Dave Schilling

Film-making in Los Angeles has plummeted in recent years. Why sit on the freeway when you could take a paid vacation?

Two more top-notch ideas from the twisted mind of Donald Trump: reopening Alcatraz prison (currently a very wet, very old tourist attraction) and applying a 100% tariff on motion pictures made in “Foreign Lands”.

Somehow, I think these two things are related. Some have speculated that the president hatched his scheme to revitalize the island jail in the middle of San Francisco Bay after watching the Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz on PBS. That feels plausible, though it’s a bit odd that his epiphany about Alcatraz would come from watching a movie about a daring escape with a convicted criminal for a hero. Was The Rock not on that night?

It’s a game where futility is expected and frustration is always simmering. At least it’s a decent metaphor for Trump’s presidency

We have already tumbled past the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency, careening down the hill with reckless abandon. One hundred days is, of course, a totally arbitrary milestone – a nice, round number that looks monumental because of the number of zeros attached.

With inflation and looming tariffs continuing to hobble commerce, shouldn’t we extend this marker in kind? If you go by the rate of inflation since the final year before Donald Trump’s ascension to power, we should be looking at the first 133.25 days. Time itself is arbitrary, speeding up or slowing down based on context and personal perception. A minute can feel like an eternity if you’re stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard.