Dumping Them Out: Sinners, Lamine Yamal, Billionaire Comedy

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I went to see Sinners this weekend at a movie theater in the Newport Centre mall in Jersey City. Just a quick PSA for anybody living in the Jersey City area who was thinking about seeing Sinners (or any movie) at Newport Centre. Don't do it. If you do, call ahead and check to see if they've fixed their A/C. It must have been 80+ degrees in that theatre Friday night. It literally felt like a sauna. I was dripping sweat so bad I could legitimately smell myself by the end of the movie. Phenomenal film though. Totally lived up to the hype. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Now I need Ryan Coogler to make whole new movie, or preferably an entire TV series based on the lives of the Michael B. Jordan twins leading up to the events of Sinners. I would watch an unlimited number of seasons of that.

I spent a solid two hours yesterday watching Lamine Yamal highlights. I'm not the biggest soccer guy in the world. I actually don't know shit about soccer. I know who the best teams in the world are, I know who some of the best players in the world are, I know the United States is supposed to have their best team ever this year (except every time I see that they're playing they lose), and I know that Messi and Ronaldo are supposed to be the "GOATS". But this Lamine Yamal kid who plays for Barcelona right now is 17-years old, and he's already played 100 career games. Comparing that to Messi and Ronaldo at his age…

At 17-years old, he's currently a favorite to win the Ballon d'Or award for best player in all of professional soccer this season. His highlights are remarkably fun to watch. In the Champions League Semifinal last week, he was the best player on the field, and had one insane goal. 

Not to mention last year he helped lead Spain to win the Euro with braces on. He turned 16 years old in the middle of the tournament. 

Again, I'm not super plugged into the world of soccer, so I don't know what people expect his peak to be. But to me it looks like he's on pace to be the best player in the history of soccer. Maybe by a long shot. He's so fun to watch I might even have to put Barcelona's next Champions League game (this Tuesday) on my viewing schedule. It takes a lot for a soccer player to get me to do that.

I had a situation the other day that put me in a bit of a moral dilemma. I was on the subway train home from work. I had a person sitting to my right, and an empty seat on my left. At the next stop, a woman of great size got on the train and sat in the open seat next to me. Being of great size, her body encroached upon my seat in a pretty major way. She must have been taking up 1/4 to 1/3 of my seat. I was scrunched up pretty significantly to avoid pressing up against the person on my other side. It would have been best for everyone had I just stood up. I don't even mind standing the train. It's like a 15 minute ride from work to my home stop. Really not a big deal at all. But it felt like a dick move to stand up as soon as the fat person sat next to me. It would have been super obvious to everyone why I stood up. It would have only drawn attention to the fact that this woman was too big for a train seat. So I just sat there at took it. I really don't know what the polite thing to do there is. Stay seated and make the ride more uncomfortable for the both of us, pretending this random woman's weight isn't an inconvenience because I want to spare her feelings? Or just stand up and make the trip more comfortable for both of us, but maybe embarrass her a little bit?

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I guess this next clip is from a few months ago, but I saw this video of Microsoft co-founder/Little St. James island frequenter, Bill Gates on Jimmy Fallon talking about AI this morning.

I wonder if anybody watched that short, out-of-context clip and killed themselves. Imagine being suicidal and seeing that. Say you were feeling especially down on yourself on day. Feeling like you were useless, and that there's no point of living anymore. Then you see Bill Gates tell Jimmy Fallon, "Yeah we really won't need humans much longer anyways." 

Welp… thanks Bill. I was on the verge of pulling the trigger anyways. That's the final push I needed. Maybe there's something for me on the other side.

Sorry that might have been a little dark. But speaking of billionaires. I was also thinking it would be funny if a billionaire tried his (or her) hand at stand-up comedy. Think about how much people would despise that. Imagine if Elon Musk tried that. Of all the horrible villainous things a billionaire can do, becoming a stand up comedian might be the most villainous of them all. It'd be so villainous I would have to respect it. Just the most unreatable human being of all-time selling out theaters with his shitty comedy just because of who he is. His comedy would strictly punch down, because it would be legitimately impossible for him to punch up. Even if he paid the best joke writers in the world to come up with the most amazing material, I'm not even sure he could pull it off. In many ways it would be like doing stand-up comedy on the hardest level of difficulty. I don't know what made me think of that, but now I want to see it happen.