Defense rests in Bankman-Fried trial

The defense has rested in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial. He was the only defense witness.

According to The Washington Post:

In his own retelling, he only learned that his hedge fund, Alameda Research, had spent $8 billion in customer deposits from his crypto trading platform, FTX, by overhearing a conversation among his employees in September 2022. He said when he confronted them, he was told to stop asking questions and that they were busy.

Tomorrow there will be closing arguments then the jury will deliberate and render its verdict. Guess what it's going to be!

Not Quite Hollywood (documentary, 2008)

Until the 1970's, Australia had the strictest movie censorship in the western world. I guess it's in the western world. When censorship was finally lifted, they started churning out very seedy, violent, sex movies. I don't know what it tells you. Either Australians NEEDED censoring, or they were kept in a state of childlike innocence so long that they didn't know how to handle their newfound freedom.

Or maybe the crap they made was of great artistic merit. Quentin Tarantino seemed to think so.

Australia made perfectly nice movies, too.

An Australian girl in my high school gave a presentation to the class about her country and a boy asked about something he saw in an Australian movie, a scene with sweaty girls in a classroom doing breathing exercises. She said, no, they don't do that. He was talking about the movie Walkabout.

Focuses only on Australian exploitation films. It didn't make me want to watch any of them. I usually find movies about foreign national cinema interesting, but this got dreary. 

Available on Pluto.

Fantastic Journey (TV pilot, 1977)

Something possessed me to watch this on Tubi. I had watched the show some in the '70's. It was on less than one season, ten episodes. It was a little strange that child actor Ike Eisenmann, then 13, was its big star. Was probably a wise move since child actors are more affordable. Roddy McDowell joined the cast later.

Researchers enter the Bermuda Triangle. One brought along his tween son. They're attacked by a big green cloud and find themselves shipwrecked on an island. In each episode, they pass through time portals into different periods in the future. 

It was pretty cheap which might have been less of a problem if it hadn't dragged on for two hours. Even in the '70's it bothered me that people from the future had 1970's hairstyles. 

The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) Jack Lemmon, Ricky Nelson

I had seen this on TV a few times when I was a kid in the early '70's. I knew who Jack Lemmon was but didn't recognize Ricky Nelson. I must have been drawn to it by the title and the cartoony opening credits. It was like a Disney version of The Caine Mutiny. Jack Lemmon as a bad Navy captain. He had been a yachtsman in civilian life, so the Navy puts him in command of a small sailing ship during World War Two. The crew doesn't know what it's doing. Turns out they're on a secret mission no one was told about. It wasn't really funny and it becomes a war drama toward the end. Based at least loosely on a true story.

There was a wave of these movies---Operation Petticoat, Father Goose, Mr. Roberts among others. 

Ricky Nelson has a song. With Alvy Moore from Green Acres; The Six Million Dollar Man's Richard Anderson appears briefly. There's a Japanese officer who speaks perfect English because he went to college in Ohio.

It did turn me off to any thought I might have had as a child about joining the military. They can just order you to do something and you have to do it, like climbing the mast and even "funny" officers were rotten people.

Free on Tubi.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Saw something on YouTube about embarrassing things young people write in college admission essays. A girl trying to get into film school said she developed a deep love of cinema after watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I'd never seen the movie. It didn't interest me, but there it was, free on Pluto. 

From Columbia Pictures. Adam Sandler's production company was behind it. Starts out as a Marty thing about a lonely mall security guard (Kevin James) living with his mother and daughter (Raini Rodriguez). 

Pretty well-made. Nothing wrong with it technically. It got terrible reviews but made a fortune at the box office. A young person seeing it and deciding to go into film made more sense than Steven Spielberg watching Lawrence of Arabia and thinking he could do better. 

I never understood what was funny about Segways. 

Romney tells Biden to take longer steps

Mitt Romney reportedly told Biden that he looks old when he shuffles. I found this surprising coming from him. Several years ago, and I posted this years ago, an elderly relative pointed out how Romney minces around.

"I've never seen a man walk that way," she said. 

Someone may have told Romney to stop doing it which could be why he was conscious of it watching Biden. In fact, the other kids may have pointed this out to him in high school which was why he started physically attacking kids he imagined were gay. He had something to prove.

Apparently Romney and Biden are friends now. It shouldn't be surprising. Biden is in the extreme right-wing of the Democratic Party and Romney hates Trump.

Sam Bankman-Fried parents

In 1990, Charles Keating, Jr, a devout Catholic and anti-porn crusader, was convicted of defrauding  customers of Lincoln Savings & Loan. He stole $250 million selling junk bonds he claimed were low risk. Mother Theresa sent a letter asking the judge for leniency. Keating had donated money to her. The prosecutor in the case wrote to Mother Theresa, explained Keating's crimes and asked that she return the stolen money he gave her. 

Part of the letter said:

My experience has been with the ‘con’ man and the perpetrator of the fraud. It is not uncommon for ‘con’ men to be generous with family, friends and charities. Perhaps they believe that their generosity will purchase love, respect or forgiveness. However, the time when the purchase of ‘indulgences’ was an acceptable method of seeking forgiveness died with the Reformation. No church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as salve for the conscience of the criminal.

It was kind of him to suggest Keating had a conscience.

So what about Sam Bankman-Fried's parents? They're being sued by FTX for the return of the stolen money their son gave them. 

It seems like putting up the money for their son's legal defense violates everything they pretend to believe. The father claimed to be a utilitarian, in doing whatever will help the largest number of people, and they believed in "Effective Altruism", throwing their money around where it will do the greatest good, yet they're spending millions of dollars trying to keep a single obviously guilty psychopath out of prison. 

They spent $50,000 a year sending their son to an elite private school. And he had a brother and sister so they may have been squandering $150,000 a year on that when public education was free for the taking.

"That's what money's for," the father said about their big flabby son's legal defense, trying to make it sound like money meant nothing to them, like they hadn't greedily lapped up millions in stolen customer funds.

It's different seeing an entire bourgeois family wrapped up in a massive criminal enterprise. Bankman-Fried's brother and sister were involved in it, too. And the parents still try to pass themselves off as moral paragons. Are they now grappling with this blow to their self-image, or were they consciously trying to conceal their true selves all along?