Extremely Grumpy Old Man Goes Out On A Violent Robbery Spree
"About two weeks later, on July 1, a man wearing a hat and a bandanna entered Family Loan. 'He was kind of running in and carrying a gun, and told my employees that he didn't want to kill anybody, and for them to get on the floor, and they followed his instructions,' Mr. Chamblee said. 'He asked the young lady for the cash, and she gave it to him.' The gunman ordered the three employees into a bathroom and barred the door with a chair. Then he needed to rest."
-The amazing story of 63-year-old Arthur Williams, who was convicted of committing 134 crimes in the 1970s and spent 33 years in prison before being released last year, only to go on a ten-day robbery spree that ended with his death the Sunday before last in a car accident resulting from a high-speed police, seems to speak to a disturbing addiction to the thrill of breaking the law. That or Williams was auditioning for a role in the new Bruce Willis movie, Red, which I want to see.
Remember that one last shitty team-up between Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, "Tough Guys"? It's just like this, only with one person, and no train, and sans Dana Carvey, the Body By Jake guy, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I'm kind of excited about "Red" too. It was written by Warren Ellis and features Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle — it's like my brain just won a trifecta of Fun.
Quickie Quizzie, no fair peekin': Who's older, Bruce Willis or Steven Tyler?
Ok, so it's like "Going in Style" meets… no, you're thinking of the one with Jackie Gleason… I don't know, that was, like, early 80s maybe? This was late 70s, like 78 or 79. George Burns, Art Carney… no, no that was Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. This is the one where they wore the Groucho glasses and robbed a bank. Right! Cause they were old and no relatives, no health care, the whole thing. It's the 70s. Everybody was poor and dressed like shit, especially old people, and in that one scene Art Carney or one of them ate dog food. Yes! So you got an updated "Going in Style" meets "Life" with… "Life." How do you not know this? Do you even watch movies? Because if it's your business, you really should consider… Ok, so "Life." Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, they end up in prison, very underrated film. Anyway, this is almost "Going in Style II" See? With the old guy robbing banks? "Going in Style II" meets "Life" and, like, some kind of car chase thing at the end? I'm telling you, dude, the fucking thing writes itself.
Thomas "Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes), and thus lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
"To escape this state of war, men in the state of nature accede to a social contract and establish a civil society, where all individuals in that society cede their natural rights for the sake of protection." But that's another story. This one is about the old guy with a gun.
He (Hobbes) did leave out the commercial motivations that can be enhanced beyond the mere having and use of a gun– like auditioning for fame and fortune in the news, a movie, or both– as the writer suggests.
All of this you knew already.