28

Kate gave me the entire Lost series on DVD for my birthday. 38 Discs. Time to get Lost...again.

And I took a hand-held self portrait on the day I turned 28.

Oscar Contenders

Despite what happens later this month at the Oscars, The King’s Speech (the KS from now on) deserves the best picture award. If you watch any TV, you’ve probably seen a spot for the movie, especially since the Oscar nominations were announced. Admittedly, the spots are a bit annoying because they use some of the best scenes in the movie and when I see them over and over again it sort of cheapens that particular scene, like I can’t take pleasure in watching it anymore. That’s a shame. However, the movie is excellent and there are no comparisons to The Social Network (the SN from now on) to be drawn.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are seasoned professionals and when you watch them in the KS you are witness to their dedication and talent. I am sure I didn’t feel that about anyone in the SN. While the acting in the SN was good enough to sustain the movie, it was the writing that pushed the story and made it interesting. Thus, I feel the SN is a better contender for adapted screenplay than it is for best picture. That award should go to a film with outstanding performances from the people on screen and behind the camera, in music, in special effects, etc. As we know, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the movie goes to the most controversial film or the most groundbreaking or the most scandalous. But the KS satisfies more of these categories than any other movie I have seen this year.

True Grit

Dry, witty, at times both despairingly hopeless and funny, the True Grit remake had many marks of a Coen Brother’s film. And from what I have seen on AMC in the last couple of weeks, the remake greatly improved on the original. Why? At the risk of sounding ignorant and unappreciative of older films, the remake looks better, the film seems less scripted, the acting is better, and when the film ends, you are sort of left in limbo, a classic finish of some Coen Bros. films. Our protagonist (Mattie Ross) is victorious, but (SPOILER ALERT) she lost an arm and she never marries and when she tries to track down Rooster Cogburn she is told he recently passed away. In the end the exuberance and youth is drained out of Ross even though her words are still poignant and sharp. You can’t help but feel for her as she stands on the horizon with a lone tree, wondering how harsh the rest of her life was, that life after she fell into the snake pit and the life after the adventure with Rooster and LaBoeuf came to an end. It must have been a life of continuous trials and tribulations because Ross is hardened and seems to no longer understand much of the world she lives in. It reminded me of the end of No Country For Old Men, when Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, sits at his kitchen table relating a dream to his wife:

…It was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback going through the mountains…It was cold and snowin…He [his father] rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin goin by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down...And when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it…And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.

Did you say skiing?

Despite popular belief, there is no skiing in Wisconsin and there is no boating in Colorado. We moved to Milwaukee three and a half years ago. It was late in that first fall when I first heard people talking about skiing.

“I’m sorry,” I interjected. “Did you say skiing?”

“Yes,” they would answer.

“Going to Colorado?”

“No, here, in Wisconsin.”

I was never very good at hiding my puzzlement or containing my laughter. “There’s no skiing in Wisconsin,” I stated as fact.

They went on to tell me that, in fact, there is skiing in America’s Dairy Land. Later that year, I would drive by one of these so-called ski resorts. It reminded me of a giant landfill doused in just enough snow that you couldn’t see you were on trash. Really, that’s all there is to a Wisconsin ski resort. Wisconsin has enough snow to ski on, but there are no mountains, no hills even, at least by Colorado standards. I discovered that year that I was a ski snob and I don’t even ski.

And now, three and a half years later, I am in Colorado and I’ve discovered I am a boat snob and I don’t even go boating. People say things like, “Oh yeah, I ski all winter long and as soon as spring hits I start boating.”

“I’m sorry, did you say boating?”

“Yes,” they answer.

“On what body of water?”

They give me a name, but it doesn’t matter. In my head I see only Lake Michigan and its glassy surface extending out as far as I can see north, east, and south, challenging my definition of a sea. Like I said earlier, I’ve never been good at containing my laughter. You know how this ends.

SoTU Thoughts

Firstly, the State of the Union always seems too long. I suggest future presidents shorten them by taking out puffy, wasteful phrases, which do not tell us anything about the direction of the country and the current administration’s plans.

Obama’s speech was moderate. For those looking for words about gun control, disappointingly moderate. I would classify myself as being disappointed with the speech in this regard. After the shooting in Tucson, the State of the Union would have been an appropriate time to suggest the tightening of gun laws and regulating the industry as much as the toy industry. A simple suggestion of reinstating the assault weapons ban or suggesting there is no need for a Glock to hold 20 plus rounds would have been good enough, but Obama ignored the issue. He, like many Dems, is afraid of the gun lobby and what they can do to future election prospects. I think, if positioned confidently, a suggestion to make it harder for people to buy a gun would be widely accepted. A gun gives anyone the power to kill. I don’t understand why, in America, that power is so easy to come by.

The unique seating arrangement, which the media made a huge deal about in the days leading up to the speech, made for more interesting TV, but it was only an artificial show of unity between the two parties. I am sure the next day leading politicians in both parties went back to pointing the finger across the aisle. Either way, I think it should be required for politicians in one party to be seated with their opposing politicians. It is wishful thinking, but maybe the forced amalgamation of the two parties would start to be something greater than a show.

The Republican response was as expected. Let me paraphrase: The country is screwed if you and I, the decent Americans in this country, don’t stop Obama before it is too late. We will overcome this deficit by never asking for you or your company to give more money to the government than you currently do. Even though we have an unsustainable budget, what we need is not more money. We need to cut spending where we can, but overlook the biggest military and defense spending in the world. And raising taxes on households that make more than $250,000 a year would be too big of a burden for those homes to bear. Paraphrase over. Really, this response came as no surprise.

Did I watch the Tea Party response? Hell no, but I did see clips of its awfulness. Michelle Bachman didn’t look at the camera and it looked like her whole face had been injected with botox just a couple minutes before she stepped in front of the camera.

A couple highlights for me:

Watching Boehner fighting back the tears when Obama congratulated him, twice, at the beginning and end of his speech.

The teacher, Kathy Proctor, who was mentioned in the speech, turning to people on either side of her and saying, “That’s me.” The Daily Show did a hilarious couple minutes about this last Wednesday.

Sunset Pics: The At-least-they-were-taken-with-a-new-camera edition

Not Offended by Ricky Gervais

By the end of The Golden Globes Sunday night, you had a good sense of the animosity being directed at Ricky Gervais for his barbs and witty commentary that made fun of nearly all the stars there. Celebrities were attempting to make sly comebacks to Gervais’ one-liners, but they were failing miserably. A couple examples: 1) Gervais mocked Philip Berk, President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, by saying, “I just had to help him off the toilet and pop his teeth in.” Berk came out and fired back, “Next time you want me to help you qualify your movie, go to another guy.” 2) Before introducing Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, Gervais ran down a lengthy list of award-winning movies Hanks has starred in and then continued, “the other presenter is Tim Allen.” Hanks and Allen fired back.

Hanks: We can recall back when Ricky Gervais was a slightly chubby but very kind comedian.

Allen: Neither of which he is now.

The celebs’ comebacks weren’t funny, it’s the fact that they were seriously offended which made it funny. Why was Allen offended? Next to Hanks, Allen may as well do commercials. The celebs didn’t get the irony in attempting to send a barb back. News flash: you are paid actors, not paid comedians and Ricky Gervais is a paid comedian. What do you expect? For him to be kind? These shows need a comedian to make the night entertaining, to lighten the mood, to mock the one of many shows Hollywood puts on for themselves to celebrate their achievements and greatness.

This just in: Celebs, you aren’t funny. Gervais is. You’re easy to make fun of, especially when you make crappy movies. Get over it.

August 28, 1963

Movies: The Social Network

Last week I was listening to an old broadcast of Fresh Air (by old I mean three weeks old). David Edelstein, NPR's regular film critic, was listing his twelve best movies of 2010. I hadn't heard of 75% of them and if you aren't a film critic, then you probably hadn't heard of some of them either. Edelstein finished his list and he was asked why The Social Network did not make it because the film is the favorite in a lot of critic's circles. I listened to his response, which served more as a reminder that I needed to see the movie before awards season so I could access its worth compared to other frontrunners this year like True Grit, The Fighter, and The King's Speech. So I did. And not having seen The Fighter yet, I couldn't compare it with the SN, but I enjoyed True Grit and The King's Speech quite a bit more than the SN.

The SN is a good movie, but it's not great. I enjoyed it because people spoke very quickly throughout the movie. The whole film was an intense exercise in listening. Apparently, people who attend Harvard and/or score a 1600 on the SAT speak quickly and esoterically all the time. I love a movie that commands your utmost attention just to keep track of the arc of the film or who the hell is who. The acting was believable. Justin Timberlake puts in a respectable performance and by film's end you hate his character, Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster because he essentially talks himself into a 6 or 7% share of Facebook by suggesting the company move to California and he helps acquire some funding. But really, are we to believe Facebook wouldn't have taken off without his aid? I hope not. The SN's greatest shortcoming is that the viewer doesn't know the accuracy of the film. Mark Zuckerberg said that the film was not accurate at all, except for his college wardrobe at the time. So, what to believe? We know the lawsuits happened, but there is so much more to the film than lawsuits and beyond them we don't know what really happened during the creation and flourishing of Facebook. Jesse Eisenburg plays a pouty Zuckerberg who doesn't show much emotion at all from start to finish. Maybe that's the way Zuckerberg is in real life, but that doesn't make him hard to portray. If it were up to me, and it's not, I wouldn't consider Eisenburg for any awards because of this and that the competition this year is intense--plenty of performances outshine Eisenburg's.

Prior to seeing The SN I had heard that the movie portrays women in a disrespectful and degrading light. It does do that, but remember, the guys the movie centers around are in college and, whether or not it was an accurate portrayal, Sean Parker is no outstanding figure either. The characters are into women and sex. Are the women on Harvard's campus as good looking as the ones in the movie? There is no way. Are the women on Harvard's campus as easy as the women in the movie? Possibly, I don't know. Are there guys in college as interested in getting some as the guys in the movie were? You bet. So, for the most part, the portrayal of women in the SN was accurate.

I will write again soon about another movie. My closing thought: The SN was good, but man, not one of the finest movies of the century so far, like some critics have described it. I will say this though, The Social Network is better than Facebook.

Bad Days...

Happen when Sarah Palin appears above the fold in The New York Times.

Here's To...

Awarding mediocrity. There were 35 bowl games this year. I didn’t watch most of them, but from what I can tell they mostly sucked. This should come as no surprise. What kind of games do you expect to have when you put a 6-6 team up against a 7-6 team? Bowls used to be huge rewards for teams at the end of successful seasons, but now you only have to be at .500 to get in? Really, it’s despicable. And what it boils down to is the NCAA making more money off of its indentured servants. More bowls mean more money and who is opposed to that? Well, for one, I am.

It used to be fun to stumble across a bowl game on TV. You once had the guarantee of the two teams playing in said bowl game of actually being good. Now, not so much. I was about as excited to catch a bowl game over the holiday season as I was to find an infomercial for the Shake Weight.

Of course, classics like the Rose Bowl proved to be good games still, but enough with the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, etc. Had Wyoming won two more games, there was talk of a bowl game. Are you serious? Wyoming was piss-poor this year and putting them in a bowl game would have done the same thing as most of the other games did, it would have just contaminated the airwaves.

First Pics of 2011

This New Year's celebration consisted of me taking a lot of pictures of the family's Scottie dogs, eating great food at restaurants, cooking excellent food at home, and me taking more pictures of the dogs because it is awkward taking picture after picture of a human sitting in the same room just to practice taking pictures with a new camera.

Here, Max and Molly take in the view from the 12th floor and watch our first substantial snow of the year fall by the window.

Chowing down at the Root Down. Awesome!

King Crab Legs for dinner on New Year's. Succulent.

Max overseeing his kingdom.

Airing Out 2010

I want to sit down and churn something out about 2010. I want you to read it and be astonished at what you’ve read, be in dismay about the year I had because maybe it was boring, but I made it sound like so much more than that.

2010 was anything but boring, but I don’t know if I can convey that anymore. As it did like the year before, 2010 started off with a trip to Florida, but through January, February, the birth of my nephew, and a conference championship my mind was with my MFA applications to ten schools. I had labored over them for almost a year and I felt like I applied to the entire spectrum of writing programs out there. Starting in late February, or was it early March, the rejections started to trickle in. First, was Wyoming. Then I can’t remember who came next. But I do remember there were nine more and the agony of going to the mailbox every day was sustained until the last letter arrived in April. I took it—the last letter—up to the apartment with me. The blinds were drawn. It was dark. I lied on the couch. I didn’t weep. I didn’t tear up. I yelled. I fucking yelled.

March is a blur. I had the whole month off. I don’t even know what I did. I wrote about the rejections. I did an annual spiel on the Oscars, self-published of course. There was a power outage and I wrote about, writing, what I believe to be, some of my best words in 2010. On the way to work one day I pulled over and threw the key to the Longmont house into Lake Michigan, cursing it in the air and hoping some feelings would sink to the bottom of the lake with it. And then Kate and I went to Wyoming and Colorado. It was cold and snowy and being in Laramie was tough knowing I wouldn’t be going to school there in the fall.

I wandered aimlessly through April, wallowing in failure (a little like I am now, but hey, that was a huge chunk of 2010). I not only coached practices, I did practices. I threw myself into them, destroying my body and finding out that I can still be fast in the pool. When I do my best in sports I tap a vein of aggression and I get lost in it. I had plenty of fuel.

The venting continued in May, one of the most stressful times of my 20s. We had made our plans for the next two years and they were denied from us. In the middle of it all we went to Mexico to escape it. We were successful in that, but the stress was waiting for us the day we got back. What next? What now? Then I went to Colorado and spent a few nights with good friends looking for our new home. Then, a wedding in May for two people in love. But it was tough and weird at times, stages of the healing process. Getting everyone together again felt right and wrong, stages of the aging and living process. Instead of a strong bond among all of us I was acutely aware of an aging history held together with feeble attempts to reestablish community. Honestly, I thought the shit was going to hit the fan this week. It didn’t so much. Some things went better than expected and for the other things, well, words went unsaid and feelings unshared, traits once rare among this group.

Like Milwaukee knew we were leaving, it threw us thunderstorm after thunderstorm in June, ephemeral, but breathtaking and humbling exhibitions of power. I searched everyday for jobs. I didn’t land one and started to doubt the wisdom in moving back to Colorado. My Mom visited us one last time in Milwaukee. Kate and I started watching Lost this month on Hulu and we never looked back. Concerning movies and TV, Lost was easily the highlight of 2010 for us. It was outstanding and our devotion to it was respectable.

July started with another vacation. This time we were off to California to see friends married, to see family, and to breath in some salty air. And then we were back in the Midwest for a few more weeks of packing and thunderstorms, one of them giving us seven inches of rain in three hours. Imagine if California got that? In our final days in Milwaukee we shed tears, took a lot of pictures of our apartment, and welcomed my Dad to Wisconsin so that he would help us move to Colorado.

I blogged twice in August. We settled into our new home, not the home we thought we would be settling into, but we thank God every day it wasn’t. We drove up our first fourteener. We went to Wyoming. The West opened its arms for us and we basked in its warm, dry, sunny climate. The proximity of friends and family helped ease the joblessness on my part. And after working for a week, Kate was offered a full-time job.

I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee in September. I witnessed Boise St. give Wyoming an ass-kicking. We finished Lost, with a blitz of 3 episodes, plus a two-hour finale, in one day. And then I got a job and we started P90X.

October: I worked some. Spent some time catching up with friends in Colorado. We had visitors. Colorado proved to be as beautiful as ever. Life went on.

A lot of people voted Republican in November. I didn’t. Are you kidding me? We spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with my parents and grandparents. Kate worked through the holiday and it didn’t seem relaxing for her at times, but my busy holiday schedule started at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving. November was warm.

In December I’ll tell you now, publicly, that I celebrated a private accomplishment. The month flew by with busy work schedules and the time to relax and celebrate our Creator was upon us in a matter of hours. We had a new camera to document it and the years ahead. The wounds sustained earlier in the year have partially healed, yet I still sometimes find in me a crushing doubt, chanting, “Failure, failure,” at me every time my hands rest on this keyboard. In the waning days of 2010, Kate’s family joined us as we welcomed 2011 into our lives, a year that can’t possibly contain in its 365 days what I want it to contain, but I will greet its every sunrise and toast its every sunset in search of it.

Christmas Eve

Once the music starts I tilt my head backward and stare at the ceiling, which is not always truly magnificent, but I stare at it like it is and I smile because everything is magnificent tonight. Christmas Eve is an oddity. As I enter adulthood, this night has become the one night of the year when I feel bombarded by the past, like it’s trying to make me feel guilty for enjoying the night. My cynicism tries hard to eat away at the night with thoughts of broken hearts, misplaced trust, and betrayal, but its massive effort fails. On this night, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I find that the flicker of a candle is more mesmerizing, the embrace more meaningful, the music more magical, and the mystery and wonder of our God more evident than any other day of the year. Rejoice that it’s easier to forgive and it’s easier to love tonight. And a God that makes us feel that way this day, or for all of them, is worth praising.

Merry Christmas!

New Camera

I picked up our new camera yesterday, a Nikon D7000 with an 18-200mm Nikkor lens. We haven't yet taken a picture with it, but we are just getting starting and can't wait to take this puppy out and start shooting.

Nat Geo Photos

National Geographic announced the winners of their annual photo contest. Check them out here.

Surf's Up, Milwaukee

Missing Milwaukee right now, not the weather, but that Milwaukee is on the shores of a lake you can surf on, and they were this week. From jsonline.com.

Dynamite

Hanukkah ended last night, but I thought I'd share this one.

Click here.

Big Pic: Pearl Harbor

I have linked to the Big Picture before, but I just checked the site today (I hadn't visited it in a while) and they have a stunning collection of pictures from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The history captured within the pictures just blew me away.

Click Here.

No Points For Variation

After weeks of no blogs, this, another picture post, doesn't really spice things up, but the view last night from our apartment was something else and I had to attempt the capture with my point and shoot even though I knew the camera wasn't going to replicate what I saw. I am hoping to remedy that in the near future with an upgrade, but I thought some of these were cool enough to share. The shelf of dark clouds and the mountains made such a beautiful band of light across the horizon that I couldn't pass it up.

October Pictures

My nephew, Nate. Cool dude.

The Banana Belt

As Denver’s first snow swirls outside my window, Milwaukee is experiencing a heat wave, the only time since late July that it has been warmer there than in Denver. I wintered in Milwaukee for the last three years and during that time I forgot how much easier the winters in Colorado are than in the upper Midwest. Of America’s 50 largest cities, Minneapolis is the only one that has a colder average annual temperature than Milwaukee.

Although average annual snowfall is higher in Denver, the first winter I spent in Milwaukee it snowed over 112 inches, an all-time record (pictured above, just one of many blizzards that winter). The winter of 2006-2007, the last winter I spent in Colorado, was record-setting in terms of snow. There was enough of it to cover not only the shadowed corners of your yard but the entire street and neighboring field for over a month. To have snow on the ground for over a month; that was a big deal to some Front Range residents and it was the first time I could remember having snow on the ground for that long. But in Milwaukee, if the snow only stays for a month you are in good cheer. It’s not unusual for there to be snow on the ground for three months straight. It’s not that they get more than Denver—I already covered that—it’s that the cold takes your breath away and they get slightly less daylight than Colorado in the winter.

When it comes to average annual temperatures, there is no competition. Among the places I’ve lived, only Laramie, Wyoming can compete with Milwaukee’s frostbite-inducing cold. Denver has its days, but I can’t honestly say the winters in Colorado are tough.

It’s amazing what a few years in a much colder environment can do to the way you respond to weather elsewhere. After just a few months of college in Laramie, I felt like I was going to the tropics when I drove south for an hour. Fort Collins was consistently 10-15 degrees warmer than Laramie. It was good I had that training, because without it I couldn’t have weathered the winters in Milwaukee with as much good cheer as I did.

Don't Forget

Conan O'Brien returns to television tonight on TBS. Locally, he's on at 9pm. I'm looking forward to it. Follow TeamCoco here.

The 2010 Midterms

After this November 2^nd, it is easy for me to be frustrated with and disappointed in thousands and thousands of Americans who, in 2008, launched the Senator from Illinois into the White House and then, only two years later, gave Republicans the majority in the House because Obama hasn’t yet dug the country out of a hole the Republicans led us into.

But I am still sanguine at times. Maybe I am crazy for being that way, but in previously shared governments meaningful legislation has passed and so I hope that the Republican majority in the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate can find common ground instead of going back and forth in a debate without results.

The Republicans are now the ones who find themselves with a mandate to govern as they see fit. This is a unique situation where they have to shift from just saying no to everything that came down from the White House to actually presenting solutions beyond making the Bush tax cuts permanent, repealing health care reform, or privatizing Social Security. Republicans came to power in these midterms because they kept promising the American people that they would represent their interests and that they would focus on jobs and reducing the deficit. I would love to see a Republican party with that focus. However, when I read the following in the paper this week I can’t help but shake my head at the Republicans:

But fresh from their victories, Republicans may have little incentive to defer to his [Obama] leadership. In the days leading up to the election, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, a top House Republican, repeatedly said there would be “no compromise” with Mr. Obama.

Is it too much to ask for Republicans to actually govern instead of again pushing on us their overtly divisive dialogue and diatribes, which accomplish nothing for the American people? If this remains the single more important thing they can do, then they have ensured their defeat in 2012 and such a defeat will be well deserved if they continue to just say, “No.” And while I am hopeful that the Republicans will do something good for America, I also know, and am comforted by the fact, that when 2012 is here, and if the Republicans have held to McConnell’s plan, than they will be in the minority again.

There are some positive signs from Tuesday’s election. There were several high profile candidates (O’Donnell in Delaware, Tancredo in Colorado, Raese in W. Virginia, Angle in Nevada, and Miller in Alaska) who all received glowing endorsements from Sarah Palin and they all lost. This is a huge bright spot. Even in her home state, Palin’s endorsement couldn’t even fend off defeat by Lisa Murkowski, a write-in candidate. This will not prevent Palin from running in 2012. She is obsessed with herself and there are enough delusional Americans out there who will push her to do it. However, in Alaska, where she was popular enough before she was McCain’s running mate, she has fallen flat on her face, leaving the governorship and the people she claimed to care about. Above the rest of the Republican candidates for 2012, she alone is the most narcissistic and it is the glorification of herself she wants to serve, not the “real America” like she always says. I suspect by 2012 America will be sick enough of her whiny voice which never delivers solutions or facts, just embellished tales from the crypt far-right.

And I don’t know how Harry Reid did it, but he defeated Sharron Angle, which is also another bright spot. Sharron Angle is a crazy ass. Read this, from a radio interview in Portland where she suggest an armed revolution: "I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." I would have been much more concerned for this country had she won. I’m not a fan of Reid either, but I am sorry, Nevada had to pick the lesser of two evils on Tuesday and thank God they did.

Colorado decided to give the Democrats a little more time in office. I am relieved they did, even if it was just by .9%. Had Buck won, the Dems would still control the Senate, but Colorado remains a battleground state. Obama won quite handedly here in 2008. That Colorado is giving him another chance is a good sign for 2012. Perhaps, by then, states won’t have to give Obama another chance, they will see some change by then and they will vote to continue it.

For me, the big takeaway is to be thankful that this campaign season is done and to hold the crazy belief that politicians will actually do their job for a year before they start campaigning again. That’s a lot to hope for. And then there are the Republicans. Will they actually do something over the next two years except rail against Obama and prep for 2012? Only time will tell, but Americans will get a very good representation of how the Right is going to govern and “re-invent” themselves and that is, in a way, comforting to me because if it’s anything like 2000-2008, I think the same Americans who contributed to this Republican comeback will be reminded of why they voted for Obama in 2008 and do it again in 2012.

2010 Midterms Pre-Blog

America, you did let fear give you a Boehner. Luckily it didn't last longer than four hours and we didn't have to seek immediate help from a doctor (a psychiatrist, that is) because the Dems retained their hold of the Senate.

More on yesterday to come.

November 2, 2010

For the short blog below I am borrowing from a hilarious sign from the Rally to Restore Sanity. The sign refers to John Boehner, Republican House Minority Leader who could likely become Speaker of the House with a Republican wave tomorrow. So, here's my message...

Tomorrow...Don't Let Fear Give You A Boehner.

Actual Bumper Sticker

I am in the process of transcribing voice recordings I have fallen behind on. One of them I listened to today was from May 15. On that day I saw a bumper sticker and wanted to remember what it said. It was on a truck seen in Milwaukee. It read:

Those that buy cars or trucks from foreign-owned companies are butchering America's economic health in an expensive way whether they admit it or not. Don't kill the eagle!

Well, I don't admit that I am butchering America's economic health by owning a Nissan and a Toyota, but I will admit to having better cars than the American-car-owning version of me that doesn't exist. However, it was news to me that I was killing an eagle.

Oh, Why Not?

Today's education from TPM: The Five Constitutional Amendments That Constitution-Loving Tea Partiers Would Change

On the mosque near Ground Zero...

"But others, led by Newt Gingrich, and far-right activist Pamela Geller, wanted the government to directly intercede to prevent the construction of a house of worship. First, though, you'd have to change that part of the Constitution that reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

On immigration...

Eliminating what's known as "birthright citizenship." That's right, you could be born here, but be deported if your parents were found to have illegally entered this country.

On taxes...

Repealing the 16th Amendment. Basically abolishing the government's right to tax our income. Instead, the government would be fueled solely by a sales tax.

On electing Senators...

This is the 17th Amendment. And some tea-partiers want to repeal it and instead give the duty of selecting senators to the legislature of the state. So, midterms would be obsolete.

On Prohibition...

TPM notes that Sharron Angle (God help us, especially Nevada if that woman wins) once expressed interest in repealing the 21st Amendment, you know, the one that repealed the 18th Amendment (Prohibition).

It is really a good read. Check it out. They do solid reporting over at TPM.

Midterms

This is my push, my one political blog before the midterm vote next week. This is where I stand. I voted for Obama, a human, not the second-coming of Jesus, so getting crap done takes a long time and given the problems the country faces now his presidency is one of the hardest in decades. He is doing his best and I believe it is much too early to see if his best is good enough for what America needs. I believe the rising tide of fear in this country is a cyclical event pushed on us by the party not in power and by the media. But I also believe the opposition has gone over the edge with claims of socialism and comparisons of Obama to Hitler. I think if Obama’s 2008 supporters go out there next Tuesday and vote for a Republican, they are voting in fear and they will be fueling a machine which runs on myth and superstition, a machine which is led by Glenn Beck, who hasn’t completed one college-level course in anything, and Sarah Palin. To so soon hand the reins of power back to the Republicans would be a huge mistake. Think about it. Agree or Disagree. Just be patient and sane and go vote in one week.

Like I said, I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I was part of that liberal tide that swept across America in the wake of eight Bush years. But I was not under a magical spell when I worked for the campaign, nor was I when I voted for the man in November. I voted for a young, relatively inexperienced politician, but I also voted for a Constitutional Law professor, a man with a top-notch education, which a disturbing portion of America believes makes a man disconnected and out of touch with the “real” America. I thought then—and I still do—that a president with an Ivy League education isn’t a bad idea, but a good one. Some say his education classifies him as an elitist. Good.

I was wary of lavishing too much praise on candidate Obama when I was working for him. And now I am wary of agreeing with every one of his policies just because I voted for him. I don’t agree with some things he has done. Frankly, he hasn’t been as liberal as candidate Obama, almost kowtowing to the Republicans at times. I want him to be tougher and show off the intelligence I know he has. It reminds me of the debates with Hillary and the other Democratic candidates running in the primaries. Obama’s levelheadedness was agonizing at times in the face of ridiculous criticisms he faced about his friendship with Reverend Wright and his connection with William Ayers. I wanted Obama just to lash out once and put these absurd people in their place, both in the media and in the party. But it never happened.

I eventually really appreciated that about candidate Obama, but I am having a hard time appreciating that about President Obama. By voting for Obama I gave him a personal mandate to run the country the way candidate Obama wanted to run the country. Really close Gitmo, don’t just try once, hit a roadblock and give up. Really end the wars in the Middle East…don’t get bogged down in Afghanistan, much more of an endless war than Iraq ever was. Really end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, not just keep promising it will end on your watch. Really restore sanity and an America I can be openly proud of when I am not in America. Don’t let the people across the aisle get you down, not tiptoe around an issue until it is too late for it to be resolved the way candidate Obama promised it would be.

But do not mistake me for someone who regrets voting for Obama. Not. Even. Close. At times, as explained above, I am impatient with the progress, but then I see someone from the Tea Party on TV or I read the signs pictured at right-wing rallies and I realize I am very, very patient and comfortingly sane. For now, the Democrats deserve to keep their hold on the House and the Senate. Obama hasn’t been in power for two years yet. How would he have solved the greatest recession since the Great Depression in 22 months? Americans need a heavy dose of patience and sanity. Give the man two more years and see what happens. Hell, we gave Bush eight years, we can afford to give Obama and his squad half that much.

Up in Smoke

I live next door to the Colorado Department of Health building. It is an ugly, 12-floor structure, a perfectly hideous building to be used by the government. And that's about it. There is nothing special about the building besides its daily example of irony, the omnipresent group of employees huddling around outside to get their smoke on. Even in the gusts this morning as a storm moved through Denver, they were circled up getting their dose. I chuckled.

If I Had A Twitface Account...

...I would tweet this right now...

Braveheart is a damn fine movie. Forget everything you know about Gibson. This film is amazing.

...and...

Wow, the Broncos need to do some work.

Don't Cry Over Spilled Hot Chocolate

Last week I was adjusting my chair at the table. I was too far away and wanted to get closer to my food. I went for it, but I wasn’t successful. I nailed my left knee on the underside of the table and the impact set a few of the glasses to rocking, risking a chaotic spill. This time there was no slop on the table, but I immediately thought of another time I bumped my knee on a table. It was 1999, I was a junior in high school, and I was attending my first high school dance.

Let’s call my date Jane. That sounds great, except that’s the name of a grandma and the middle name of my sister so that makes it a poor choice really. Moving on. I was in a new town, at a new school, and at a new church. I didn’t know anyone. I think it was a Sunday night when Jane came to the door. My mom answered the door (and I just embellished that because I can’t remember who exactly answered the door…it wasn’t me). I was called to the door and there was Jane, a girl I had a bit of a crush on back in the church camp days. The crush was lingering because I was fairly excited that there was a girl at the front door asking for me and she wasn’t here to sell me girl scout cookies or magazine subscriptions so she could go to Disney World for the entire summer. No, Jane was at the door to ask me to homecoming. I convinced myself it was out of pity because she went to the same church, I was the new guy in town, and I was the pastor’s kid who didn’t have a date to the dance. I don’t know whether any of those reasons are accurate, but I have suffered through bouts of low self-esteem and during one such bout I must have settled on one of those explanations being accurate. I think I know precisely which bout that was…I was on the dance floor at homecoming with Jane and I started to move and groove and she immediately gravitated toward her friends. I didn’t know them and she seemed to enjoy dancing with them more than with me and all this conversation was happening at chest height, the music was loud, and there wasn’t a face in the room I could see clearly, just a bunch of hair hovering around my shoulders.

I am getting way ahead of myself. Earlier in the night there was, at one point, some hot chocolate to be consumed. Jane and I were with three other couples that evening. They all seemed much more serious than we were, but we knew them from church and it seemed right to tag along with them. I think this was my decision. I didn’t know anyone outside of youth group so we wound up in a churchy type of homecoming group. The group was kind of awkward, but I was the new kid, 6’8” (about), and on my first date to a high school dance…it was going to be awkward with anyone.

The cool thing to do back then if you didn’t have any money to go to a nice restaurant was to do it all for free by doing a round robin dinner. Apps here. Entrees there. Desserts over there. This way the parents are more involved in the evening and they get to pay for all the food. It’s excellent. It’s the poor man’s homecoming/prom dinner.

I am getting distracted again. We were all set up for dessert. The hot chocolate was on the table. I, being the tallest guy there, was given the seat at the head of the table. Most people had settled in, but I had to squeeze by someone and a china cabinet I was taller than. I made it to my seat, pulled it out and I was going to do something familiar to all tall people. We can’t get into small spaces like all of you average people can so we adapt. Our go to maneuver in a tight spot is sort of a controlled sideways fall/slide. Once we commit to the movement there is no backing out. That is to say, once you start falling from a height of 6’8” you are going to wind up on the ground or, in this case, the chair you were aiming for. In one fell swoop I was going to get my butt in that chair and swing my legs under the table. It was going well, it really was, until my legs flew under the table and connected with a mysterious appendage protruding down from the underside of the table. Hitting this made the whole table rock. Hot chocolate went everywhere. A few glasses tipped over. I can’t remember if it actually got on anyone, but it was all over the lacy white tablecloth. I was silent and then profusely apologetic to my date and her mother who happened to be serving us the hot chocolate.

It was not, at the time, a good moment to be tall. Perhaps, I could say I even hated my height at that moment. It was embarrassing. I had just made a mess and all I wanted to do was to fit in and be cool with my date. But last week when I bumped my knee on the table I smiled for two reasons. One, it made me think of the homecoming dance in 1999, a night which I hadn’t thought about in a decade. And two, there is no bump on the knee I could take which would make me curse my height now. I welcome the next bump, it will surely dust off a memory that will make me not necessarily feel happy, but just feel.

Cool Show Watch

Tonight, Bill Bryson (one of, or perhaps tied for, my favorite author/s) will be on The Colbert Report. Easily two of my favorite guys ever on one episode. Check it out.

Glenn and His Fans

This morning I read a profile of Glenn Beck. It was from the NY Times Magazine from October 3^rd. I had never read an article about Glenn Beck for many reasons, but it was the cover story of the magazine, it was free, I knew it was a reputable journalist (Mark Leibovich)… I couldn’t resist.

I don’t get Glenn Beck. I am not alone in feeling this way. Apparently, Chris Wallace asked Glenn Beck on Fox News Sunday, “What are you?” Although I read the article, that question still remains. His ideas are cuckoo and I don’t understand why he has a following. But, I thought I would share a quote from one of his followers. Leibovich followed Beck to Alaska where Beck was doing a rally-type-of-thing with Sarah Palin. It is important to know that a favorite pastime of Beck’s and his followers is to rail against Woodrow Wilson because he ushered in the progressive era in America. So, here’s the passage from the article:

Sitting in the row behind me was a truck driver named Jerry Cole, who was from Fairbanks and wore an “I (heart) Woodrow Wilson” T-shirt with a slash through the heart. “He was the start of the Progressive Era,” Cole said of the long-dead president. “He believed that college intellectuals should decide how the world should be run.”

The Temp Agency Test

My first summer home after graduating from college I cheated on a proficiency test at a temp agency. I was having trouble finding a job and someone (I think it was my mom) suggested I go to a temp agency and see if I could get a good placement. It took a little more searching before I decided a temp agency was one of my only options. My ego took a hit, but I did walk into an agency located on Main Street in Longmont, CO.

The first thought I had inside the door was that this place is not going to find me a job that I would ever like. Run. But I didn’t. I stayed, sat down with a nice lady, explained my situation, surprise, I’m jobless and looking for work. She nodded several hundred times and concluded that I, just like everyone else that walks in the door, had to take a few tests in order for the agency to determine where I was skilled—if anywhere.

I was ushered to a back room full of cubicles and old computers. The computer led me through some typing and data entry tests. I excelled in the typing tests and was feeling confident. I wasn’t as fast on the keypad for data entry, but I was still feeling pretty good. I was even hoping for the lady to look at my report and recommend me to some company right away because she had never seen typing that fast before.

Then came the math section. I was rusty, but I was doing just fine until I got to long division. Holy crap! When was the last time I had to do long division? I thought for a moment, maybe 7^th grade…maybe a little earlier or later? I didn’t know when I performed it last, but worse than that, I didn’t know how to do it anymore. I didn’t even know where to start. Of course I could rely on just working the problem through in my mind, but I knew there would be decimals and I wasn’t trusting of my ability to get this right. I considered my options. 1) Leave these questions blank because there is no way I can get the right number down or 2) slyly pull my cell phone from my pocket and take advantage of the calculator. For me, at that moment, it was a pretty easy decision to make even though I wasn’t proud of it. I busted out my cell phone and tapped out the problems and within a few seconds I had the right answers to the thousandth decimal point.

Now, I don’t know if they had cameras back there or if the fact that I didn’t show my work tipped them off to my cheating, but I only heard from the temp agency once and it was for a very short manual labor job I was trying to avoid from the beginning. I didn’t tell anyone about it and I had a hard time overcoming the fact that I couldn’t do a few long division problems, but I was determined to never use a calculator again when faced with a long division problem, which was good, because three years later I cracked open a GRE study book and listed before my eyes was a page of long division problems. It was time to call in the mathematician in the house, my wife. I recruited her for a lesson, which lasted all of two minutes before something clicked and grade school math was once again a breeze and not something I had to fear running into again at a temp agency or on the GRE.

In a theater, far, far away...

I hate the 3D fad. And I really do think it is a fad. I don’t think everything is going to be 3D in ten years. It isn’t like when HD first came out, you could clearly see and enjoy the difference between your standard image and an HD image. With 3D it is much more a matter of taste. A real life example: I liked Avatar. Did I feel its 3D-ness added anything to the experience at all? No.

That said, if anything changes my mind about 3D it will be seeing all six Star Wars movies painstakingly rendered to 3D format and being rereleased on the big screen starting in 2012 with Episode I. Unfortunately, they will be starting with the weakest of all six SW Episodes, but that won’t keep me from seeing it another time. And this time, the story is going to be in order and each time you go back to the theater, in my opinion, the movie will be better than the last. So I am stoked to give 3D another chance. It is just a bummer I have to wait until 2012 to do it.

Other TV

I have mentioned on this blog before that I dabble in other TV shows, mostly of the medical variety because of Kate. Those shows: ER (now off the air), House and, on occasion Grey’s Anatomy. So, it was with a little excitement that Kate sat down to watch the season premiere of Grey’s last week. I joined her sans excitement and with book in hand.

I was reminded of how sappy the show is. Slo-mo. Voiceovers by Grey that bookend each episode. Love triangles. Dusty, old relationships, which are constantly in limbo. It is sentimental porn.

At the end of the hour, as the music died down and Grey’s voiceover came in to tell us how we should feel and what we should draw from the episode, Kate and I sighed, looked at each other and said, “I miss Lost.”