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Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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23 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordan says:

    Saw it last night.

    The economy question jumped out at me as well. It kind of made sense in the first movie, but this one inflated it too much without some kind of explanation to help it make sense.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordan says:

      So I googled it.

      The explanation that made the most sense to me is that the coins are not special coins, particularly, they’re just gold coins that cost about $1000 each. When they’re handed to hotel staff, they do two things:
      1) Indicate Membership
      2) Provide A Gratuity

      The suit, the guns, all that. Those weren’t paid for with the coins. They were paid for with dollars.

      There. That apparently came off the DVD extras.

      The gold coins are useful because they’re worth a lot and they are, effectively, untraceable. At the end of the day, however, they’re just a krugerrand.

      Which makes sense.
      But is somehow disappointing anyway.Report

      • Oscar Gordan in reply to Jaybird says:

        That adds quite a bit of subtext to the scene where two drinks are paid for with a coin.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordan says:

          Yeah. And it more easily explains the “put these into circulation” thing as well as the whole issue where it seems that some people hoard these while others throw them around like water.

          Maybe only certain people (that is, assassins) can purchase them at cost+vig?

          So they’re valuable to all, but only not particularly scarce to some.

          And now I have to wonder at the $7,000,000 bounty offered in the movie.

          Sure, in *MY* life, I’d love to have $7,000,000. But that seems a patry sum in the universe in which they’re hiring bodyguards willing to run forward despite seeing their co-bodyguard just finish having been shot in the head.

          I mean, that’s less than the payroll for three-four years of the people who got shot at the dance party alone, assuming $50,000/year plus bennies (not counting intangibles).

          And if you’re paying more than $50,000/year, (which I imagine you’d have to), we’re down to two-three years or even one year’s worth of payroll costs alone.

          Which makes the sum paltry indeed.

          ($70,000,000? Now we’re talkin’. Plus they wouldn’t have to change that one monologue, you know the one, that much.)Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    Yesterday I picked up Highbrow/Lowbrow: The emergence of cultural hierarchy in American Culture from the library. Scholarship is a bit old though considering it came out in 1988.Report

  3. LeeEsq says:

    Its a cold and rainy day in NYC so I’m staying inside and using YouTube to watch some free movies. Just finished watching Lionheart, a fun but cheesy movie from 1987 starring Eric Stoltz as a French knight. Everybody speaks with American and British accents though. Its actually kind of interesting because a lot of big Hollywood names were involved in making Lionheart but it never made a big impact even as a cult classic that people who grew up in the 1980s feel nostalgic about. The script is solid and well-written, the number of plot holes next to none, and the acting very decent but it seems to have disappeared from public consciousness.Report

  4. fillyjonk says:

    Reading Louise Penny’s “The Brutal Telling,” one of her Inspector Gamache novels. I enjoy these because the lead detective in them (Armand Gamache, of Montreal’s Surete) is fundamentally a good person: someone who abhors violence and murders but who also finds himself sometimes challenged and bemused by some of the moral dilemmas he faces in exposing the murders. And he also loves his wife and his grown children, and enjoys a good meal….Penny’s novels, unlike some modern crime novels, are a lot “milder” – the violence is all “off screen,” so to speak, and I’ve not run across any graphic sex in them (graphic violence and sex are two things that quickly put me off an author).

    I also enjoy them because of the setting – Quebec, and most commonly a small town near Montreal called Three Pines (which does not exist in the real world) – there’s a lot of discussion of the history of and tensions between Anglophone and Francophone Quebecois, and that little cultural bit is interesting (I have been to Montreal a few times, and have ancestors from that part of the world).

    It’s an enjoyable series, and I like series like this, because if you like the characters, you get to revisit them in later books.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    One other thing that bugs me. You’d think that there’d be a rule that said something like “we are professionals, people… it’s wrong to take hits on assassins. Take the hits on those who hired them. The assassin himself is just a tool.”

    Or, at least, a lampshade on why there isn’t a rule that says something like that.Report

  6. Damon says:

    Sigh…

    I’m not even up on current movies. I saw the new ghostbusters movie. Meh. Although the old one is a bit tedious after being viewed a dozen times, I remember seeing it for the first time. Wow. The new one? Meh. Cute. Worth it for a DVD rental, not for full theater price.Report

    • Kim in reply to Damon says:

      The New Ghostbusters managed to offend everyone that mattered, that’s why it was a flop.
      ….
      Nobody can figure out who the fuck matters though, so we get to listen to SJW and Anti-SJW bitching about the whole thing, when neither side matters in the least.

      Props to the person who picked up on the cast spawn-camping a Cancer Ward. Report

  7. North says:

    Yeah the Continental rooms seem enormously underpriced. As you noted the cost to hire bodyguards would have to be enormous. Why bother? Simply set up shop at the Continental.

    My bet is in the 3rd John Wick the Continental system itself will collapse or be in danger of collapse.Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    Good news! Sonny Bunch wrote an editorial on the John Wick Economy in the Warshington Post!

    I’m not sure I agree with it, but it does make some interesting points about price signals.

    And, for that matter, explains why the coins are so very much worth hoarding (remember how we saw box upon box upon box upon box of them in the beginning? Yeah, that).Report