Someone left a comment in my last movie post saying that A Nightmare Before Christmas was less of a Christmas movie than Die Hard.

I take exception to that.  Die Hard is more than just a better Christmas movie than Nightmare.  Die Hard is one of the most Christmas movies ever.

It belongs at the top of the Christmas movie hierarchy.

Think about the plot at the most basic level.

A husband and father starts the movie alienated from his family because he is over worked.  He goes through a struggle that forces him to confront his situation with his family and learn that the true meaning of the season is being with the ones you love.

There are countless movies with this same plot structure.

Jingle All The Way is a 1996 Schwarzenegger Christmas movie where the struggle is dad getting the perfect sold out gift on Christmas Eve.

The Santa Clause is a 1994 movie staring Tim Allen as an overworked toy salesman who struggles with the fact that he is now Santa Clause.

Die Hard is the 1988 movie staring Bruce Willis in which the struggle is terrorists taking over the building owned by his wife’s employer during their Christmas party.

It is in every way a classic Christmas Movie plot, just with European bank hijacking terrorists instead of annoying children.

If The Hallmark Channel and El Rey Network got together to make a Christmas movie, I doubt the plot would be much different.

Also, if anybody wants to add their favorite blogger to their Christmas list, I really want a machine gun.

“Get off my zip code.”

MIAMI SPRINGS, FLA. (WSVN) – Police are on the hunt for a man who reportedly sexually assaulted a tourist at her Miami Springs hotel.
According to Miami-Dade Police, the victim was staying at the Clarion Inn and Suites along Northwest 36th Street, Monday.
The victim heard a knock on her door and went to open it just after 12 p.m. That’s when the subject forced his way in.
“Once he was inside the room, a brief struggle ensued,” said Miami-Dade Police Detective Angel Rodriguez, “and at which time the offender pulled out a box cutter and sexually assaulted the victim.”

Woman sexually assaulted at Miami Springs hotel; man on the run

I have covered hotel security many times before and it seems like a good opportunity to revisit it. Let’s start with a sad true: Security in hotels (and pretty much any corporation) is at the bottom of the importance scale  because it does not generate revenue. So, if they can keep expenditures to a minimum, they will do so. They will only change if a problem is detected and it costs them money.

The other issue that hotels have regarding security is that by nature hotels are supposed to be welcoming places, wide open access to the public so they can partake the amenities offered by the place.  Having a tightly controlled access and egress makes guests think “How come they have so much security? Is there something we should know and they are not telling us?” and the will not come back again and even spread the word to friends, family and strangers in Travelocity.

So, as usual, you are your own First Responder and Security Detail.  Let’s start with the basic: Does your room door have a peephole? If it does not, ask for a room change immediately. No compromise on that. If you cannot monitor who is on the other side, you are being placed in a trap hole and the possibility of an ambush when coming out.

The words “Housekeeping!” , “Room Service!” or “Maintenance” are not passwords that make you open the door without the need to check first.  “But I asked for more towels/called for faulty AC/ordered supper!” It does not matter, you check, double-check who is on the other side. It still amazes me that people who are mildly conscious and safe at home will suddenly throw caution to the Trade Winds and just behave in a stupid manner because they are in a different location.

But what if you hear a knock and you are not expecting anybody? The first hint that it may be danger is if the knock is not followed with the magic words “Housekeeping!” , “Room Service!” or “Maintenance.” But even if they are uttered and you have not asked for any, your alarm system must go up:

1. Be Loud. Ask  what they want in a tone of voice you know it is gonna bother the neighbors. Let them answer and pretend to be deaf, ask them to repeat themselves loudly. Bad guys seek stealth, not calling attention.
2.  Tell them (loudly) that you will call Front Desk to confirm they have business in your room. And don’t bluff, please call Front Desk. The people at the Front Desk should know if there is a call pending or find out fast if there is one, specially at night. If the answer you get is negative, ask them to send security right away or call the cops. You will call the cops anyway on your own, but you have told Front Desk that there is something wrong and they better step up.
3. Assume your Defensive Protocol for imminent attack. Basically fancy words saying, get your gun/weapon and take cover. Remain on the ready till things get figured out or the threat leaves. If you do not have a “Defensive Protocol”, How about you start coming up with one?
4. If there was a threat, demand a new room or get out of the hotel altogether if your gut tells you.  There is no shame in being safe. The Bad Guy may have chose the room for a reason and you need to GTFO. The staff may call you silly and even laugh at you behind your back, but screw it. It is your ass on the line, not theirs.

One other thing, hotels rooms should have information packages with all the relevant information of the place, Read It. If the hotel’s restaurant ends dinner service at 10 PM and does not start delivering breakfast till 6 AM, you know a Room Service call between those hours are bogus. It also varies per hotel chain, but they may have a minimum housekeeping staff at night for guests calls and same for maintenance. It is very unlikely that you will see them and much less hear them cleaning rooms or fixing stuff unless there is an emergency. The biggest asset for guests a hotel has at night is quiet and they will do the utmost to make it so they don’t get calls from pissed off guests complaining about some idiot next yelling at housekeeping at one in the morning.

Everyday, we learn something new about the Thanksgiving night shooting of EJ Bradford in Hoover, Alabama.

An autopsy was performed and it shows he was shot three times in the back.  The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), the statewide investigative law enforcement agency in Alabama (like FBI or Texas Rangers of Alabama), has prevented the release of mall security camera footage until their investigation is complete.

This is starting to look like a bad shoot.

Keep in mind that other concealed carry holders were there with their guns out and were not shot.

Remember just a couple of weeks ago a Chicago police officer shot a security guard who had intervened in a shooing at a bar.

These are both terrible situations that require more investigation and training.

Both the mall shooting and shooting at Manny’s Blue Room were described as “potential mass shootings.”

We know that the best way to deal with a mass shooter is to go in and immediately engage the shooter.

It seems that – giving the benefit of the doubt to the police that the are in fact not Klansman looking to murder black people – the police responded by shooting the first person they saw with a gun, who just happened in each of these cases to be a good guy.

I need to point out that in both of these cases the good guy with a gun and the suspected mass shooters were black, and just how much of the shooting was motivated by racism vs. how much was motivated by a description of the suspect is unknown at this time.

Maybe, we need to tone down the response to a mass shooting just a little so that police can be certain that the person they see with a gun is really a mass shooter and not a good guy with a gun responding to one.

Instead, The Daily Show decides these incidents mean that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to black people.

There is no tragedy that can’t be use to justify stripping people of their rights.

Especially gun rights from black people.  There is little Leftists can’t stand more than self reliant black people, and a law abiding black gun owners drive them up the wall.

Of course, the cure for this is 100% the opposite of what The Daily Show advocates.

Make it clear to the media and public perception that there are law abiding black gun owners and black concealed carry permit holders and that “black man with a gun” can also mean “good guy with a gun.”

The Daily Show is actually pushing the idea that guns rights are not for black people so if you see a black person with a gun he must be a criminal because law abiding black people don’t own guns.

This isn’t funny and it makes the situation worse.

There are a lot of good lessons to learn from these situations.

“Black people shouldn’t enjoy the Bill of Rights” isn’t one of them.

Take every horrible thing I’ve said about the incompetent, self serving bureaucrats of the Broward County School Board, the egregious Sheriff Israel, and the gutless, chicken shit cowards of the Broward Sheriffs Office and SRO Scot Peterson, now increase that by a order of magnitude.

That is how bad the Parkland situation has gotten.

The Sun-Sentinel, which I normally disagree with on just about everything, has done Pulitzer worthy coverage of the ham-fisted incompetence of Broward County in regards to the shooting.

This is their latest headline:

School shooting PR consultant apologizes after calling critics ‘crazies’ and reporter ‘skanky’

A crisis public relations consultant created a crisis of her own for the Broward school district, after a video came to light in which she dismissed the district’s critics in the Parkland massacre as “crazies” and called a reporter a “skanky” “jerk” who “smells bad.”

Sara Brady, who was paid nearly $75,000 to assist the district after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told an audience of public relations professionals last July that critics of the school district’s controversial Promise program, which allowed students who commit minor crimes to avoid jail, were “crazies.”

She criticized South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter Scott Travis, although she didn’t name him, as “just a jerk,” and then she got more personal.

“He is sloppy, he’s reckless, he’s mean, and he smells bad,” she said, laughing along with the audience.

At the point, Broward school district spokeswoman Tracy Clark can be heard calling out, “Sour milk!” That provoked more laughter.

At another point in the video Brady describes him as “that nasty, skanky reporter.”

Broward County spent $75,000 to hire a PR expert to come in and cover up their glaring malfeasance and enabling of the Parkland shooting.

The woman that they hired let it all hang out when she though she was having a behind closed doors presentation with other PR people.  It was recorded and leaked.

Instead of the attitude of Broward County being contrite saying “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” it did what every bureaucracy does, attacked anybody who questioned Broward’s ineptitude, malfeasance, and mismanagement as being the real bad guy.

It’s not that Broward is run by awful people, it’s everybody who noticed how badly Broward is run is stupid and crazy.  Who are going going to believe, the Broward County management or your lying eyes?

Of course, anybody who just watched the Broward County election and the actions of Brenda Snipes saw that play out again.

“And sure enough, all the crazies kind of came out,” Brady told an audience in California, in a video revealed by the South Florida Sun Sentinel in a recent story about the school district’s public relations damage control after the shooting. “The district knows who the crazies are and who the opposition is, and so certainly they seized on it and started putting stuff out there.”

The Promise program had been seized upon nationwide by conservative critics who were happy to lay part of the blame for the shooting on a program supported by President Obama. But the program had also been criticized by many family members of the victims in the massacre.

The Sun-Sentinel exposes the PROMISE Program for being the primary culprit in why Nikolas Cruz, who had been a problem since elementary school, was free to be a school shooter and not in prison.

Brady, of Winter Park in suburban Orlando, apologized, saying her comments had not been aimed at the bereaved families.

“Mr. Pollack … my remarks were intended to poke at the media in general,” she wrote in response. “I offer my profound apology for my lapse in judgment and display of disrespect.”

“I’m sorry I got caught saying horrible shit about people like you.”

On her own Twitter page, she said, “My comments about ‘crazies’ were part of an overall presentation for communication practitioners and were in reference to the anonymous trolls and bots who seemingly always appear after these hideous tragedies.”

“Everybody who disagrees with me is a Russian Bot.”

In an interview, she said she was not dismissing all critics of the district as “crazies,” just the more extreme, troll-like commenters on social media who sought to find fault with every statement or action.

Faults like the fact that Broward County lied about everything until documents were released that proved they lied?  I guess parents who worry about the safety of their kids after such a horrible thing happened right under the nose of the county are just trolls and bots.

She acknowledged her insults to the reporter as a “poor choice of words” in a conference intended to help school communication professionals know what to do when confronted by a crisis and a media storm.

Having the right choice of words is literally her only job.

“I probably went a little overboard in my comments about the reporter,” said Brady, a former police reporter at the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s just kind of shop talk. I acknowledge that.”

But when Trump attacks the press, that is the death of the First Amendment.

Broward school superintendent Robert Runcie, who watched the video the previous night, called Travis to apologize, saying said the comments were “inexcusable and don’t reflect the values of the district.”

Although he said he knows he’s had a tense relationship at times with the Sun Sentinel, Brady shouldn’t have used that kind of language or engaged in personal attacks. He said the district had canceled her contract before this came up.

Voices of Change: The shooting, the aftermath and the movement
“We may have had our differences, but never have I been in a situation where that kind of language was used,” he said in an interview. “It’s hurtful. It’s wrong. And it doesn’t represent my views or the views of the leadership of the school district.”

It’s bad when your PR person makes your PR worse.  I wonder if they will ask for the $75,000 dollars back.

School board member Robin Bartleman forwarded a link of the video to Runcie, saying it reflected poorly on the district. Using the term “crazies” to describe the district’s critics was unfair, she said.

“FYI, many of those people asking questions were the victims’ families,” she wrote.

Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine, who represents Parkland, said the school district might have been better served by a different public relations firm.

“First rule of crisis PR. Dont let your crisis PR person cause you additional crisis PR,” he wrote on Twitter. “So sad. This is so wrong on so many levels. We have local PR people with love and compassion that would have served all of us with more dignity and professionalism!”

Some people are hoping for re-election.

I’m hoping for pitchforks and torches.

So let’s get this straight:

Every county level agency or organization in Broward mishandles Nikolas Cruz as far back as we have records for, failing to prevent an obvious tragedy from occurring.  Every county level agency or organization in Broward mishandles the actual shooting, allowing many more people to die than should have.  Every county level agency or organization in Broward mishandles lies about their failings and puts more effort into protecting the bureaucracy and covering their own asses than preventing a future tragedy or helping the victims.

The county hires a PR woman who comes in and shows absolute disdain for the victims, their families, and everyone who wants to get to the bottom of this.

Still no Broward County administrator gets fired for this.

Before the 2020 elections, I thing the good people of Broward should set up a guillotine in the War Memorial Auditorium just to make sure that there are no incumbents in the next county government.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of the most disturbingly horrible movies I have ever seen.

Who decided that this is a Christmas movie worth playing over and over again during December?

Who decided, more over, that this is a “family” movie which means kid appropriate?

I’m an free speech advocate but I would not have a problem with the systematic elimination of every copy of this movie from the known universe.

I do not think we can say Richard Hammond is an ignorant about cars, regular or otherwise. But yet, the first time he tries to take out a Formula One rocket, he cannot make it 25 yards out of the pits. He simply did not know how to deal with this particular beast. It does not make him some sort of useless example of human being but an untrained one.

It seems some people find sick rejoice at pointing out the good faith failings of others as way to prop their ego and politicize stuff. We don’t do that in this blog. I will use tragic examples as teaching tools and even if you are the idiot that begged the event, I am not going to make political or self-aggrandizing taunts, just point out that you are an idiot.

So, if you need to put down people just because it makes for a long-lasting mental erection, please go do somewhere else. I am older, ornery and my total effective time for suffering fools is about 5 milliseconds.

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