These Concrete Streets

This + more in today’s Sunday Funnies

Let’s begin with a choice.

Say there’s a check in the mail. It’s meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that check be for $9,794 or $28,639?

It’s not a trick question. It’s the story of America’s schools in two numbers.

That $9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It’s well below that year’s national average of $11,841.

Why America’s Schools Have A Money Problem

A movie gem to stream this weekend: Blood Pulls a Gun

There are plenty of great movies and TV shows to binge-watch — but what about the times when you only have a few minutes to spare? For the month of March, we’ll be counting down terrific short films. This week: Blood Pulls a Gun.

The terrific 2014 short Blood Pulls a Gun has all the elements of a traditional film noir: a moody, atmospheric musical score, a seedy crime narrative, and a voiceover narrated by a jaded protagonist. But one thing that separates Blood Pulls a Gun from your average crime thriller will be apparent the second you start watching: that jaded protagonist happens to be a teenaged girl.

Blood Pulls a Gun follows Alice, the teenaged daughter of a man who runs a decrepit motel off a remote road in Australia. It’s the kind of place where the pages of hotel-room bibles have been ripped out so they can be used as cigarette rolling papers, and where the average guest stumbles in without a reservation to hole up for a single night.

Alice is bored, lonely, and eager to be treated as a woman, not a girl. So it’s no surprise that she is immediately entranced by the handsome, heavily tattooed stranger who speeds up to the motel, who calls himself Blood as he takes a room for the night.

Alice takes a voyeuristic pleasure in spying on the motel’s various residents, and Blood Pulls a Gun holds tightly to her point of view. That means the audience, like Alice herself, is forced to fill in some of the details about what’s going on with Blood herself. The clues we do get — a girlfriend who wears a blonde wig in public, a loaded handgun, and a pointed interest in learning whether a man named Jethro Hyam has recently stayed at the motel — make it clear that getting entangled with Blood is a risky proposition. But Alice is full of youthful foolhardiness and excited by the danger, so she insinuates herself into the situation anyway, to tremendous consequences.

Blood Pulls a Gun is a tremendous showcase for the wide range of talent involved. Director Ben Briand, working from a script by Kevin W. Koehler, imbues the story with both style and weight. Star Odessa Young is a tremendous find, playing up Alice’s yearning stabs at maturity without ever losing sight of the fact that she’s still a girl. And at just 18 minutes, Blood Pulls a Gun doesn’t overstay its welcome, offering a sleek, stripped-down thriller that still lands with a gut punch.

Blood Pulls a Gun is now streaming on Vimeo. Watch it below:

Louis C.K.

This has long been one of the most influential quotes I have ever come across. Completely changes my perspective on soooo many situations in my past.