th century. You’d be wrong. That image is from 1990. Shanghai is a stunning example of just how fast cities can rise up into bustling modern metropolises.
These three photographs depict the same street in Dubai, progressing from a few lone buildings in the desert to the jam-packed, seemingly perpetually-under-construction ode to excess that it is today. As a matter of fact, that most recent photo was taken in 2007, and the street has undoubtedly changed even more now. Imagine what it would look like if the recession hadn’t slowed down the frantic pace of development!
In 19 years, the view of the skyline from this end of Bangkok’s Lumpini Park underwent quite a transformation, blossoming with high-rises even while the greenery in the foreground stayed mostly the same.
Panama City is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the world, and these two photographs show a sharp contrast between two eras. The city sprouts from a quiet village into one of the fastest-growing urban areas in Central America.
London has gained a number of high-profile, flashy modern buildings in the years that have passed since the 1970s. These four images depicting the banks of the Thames then and now, and a few glittering examples of modern architecture stand out, including City Hall and 30 St. Mary Axe (known as ‘the gherkin’), both by architecture firm Foster and Partners.
The rapid rise of Tokyo is certainly evident when comparing two images of Tokyo Tower, one taken soon after the tower was built in 1958 and the other captured in 2010. Once nestled into a landscape of traditional Japanese buildings and trees, the tower remains an eye-catching landmark, but its surroundings couldn’t be more different. Below that, an incredible time-lapse video shows the evolution of the Shinjuku district over 35 years.
Even in 1954, you could get a feel for just how large of a city Sao Paulo would one day become – as in, largest-city-in-the-southern hemisphere huge. It’s also the world’s 7th largest metropolitan area, with nearly 20 million inhabitants. These two videos capture the realities of the city in two very different eras.
The view of Atlanta from the North Avenue bridge over the interstate has evolved dramatically since 1964, as downtown development has spread further and further out from the epicenter of the city. This southern city is notorious for its urban sprawl, partially due to the fact that it has no geographic boundaries like waterways or mountains to keep the city’s size in check.
It didn’t happen quite as quickly, but the changes in Las Vegas – evident here on the Las Vegas Strip – are almost as mind-boggling as those in Dubai. The gambling mecca of the Nevada desert went from a mere stopover on the pioneer trail in the 19th century to a popular gambling destination in the 1930s before shooting up into the neon metropolis it is today.
Paris is the kind of classic city where you don’t expect to see Shanghai-style, blink-of-an-eye changes. As it is in many historic districts around the world, in over a century, little has changed in the top Paris images other than the growth of trees. That’s not true everywhere in the city, however. The bottom two images show the same view of the business district of the city in 1960 and 2006 (with a rendering of the controversial as-yet-unbuilt Phare Tower, the tallest building), with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
Wouldn’t you think that the Midtown Manhattan skyline would have changed more than this over six decades? In 1954, many of the buildings that still define the skyline today were already in place. While it’s clear that many buildings sprouted up by the time the second photo was taken in 1985, it’s not a dramatic change, and even less so between then and 2009.
The fastest-growing city in China (and possibly the world) was nothing but a tiny fishing village as recently as the 1979. An influx of foreign investment spurred growth so rapid, the city seemed to change every single day. Today it’s a boomtown with 12 million residents. See the whole 25-year progression at Skyscraper City.
