Photos from the Filming of Captain America 2

I am so awesome that Marvel decided to shoot scenes from the upcoming Captain America 2: Winter Soldier movie just a block from my house. The Lorain Road Bridge--better known as the "Green Awesome Bridge" in my family--is the scene of some heavy stuff. But I couldn't stand around all day, and the place was filling up with whiners, for lack of a better word. I did get some shots of a dude on a motorcycle dressed like Captain America, but I assume it was a stunt double and not Chris Evans. Still, sort of cool shots. I had to be about 200 feet or more back and I used a 300mm zoom for these.

UPDATE: More awesomeness!

Chris Evans did show up later around 7:00pm, and my kids having camped out for almost 2 hours got some autographs. Here he is signing my son Gideon's hand.

Chris Evans seems like a really nice guy. He had come over to sign a bunch of autographs earlier, so I cynically thought "He's done, he's not coming back." But he did, and he signed tons of stuff. The kids were in their glory, even as I was getting a bit bored. Here's an autograph on the back of our copy of The Avengers Blu-ray.

Chris was also signing the back of these Captain America shield pins with a standard Sharpie marker. Kind of an amazing feat I thought, but I guess stars have a lot of practice. Just about everybody had one, even Justin, our 1-year-old.

I liked this, too, it's basically a model of a fighter jet that they were holding against the giant green-screen. Seemed cheesy, but I suppose they'll just edit out the dude's hand.

The good folks from the Emerald Necklace Inn were serving making sure no one dehydrated by setting up a tent and serving water, lemonade, and soft-drinks and were being very generous with parking spaces.

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Why don't they ask the Imams to declare Islam a "religion of peace"?

Jihadwatch has the scoop. Let me paraphrase it for you. Here's what Al-Azhar—the foremost, most prestigious and influential Islamic institution among Sunni Muslims—is saying: "Hey, Pope Francis, we like you so far. Please declare Islam a religion of peace and we won't get violent. But please don't ask us to meet and talk with Jews and Israelis; we hate them."



Here's a better idea. Why don't that request that all the Muslim Imams—both Sunni and Shia—declare that Islam is a religion of peace and decry all religious violence? The Pope is just a kafir anyway, an idolater who believes in the Trinity.

Too many rights?

Who is allowed to have "too many rights"? Not Christians serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, that's for sure. Bill Donohue explains in his piece about how the Obama Regime opposes a Religious Liberty amendment in a National Defense Authorization Act. Excerpt:

When it comes to those who elect to mutilate their genitals in transgender surgery, we are told they can’t have too many rights. When it comes to suspected Muslim terrorists, we are told they cannot have too many rights. When it comes to pre-teen girls seeking to get birth control pills behind their parents’ back, we are told they cannot have too many rights. But when it comes to the religious rights of the Armed Forces, we are told they already have too many rights.

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View From My Chair

This was the view from my chair at Panera today. This is not the "view from my table". The "view from my table" would be my bulging eyes and drooling mouth. So I don't know why anyone would want to see that.

So we can see on the right the Spinach Power Salad which is comprised of "Fresh baby spinach, roasted mushrooms and onion blend, diced eggs, applewood-smoked bacon, frizzled onions & smoky Vidalia® onion vinaigrette." On the left is a cup of Low Fat Vegetable Soup with Pesto which allegedly contains "water, tomatoes, yellow wax beans, zucchini, onions, barley [may contain wheat], cauliflower, red bell pepper, Swiss chard, seasoning [modified corn starch, sugar, autolyzed yeast extract, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, natural flavors], tomato concentrate [roasted tomatoes and tomato paste, salt, sugar, natural flavoring, and cilantro], tomato paste, basil), basil pesto (basil, canola oil, water, romano cheese [pasteurized cow's milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes, powdered cellulose], extra virgin olive oil, chopped garlic and salt."

I washed it all down with a small plastic cup of water with a lemon and three non-cubic ice cubes. You can see the cup in the background with that cute, black plastic swizzle straw. The food tasted pretty good and cost $8.40.

I know you guys were simply dying to see this. So you're welcome.

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Snowden

The excerpts below are from Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt email, which I highly recommend, BTW. He first links to John Yoo's piece on NRO's The Corner which begins "Edward Snowden should go to jail, as quickly and for as long as possible," a statement with which I agree. But I'm in more emphatic agreement with Geraghty's subject line: "Don't Come Crying to Us, NSA; You Guys Are the Ones Who Hired This Goofball."

Yoo also points out that Snowden's claim to noble motives is muddied quite a bit by his decision to run to Hong Kong. (By the way, the last guy to run to Hong Kong, certain that he was beyond the reach of American law enforcement and extradition treaties, was Mr. Lau, the money-keeper for the Gotham City mob. And we all remember how that turned out.) When Snowden declares, "Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech," we have to wonder if A) he's already working for the Chinese or B) he's an imbecile.

This may be a story with no heroes. A government system designed to protect the citizens starts collecting all kinds of information on people who have done nothing wrong; it gets exposed, in violation of oaths and laws, by a young man who doesn't recognize the full ramifications of his actions. The same government that will insist he's the villain will glide right past the question of how they came to trust a guy like him with our most sensitive secrets. Who within our national-security apparatus made the epic mistake of looking him over -- completing his background check and/or psychological evaluation -- and concluding, "Yup, looks like a nice kid?"

Watching the interview with Snowden, the first thing that is quite clear is that his mild-mannered demeanor inadequately masks a huge ego -- one of the big motivations of spies. (Counterintelligence instructors have long offered the mnemonic MICE, for money, ideology, compromise, ego; others throw in nationalism and sex)

My position on this is no doubt driven by my being a security hawk before I'm any type of civil libertarian. And what frustrates me most by this story is how it is taking time away from the IRS scandal.

I'm perplexed that Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have spoken favorably about this character. To me, he's a typical paranoid, head-in-the-sand Paulistinian who—like Geraghty points out—obviously has an enormous ego. What on God's green earth he was ever doing working in National Security is completely beyond me.

Well, it's not really beyond me. He is handsome, and there are a lot of middle-aged women working in human resources departments. That's how I'm guessing one otherwise unemployable friend of mine keeps getting good jobs. Now it is revealed that he is dating a pole-dancer. Say "bye-bye" to everything, Prince Charming; prison will not be fun.



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Paul Ryan delivers clarity as always

From the National Organization for Marriage's Blog.