In addition to the reported disappearances and deaths of Sergei Mikhailov, Ruslan Stoyanov and Oleg Erovinkin, which I summarized in a 1.29 post, I’m wondering about the fates of the poor Russian prostitutes who may or may not have performed a urination show for Donald Trump four years ago in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. I don’t know if any of this is true, but if it happened and the Russians do have a Trump pee-pee tape, those poor women have probably been “disappeared.” If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted the alleged pee-pee episodes kept under wraps, wouldn’t you order the murder of the women involved, just to be safe?

What a drag it was last night to catch a 10 pm screening of John Wick, Chapter 2 at the Fiesta plex.  Me and roughly 25 or 30 wage-earning lowlifes. Baggy pants, hoodies, etc. “What a way to live and think!”, I muttered as I sank into my seat. With all the wonder and excitement of life outside, we few have chosen to watch a shitty Keanu Reeves action flick in a crummy megaplex on a rainy Friday night…welcome to the dungeon!

I was half-okay with the original John Wick but this thing…God. There’s a cool, efficient way to assemble programmers of this sort, but the evidence suggests that director Chad Stahelski, a former stunt man, and screenwriter Derek Kolstad just don’t have the skill or the smarts to improve upon the 2014 start-up. There’s a vapor cloud of stupidity hanging over the film at every turn. The fairly applied adjectives include “dull, poorly written, lazily acted, predictably plotted,” etc.

Reeves brings nothing spry or special to his performance — his line readings make Clint Eastwood‘s Dirty Harry inflections seem almost on the level of Alec Guinness performance in Smiley’s People, and his eyes are dark and dead. Even the minimally talented Jason Statham is better at this sort of thing.

The big villain in Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Avengers: Infinity War (Marvel/Disney, 5.4.18) is an enraged purple-hued ayehole named Thanos (Josh Brolin). Marvel honcho Kevin Feige has described Thanos as “the biggest, the best, and the baddest villain we ever had, and the most frightening villain the Avengers have ever faced.” That is just horseshit — every snarly superpowered villain in every superhero movie ever made has been designed to be the most vicious and terrible ever, and at the end of the day there are only so many feet in a roll of rope. Nobody gives a shit — it’s the same old dance, the same old scheme and we’ve got so many dues to pay. Infinity War is being touted as the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began with the original Iron Man (’08). In a pig’s eye — one way or another Feige will dream up something bigger, grander, more awesome and holy-shitty (at least in his own eyes).

The anti-Trump Resistance is the new Tea Party, only from the left…right? But to hear it from Piers Morgan, the wisest way for progressive lefties to play their cards is to calm down, accept Trump policies (revival of Jim Crow racism, pro-fossil fuel, homophobia, anti-immigrant instincts, hooray for Putin), somberly acknowledge the fact that Donald Trump managed an electoral (if not a nationwide vote-count) majority and speak only when called upon after raising their hands. That’s Australian comedian Jim Jefferies ripping into Morgan and flipping the bird.