Movies & TV / Columns

The 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week: Dean Cain

November 11, 2019 | Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz

The 411mania Dumpster Fire of the Week

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.

When did reserved seating at the movies become a thing?

MovieTheatre

I recently went to a movie theatre I don’t typically frequent (in fact, the last time I went to that theatre was last fall) and was subjected to a reserved seating scheme that was just, well, bullshit. Every movie, every theatre, every showing was reserved seating. You had to pick which seat you wanted before setting foot into the actual theatre, your seat number is printed on the “ticket” (and it really isn’t a ticket anymore, it’s just a goddamn piece of paper), and you couldn’t “switch seats” even if the showing wasn’t sold out and no one had purchased the seat you wanted to switch to. I doubt that an usher or theatre employee would have kicked anyone out if they didn’t actually sit in the seat they bought, but, at the same time, is this really how the movie going experience should be?

No. There should be no such thing as “reserved seating” at the movies. It’s completely antithetical to the movie going experience. If you want a particular seat, you get to the theater early or have a friend get to the theatre early and “save” you the seat you want. And if that saved seat sucks, you move around the theatre and see which unoccupied seats are potentially better. Sometimes you just don’t know where you want to sit until you get into the theatre.

On top of that, having to pick a seat ahead of time just prolongs the actual ticket buying process at the box office, which was already annoying before all of this “reserved seating” nonsense (Do you have a rewards card? Do you want to donate to charity? Etc.) And that’s before you pick the seat you want. What happens when the seat picking screen shits the bed? Is the ticket seller going to have to break out a paper map for you to check off?

This is all way too complicated. And ridiculous. It needs to stop.

Anyone else hate this shit?

And now onto this week’s Dumpster Fire of the Week.

DumpsterFireImage1

DeanCain1A

This week, the 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week goes to actor Dean Cain, for misidentifying the Trump/Ukraine whistleblower and the subsequent issues that misidentification created. And by issues I mean the person Cain claimed was the whistleblower received multiple death threats, which is just terrible.

Cain tweeted out a photo of former Obama White House staffers this past Wednesday, November 6th, and identified R. David Edelman as the whistleblower that raised concerns about a call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky where Trump asked Zelensky to investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful Vice President Joe Biden. Cain didn’t use Edelman’s name in the tweet but he did put a red circle around the man’s face and said he was the whistleblower. Edelman, of course, isn’t the whistleblower and couldn’t be the whistleblower (he left government in early 2017), but that didn’t stop Edelman’s name from circulating around right wing social media. And that’s when the death threats apparently began. Cain did, eventually, delete his tweet when he found out that he was dead fucking wrong, but the damage had already been done. It also looks like Cain got super defensive when people took him to task for trying to name a whistleblower in the first place and he has blocked various people from reading his tweets and whatnot.

Cain isn’t the only right wing personality/celebrity to try to release the name of the whistleblower. Fellow right wing actor/celebrity Kevin Sorbo has attempted to identify the whistleblower, as has 411 Dumpster Fire Hall of Famer and drug addict Rush Limbaugh. Several guests on Fox News have also apparently named the whistleblower, although I’m not sure if any Fox hosts have tried (I know that Fox told its employees not to put the whistleblower’s name on air, but, really, if one of them did what would actually happen to them?). A name has been circulating the internets for a few weeks now, but no one has officially said if the name in question is the actual whistleblower.

Now, mistakes happen all of the time on the internets and social media. People tweet out the wrong shit all of the time and, sometimes, when people are made aware of the wrong shit they’ve put out into the world, people actually apologize for what they’ve done and then move on with their lives. But that only happens sometimes. Other times, people caught seriously in the wrong “apologize” and then act like what they’ve done was no big deal and then get super defensive about their giant fuck up. Dean Cain should have just apologized for what he did and then, when people continued to criticize him, he should have just continued to apologize and move on. Cain didn’t do that, though. Cain decided to get defensive.

Should Cain have known that helping to out a publicly anonymous whistleblower was a potentially bad idea? Yes, he should have. If Cain wanted to go on social media and complain about the whistleblower and the ongoing impeachment process and whatever else, fine. That’s his right as an American. But whistleblowers have legal protections for a reason, and to deliberately participate in outing that person is just wrong. Why not wait until something is official before joining in the condemnation/dogpile? Maybe then, someone who isn’t involved in anything, like R. David Edelman, won’t get their lives completely upended.

And when you consider that Cain has complained about getting death threats for his right wing views in the past, you’d think that he would have gained some perspective on the whole “people losing their minds on social media about politics” thing. You’d think Cain would think twice about wading into something that could get insane very quickly.

None of that apparently happened, though.

Please, everyone, please. Calm the fuck down. Don’t participate in something stupid.

**

And now for this week’s honorable mentions…

-Dumpster Fire Hall of Famer, 2018 Dumpster Fire of the Year, and (Jesus Christ) 45th President of the United States Donald Trump, for the recent settlement agreement regarding the now dissolved Trump Foundation. Just go ahead and read the story at the link, digest the facts of the case in question, and then realize that this lying fraud said he would never settle the case in the first place. How can anyone trust anything this guy says ever again? How? The man’s a criminal, and he’s going to get re-elected in 2020. Just let that sink in.

The “Liberal” Media, for losing its mind over the prospect of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg running for president in 2020. “Bloomberg getting into the race changes everything!” But does it really? He may have loads of money to spend, but who, exactly, is his potential constituency in the Democratic Party at this stage of the game? If the party is “moving left” and Bloomberg is a big deal centrist, how the hell does he win? Why does he think he can be a savior?

ABC’s The View, for having Donald Trump, Jr. on the show last week to promote his book. The appearance was always going to be a shit show, which is what the show’s producers and ABC clearly wanted because shit shows bring in ratings, but I don’t think anyone contemplated just how big of a shit show it was going to be. The whole thing was unwatchable. The only real plus of the interview is that it showed, just in case you didn’t already know, Don Jr. is a horrible, horrible person who doesn’t belong on TV in any capacity. The man is just awful.

Madonna, for her recent late concert start in Las Vegas. The concert was expected to start at 10:30pm, but the singer didn’t show up until after midnight, and the show didn’t end until 2:45am. The crowd that bothered to stick around for the show wasn’t happy. While it’s true that Madonna is known for being late to her own concerts, being two hours late is ridiculous. And when the show is scheduled to start at 10:30pm, being two hours late for that is just bullshit. Madonna should apologize to her fans and make a real deal effort to not be so goddamn late for her own shows. Almost two fucking hours?

**

Thanks for reading. Agree? Disagree? Sign up with disqus and comment. You know you want to, so just go do it.

Please “like” The Gratuitous B-Movie Column on Facebook!

Oh, and B-movies rule. Always remember that.