Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

I lived with a roommate in college for four years and, as can happen, our various household stuff got mixed together. We moved apart amicably and now, 3 years later, find ourselves living in separate apartments in the same city again. She's been over a number of times since then.

On her latest visit (dinner at my place!) she looked at the fork I was holding and proclaimed it was hers and she needed it back. In fact, she asked for all the silverware with that particular style to be returned.

I thought she was joking at first, but then she explained they were her mother's and she needed to return them. Am I wrong that this seems ridiculous? Her mom has now been without this special cutlery for over 7 years. I've been to their house and I can promise you they have plenty of silverware to go around.

What is my obligation here? She's referring to the majority part of my silverware, so I'd have to go out and buy more. She didn’t even offer to replace the silverware she's "retrieving.” Should I tell her the statute of limitations has passed? Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

I can’t believe your friend is still ON YOUR CASE, calmly asking you to return a family heirloom you stole from her when you lived together. You really have no choice but to take it up with the police at this point, so that they might use the full power of the law to confine her madness. “Trial of the Century” gets thrown around a lot, but this courtroom spectacle shall be truly riveting. Nancy Grace will live and die by these spoons. The next time your friend brings up the issue of your her-your silverware (perhaps next week when you host Taco Tuesday—a meal pointedly devoid of cutlery), ask for the name of her lawyer and yell "YOU'LL GET YOUR FORKS IN HELL, BITCH."

Or you could just give your friend back her freaking silverware.

The proper response to learning you stole something from a friend is “Oh, God. I'm so sorry! Here, take it back!" Not. “Okay, we need to talk terms."

Imagine being your friend. For three years, she’s been thinking that her mother’s cherished silverware was lost forever. Then, one day, she looks down and realizes she's holding one of the pieces. What luck—the entire set has been under the care of her close friend all this time! “Finally!" she thinks "I can have my silverware back.”

"Well," you say, "I’ve had this stuff for a while. So. It's mine."

The silverware has not developed Stockholm Syndrome. It will not miss you when it is returned to its rightful owner.

If I were you, I wouldn’t bring up your opinion, based on moonbeams and dewdrops but almost certainly not the laws that govern the United States, that the statute of limitations has run out on your friend’s claim to her own silverware that you stole. For one thing, if the crime sounds too boring and soft to be even a Nancy Drew title (“The Case of the Purloined Cutlery That I Kept in My House for Three Years”), you probably shouldn’t prosecute. More importantly, this isn’t civil court. This is you having dinner with one of your good friends. What was your plan, exactly?

“Possession is 9/10ths of the law. Eat it bi-atch! So, you wanna watch Breaking Bad on Sunday?"

Silverware isn’t hard to find. What are the odds you will enter another store at some point over the course of your natural life? Pretty good. The odds that some of that store’s wares will be of the silver variety is also pretty good. Even dollar stores sell disposable cutlery. You can get a decent set at Target for $30. But maybe you don’t want to downgrade back to ordinary department store brand now that you’ve tasted the delicious cold steel of expensive silverware. All the more reason you should return this silverware to its rightful owner. If something is worth stealing, it is wrong to steal it. And “I’d have to go out and buy more” is not a valid excuse for not returning something you stole.

Your friend does not have to offer you restitution because she is reclaiming the silverware you took from her. If you find the burglar who stole your car, you are not obligated to buy him a replacement car before you can get yours back.

On a personal note, this sentence really breaks my heart.

"I've been to their house and I can promise you they have plenty of silverware to go around."

Do you realize this makes you sound like an old timey street urchin? “A chicken in every pot and a spoon in every bowl! Graceful taper candles, never before used – and more in the closet besides!” Did you burst into song when you entered their home? Did you think you were gonna like it there?

Don't begrudge your friend's family the silverware that is their silverware. Maybe someday you will have a dinner set of your very own. I hope no one steals it.

On Saturday night, my roommate and I were heading out for the evening. As we walked down the sidewalk, my roommate accidentally bumped into another man who happened to be carrying a bottle of liquor in a plastic bag. As a result of the minor collision, the man dropped the bag and the bottle shattered. My roommate apologized and we continued to walk, only to be followed and approached by Broken Bottle Man. "Excuse me," he said. "That was a full bottle of gin. I'm going to need you to replace that." My roommate immediately pulled out his wallet and handed him a twenty (the only cash he happened to be carrying). Broken Bottle Man was satisfied and left.

As we continued on our way, I told my roommate I felt it was crazy that he so readily forked over the cash. More specifically, I thought it was ridiculous that the man asked to be paid back and that my roommate felt obligated to pay him (as opposed to my roommate offering the money out of his own volition as a sympathetic gesture). Sure, the situation was unfortunate. And sure, I would probably be irritated if someone bumped into me on the sidewalk and I dropped a perfectly good bottle of gin. But I also realize that this is New York: sidewalks are crowded and sometimes shit happens. It was clearly an accident.

Basically, I felt his sincere apology should have been enough to mollify this dude and that my roommate was under no obligation to pay him back for his booze. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

Bumping into someone is not an act of God unless a tornado sucks up your body and flings it on top of another person (or you trip over a rock or something). One of the quirks about growing up on Earth is that you develop a feel for the planet's gravitational pull. Maybe you bump into another person because you—or they—weren’t paying attention; maybe you were rushing; maybe you’re a dick who likes to body check people. Under normal conditions, though, humans are able to walk on sidewalks (even crowded sidewalks) without careening into one another. “Stumblebum” is not a condition recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

So, yes, if you bump into another person, they drop whatever they were carrying, and you are clearly at fault (I’m assuming your roommate was, since you say he bumped into the man and not the otherway around), you should offer to pay for whatever you broke. You can't just walk around adversely affecting other peoples' lives, and then shouting, "Let that be a lesson to you about the impermanence and fragility of all things, random stranger!” as you disappear into the night. When you're exchanging information with someone after a car accident, you can't just hand them a scrap of paper on which you have scrawled "C'est la vie!"

As for this:

More specifically, I thought it was ridiculous that the man asked to be paid back and that my roommate felt obligated to pay him (as opposed to my roommate offering the money out of his own volition as a sympathetic gesture).

Do you mean to imply that the situation was ridiculous only because the man asked for payment, and that it would not have been ridiculous if your roommate had simply offered payment, unasked? That is ridiculous! That is nonsensical. You’re fine with this guy receiving reimbursement, but only if your roommate offers it? The act of the injured party’s vocal cords vibrating to form a request of payment renders the situation ridiculous? I think we’ve already established that your roommate was never going to offer to pay him, by virtue of the fact that he did not do that. If this guy had waited for your roommate to make an offer to pay him, he would be waiting there still, a small puddle of gin drying rapidly at his feet.

Speaking of which: always be sure to sniff the puddle before paying up, because filling empty gin bottles with water and then hitting up strangers for payment when they "make" you drop them is a smooth way to make a quick $20. Gin and water look a lot alike, but only one of them will produce a puddle that smells like gin when you smash a bottle of it on the street.

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions here (max: 200 words). Images from Shutterstock.

Subway kittens! The subway shark! All truly important news items come in threes, so we're due for one more animal to make headlines on New York mass transit. What's it going to be? Llama? Tiger (yes, please)? Peacock? Red-tailed hawk? Platypus? (Rats don't count; rats are part of the normal subway ecosystem.) Share your picks, hopes, and personal nature tales in the discussion below.

[Photo via Shutterstock.]

Los Angeles police arrested about three dozen alleged members of the Rollin' 30s Harlem Crips (a.k.a. Ice-T's former gang) yesterday on federal and state charges related to gang operations and drug dealing. It was the culmination of an investigation called "Operation Thumbs Down," a reference to a popular Rollin' 30s hand sign: two thumbs up.

The LA Times reports that investigators turned up an unspecified amount of drugs and guns after raiding homes and businesses in the early morning yesterday with 34 federal search warrants.

With an estimated membership of 700 to 1,000 members, the Rollin' 30s Crips are one of L.A.'s most infamous and oldest Crip sets, controlling an area of about two square miles in South L.A.

Part of the Operation Thumbs Down involved diving into Rollin' 30s members' social-media accounts, which turned up, among other things, the photo above of a little girl holding a massive rifle.

[Image via KTLA]

Liz Cheney doesn't think her sister should have been permitted to get married.

Persnickety comedian Dave Chappelle has been co-headling Funny or Die's Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival, but a rowdy crowd in Hartford, Connecticut last night upset Chappelle so much that he stopped performing less than halfway through his allotted time, before giving what some fans perceived to be a giant figurative middle finger to the audience.

Chappelle had been on stage for just ten minutes when shouts from fans (not surprisingly, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" was thrown around a lot) proved to be too much for the comedian, and he stopped his act. He used his remaining contractually obligated 15 minutes of performance time to sit on a stool, chain smoke cigarettes, and read passages from an audience member's book out loud. As the crowd booed him, Chappelle retorted with "You're booing yourself. I want you to go home and look in the mirror and say 'Boo.' Remember, that's how I feel about you." He then waited out his remaining time—in good spirits, whilst admonishing the angry crowd—and left the stage.

The Twitterverse has been abuzz since. Most fans who were at the show were furious, though a few defended him and blamed the noisy audience. Comedians like Patton Oswalt, who wasn't at the show, have come to his defense as well.

demitri martin was a great surprise but fuck dave agggghhhhhh

— _ (@LuchnessMonster) August 30, 2013

I hate Hartford, The Comcast sucks, and that audience just ruined the show. All you needed to do was shut up, and you couldn't. #oddballfest

— Adam Cattel (@AdamCattel) August 30, 2013

Dear Dave Chappelle's fans: He's one of the best comedians working, & you're not letting him do what he loves. Stop being assholes.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 30, 2013

Decent video from the event tells a similar story:

Ebony's Lesli-Ann Lewis was in the audience and came to Chappelle's defense. Lewis points to race being a factor in the heckling of Chappelle; a complicated history of black performers and "white consumption," which is indeed an issue. Chappelle's walkoff however, can be attributed to a larger issue: audiences of all racial makeups not knowing when to sit down and shut the fuck up. Hecklers have long been a comedy show fixture, but comedians don't get paid to handle hecklers, they get paid to tell jokes. When hecklers take ability away from them, it's up to comedians like Chappelle to take a stand.

This isn't the first time Chappelle has refused to perform in response to an untamable audience—back in 2011, he stopped performing after just one joke at a charity event in Miami and used his remaining 45 minutes to sit on stage and sigh at the audience.

Labor Day is a complete rip-off. Labor isn't celebrated at all—instead, a single day's break from labor is celebrated. You might think this is a stupid thing to care about, because Labor Day is really just about getting drunk in your yard, again. But that's actually evidence of this very successful con job pulled on you, the American worker (or unemployed person, or discouraged worker, or "grad student"). You probably don't even believe in Labor Day.

America, as you've surely been told, is a very special country. One example of the superiority of the United States is that it managed to deport the global workers holiday called May Day. This was especially skillful because May Day began not in Russia or Finland or Middle Earth, but in Chicago, a major American city built specifically to exploit the labor of poor immigrants.

On May 4 of 1886, police opened fire on laborers demanding an eight-hour workday. The cops had been sent over by their bosses at the slaughterhouses and City Hall to break up the rally and smash skulls. The chance to open fire on the workers conveniently arrived when a crude bomb was tossed toward the coppers by persons unknown; eight local anarchists were rounded up and convicted—four of them were slowly strangled in an intentionally botched public hanging, while a fifth condemned man blew off a significant portion of his own head by chewing on a blasting cap he'd smuggled into prison.

The phony trial gave fuel to the new global labor movement, and it inspired the creation of International Workers' Day on May Day of 1889, meshing with the European spring festivals held on May 1.

Leaders of other countries would've loved to kill off May Day. But it was too wrapped up in the old pagan spring celebrations, now starring cheery mobs of laborers singing ancient songs about smashing the system and sawing off the head of the screaming king. After dancing around the maypole and drinking everything in sight, the festively clad young people would tear off their folk costumes and screw each other in the forest, like wood sprites.

But every now and then, the revelers would launch a real revolution, which is how we got the Soviet Union and leftists and all that.

Very crafty U.S. holiday planners within the federal government were told by bankers and industrialists to find a way to get rid of this phenomenon. They had watched with interest as the Catholic Church tried (and failed) to steal May Day from workers by renaming it Saint Joseph's Day—the mythological Joseph, the cuckold in the tale of Mary's supernatural pregnancy, was the patron saint of going along with the system even though you're utterly dead inside.

For Washington, the answer was to simply have a different kind of May Day—one that was more about sitting in the yard getting drunk, instead of storming the Bastille or seizing the means of production. After U.S. marshals and soldiers slaughtered railroad workers during the 1894 Pullman Strike, the federal government quickly whipped up a national workers' holiday. This "Labor Day," the first Monday in September, was preferable to the May Day agitations that called for worldwide socialist revolutions.

The American authorities re-christened May Day as "Law and Order Day," a deft bit of word magic that knocked the life out of U.S. celebrations of May 1. The commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre itself, on May 4, is now a fake Disney holiday—May the Fourth Be With You celebrates the immense financial success of Star Wars products.

Labor Day worked all right during our brief mid-20th century era of a prosperous middle class and a less desperate working class and a fully marginalized poor with no access to Twitter. But as a salaried job went from the norm to a prize held by the fortunate, the hard-won eight-hour workday became something sadder and stranger.

One of every three workers is now part of the "contingent workforce"—the exact number is conveniently hidden, because "the Labor Department does not regularly collect data about this group." When the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped counting this contingent workforce in 2005, it was already at 30 percent of all workers. They're temps, contract workers, seasonal workers, and warehouse labor filling boxes for Amazon. They're generally in service, retail, food production and dead-end office jobs: stocking shelves, killing meat animals in a factory, doing telemarketing or data entry, cleaning bathrooms, working security, etc. And they're often deliberately kept from working 40 hours a week, because only then would they be entitled to benefits and legal protections reluctantly granted to full-time employees.

The modern Labor Day is one of the major retail sales weekends, right up there with the ominous Black Friday of Walmart riots and the unsatisfied mobs haunting Day After Christmas sales. With 70 percent of retail workers kept as part-timers and low-end retail increasingly being a round-the-clock operation, Labor Day is likely to be just another day of labor for the nation's worst-paid not-quite-employees.

Retail, along with "customer service representatives" and "fast food preparation," is one of the top five "largest job growth" occupations, according to the Labor Department. But don't get used to such horrible jobs, because even these are going away. The burger-flipping robot and the self-service checkout computer are killing off the crappy jobs just as machines killed all the jobs in agriculture and manufacturing.

This is the worst part of Labor Day, for those who want to think about it: Nearly all remaining jobs will be eliminated, probably in your own lifetime! The American-led destruction of the labor movement has been remarkably successful, and three decades of aggressive anti-union propaganda has made the few remaining trade unions with their pensions and vacations seem decadent and greedy to people struggling with a shift at the Del Taco followed by a shift at the Walmart, leaving children and elderly parents with whatever member of the casual family is without paid work of any kind.

But don't feel smug if you've got a law degree or work for an accounting firm or manage some department selling whatzits. The management massacre of 2008 and 2009 was just a way to get rid of dead-weight white-collar workers. Those jobs will never return. Most everything that anyone does can be done better and more cheaply by computers, and the price of robots is dropping just as the price of mainframes plummeted 20 years ago with the introduction of cheap but powerful PCs.

The next mass movement, if it ever happens, will not be about increasingly scarce laborers, but about people in general. Nationalism, oxycontin, despair, television, alcohol and slob propaganda have all done a very good job of keeping the 80 percent of Americans who are "financially insecure" too worn down and miserable to realize they've got a common enemy. If they ever do figure this out, there will either be a long internal war—the "class war" that worries rich liberals and rich conservatives alike—or the Pentagon is just going to poison the whole country between Silicon Valley and Manhattan.

Enjoy the barbecue.

Ken Layne writes his American Almanac to mark the nation's important holidays and traditions. Next up: Halloween! UPDATE: The original version of this post mixed up the 1884 and 1894 railroad strikes; thanks to commenter sjk333 for the correction.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke; original image via Getty.]

This is how it starts. In a brief follow-up to Secretary of State John Kerry's statements today, President Obama this afternoon slammed the U.N. Security Council's "incapacity" to act in Syria and said that he is considering an American intervention to try and mitigate that nation's attacks on its civilians. Don't call it a "war," though; President Obama prefers a "limited, narrow act."

Obama gave his remarks, which were not broadcast live, before a meeting with Baltic leaders. According to NBC News, the president said that the "wide range of options" the administration is currently looking over does not include any plan that would put American soldiers onto Syrian soil:

"In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign, but we are looking at the possibility of a limited narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria but others around the world understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm," he said.

Obama added that intelligence saying Syria is using chemical weapons is a threat to American national security. "[W]hen over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal," said Obama. "That is a danger to our national security."

In response to the growing calls for intervention in Syria, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said recently that "Syria will defend itself against any aggression."

[Image via AP]

The young men of the boy band One Direction like playing with their fame. Throughout their Morgan Spurlock-directed 3D concert movie/behind-the-scenes doc, One Direction: This Is Us, we see them conducting the applause they receive as though the crowds of adoring fans are instruments. They run to and from ledges of buildings their admirers have gathered around, manipulating the roar of adulation. They use hand signals to amplify and decrease the screams and squeals. At one point, one member is being interviewed alone about how great his fans are. As evidence, he gets up from his chair and walks a few yards to the window behind him that he stands in front of and throws open, unleashing an appreciative sonic boom.

Where One Direction's pop-star peers make pseudo-philosophical musings about the nature of fame (see Lady Gaga's empty single "Applause")—or simply fret about it—the guys of One Direction are just having fun. Fame's a toy fit for a boy, and this group has five. Their names are Blonde Spice (Niall Horan), Bland Spice (Louis Tomlinson), Cute Spice (Liam Payne), Taylor Swift's Ex Spice (Harry Styles), and Zayn Spice (Zayn Malik).

The amused, borderline-mocking attitude with which this group of Irish and Brits approach their popularity runs through their brand. Early on in the film, we see them practicing with their choreographer, who informs the camera, "they hate dancing with a passion." Describing their approach to moving onstage, Malik says, "We take the piss out of dance moves." Indeed, during the dozen or so concert performances included in the movie, we see the guys mostly just sauntering onstage, sometimes individually mimicking the stylized moves boy bands of the past have primed us to expect, but mostly just goofing off. The guys of One Direction, who were assembled on the U.K. singing competition The X Factor, aren't polished. Or maybe they're extremely polished at looking unpolished.

Again and again, their public image tells us that they're dudes. Pretty, scrawny, nonthreatening dudes, but dudes all the same. More and more, modern masculinity amounts to an extreme ease with one's self and his surroundings. This means not taking anything too seriously (especially one's manliness). One Direction may be the most masculine group to ever congregate onstage and competently croon sensitive, guitar-riffy bubblegum pop for girls.

They drive golf-carts around backstage just minutes before they're supposed to go and sing in front of thousands of people. Their pre-show ritual is a sports-team chant as opposed to a solemn prayer. They openly discuss the fact that they are most likely living in their collective professional peak, that one day One Direction will be a thing of the past, along with this enormous popularity. How much of this is calculated (and thus self-defeating) is anyone's guess, but This Is Us does a great job of portraying these five blokes as endearing down-to-earth normal guys on the ride of their life. Styles bristles over being described as "famous," as it's a word that "gives you no substance." I've never heard such a succinct refutation of celebrity values from an actual celebrity, especially one who isn't yet 20.

At one point during a break on the tour that the film chronicles (which took place earlier this year), we watch the boys go back to their roots. Styles joins the older women behind the counter of the bakery he worked at before going on The X Factor—they all still love him. This expressed ability to fold right back into a normal existence unfazed by fame is an extremely attractive prospect given the absurd degree with which our culture regards celebrity. The illusion of One Direction is just as seductive as the group's creative output.

Much is missing from the This Is Us, which was co-produced by Simon Cowell, who signed the group to his label. There is no mention of sex or drugs or (famous) girlfriends. The rawest scene involves a debate over who just farted. From what we see, there is never any external conflict amongst the guys, and they're more than happy to sing whatever is put in front of them. The toll this lifestyle of nonstop mobs takes on the guys' individuality is never much explored, just sort of vaguely hinted at about three quarters of the way through the movie.

The group's trademark homoeroticism is also largely missing from the movie, save one feigned kissing attempt, a pantsing, and lots of shirtlessness. Horan loves to record in the nude. Styles enters a studio booth and notes, "Smells like men in here. Smells like a mixture of boy and men." That's about as titillating as it gets, if you're into straight-on-straight action.

One day, one or more members of One Direction will write a book or otherwise tell their stories and they'll be juicier, and, if the off-the-cuff cleverness of just about all of the members is any indication, deeper than This Is Us. But I won't be surprised if the tell-alls also include a lot of what's here. This kind of charisma and amusement is a hard thing to fake.

And in conclusion, Liam Payne is soooooooo dreamy and I swooned every time he was on screen!!! I love him and I know he loves me even if he doesn't know it.

Yesterday, a very important NYC thing happened: Two kittens halted the subway's B and Q lines for an hour. How could two feline urchins so rudely interrupt the necessary flow of human transport? the bad people wondered. Ooooh, kitties! the good people cooed.

To apply this very significant divide between good and bad New Yorkers, Daily Intel asked the current Mayoral race contestants whether they sided with the trains or the cats (i.e. whether they were good or bad people). Republican Joe Lhota said he was a bad man. ("No, Joe does not think a train line should be shut down," a campaign spokesperson said.) His rival John Catsimatidis insisted that he is a very good man and passed along this lovely stanza about his true feline feelings:

I am an Animal Lover
Especially CATS
Supposed they were
Baby Rats
Its up to the Policeman on the Scene to make decision
Not the Mayor

Unfortunately, Catsimatidis's extreme goodness is entirely neutralized by the extreme badness of him being a lifelong Yankees fan. But he does get a couple of points for reminding Daily Intel that you can't spell Catsimatidis name without "cats." Dogsimatidis just wouldn't have the same ring.

[January 2013 CATSimatidis campaign photo via AP/Seth Wenig]

Here's some mesmerizing and creepy time-lapse footage of the World Trade Center complex being rebuilt.

Fashion people suck, Fiona Apple rules, and the sky is blue.

Welcome to Annotate This, where we gather reviews, trailers, and annotate the posters for movies coming out this week. It will help you decide what to avoid, what to see, and what to pretend to see. Click on the image above to add your comments to the mix.

Passion

Doing-the-right-amount-of-too-much auteur Brian De Palma has cast Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace as two lovely ladies to love (to murder?) each other. It's based on a French film, Love Crime, but we Americans have tarted it up, like we do. Obviously it's shameless and De Palma-y. Some say that it is a little generic, but others say it could rank in DePalma's best, but not like top five best. Read Rich Juzwiak's interview with De Palma here.

One Direction: This is Us in 3D

There are a bunch of young men in a band called One Direction. They have many eager fans who want to know all about them, so Morgan Spurlock was like, cool I will make a documentary about the commodity of five boys named Niall, Louis, Zayn, Liam, and Harry. Apparently they're charming but super fucking boring. It's got no insight and two different reviewers bring up the idea of "warts and all" and say this movie is not that.

Afternoon Delight

This is Jill Soloway's movie about a bored thirty-something (Kathryn Hahn) with a cute yuppie husband (Josh Radnor) and an over-sharing therapist (Jane Lynch) who adopts a spunky stripper (Juno Temple) as a live-in nanny and life-changer.

The Lifeguard

A 30-year-old woman (Kristen Bell) has a little millennial-life-crisis and so she goes to her suburban hometown for "a job that pays $9 an hour but comes with lots of free metaphors about drowning and responsibility." Reviews cottoned onto this as well, calling The Lifeguard lifeless, adrift, drowning in self-pity, and awful.

Closed Circuit

This is about dramatic terrorist attack in London, but also about some ex-lovers so there can be sexy plot lines. Directed by John Crowley from a screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises), it stars Jim Broadbent, Rebecca Hall, Eric Bana, and Julia Stiles. It's well-organized, gripping for a minute, but then it goes slack.

Getaway

Haha okay, so in this movie Ethan Hawke is a race car driver, Selena Gomez is a "young hacker." Yes, Selena Gomez is a "young hacker." As with many a film, delivering a USB drive by driving is the crucial centerpiece.

I Declare War

This cutesy though affecting, archetype-laden Canadian film from co-directors Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson blends reality and imagination as their came of Capture the Flag begins to embody and comment upon a culture of violence.

Our Nixon

This documentary is stitched together from Super 8 footage, filmed by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin while in the Nixon White House. These entertaining personal visual accounts were seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigations. Because of the extensive accounts of the Nixon White House in existence already, the tapes now come across as "more evocative than revelatory" and create a "portrait of innocence lost as a behind-closed-doors exposé."

Empire State

Some straight to DVD fare over here, with Dwayne Johnson, Emma Roberts, and Liam Hemsworth from director Dito Montiel. The movie centers on some old friends who want to rob an armored car, while a cop follows them about the city.

American Made Movie

This "solid if unexceptional" documentary is honest about its mission to convince people to buy American-made products. From filmmakers Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio, American Made Movie focuses on global economy as well as the collapse of the middle class, at the same time it relies heavily on anecdotes.

All the good superheroes are used up, so the next fun entertainment for Americans will be various sequels and spinoffs from the Holy Bible. A lot of Americans still claim to believe in the Christian religion: 77 percent say they still follow the breakaway Jewish sect, which remains a huge demographic even if it's down considerably from its 90 percent market penetration a half century ago.

But very few Christians actually know much about the Bible, because it's a very long and confusing collection of arcane genealogies and bizarre ancient fables. What Americans do know is whatever wrong stuff they sort of vaguely remember from lying grandparents and "Sunday School," which was a dingy room where crying children were dropped off while the parents went to socialize at the church service.

This makes it easy to "reboot" dull old folk tales about camels and mustard seeds, which is exactly what NBC is doing with its sequel to the History Channel's low-budget hit The Bible. The new show, Beyond the Bible, will follow some of the characters who weren't killed off in the last miniseries. (The popular Jesus character will not return, unless the producers come up with some far-fetched gimmick like "it was all a dream.")

Meanwhile, Ridley Scott is doing a Gladiator-style take on the Book of Exodus (the one with Moses), and camp legend Russell Crowe is starring as Noah for another big-budget melodrama. All Noah really did in the actual Old Testament was build a kind of storage container for zoo animals, which is eccentric but ultimately boring. Noah also masturbated on his son or did some other mysterious incest, so maybe we'll finally get to see Russell Crowe do an incest scene with one of today's bright young stars. The important thing is that it's ultimately about God, who makes all of these things happen.

The Christian Science Monitor says Bible Blockbusters are officially a trend:

The biggest factor driving the new interest in Biblical movies is the “overall loss of storytelling craft that is afflicting our culture and particularly Hollywood,” says Barbara Nicolosi Harrington, executive director of the Galileo Studio at Azusa Pacific University and writer of the original screenplay for the projected 2014 Lionsgate film, “Mary, Mother of Christ.”

“Hollywood is more and more unable to create original stories,” she says. The industry is reaching for Biblical stories because they have name recognition, high stakes, a built-in "fan base, " and an epic quality that seems ideal for today's CGI technology, she notes.

Production information on IMDB.com notes that Noah is a "fantasy," and also that Emma Watson co-stars!

Believers in Christianity are older and poorer than Hollywood's movie-night demographic, so what works on basic cable may well flop at the multiplex—the last big Bible hit was Mel Gibson's The Passion in 2004; it's safe to assume the audience for that cleverly timed media outrage is mostly dead by now. And the TV hit The Bible cleverly used an Obama lookalike to play The Devil, which was a smart marketing move to attract a conservative white audience struggling with unemployment, racism and fear of actual devils. Besides, the only religion most Americans under 50 actually believe is the Force and Yoda and all that, from the mythological Star Wars movies.

With a new Star Wars trilogy coming from Disney beginning in 2015, the Bible will likely be thrown right back in the garbage with Shakespeare and all the other public-domain classics nobody really wants to see with or without CGI effects.

[Image via Shutterstock.]

The Global Post asks some Syrians their thoughts on the U.S. possibly intervening in the nation's ongoing conflict: "I don’t have a lot of hope about this strike. It will not do anything—nothing will change."

President Obama says he hasn't yet made a decision about intervening in the Syrian civil war as a response to last week's devastating chemical-weapons attack. And if he hasn't, why would you have, especially since it's Labor Day weekend and you're trying to figure out how to grill scallops, exactly, like, just throw them on there, or what? Well: We're here to help. Here are four opinions you can have about the U.S. options:

Opinion 1: Do not bomb Syria

Who believes this: Most of the U.S., depending on how you read the polls; most of the U.K. and especially the Labour party; pacifists; non-interventionists like Rand Paul; Syria's allies.

What it entails: Depending on which person is espousing this opinion there are a few different flavors of not-bombing Syria, but all of them share an essence, which is "not shooting missiles at anything." Maybe you're a pure isolationist who thinks the U.S. shouldn't get involved at all; maybe you think the U.S. should limit itself to providing weapons to rebels; maybe you're the kind of person who has noticed a pattern of bad results when "the West" gets itself involved in "The Middle East"; maybe you're Vladimir Putin and you want to troll the U.S. by supporting Assad; maybe you're on the Iranian Supreme Council and you want to prop up another Shi'a regime. The point is, you all agree: Let's not bomb!

The problem with this opinion: According to intelligence from the U.S. and other countries, Assad's forces have used chemical weapons on a civilian population, in violation of international law and really any decent sense of morality. Refusing to lift a finger (...to press the "Cruise Missile" button) in response represents an abdication of U.S. responsibility not only as a member of the global community broadly, but as a singularly powerful force on the world stage. Speaking more practically, an attack could prevent further chemical-weapon use—and, furthermore, refusal to act allows more civilians to die in Syria, and more weapons to fall into the hands of the extremist groups who have set up shop as rebels.

Opinion 2: Bomb Syria to punish Assad for using chemical weapons

Who believes this: By most indications, the Obama administration; France.

What it entails: This seems to be the option currently favored by Obama and his foreign-policy team: A time-limited series of strikes intended to "punish" Assad for chemical-weapons attacks, and warn him against using such weapons again, but not necessarily concerned with toppling or removing him from power. The idea here is that Assad still maintains fairly broad support inside the country, and the ideal end result is a peace deal between rebels and the government—not a potential power vacuum that could allow extremist groups to flourish, and certainly not deep U.S. involvement in a multifaceted sectarian civil war.

The problem with this opinion: Setting aside the fact that there just isn't an coalition or broad international support for this option, which undermines the idea that it's about "international law," this is just kind of bombing for bombing's sake, isn't it? Without a specific set of goals other than a vague idea "punishment" and "warning"—of a regime, we should note, that's made up largely of a religious sect, the Alawites, that likely believes at this point that it's fighting for its very existence—why bother?

Opinion 3: Bomb Syria to remove Assad from Power

Who believes this: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, interventionists like Senator John McCain and Foreign Policy's Michael Weiss.

What it entails: Shoot cruise missiles at Syrian targets with the specific intent of removing Assad from power entirely, not only "punishing" him for using chemical weapons but helping end the civil war in the country and opening up the possibility of a democratic, peaceful Syria.

The problem with this opinion: "Regime change" has not, historically, worked out super well for the U.S., and really not super well for the countries whose regimes the U.S. has decided to "change." There's no indication that Syria would be any different—and some indication that, absent Assad, the country might be less stable. (Among other things, the Alawite/Shi'a minority could face violent retribution if removed from power entirely.)

Opinion 4: Fuckin' invade

Who believes this: Actually, surprisingly, no one, really? Assad's son? The Onion, maybe?

What it entails: "Boots on the ground": Actual U.S. (and whichever other nations are dumb enough) soldiers (and tanks, planes, and so on) engaging with the Assad regime's forces and enforcing peace across the country.

The problem with this opinion: Nothing. There are no problems with this.

In a shocking display of premeditated aggression, a U.S. Navy report (manifesto?) reveals that over the next five years, training exercises will likely kill hundreds of marine animals and seriously injure thousands more.

Last I saw you, you were stamping a kiss onto my forehead. I don't remember what you were wearing, or your smell. Only that you gave me a kiss the night before you left. That was twenty-three years ago. I was five.

Much has changed since that embrace. I’ll start with the constants. There is one: Marcus Books, our bookstore—selling “Books by and about black people everywhere”—is still there. Even Chicago Barbershop— that place we looked toward to say, “well, at least there are two black businesses in the Fillmore”— closed a few months back.

This year marks the bookstore's 53rd anniversary. Mom is in the store everyday. Our sister Tamiko, too. Pops is more smiley since his retirement and stays fixing stairs, building shelves, making collages: beautifying our home. Thirty years administrating at General Hospital, plus your absence, wore his happy down. The house is full like it’s always been. In '89 there were eight of us sharing four rooms. There were many people always, but I never felt hungry for space.

Did you know that in the Fillmore strangers would call me one of two titles: Richardson Baby or Khary’s Little Sister? Like Orville Luster (who was one of those elder black men who, you were certain, was ridiculously fine in his day) would ask while buying his morning newspaper “How’re your grandparents doing young lady?” and I would stop, stand erect, compose my little girl mess: “They’re fine thank you. I’ll tell them you say hello.” Or alternately, when Mean Jennifer was trying to make me feel small, a young black dude would walk by and say “Haa-ay Khary’s Little Sister.” Their public acknowledgement of me was also a recommendation for Jennifer to retreat. On our block and in your light I was both proud and protected.

A family whose job is buying other people’s houses purchased our property. that purple Victorian that holds your family and your bookstore. A predatory loan forsaw the neighborhood’s future worth. It slowly wrenched us out. A nonprofit offered to buy it back from these new folks – purchasing price plus profit. Keep the bookstore operating, they say. But the new owners would like nothing less than double the money.

We are waiting to see if the city will understand what the community already does: that Marcus Books is a historical landmark; that it is San Francisco; that it is the Fillmore’s best self. If they do, perhaps the store can stay. We—your parents, sisters, nieces—will have to go.

…

Do you remember the Goodwill next door (the roof to which you always jumped from our hallway window)? It’s gone. Got scooped out like the middle of melon and turned into Dosa, a South Indian restaurant that folks make reservations for on their cell phones. The Goodwill moved to where the corner store was. (Isn’t it funny how every corner store was "the corner store" even if it was in the middle of the block, and we could tell by the specificity of goods sought which one we meant? The one I'm referring to had a slim candy selection (no sour straws!), but it had cheaper toilet paper, so sometimes we'd go there for that. Or, if we were walking to the 38 Geary stop we'd get chips or something else we didn’t need simply because it was in our direction.)

Overall, the corner stores have less candy, more wine, and plenty of organic everythings. The Kabuki theater across the street (the one that felt like one big stain-soaked carpeted bathroom) is now the Sundance Kabuki Cinema where you can eat sushi and have cocktails in your assigned seats. Perry's, the black-owned ice-cream shop with the big jar of electric yellow pickles—where your sisters, Lealah and Gina, worked summers—is gone. Goodwill, which expanded east to add a "boutique," stands in its stead.

I wonder if Fillmore will ever be done with its “renewal.”

There is a jazz club, Yoshi's, where the black hair supply and dusty parking lot used to be; an aquatic store sits in lieu of the law office where the black dude with the crooked glasses did dad's taxes. There's a hair salon, a pizza shop, a hookah bar, a wine bar – and there are many new places that describe their being there in the name of San Francisco’s "heritage." I've come to appreciate jazz, wine, hookah, and designer pizza. I am sure you would have enjoyed these things too, if it were not for your absence that in part made space for it all.

Even the parking lot holds your story, Khary, which is also the Fillmore's. The day you were murdered you were in the car with your best friend Kofy, and your murderer/friend/dope-dealer-competitor. Tamiko told me that she remembers you sitting in the passenger seat with the car in lurch.

You were waiting for her to moveonpastnow. She was waiting for you to introduce this new face. She did not move. You did not announce. Her surprise at your lack of introduction tells me something about the way the neighborhood used to be – a place where everyone said hello and was accounted for.

The next day, my friend and I were spending the morning painting nails with polish turned to goop. We perched our four little hands on the windowsill so our nails could dry. Mom called me, Lealah, and Gina into the small room facing the Fillmore side of the street to tell us you were gone. I grew quiet because everyone else was and focused down on my nails that were still undry: susceptible, already with markings of precarity.

We were told to go downstairs to see our grandmother who lived below us. We did. She held us long. I realized how quiet the kitchen was when the 22 Fillmore bus sounded the room in its quake. Mom handwrote a sign she taped to the inside of the bookstore window. Closed. She asked me if I was hungry, which I regarded as an incredibly thoughtful inquiry since her only son had just died.

I walked with Nef, our aunt, to the store and as we approached the lot our cousin, Rysse, and Tamiko, with your baby nephew and cousin tucked in their car seats, drove in. We followed her car as she parked. Nef said something about you. I didn't hear it, but Rysse melted. I forget exactly what happened next but I do know that the parking lot where your big sister last saw you, and where your cousin turned soupy in response to your murder, used to be lightly peppered with cars. It was so empty, in fact, that I learned to ride my bike there. It’s where Lealah and I roller-skated in protective gear that entirely exceeded the lot’s potential danger. Today we circle, circle, circle, the block to find space to rest our car.

…

Dad's baby blue van, the one you were driving when it happened, was what we rode to and from school in for three years after you passed. Your murder was proof to a lot of Fillmore that we were vulnerable and unable to protect our sons, just like everyone else.

You were the face of anti-“black on black” violence in the Fillmore. You were on your way to SF State in the fall. Me and Lealah even made signs with your name on them for an event on black youth violence at the Cathedral Event Center on Geary. It was awkward. I didn’t fully understand why we were there and why folks held us in embrace for so long. Plenty bookstore customers said they thought mom should’ve been more “involved” with your murder.

I still don’t know what is more involving than sadness.

The Fillmore is now a “heritage” site. It feels like your tombstone and an apology, the kind a shamed child mutters under his breath.

…

The good news is that the bookstore continues to do what it always has; it provides a house where black worth, literacy, and genius live uninterrupted. But the folks who used to shop there don’t live in the area anymore. And I think you would find it hard to believe, Khary, but now folks read books on phones as light and thin as candy bars. Remember the very first cell phone you owned, the one dad joked needed its own seatbelt?

When I take Gina Raye— your second newest niece—up the street for a walk, folks look at us like we're the anomalies. Which, I suppose, we are. Not only are there no black people around (save the homeless folk who are the only ones who know my name and ask about our grandmother's well-being—or about you, for that matter), the parts of Fillmore that folks are too scared to walk through are getting smaller, more narrow, less brown. Clacking high heels sound the street and dudes in leather boots smoke cigarettes on our stairs. They and their carefreedom clench up when we walk toward our steps. They seem so surprised when we pull out keys to enter our home.

…

These days I'm am teaching. You would not be surprised that I read about black folk for a living in a field called "African Diaspora Studies." It is a name for what we've always known – that black folks are connected and disconnected at once. Our task as scholars is to figure out the how and why of both. Because I'm a scholar and because I am black, I think a great deal about ghosts and hauntings. I like this because it helps me know you and helps me better understand how you are and are not at home, and why I feel both when I am in 1716 Fillmore.

For example, Toni Morrison, who is just my favorite thinker (always, but especially when it comes to talking about ghosts and the "unremembered"), writes that "invisible things are not necessarily not there." Although you are dead, Khary, you have not died. What I have of you are the parts others have gifted me, plus that kiss. Sometimes I remember the embrace—your folding at the knees to reach my forehead, your palm at the hood of my head—and it keeps me safe.

Most days though I feel our end, your breaking away, and I think of just how very mean San Francisco can be.

…

I still wonder: Did you feel the gun? Was it cold? Did you know that day, in our parking lot, that you were going to die? Did you go right away or was there time to think? And if you came back right this instant, where in San Francisco would you go? Where could you live? Would the neighbors know which family you belong to?

The park and still-swings that were backdrop to your morning murder are today the spot where first dates go. It's a clean green park where couples with coffee sit on benches and read. Or meander. They unwind and relax where you transitioned. They exercise a luxury of time in the place where you were refused more. Your death spot was my high school bus stop.

I was always visiting your grave.

The 1980s (a la Reagan’s War on Drugs) tried to spin black folks into one pathologically tangled ball of poor decisions. You knew that crack cocaine was king. You knew that it empowered even as it destroyed and it rendered sovereignty to those who, along with their families, seemed like they were always being told to move. San Francisco is a history of black folks having to go. We know the difference between eviction and travel. We know that only one involves a real freedom of movement.

Marcus Books is the only thing that looks like you, Khary. No longer written into the news as tragedy, Fillmore lives in travel magazines and on Yelp. And isn’t that a good thing?, people who don’t know me ask. How good could it feel knowing that one will never be able to live where one grew up? How empowering can your brother’s death be as a yardstick for how positively far the neighborhood has come?

We will have to move soon.

So here is my letter to you—which is to also say, my letter to the neighborhood. Here is my autobiography of gentrification. My farewell to 1716. A family has purchased our home, and refused to sell it back as honest people would do, as a lover of the neighborhood would do. That is why I am here telling you that you are remembered, Khary. You are safe with us. In all the places we must go.

Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. She writes about race, gender, and performance.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]

Dino Bouterse — the son of Suriname President Desi Bouterse — was charged Friday with running a cocaine-smuggling operation into the US and openly brandishing a rocket launcher.

According to federal prosecutors, Bouterse conspired with another man in July to smuggle a suitcase filled with 22 pounds of cocaine onto a commercial flight from Suriname to the Caribbean. It is not clear how or when he used the "light anti-tank weapon," "a launcher containing a rocket, and pistols,” according to the indictment.

Bouterse was arrested Thursday at Panama City International Airport while traveling with a diplomatic passport. He was extradited to the US and charged Friday in New York City.

The 40-year-old was previously convicted by a Suriname court of trafficking in cocaine, illegal firearms and stolen cars in 2005, but served only three years. His father was elected president of the country in 2010. Bouterse currently serves as the director of Suriname's Counter Terrorism Unit.

Bouterse's father, a former drug trafficker and accused murderer, is currently hosting the UNASUR summit for leaders of South American countries. According to the Washington Post, officials announced on Friday that the younger Bouterse's speech would "be postponed by several hours."

Bouterse was held after his arraignment, and a hearing has been set for September 9.

[TWP, image via AP]

Good news if you're George Zimmerman or even if you're just generally looking for guns and unfavorable press coverage — rifles that belonged to Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hilter are available online for purchase, right now.

Supreme Court Justice and all-around dope person Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first SCOTUS justice to officiate a same-sex wedding tonight when she marries Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser and economist John Roberts (not Ginsburg's colleague).

Kaiser, 59, has run the Kennedy Center since 2001 and is close friends with Ginsburg, who is an "ardent supporter of the fine arts." Kaiser met Roberts, 31, an economist with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, about two years ago at a gym and proposed last year on a flight to Rome.

The two will wed tonight in the Kennedy Center Atrium in front of 220 invited guests, who will include opera and Broadway stars, as well as "influential philanthropic and arts patrons" like the DeVos and Mars families.

Supreme Court Justices often officiate ceremonies for friends and family (Ginsburg officiated her son's wedding and Clarence Thomas officiated Rush Limbaugh's third marriage), but Ginsburg says that no justice has officiated a same-sex ceremony because the issue hadn't yet been decided.

Now that DOMA has been repealed — Ginsburg was in the 5-4 majority overturning a key provision — Ginsburg's gay wedding circuit is filling up. She will officiate another ceremony for Washington Post food writer David Hagedorn and his fiancé, National Weather Service director of communications Michael Widomski on September 26.

[TWP, image via AP]