Pun Salad

• It's the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square and the brutal repression of pro-liberty demonstrators by the Chinese Communist government. Matt K. Lewis (ML) interviews Marion Smith (MS) of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
  ML: These students were victims of Communism. How should we honor their sacrifice for the cause of freedom?

  MS: By telling the truth about what happened there in June of 1989. For 25 years now, the Chinese government has covered up the truth and denied the well-recorded historical fact of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese government has largely been excused for this egregious and unconscionable act of aggression against its own people.

  The Chinese government, and a lot of Americans, want you to fuhgeddaboutit. Don't.

• Very cool: Dean Norris playing Ben Franklin.

  One can dream:

  The King: Hey, white boy. They call me "George the Third". You know what that means?

  Ben: If I have to guess, I’d say that’s British for "asshole.”

• If you had the slightest doubt about the sheer ditziness of Gwyneth Paltrow (quoted here):

  I am fascinated by the growing science behind the energy of consciousness and its effects on matter. I have long had Dr. Emoto's coffee table book on how negativity changes the structure of water, how the molecules behave differently depending on the words or music being expressed around it.

  It's all fun and games until someone drowns because the structure of water changed.

• Ed Krayewski at Reason gave me a chuckle with one of the items in his "A.M. Links" list:

  According to contract documents, the Secret Service is purchasing software that can detect sarcasm on the Internet. Great idea guys!

We might be the last people in America who had not seen Frozen. If Pun Daughter were 15-20 years younger, we probably would have seen it a half-dozen times by now, owned the soundtrack, bought some action figures for Christmas, etc. Instead, it just showed up via Netflix, and Mrs. Salad and I got to bathe in the Disney magic all by ourselves.

The plot: Anna and Elsa are royal sisters in some vaguely Scandinavian locale. Emma has the occasionally useful, but mostly dangerous, power to command the power of cold. (Kind of like the X-Men's Iceman, but cuter.) Elsa decides she must exile herself to avoid unintentional tragedy, but manages (somehow) to set her kingdom into deep-freeze before leaving. Anna must track her down and convince her to return. She's assisted by Kristoff and his impossibly intelligent reindeer, Sven.

There are twists and turns, a cute snowman sidekick, suspense, clever gags, and action. Won two Oscars. What's not to like?

Local note: Frozen's (Oscar-winning) co-director, co-writer, voice talent Jennifer Lee is a graduate of the University Near Here, and was the Commencement speaker a few weeks back. The gathering sang the "Let It Go" song for her, and Mrs. Salad reports that everyone seemed to have known the words.

Also included on the DVD was a wonderful Mickey Mouse cartoon "Get a Horse!". The YouTube version:

But this mainly made me sad that we didn't see this in 3-D in the theatres.