Joey Red Stockings

@CrazyVibes_1 This is horrendous ai gibberish.

By Season 4 of The Sopranos, Gandolfini was earning $400,000 per episode. HBO wanted Season 5 on the fast track, and the offer was staggering: roughly $1 million per episode across 13 episodes. Agents celebrated. Lawyers drafted. But something stopped him cold. His co-stars were earning a fraction of what he made. Edie Falco, the woman who carried every scene as Carmela Soprano, wasn't close. The supporting cast earned even less. Gandolfini looked at his contract and saw something executives didn't want him to see — a gap that felt deeply unfair. So he did something that shocked Hollywood. He walked away. Production stalled in early 2003. HBO filed a lawsuit seeking around $100 million in damages. Headlines called him difficult. Columnists called him unstable. "They think I'm a wild animal," he reportedly told a friend that spring. The easy move would have been to sign, cash the check, and disappear into Tony Soprano's shadow — the character who made him a household name and quietly trapped him inside it. Instead, Gandolfini made a different choice. He eventually returned to the negotiating table and signed the deal. But what he did next became legend. Gandolfini reached into his own pocket and personally gave approximately $33,000 to each of 16 supporting cast members — roughly $500,000 of his own money — as a thank-you for standing by him during the shutdown. No press release. No cameras. No announcement. Just quiet envelopes handed out privately. Crew members remembered other moments too. Gandolfini would show up early at Silvercup Studios in Queens, sit in a folding chair, chain-smoke, and ask grips and lighting technicians about their kids by name. He remembered birthdays. He remembered losses. When a crew member's family member fell ill, he quietly helped with expenses. When writers pulled all-nighters rewriting scenes, he fought to protect their words on screen. The turning point wasn't the signing. It was the pause — the refusal that cost him his reputation, invited a massive lawsuit, and risked killing the biggest show on television. He bet everything on a principle most people would have quietly swallowed. Season 5 aired in 2004. Ratings climbed. Awards followed. Critics called it one of the greatest seasons of television ever made. But behind the numbers was a quieter truth: James Gandolfini used his leverage not just to lift himself — but to lift everyone standing beside him. He played a man who ruled through fear on screen. Off screen, he led through loyalty. When he died suddenly in 2013 at age 51, cast and crew members told the same stories over and over — not about his Emmy wins or his iconic performance, but about the envelopes, the folding chair, the questions about their kids. A legacy built not on what he earned, but on what he shared. Power doesn't always roar. Sometimes it whispers through a quiet envelope, handed over with no cameras watching.

@Daractenus He should go back to smack, his charmed trust fund existence, and cheating on spouses. All things he's better at than whatever this latest chapter is.

"President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction." The United States of America is on the verge of achieving pure idiocracy.

@Acyn The buffoon brigade at it again.

RK JR: One of the Democrats was ridiculing President Trump for his math, and she was saying it's in mathematically impossible to have any drug drop by 600% cost. And I said, well, if the drug was $100 and it raised the price of $600. That would be a 600% rise. If it drops from 600 to 100, that's a 600% savings.  Trump: That’s right. RFK JR: The president used that mathematical device to illustrate the magnitude of the theft.

@SavWooood @CalltoActivism Annnnnnnnd back to podcasting sponsored by supplements he goes.

@CalltoActivism @DoinWork86 looking left and right at the same time asssss

🚨FIREWORKS just erupted at the Trump stooges' press conference announcing charges against the SPLC. Todd Blanche jumped in to bail out Kash Patel as he had a total meltdown when a reporter asked him about the latest BOMBSHELL article in The Atlantic magazine. Total chaos.

@Acyn Witkoff, Kushner, and Thiel's pet VP here are America's top thee diplomats. Expect this war to last until we're all dead.

Vance: We had never had a meeting like that where you effectively had the person running Iran sitting across from the VP.

@THR Vance flying there to meddle and repulse people helped too.

Did a Documentary Just Help Defeat Hungary’s Viktor Orban? hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-…

@Acyn It seems impossible but credit where it's due, this cabinet gets dumber by the day. Fascinatingly deep bench of sh1t heads.

Mullin: I believe sanctuary cities is not lawful. Some of these cities have international airports. If they are a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city? We need to have a really hard look at that. Baier: So you are saying that big cities that are sanctuary cities that have a big airport, they might lose their customs? Mullin: I'm going to be forced to make tough decisions.

@atrupar Reading news clippings and watching tv is not "well read" but then again maybe it is in the alternate universe these people live in.

Leavitt: "You always want to be the most well-read person in the room, and I try to be every day. But Donald Trump always is."

@Acyn @willcain buys all that hair gel with money Rupert Murdoch pays him, he the billionaire head of a network that uses its anchors as pawns to drive his overt, open agenda. Projection as always with these cartoon characters.

Cain: I would suggest to you that in fact, you are not informed. You're actually pawns…. not just funded by billionaires, but driven by an overt, open agenda.

@SavWooood @enjoyer_liberty Great list, made even better by including the oft disrespected Batman Forever. I'll keep my McDonald's Two Face glass filled with champagne til the day I'm in the ground.

@enjoyer_liberty @DoinWork86

Reminder that 1995 might’ve been the greatest year in film history Heat Crimson Tide Casino Braveheart Se7en GoldenEye The Usual Suspects Leaving Las Vegas Dead Man Walking Apollo 13 Batman Forever Toy Story Jumanji

@ProudSocialist "exquisite munitions" this guy is such an airhead, fetishizing weapons.

Pete Hegseth on why the Pentagon needs an additional $200 billion for the Iran war: “It takes money to kill bad guys.” Wake up America. Our government along with Israel are the bad guys. They’re endlessly bombing Iran, Lebanon and Gaza to death all to enrich the Epstein class.

@SDNYnews "Trading on non-public, market-moving information in breach of a duty of trust or confidence is a crime.” Maybe Jay and team should take a look into prediction markets and oil futures...

“Ryan traded on confidential information – buying shares ahead of the announcement of an FDA drug approval – and tipped others to do the same,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “Trading on non-public, market-moving information in breach of a duty of trust or confidence is a crime.” justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/m…

@Acyn @SavWooood bizarro world.

Mike Johnson: Tonight we have created a new award. We are going to do something we've never done before. We will honor him with a new award. He is the first ever recipient of the America first award. That is this beautiful golden statue here, appropriate for the golden era.

@SavWooood @RedWavePress As always, very coherent messaging from the Crime House.

@RedWavePress @DoinWork86 well makes total sense to me how about you bru?!

Fox News’ Peter Doocy: “Now that you've announced that the U.S. has destroyed all of Iran's mine-laying ships, why can't the U.S. just immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz?” President Trump: “Well, we could, but it takes two to tango. We have to get people to take their billion dollar ship and drive it up. When Pepe has his big sugar ships coming around and they cost $1 billion and we say, ‘I think it's okay now, Pepe, take your ship, drive it through the Strait of Hormuz.’ He may say, ‘let me wait a little while’ because… these ships are very expensive. They can cost up to $2 billion, so they don't want to take a chance that gee, I think you'll be okay.” “We don't know if they even said any mines. But the thought that they may have is enough to keep people from saying, we don't need it.”

@sundaylongread @LBurst @jeffmaysh @SavWooood Kleinfeld sprung Tony T from prison after all.

When Brooklyn businessman Jacob Ostreicher was imprisoned in Bolivia, actor Sean Penn orchestrated a covert smuggling operation to get him back to the U.S. @LBurst reconstructs the whole improbable rescue in vivid detail. Guest editor @jeffmaysh's top pick nymag.com/intelligencer/…

@SavWooood @sentdefender Ssshhh, you're gonna get us both tossed in Elon jail. The free speech is only for our tech overlords.

@DoinWork86 @sentdefender Think a good tomato toss could help here

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth states that the Strait of Hormuz is “open for transit” and the only thing preventing that is continued drone and missile attacks by Iran.

@madmenpics @SavWooood seen em all? Sounds like someone I know.

Which Best Picture nominee would be Don Draper’s favorite? #Oscars

@alpacinesque @SavWooood that's the discipline.

Teamed up with a girl I always talk shit about for a group project and she does hate my guts too but we picked each other cause we both know we’re the best and we want good grades

@BulwarkOnline Person who always knows everything about everything suddenly knows nothing.

Q: "You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school…but you're the only person in your government saying this…Why are you the only person saying this?" Trump: "Because I just don't know enough about it."