Pheaturing Mackenzie Davis

Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Tuesday. This weekend was a glitzy pageant of celebrities giving political speeches, and also the Oscars. Saturday night in New Hampshire was the annual Democratic Party dinner, which featured the remaining presidential candidates pitching themselves to voters sitting in stadium-style seating. Pete Buttigieg's speech laid down the track for a loud chorus of "Wall Street Pete" chants, which definitely came from Bernie Sanders supporters, and maybe even Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren supporters. He also got a delightfully shady anti-endorsement from America's shaman, Marianne Williamson, who pledged to personally call a Buttigieg supporter and tell her to reconsider. She posted this incredibly unsubtle subtweet against him as well.

Polls show Bernie as firmly in the lead in the New Hampshire primary, with Klobuchar surging among the moderates. The Klob Glob is forming. This might seem like a non-ideal position for a politician to be in, but if Iowa is any indication, Pete will declare victory in New Hampshire anyway before any results are reported.
Anybody want to head to East Palestine, Ohio and hunt down a psychopath? Maybe give him ten minutes in a closed room with the biggest, meanest guy in our hunting party after we feed him a fifth of whiskey while he watches slideshows of the dog this piece of trash murdered? Sounds like a plan! Or the police can just catch the monster who committed this heinous crime and throw him in jail forever. That works too. On January 3rd of this year, Barbara Greaves reported her female beagle named Trouble missing. The dog had been outside, tethered to a cable run for about an hour until her disappearance around 9 p.m. Two days later Barbara’s son Scott found the dog’s severed head in their lawn. The Greaves and the East Palestine Police Department have absolutely zero leads. No one has been arrested. The family and the authorities have absolutely no idea who did this to their sweet, innocent dog. Because whoever did this to Trouble deserves to be caught and then thrown feet first into a woodchipper (my words) the East Palestine community has created a Facebook page called “Justice for Trouble” to help find any information on who might have committed this insane, psychotic crime. There is also $10,000 worth of reward money on the line. The Columbiana County Humane Society is offering $8,000 for information that could lead to the murder’s arrest and conviction. The Mahoning County Crime Stoppers group, meanwhile, is offering $2,000 for information on the murder. If you have ANY information about what happened to this poor dog and the Greaves family absolutely hit up the East Palestine Police Department, the Justice for Trouble Facebook group, the Columbiana County Humane Society, or the Mahoning County Crime Stoppers. Also go hug your dogs.
Well, this is a first. A terrifying first if I might add. You know how people sometimes cough and say “Oh man, I coughed up a lung!” Well… this 36-year-old man definitely coughed up something, alright. A California man (who is unidentified due to a study conducted by The New England Journal of Medicine) was admitted to the intensive care unit with chronic heart failure, shocking medical experts all around. The man was coughing so severely that he hacked up an intact cast of the right bronchial tree! Yes, you read that right! The patient was originally receiving treatment at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center and had previously been fitted with a pacemaker. Over the course of the week, the patient had begun to cough up phlegm and blood. But, during a particularly extreme bout, he managed to cough up an intact cast of his right lung! The right bronchial tree consists of three segmental branches in the upper lobe, two segmental branches in the middle lobe and five-segment branches is the lower lobe. The patient’s trachea was subsequently intubated, and flexible bronchoscopy revealed a small amount of blood in the basilar branches of the right lower lobe. The man was extubated two days later and had no further instance of coughing up blood. Unfortunately, due to his condition, he died one week later after complicating heart failure. See, I told you it was a first!
eBay is the land of everything and anything for sale. You can literally find everything on eBay, whether it’s a ghost in a jar, a gross used towel, or Justin Timberlake’s half-eaten French toast. It’s all there. Well, its safe to say things got a little out of hand when a man decided to take a revenge game a little too far. Thirty-four-year-old Dale Leeks from Essex decided to surprise his girlfriend, 37-year-old Kelly Greaves, by selling her on eBay. Here she is...

As a joke and an act of revenge for whipping him across his butt in a riding shop, Leeks decided to create a listing dedicated to his girlfriend describing "her conditions." Some of the conditions read "for parts or not working" saying there was a "constant whining noise." As if Greaves was a used car, Leeks described her as "fairly tidy but close up shows signs of wear," whining that she sometimes had leaks but nothing that can’t be plugged. BUT, like most things on eBay, everything quickly backfired and Leeks actually started receiving bids. Within hours, the listing had been viewed more than 80,000 times with over 1,000 bids. The two were on a night out when Leeks wouldn’t stop getting messages about the ad from all across Europe, Australia, and the United States. Within 12 hours the couple revised up to $50,000 bids. But like everything in life, things took a turn, and eBay removed the listing 24 hours after the post was listed, due to its policy against selling human body parts or remains... hahahaha, not before reaching a whopping $119.000! What shocked me the most about this whole obnoxious scenario was the fact that some bidders actually took it seriously and the fact that eBay has an actual policy for this. Clearly, it’s happened before. Of course, most of the comments he received on eBay were jokingly messing with the couple, which is understandable. It was funny, I will admit, but it’s still a little worrisome. Luckily the couple laughed about it, saying they definitely weren’t expecting the response it received. Leeks stated, “Kelly turned around and said to me ‘so what price would you actually have sold me for? Would you have been upset if someone actually bought me?’ I said I would have been upset but I would have been crying in either a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, which makes it a whole lot better.” The couple has been friends for ten years and has been dating for a year. Clearly, these two are beyond in love and are on the same page when it comes to pranking.
Better call Becky with the good resume. New documents released by federal prosecutors include the fake rowing resume that pitched Olivia Jade to USC as the ultimate crewing recruit. The resume lists Olivia Jade Giannulli's impressive accomplishments, including two gold medals, two silver medals, and two bronzes, despite having never set food it in a rowboat. The resume boasts that Olivia is "highly talented and has been successful in both men's and women's boats," which isn't a lie if the boat is a yacht. Becky and her husband argue that they have no idea who made the resume, and had no knowledge of anyone bribing the university. Stay tuned: the drama will play out in federal court this spring.
When I saw this picture of Dr. Richard Dawkins it reminded me of something...

And then it hit me...

Wait a freakin' minute. I'm so confused. Is that Emma Watson? Did someone prank me? Ugh. Moving on... I'm too confused. Hey, future kids, these are the Chainsmokers...

Haha. If I had a TARDIS I would try to go back to London in the 40s and maybe hit up a book store. Knowing my luck though it'll be after the Blitz and I would see this...

That's sad. I wonder what he's reading. So, journalists sometimes make mistakes, which makes editorials sometime cringe worthy, like this one...

Speaking of Kansas...

Trump was right. Haha. Another NFL team and logo have been changed...

Pretty cool, right? Okay, so, This sounds like the premise of an adult film, but sometimes truth is stranger than (adult) fiction. A dad sent the Phile an email saying that his son is engaged to his stepdaughter, and he wants assurance that he's not a jerk for refusing to pay for the wedding.

"When I married my wife, my son was nine and my stepdaughter was fourteen. They grew up together and we all got along wonderfully. My son is now twenty-three and both him and my stepdaughter have told us they're engaged. We had no idea they were even dating in any form. I'm feeling very uncomfortable with this. I don't know when this relationship started, and I'm disgusted by the age difference implications. My wife was shocked and isn't very happy either. But she's in the mindset that they're adults and aren't exactly blood related so we can't do anything about it, which I agree with. But I've put my foot down on not contributing any money towards their wedding. And my son is aware that I'm not exactly thrilled with the relationship. Peverett Phile, am I a jerk?" This story made me barf. Am I a jerk? It's straight out of The Brady Bunch Movie... or that infamous Folger's coffee commercial. Things get worse, as the dad's ex-wife is now using the situation to hurt him even more. "I'm actually being attacked nonstop by my ex who blames me for this situation. She blames me for bringing my stepdaughter around our son. And the sad part is I agree with her. I hate that I'm second guessing my marriage to the woman I love with all my heart." Plus, the son/stepbrother/fiancé won't tell his dad when the relationship started, which really ups the nauseating ante. "My son isn't giving me an answer of when the relationship started and the five years age difference starts feeling very wrong depending on when their relationship started." My thoughts and prayers are with this dad. Step-siblings are siblings, and society is rightfully disgusted by incest.

If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. So, my son and I were talking about how we used to watch "Sesame Street" together when he was little. Now the show is on HBO...

"Remember when the History Channel had actual documentaries on it, Ernie? Hitler, Ancient Egypt, the American Civil War... they had some good shit! Now it's all "Ancient Aliens," "Ax Men," and bad decisions."

Haha. So, you know about the coronavirus, right? Well, a friend of the Phile wanted to say something about it. He's a singer, patriot and renaissance man. You know what time it is...

Okay, here’s the deal... there’s a nasty bug called the coronavirus that’s killing people and spreading all over the globe. There’s currently no cure or treatment and little if anything is known about how to combat it On a daily basis I see people walking around, projectile coughing and sneezing... with NO effort being made to cover their mouth and/or nose. Since this action is widely held (by anyone with half a brain) as a prime example of how to spread an infectious pathogen I choose to see such action, as assault with a deadly weapon THEREFORE... effective immediately, anyone who coughs or sneezes in close proximity to me (without covering either their nose or mouth) will be deemed as an attacker who is in fact, attempting to kill me. I shall respond to such a perceived attack in a violent manner and render the perpetrator unconscious by means of a single, devastating punch to their left temple... just above the ear. So as to not risk infection by any of their plague carrying sputum. By the way... if you believe I’m even close to kidding about this... you truly know nothing about who or what I am. You have been warned.

I have some very cool guests lined up, and one of them is the writer of the 114th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. I mentioned who it will be a few weeks ago but I will tell you again.

The 114th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...

The great Julie Andrews will be on the Phile on Monday. You know I live in Florida, right? Well, there's stuff that happens here in Florida that does not happen anywhere else in the universe. So, once again here is...

A Florida woman may have her fiancé rethinking things after she shoved a handful of dog crap in his face to put an exclamation point on whatever point she was trying to make during an argument the two were having. Forty-one-year-old Jane Marie Faulkner was charged with domestic battery for her poop attack on her fiancé. Police were called to her and her partner’s St. Petersburg, Florida home and, unsurprisingly, found that Faulkner was intoxicated. She admitted pretty quickly to shoving dog poop in her fiancé’s face but the pair refused to tell the cops what they were arguing about. Considering Faulkner has previously been arrested for... take a deep breath... grand theft, disorderly intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, careless driving, battery, disorderly conduct, marijuana possession, resisting an officer with violence, theft, and narcotics possession there’s a decent chance that their argument was about some super illegal stuff. A judge has ordered her to have no contact with her fiancé for the time being and she has been fitted with an ankle monitor that detects alcohol intake. A few thoughts: 1. Having dog poop angrily smeared in your face by your partner has got to be a dealbreaker, right? There’s no coming back from the memory of what a dog’s fecal matter tastes like every time you look at your significant other. 2. I said it already but there’s no way these two weren’t arguing about, like, what to go pawn in order to buy fentanyl or whose turn it was to hit the meth pipe next. It seems unlikely they were having an argument over free market economics or, say, anything involving a book. Unless, of course, that argument involved who smoked all the meth they hid in the Bible they cut the middle out of.

Bubba and Earl were in the local bar enjoying a beer when the decided to get in on the weekly charity raffle. They bought five tickets each at a dollar a pop. The following week, when the raffle was drawn, each had won a prize. Earl won first prize, a year's supply of gourmet spaghetti sauce and extra-long spaghetti. Bubba won sixth prize, a toilet brush. About a week or so had passed when the men met back in the neighborhood bar for a couple of beers. Bubba asked Earl how he liked his prize, to which Earl replied, "Great, I love spaghetti! How about you, how's that toilet brush?" "Not so good," replied Bubba, "I reckon I'm gonna go back to paper."

Today's pheatured guest is an actress who starred as computer programmer Cameron Howe in the television series "Halt and Catch Fire." In 2019, she starred as the augmented super-soldier Grace in Terminator: Dark Fate which is now available for streaming and on Blu-ray and DVD. Please welcome to the Phile... Mackenzie Davis.

Me: Mackenzie! Welcome to the Phile. I loved you on "Halt and Catch Fire"! Welcome to the Phile. How are you?

Mackenzie: Hi. I'm just great. How are you?

Me: I'm doing good. So, did you watch the Terminator movies when you were a kid?

Mackenzie: I wasn't exposed to them when I was a kid. I knew about them but it was my parents' responsibility to show me and they neglected to. They failed. I want that on record.

Me: Well, it is. So, did you ever see the films?

Mackenzie: I watched the first two in a personal film festival containing two movies in my house about six months before I auditioned for this movie. It was an act of coincidence and not planning but...  

Me: What made you watch them then?

Mackenzie: I saw them as an adult because I thought I was missing a huge chuck of cinema history that was hardly recommended to watch and I really liked them. Then I was in one shortly there after so it was a unique sequence of events.

Me: I saw the first one on VHS and then the second and the others in the movies. So, were you by yourself just watching them in your room?

Mackenzie: I was. It was really my own film festival with two movies.

Me: So, after you watched them how did you feel? Did you understand why those films are so popular?

Mackenzie: I did. I think the first one had aged a little bit even though it was revolutionary and an amazing story but it feels like a product of those early mid 80s. But the second one really knocked my socks off because it felt other than some slight advances in special effects the story still felt so compressing and temporary. And Sarah Connor didn't feel dated and also didn't feel that she was constructed of a bunch of outdated gender tropes. The felt like a real warrior woman that had a true arc and a true place that she came from and a place that she was going. She was just discovering the missing link of all these female characters that came out after her and seeing where they came from, or at least a really important entry in that conversation.

Me: So, where are you from, Mackenzie?

Mackenzie: I am from Vancouver.

Me: What was it like growing up there? I always wanted to go to Vancouver.

Mackenzie: It was nice growing up in Vancouver. It was beautiful and wet. I just went back for a friends wedding to a town called D'arcy and just driving that road in the mountains and being among the trees. I've been away for a long time but I really feel where I come from is an indelible part of me and I started to feel that a lot more with Vancouver. So I loved growing up there.

Me: When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?

Mackenzie: I always wanted to do it. It was never a decision, I never had a revelatory moment where I had to be on stage. I was sort of loud and gregarious and assertive. There was a place for that I never really thought, well I knew I could do it when I was older but never was trying to make it into a career. For me I was always just inside kids theatre camp and did plays at school and loved being in plays and went to acting class after school. I was in the drama club but it never became this professional ambition. In a way I'm so grateful for it that that wasn't part of my life until I was quote a bit older. I always got to like it because I liked it and got to have pizza after school and stay late. That sort of haunted feeling of being in the school after most of the teachers had gone home. I could walk down the halls and be like I'm here every day but never here at night. So I just had a nice relationship to it and got to pursue it at my own pace.

Me: So, in the new Terminator movie who and what do you play?

Mackenzie: I'm an augmented human sent back in time from the future to protect a young Mexican woman named Dani from an evil Terminator called Rev-9. My character, Grace, must protect Dani at all costs because she's a key member of earth's resistance to the machine overlords.

Me: Okay, so what's an augmented human?

Mackenzie: Okay. She's human who has had a human life and human experiences. I've been related it to plastic surgery, how they augment some part of themselves and it doesn't change the eventual core, it just makes someone have a different nose or bigger breasts to something. So for her she's stronger and faster and her hearing and eyesight is augmented so she has many benefits of being a machine but she hasn't let her humanity which was nice for me to play as an actor. I'm not playing an emotionless robot.

Me: Did you know how to fight beforehand?

Mackenzie: No, I didn't know how to do anything at any point. I learned the skills but I had no background as kicking ass or an athlete. I just had lot of passion. Everything was extremely new for me. I did get to a point where I was really proud of the progress I made, I was extremely able and I was proud of what I did in the movie.

Me: So, do you still feel tough and think you can still kick ass?

Mackenzie: No, all the grace and coordination and core strength was just a temporary period a few years ago, that is completely evaporated my muscle memory and I'm back to my gawky 13-year-old that I always feel I am.

Me: What kinda training did they put you through?

Mackenzie: Okay, I got the role when I was shooting another movie in Ireland so as soon as I got the role I started exercising just four days a week. I had to compromise between this movie and the other movie and not be completely in training mode. Then I switched to six days as soon as I got to L.A. and by April I was doing six days a week and then I had military training, I went to Texas for a week with Linda Hamilton, we trained with a former Green Beret at a "shooting ranch." I'm not sure what to call it but it was a place with many guns. What would you call it, Jason?

Me: A gun farm? A gun petting zoo? Hahaha.

Mackenzie: A living nightmare. And I went to train with this really lovely group of people who taught us everything about weapons and were very kind and understanding when I would just burst into tears when I was in the middle of training shooting. I was like I don't like this, I don't like using these and I do not want to be a part of this!

Me: You didn't want to be part of the movie?

Mackenzie: I wanted to be a part of the movie but it was alarming to all of a sudden to be doing SWAT team room clearance drills when I'm shooting across from someone I just met and like very much, and trusting I'm not going to shoot them. It's just an alarming experience. Then we went to Madrid and did a month and a half, six hours a day weightlifting in the morning, military training in the afternoon, stunt training in the afternoon for three hours. That's where I really discovered how hard it is to do this stuff if I did not grow up doing any form of martial arts or gymnastics. My body isn't efficient, I could lift weights, thats like a linear process, I could grow muscles, anybody can do that. But having my hips be mobile and having ti understand choreography. It was like learning a new instrument and it was just so, so difficult. And everybody was very, very patient.

Me: What was it like working with Tim Miller? I am a big fan of his, and hoping to get him on the Phile one day.

Mackenzie: Tim is a beautiful, beautiful person. I didn't expect that from a director of an outwardly masculine hearty explosive movie like Deadpool. But he really kept the sort of emotional through-line of this story top priority and never lost sight he can have all the explosions in the world but if he don't care about or know the people on the building it doesn't matter. Just watch a demolition.

Me: What is it like for you working with CGI?

Mackenzie: The cool thing about this movie was so much of it was practical. The world behind me would get filled it and it would be a night sky instead of a blue screen but I was really since this thing. I could real touch things and move things. It was complexity green screen...

Me: What about when the two jets crashed into each other?

Mackenzie: I do believe that plane sequence was the hardest one because just the psychics of it and the dynamics of what it feels like when the pressure is encroaching on the right side of the plane and I'm in a parabolic spin. It was difficult to understand how my body would move in reaction to those dynamics. So right after we have that high speed chase in the sky a Hummer falls out of the plane and I hold on to it and I climb up it. That was a day I thought my God, Grace could do everything. I was really hung from a thing that was suspended, it wasn't falling though the sky but it was high off the ground and I had to use my upper body to hold myself up and I had to climb up the side of the thing and I had to release these parachutes. There was a lot of practical effects that made it feel legitimately difficult and necessary for my body to perform in peak mode. Which was nice to know that all of this exercise wasn't just for aesthetics but was essential to the survival of the character and survivals to shoot this movie for six months. I needed to be an athlete.

Me: Well, I'm impressed. I could barely get up of the couch. So, three of the four main characters were women. What do you think of that?

Mackenzie: I find this conservation a little difficult to have because I think representation is so important. This is an example of seeing three women who look different, of different ages, different heights, with different body types to different regions. The lead of this movie is a Mexican, or she's Columbian, a Latino woman. It's important to see these people or have stories told by people that look different and who aren't the monolithic figure of a hero. However it's somehow more progressive if we're allowed to accept it as fact and to make it as a responsibility to watch movies with female characters because we have to, it's progress. It feels like a trend in that case and I don't want to be something that is temporary or something that is being capitalized on because in this moment it might be sexier cool to be this type of character. I don't know, I'm struggling how to occupy both spaces, representation is so important and I want to a part of. I'm concerned with the images that I produce on screen and I want to be a part of producing positive images, and also never want to have to talk about it because this is normal. We don't have to address it all the time. No one is asking Gabriel Luna what it's like playing a male Terminator. It's a funny thing, but it is cool.

Me: I get it. So, do you ever think that one day the human race would ever be taken out by AI? 

Mackenzie: First of all, I worry about everything. I'm really trying to dig myself out of this sort of widening pit of nihilism about the future. I worry about it because it's a hard thing, I can't personally chose to opt out and save myself. It's a social thing. Did you see that documentary called The Great Hack about the Cambridge Analytica?

Me: No, should I watch it?

Mackenzie: No, don't watch it. You'll get more nihilistic.

Me: Okay. If you say so. Mackenzie, thanks so much for being on the Phile. Please come back soon. 

Mackenzie: Thank you, Jason.

That about does to for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my guests Laird Jim and of course Mackenzie Davis. The Phile will be back on Friday with A Peverett Phile Valentine Pheaturing Shania Twain. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.

I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon