The Rant Institute

I just happened to come across the old movie from 1979 called "The Wanderers" tonight, the movie about street gangs in the Bronx around 1963. And as I watched the opening minutes, for the first time, it occurred to me that Joey screwed over Richie a helluva lot more than Richie screwed over Joey. But I'm betting you cannot tell me how? If you recall the movie, Joey develops a thing for Nina, who's played by Karen Allen, even though everyone can tell that Nina has a thing for Richie. But Richie has a girlfriend. By near the end of the movie, however, Joey and Richie's girlfriend find Richie and Nina fooling around in the back seat of a parked car. Note also that the Baldies were chasing Turkey and Joey in the beginning of the movie, to which all of the Wanders came running to their aid when Joey began to whistle (make a mental note of that fact, by the way). By the end of the movie, conversely, both Joey and Turkey left the Wanders, with Turkey betraying his ol...

I have long been a fan of Edger Allan Poe, and his poem The Raven is obviously one of his most famous works. I have read this poem any number of times before, and enjoy regularly deciphering it's ideas in different ways. But just last night, as I sat reclining, it occurred to me that the poem was perhaps more sinister than I had ever imagined.  I had always interpreted the poem to be of a man who was mourning the loss of his daughter, Lenore. But then I thought that perhaps she was his lover instead. (If I was feeling rather jovial, I would imagine it was his cat or his goldfish.) But what I had failed to consider in these many different possible explanations for who the mysterious maiden named Lenore could have been, was that perhaps he had murdered the poor girl. And if Lenore had been both his mother and his lover, then the Raven is basically about Oedipus Rex. Indeed, perhaps he smothered her to death using the very pillows upon which he sat reclining, and now was haunted b...

I just watched Prescription Thugs , by Chris Bell, the same guy who made Bigger, Stronger, Faster.  Basically, as Bell points out, the movie is about Big Pharma’s “addiction to money.” WARNING: IF YOU WATCH THIS MOVIE, AND FIRE IN THE BLOOD , YOU'RE HEAD MAY EXPLODE! The same problem in the mortgage markets is going on in the pharmaceutical markets, with Big Pharma addicting people to drugs (in the same way the Big Banks were addicting people to easy loans), and then we blame those people for being addicts.The profits, however, always remain in the pockets of the pusher-man.    Like in the movie, The Big Short , the same way that mortgages were being bundled up and sold in “tranches,” despite the fact that no one knew if the assets in a given “tranche” were actually worthy of the triple “A” ratings they were being assigned by the ratings agencies, so to are pharmaceutical companies now selling us drugs for every physical or psychological aliment their mark...