Movie Review: Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

Year: 2012
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale
Michael Caine
Morgan Freeman
Anne Hathaway

For those who haven't seen it, this is supposedly Christopher Nolan's last Batman film. Kind of disappointing for those of us who how magnificently Nolan brought the Batman series back to life after the dismal "Batman and Robin". Whoever thought that George Clooney would make a good Batman and that Arnold Schwartzenegger would be able to act in that Mr. Freeze suit should be shot.

The basic premise of the film is that a supervillian named Bane, a former member of Ra's Al Ghul's League of Shadows from the first film, comes to Gotham to "finish" Al Ghul's work. This film also introduces Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. I'll tell you, i had my doubts about her as Catwoman until i rewatched the old Batman TV series from the sixties and became reaquainted with Julie Newmar's Catwoman. At that point, i thought 'if Hathaway plays Catwoman just like that, it'll work'. And she did. And it worked. I also appreciated that Bane was handled with respect and dignity. For those who don't follow the comics, Bane was a character in the nineties who broke Batman's back. For a year, while he recuperated, Bruce Wayne was NOT Batman. This led to probably the most interesting year in Batman's history. Bane was brought, luchadore mask and all, into "Batman and Robin" basically to carry Poison Ivy's luggage. In this film, they ditched the luchadore mask in favor of a mouthpiece.

THE GOOD: Overall, an excellent film. The story is great, the special effects rock, and the performances overall are very good. The film is just short of three hours long and you don't notice the time passing. Nolan brings the same bizarre touches to this film that he did to "Memento", "Inception" and the previous Batman films.

THE BAD: Let me start this section with a disclaimer: these are just little nit-picky problems that i had with the film. Nothing major. So if you want to skip this, fine. Okay, on to the picking of nits... I hated Batman's cape in this film. For some weird reason, they replaced the cape that they used in the previous two films with this black velveteen thing that doesn't hang or billow right. Because it's jet black, it also doesn't mesh well with Batman's costume, which is gray-black. They changed Bane's backstory slightly from the comics, and i would have liked to have known more about him. A good editor would have also trimmed about 30 minutes from the film without damaging it. They also missed a bet with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played a young cop who figured out Batman's secret identity. In the first film, Batman saved a young boy who had been gassed with the Scarecrow's fear gas, and Batman said "Don't be afraid" and the boy said "I'm not". This should have been Gordon-Levitt's character, and it wasn't.

THE UGLY: Christian Bale's heart didn't seem to be in this film. His performance didn't seem to be up to his usual excellent standards.

All in all an excellent film, well worth theater prices. They left the film open for sequels, but Nolan will be missed as director.

Peace.

Randal

The Culture of Conflict

I had a very disheartening experience last night.

I belong to a dating website called okcupid.com. I haven't had a lot of success there. Met my second wife through it, not sure if you'd call that success or not the way that things worked out. But anyway, the site will occasionally pick three people out that it thinks that you'll like for your "quiver". Sometimes it's off and sometimes it's WAY off.

So last night i was looking at my quiver matches and quite enjoying one of the profiles. She's a teacher, which i dig. She's articulate and seems intelligent, both of which are good. She has a cute nose. Then when i got down to the section about TV shows that she watches she put "FOX News (LOL)". I wasn't sure what that meant. I mean, if i told anyone who knows me that i'm an avid Faux News viewer they would say "Yeah, right" realizing that i was being sarcastic or ironic. And she had said earlier in her profile that she was looking for someone who shared her dry sense of humor. Okay, so she's being ironic.

Then a little later, she said that one of the things that she enjoys doing is trolling Yahoo News on the internet and leaving comments just to "piss liberals off". Okay... so her "LOL" after FOX News wasn't meant to be ironic and i was back to being confused about it.

This got me to thinking about the culture of conflict that we have in this country that's preventing us from moving forward, and Faux news viewers are not the only ones responsible. Both democrats and republicans (i won't say liberals and conservatives because i don't feel that these parties represent those ideals anymore, if they ever really did) have fallen into this pattern of just getting up in each others faces and refusing to budge. Republicans are just better at it, because today's democrats are a bunch of wimps who tend to fold like a birthday card whenever the republicans want something. I just don't understand it, frankly. If you have two people trying to go somewhere and both refuse to move, guess what doesn't happen? Both sides seem to have the intellectual attitude of "shoot first, ask questions later" and i personally can't think of a worse way to get information. Ask your questions first. Get your information first.

Then shoot.

I will say, though, that it also confuses me because she's a science teacher. Anyone who watches Faux News on one side or MSNBC on the other shows a blind loyalty to one party and a blind refusal to listen to the good ideas of the other. And i can't figure out how a science teacher can blindly support this party. This is the party who supported Scott Walker, who wants to balance a state budget by cutting the pensions of teachers. This is the party that insists that the non-scientific non-theory of "creation science" be taught side-by-side with the scientific theory of evolution. This is the party that insists that global climate change was dreamed up by Al Gore in 2000 to destroy American business.

So i guess what i'm asking is that we get past this habit of digging our feet in on stuff and start compromising enough to move forward again.

Peace.

Randal

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

Year: 2012
Director: Marc Webb (No joke)
Writer: James Vanderbilt
Alvin Sargent
Steve Kloves
Stars: Andrew Garfield
Emma Stone
Martin Sheen
Sally Field

I'm a DC guy. Always have been. Superman, Batman, the Flash. Seriously. The only Marvel comics that i read with any regularity were the "weird" titles... Werewolf By Night was a favorite, and of course, House of Dracula, and Dracula's nemesis, Blade.

And Spider-man.

None of the other Marvel heroes captured my imagination quite like Spider-man did. Maybe it was because he was a little tormented, but not as mopey and gloomy as the rest of the Marvel heroes. Even BATMAN seemed more energetic than most of the Marvel Heroes. I realized pretty quickly that if you thought too hard about Spider-man's powers he would fall off the side of the skyscraper and die on a New York city street (like if it's his skin that allows him to cling to stuff, shouldn't his gloves and boots make him fall?), but the stories... especially the early stories by Lee and Ditko and the 80's stories by John Byrne... were really gripping, well-told tales.

So here comes desperately needed reboot of the Spider-man franchise. The basic story, for those who don't know, is teenage Peter Parker being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining the powers of a spider. The ability to climb walls, super agility and strength. In this film, unlike the earlier series, Parker has to build his web shooters like he did in the comic. The bad guy in this film is the tragic Dr. Curt Conners, AKA the Lizard. I like that Dr. Conners was trying to do good and wound up doing bad in the process. The only reason that he fights Spider-man is because he sees Spidey as trying to stand in the way of his grand design for human beings.

THE GOOD: The story. Except for having to retell his origin (a necessary evil) the story moves along at a great clip. It's a fun, engaging movie. The performances, for the most part, are terrific, but what do you expect from a cast like Emma Stone, Martin Sheen, Sally Field and Denis Leary?

THE BAD: I hate to say it, but Andrew Garfield as Spider-man. He gives a good performance, but he's also very twitchy and spastic. It's almost like he was trying to be too serious of an actor. Which he is. He's a very serious actor. But when you're playing a super hero, you have to let some of that go and just have fun with the role. I'm also starting to get really tired of seeing actors in their twenties playing high school students. At one point Emma Stone says to Denis Leary "Dad, I'm SEVENTEEN!" Sure you are, sweetheart. No offense, but you're obviously NOT seventeen.

THE UGLY: Spider-man 2 and Spider-man 3. The first Spider-man film was so good that i expected great things from the sequels that they didn't deliver. Spider-man 2 wasn't bad, it was just basically a replay of the first film and Spider-man 3 started off great and then degenerated to beyond terrible in the second half. And this was the one that i most looking forward to because this was the film that introduced Venom, one of the great villains of all time. I knew that i was in trouble when i saw that they had cast Topher Grace (Eric from "That 70's Show" as Venom. Please, guys... you've started off so well... please don't let us down again with the sequels.

All in all a great film. And the 3-d effects are definitely worth the extra dollar or two.

Peace.

Randal

Americans Need To Ask Better Questions

When the newly-elected governor of Michigan announced last year or year before that he planned on balancing the state budget on the backs of teachers, it made me mad. You know what made me madder? The drive to recall him.

When he rode into office on a wave of "I'll do whatever's necessary to balance the state budget", no one bothered to say "Really? And what are your plans?" If he had said "Well, i plan on cutting the pay, benefits and pensions of teachers", then i'm sure that he wouldn't have been elected. As it is, no one bothered to ask, so he didn't have to tell.

But that's one of the big problems with America today. We don't ask enough questions. Like when Walmart promises that they'll always have the lowest prices. Heck, sometimes they'll drop their prices so low that a competitor will have to go out of business because they can't compete. But it seems like no one asks "How?"

Well, since the majority of Americans today have no idea how retail works, let me explain it to you.

Contrary to what it seems, retailers don't just randomly assign prices to things. It's actually a formula. This isn't exact, but it goes more or less like this... overhead (payroll, electricity, advertising, taxes, etc) plus profit margin equals markup. Markup plus wholesale cost equals the price of the item. I can tell you that in our "get rich or die tryin'" 21st century mentality, profit margin is the last thing to get cut. You know what's usually first? Well, they can't change the amount of taxes that they pay... they can't significantly change the cost of their electricity... i mean they can, but only to a certain extent. So what does that leave? Payroll. The first thing to go in payroll is usually benefits. Like Walmart setting it up so that only about 45% of their employees (most of that 45% being management) have access to health benefits. But we don't have to worry about that because we don't pay for that, right? Except, when one of these people, unable to afford to see a doctor for that cold goes into the ER to be treated for pneumonia and can't pay their bill, who do you think does? You and I. Another thing that they do is pay the absolute minimum that they can for labor. But we don't have to worry about that, either, because it just saves us money, right? Except that a lot of these people end up on government assistance of one sort or another (food stamps, energy assistance, whatever), which we pay for. Another trick that not just Walmart, but a LOT of retailers do (Target seems to be the only one that doesn't do this) is to have one employee performing four or five tasks at once. This doesn't actually cost us money, but think of this the next time that you're in a Walmart and see one employee going crazy trying to process returns, money orders and bill payments and answer the phones all at the same time. These hidden costs are what retailers call "backend" expenses. You don't see them... but they're there.

I saw this first hand years ago when i was working for Costco. A customer said "Why doesn't Costco have bags like everyone else does?" I responded "Because, ma'am, we don't charge you for bags." Her response? "The grocery store doesn't charge me for bags." Of course they do. That's part of their overhead.

And it goes deeper than that, too. Every since the Reagan administration, we've allowed slave labor to assemble our crap. And i don't want to hear that garbage about how anything that we pay them is better than what they could get otherwise. When you look at an outfit like the Chinese company Foxconn, which builds Apple products, and take into account that many of their employees are working sixteen hour days and six hour weeks for almost no pay and no benefits, it doesn't become worth it. When they had five employee suicides in five months because of the working conditions, it doesn't become worth it. When you realize that (i think that the figure is) 40% of the money that we send over there goes to enrich and prop up the Communist government, It doesn't become worth it.

We're full of big talk about how we're working to bring democracy to the world, and that we want everyone to have the same quality of life that we do. But that's all that it is... talk. Unless you mean, like Newt Gingrich apparently does, that we should lower our quality of life to match the average Chinese quality of life. And trust me... most of them ain't living high on the hog. We're really perfectly okay with propping up a repressive government like China as long as we can get an HDTV for $200, or overthrowing a democratically elected government like we did in Iran in the forties or Cuba in the fifties. In both cases, we disliked the duly-elected official, so we performed a coup and put someone that we liked in power. In Iraq it was the Shah. In Cuba it was a bright young up-and-comer named Fidel Castro.

Now. Having said that, i would also like to say that it may be too late to change our massive sell-out of our economy to Communist China. We are so deeply in debt to China that our politicians have to convince us that we're really doing something good over there, because if one of them actually had the balls to suggest that we change the way that we're doing things all that China has to do is call that debt home and our economy sinks like an anchor. The republicans are right... we need to change the way that we're doing things. But cutting the salaries of Americans, denying Americans health care and robbing our teachers and public officials isn't the way to do it.

Peace.

Randal

Movie Review: Ringmaster

Year: 1998
Director: Neil Abramson
Writer: Jon Bernstein
Stars: Jerry Springer
Jaime Pressly
Molly Hagan

I've been meaning to watch this film for years because i like the two female leads. Really i have. Just not enough to... you know... actually RENT it or add it to my Netflix queue or anything. I kept thinking "I like those two... i'd like to see that one of these days." So a couple weeks ago it was on one of Showtime's innumerable channels, so i dropped it on the DVR and finally watched it a couple of days ago. Why the delay? I hate the Jerry Springer show, as well as his new show on GSN, "Baggage". I mean, i don't dislike Springer himself, he strikes me as a man of some intellect and talent. One of those talents just seems to be making crappy TV shows. At my old job they would watch his show in our breakroom and... i swear that this is true... every time that i heard that "JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!" it would give me a stomach ache. I'm not kidding. In the interest of full disclosure, i have watched two almost full episodes of the show. One because i was channel flipping and i saw that he had as his guests the Shappell twins, two of my heroines. These two women have lived their entire lives (i'm not even kidding here) joined at the forehead. They've even managed to make a bit of an acting career for themselves. It's amazing. The other time it was the whole freakshow element of the thing. I don't remember how i started this one, but there was the gorgeous girl on there breaking up with her schnook of a boyfriend. I couldn't help but think "how'd this guy let himself get into this?" Then they brought they guy out that she was sleeping with, and, of course, the two guys fought. After the commercial, they had everyone calmed down. Then she dumped the SECOND guy on national TV and they brought out the girl that she was now sleeping with. The girls kissed. What did they guys do? They couldn't beat up a girl. So they fought again. That's my shameful confession of the day. You don't get another one.

Oh, the movie? It was pretty good, actually. Molly and Jaime were both as sexy as all get-out and their two "guys" seemed adequately like whipped dogs through the whole film. And Jerry was... Jerry. If you don't know, the movie is like a behind-the-scenes story of the Springer show. Molly and Jaime are mother and daughter who were going to be on an episode called "I slept with my step-daddy". That about sums it up.

The good: This actually seems like a pretty honest look at the Springer show. I mean, at one point, a reporter is interviewing Springer when a tussle breaks out in the hallway between two of the guests. After Jerry helps to break it up and scolds them, he returns to the interviewer, who asks "Are they okay?" And Jerry says "Of course they're not... they're on my show."

The bad: With the exception of Jerry, the male characters in this movie are like cardboard cut-outs. They're more male stereotypes than men. You have the unemployed, hard-drinking horny redneck. You have the dumb, whipped young redneck. You have the dog of a black guy who will sleep with anything female that moves, but is especially drawn to white girls. There are also some major editing and continuity problems with the film. Like at one point the young, dumb redneck locked his key card in the hotel room that he shared with his girlfriend, Jaime. So he goes out to see the town. He returns later and somehow opens his door to find Jaime having sex with the dog of a black guy. Molly Hagan gets her t-shirt signed by Jerry, who signs it "love, Jerry". In the next scene, the writing on the T looks completely different and it says "thanks, Jerry".

The ugly: The Jerry Springer Show. This show generally shows no respect for humanity at all. Like those "Which of these five guys that i slept with over the course of a week is my baby's daddy?" episodes. I mean, you know that this crap is going to be in syndication for ever. What happens when that kid's twelve and his friends recognize his mom on a rerun? It's awful.

Peace.

Randal

Sexuality

I realized after i wrote that blog entry on gay marriage that i should probably make myself clear on sexuality in general.

First off, as a Christian, i believe that God WANTS us to enjoy the gift of sexuality responsibly. If God only wanted us to enjoy sexuality within the confines of marriage, then that's what we'd be able to do. I mean, God's pretty good at making things work the way that God wants them to work. Besides, as some great wit once said, if God didn't want us to masturbate, then our arms wouldn't be the right length.

Also, i believe that heterosexuality and homosexuality are not only misnomers, but a false dichotomy. I say that they are misnomers because it's not really about sex. It's about who you love. It's about who you want to spend your days and nights with. Let's face it, you don't have sex with everyone that you love and most of us don't always love everyone that we have sex with. My preferred terms, because i think that they're more accurate, are heteroamorous or homoamorous. I say that it's a false dichotomy because, except for maybe John Wayne at one of the spectrum and Harvey Fierstien at the other end, there are no perfect homo- or heterosexuals. Years ago, in the fifties, the great sex researcher Alferd Kinsey came up with his scale of human sexuality. The scale runs from zero (absolutely heterosexual) to six (absolutely homosexual). I think that most of us tend to fall somewhere on that spectrum outside of zero and six. Kinsey, for instance, classed himself as a two. I would class myself as about a zero point five. I think that homophobes (or heterophobes, they do exist) would class themselves as a perfect zero or six, but tend to be more like a two, three or four.

Good information on the Kinsey scale can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale

Peace.

Randal

Gay Marriage... Again

When are we going to get over our brainless obsession with who people are attracted to or have sex with? Seriously.

This "debate" has been going on for... what... twenty years now? It's time to just get over ourselves and let homosexuals be as miserable as the rest of us. I realize that my words here won't settle this debate, but maybe they'll give people some stuff to chew on...

1) The Religious Issue

Marriage is not now, nor has it ever been in modern times what it was in Mosiac times or even in Jesus' time. In Biblical times, marriage was a way to have legitimate sons to leave your property to. Since women were not allowed to own property at that time, were, in fact, considered nothing more than incubators for a man's "seed", they were considered property and were "given" in marriage as such. And the modern idea of dating? Forget about it! No father would leave his daughter alone with a man who wasn't her husband.

As far as the Biblical quotes about homosexuality go, these fall into two camps. The Old Testament and the New. In the old, the ban on homosexuality was exclusively a ban on MALE homosexuality. Why? Well, again, women were only considered peripheral in the issue of children. Also, women were not considered sexual creatures. They were not believed to enjoy sex at that time, but to endure it. So it was unthinkable that a woman would seek sex the way that a man did. The New Testament ban on homosexuality, if you read those passages closely, also refer to "revelers" and "gossips". And yet there's no religious group outside city hall carrying signs that say "Big Mouths Go To Hell!"

What about Sodom? Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality, right? It's pretty clear. Except that it's not. First off, the term sodomy refers to ALL oral and anal copulation, not just those between people of the same sex. Also, if people would READ their Bibles instead of simply taking someone else's word for what it says, they would find Ezekiel 16:49. "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." Doesn't that pretty much describe the republican platform in the twentieth century? Add to that everything that Jesus said about loving your neighbor and not judging one another and you have a very different view of the Biblical view of how we should treat homosexuals.

2) Unchanging Marriage

Another argument is that marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman because that's the way it always has been, amen.

Except that it hasn't.

I've already pointed out that marriage was an entirely different concept in Biblical days than it is now. Among other things, men could have multiple wives in Biblical times, while women were limited to one husband.

But that's not the only change. Through the twentieth century Jews were not allowed to marry Gentiles. In my lifetime, marriage has been changed again, allowing marriage between white and black people. And the debate over that looked an awful lot like the current debate.

Another thing to remember is that, until the last couple of hundred years, their was no such thing as a secular authority. All authority was religious authority. Heck, up until the 1400's, priests, bishops and popes were allowed to marry. This changed because it muddied the water that divided the priest's property from the church's property.

3) Civil Opposition to Gay Marriage

We have NEVER decided civil rights in this country based on popular opinion. Ever. As a matter of fact, if you look at the two big civil rights struggles of the twentieth century, the equality of women and black people with white men, these things were passed in the face of overwhelming civil opposition. In the first case, when sufferage was passed, only white men were allowed to vote. If it were left up to a vote, do you think that white men would give that portion of their power away? The same thing happened during the civil rights era when only white men and women could vote. I repeat that we have NEVER granted civil rights based on a vote and we shouldn't start now.

I laud the president for taking such a clear stand on gay marriage, especially in an election year. I was gravely disappointed during the 2008 election when he said that he wouldn't support gay marriage, and am proud of him now.

Peace.

Randal

Seinfeld

Year: 1990-1998, 2009
Director: Various
Writer: Various
Stars: Jerry Seinfeld
Julia Louis-Dreyfuss
Michael Richards
Jason Alexander

Throughout the original run of this series, i know that i watched one episode (The Puffy Shirt) and may have watched two. I didn't like (and still don't like) Seinfeld's comedy. All of my friends raved about it of course, and you couldn't look anywhere in the media without seeing it, but it just didn't interest me.

So last year at the urging of my (then) wife, i started to watch the series from the beginning thanks to Netflix. I watched the series finale last night. Here's the conclusion that i've come up with. Seinfeld was... okay.

THE GOOD: There are some truly hilarious moments in the series. I think that i lol'd once or twice per season. Like the scene where a telemarketer calls Jerry, and he asks if he can have the telemarketer's home phone number so that he can call him back later. When the telemarketer says "no", Jerry says "So you don't want people calling you at home?" The telemarketer says no again. Jerry says "Now you know how I feel." Granted, for me, most of the truly funny moments were Michael Richard's physical comedy, but he's always been brilliant at that.

THE BAD: This group of friends is truly, deeply unlikeable. Except for Jerry, who has his moments, i think that i would cross the street to avoid these selfish, shallow people if i knew them in real life. I like sitcoms where i like and care about the people in the show. Like the group on "How I Met Your Mother". I would genuinely like to hang out with this group, even Barney. But not the Seinfeld crew. The series finale where they're videotaping and mocking the fat guy getting carjacked without helping or even calling 911 typifies this group of losers for me.

THE UGLY: When Seinfeld was on, i couldn't avoid hearing about how it was a "show about nothing". A show about things happening to these people that happen to all of us. Thaat may have been true in the beginning, but as the show progressed it got more and more intricately plotted and became less and less about ordinary things happening to ordinary people. It became less a ground-breaking show and more a typical sitcom, in other words.

In summation, if you want to see Julia Louis-Dreyfuss in much better roles, watch "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" or her new HBO series "Veep". If you want to see Michael Richards at the top of his physical comedy game, watch "UHF".

Peace.
Randal

To Be Clear...

... and fair. I'm probably not going to vote for the president again. This isn't because he's a Kenyan-born socialist Muslim or any of the other nonsense that the right promotes because they really can't find anything wrong with the guy. I'm not going to vote for him because he's NOT more socialist. The guy ran on a platform of CHANGE but so far what he's been demonstrating is MORE OF THE SAME. One of his early moves that really impressed me, stopping the Bush-era busting of pot clinics in California, where they're legal, has been reversed. He's started using federal agents to override the state's legalization and decriminalization of pot. I'm not a pot smoker, by the way, but see no reason why, if cigarettes and alcohol are legal that pot shouldn't be. I'll probably vote for the libertarian candidate, whose name escapes me at the moment. But, to be fair, i want to take a look at some of the crap that the right is attacking him on.

THE FAKE OUTRAGE OVER THE PRICE OF GAS

First off, this makes me mad because this is the same right-wing who says that the government should have no control over a corporation's ability to make a profit. One of their presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich, even proposed overturning child labor laws! And yet the government should control this one industry? Make up your minds, guys. And it's a myth that we produce enough oil in America to be self-sufficient, by the way. At peak, we're producing about half of the oil in a day that we consume, according to the USGS. The only way that we can be self-sufficient is if we severely restrict our use of oil and gas. Use up and throw away less plastic. Stop using oil in fertilizers. Use less electricity at home. Drive less and in a more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Another reason that i think that this is fake is because of gas prices themselves. In 2000, when Bush was elected, gas was between $1 and $2 per gallon, typically around $1.50. In 2004, at reelection time, it was about the same. More like $1.80 per gallon, but still up there. In 2005 and 2006, though, gas rose over $2 per gallon and in 2007 most people were paying more than $3 per gallon. In 2008, the middle of the country was paying over $3 per gallon and the coasts were paying more than $4 per gallon. So during the Bush era, gas more than doubled in price. So where was the outrage from the right at that? Nowhere. For the last four years, gas has pretty much stayed between $3 and $4 per gallon. So what's the problem?

UNEMPLOYMENT

In 2000, the unemployment rate was at 4.4%. This was down from over 7% in 1992 when Clinton took office. This is a drop of almost 4 million unemployed people during the Clinton era. In Bush's first term, unemployment went up to 5.5% and we added about 3 million people to the unemployment rolls. During Bush's second term, unemployment rose steadily until 2009 (the year Obama took office before any of his policies went into place), unemployment rose to 9.3% with over 14 million people unemployed, almost triple what it was in 2004. Between then and now, unemployment has dropped to around 8% and a million people were removed from the rolls. So what's the problem?

STOCK MARKET

In 2000, when Bush took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was around 11000. By 2004, it had dropped to under 11000. By April 2009 (two months after Obama took office, before any of his policies had come into play) it had dropped to under 7000. Between now and then it has steadily risen, breaking 12000 several times. At Friday's closing, the DJIA was over 13000. So what's the problem?

All that i'm saying is that, if you're going to vote against the guy, make sure that you know WHY you're voting against him, and not just buying into the right-wing noise machine.

Peace.

Randal

It Puts You There Where Things Are Hollow... But People Still Want It

I will never understand a desire for fame. Don't get me wrong... i would like to be well-known (and well-respected) for my writing. But this is not the same as "fame". Santana on the television show "Glee" summed it up... "I want to be famous. I don't care for what. I just want everyone to know my name." This seems like a plague in our culture right now. And worse, we cater to it. We make utterly talentless, useless people absolutely famous (I'm looking at you Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie).

Howard Zinn i think it was said "We have devolved from "Did you see me being (brave, smart, honored) on television?" to "Did you see me on television?" As much as i hate to give Andy Warhol credit for anything (another, in my opinion, talentless hack) he was right on the money with his comment about everyone being famous in the future for fifteen minutes.

And worse... fame is a drug. It's apparently highly addictive, and people will do anything to get it and, once they have it, keep it. The female wrestler Chynna, after her wrestling career was over, started a career in porn to keep that fame fix coming (pardon the pun). She's an exception, however... i've seen one of her adult movies and she really does seem to have some talent in that particular field. John Ramsey came out with a new book this month to commemorate the anniversary of the death of his daughter. His jones for fame is so bad that he'll use his dead six-year-old's corpse to perpetuate it. This is made worse by the fact that i seem to be the only person who thinks that he murdered her! I recently saw an ad for some show promising to reunite Amy Fischer (who has also turned to porn to perpetuate her fame) and Joey Buttafuco.

Worse still, it seems that infamy is every bit as good as fame these days. Look at the appropriately named John Wayne Bobbit, who had his "it" "bobbed" by his wife. He also turned to a brief career in porn, and, when that didn't perpetuate his infamy well enough, became a televangelist. Or Charlie Sheen. This is a genuinely talented guy who tried his hardest to turn his career into a grease stain on the sheets, and yet we just won't let him go away. He's on Directv ads. Somehow he has also become a spokesman for Fiat, a brand known for it's class and style. How the heck they managed to cast a guy as their spokesman who has absolutely NO class or style is beyond me.

Another aspect of this, for me anyway, is money. When do you have enough money to have someone approach you to do a commercial and be able to say "No thanks"? When i saw a Macy's commercial featuring Donald Trump and Martha Stewart and a Pepsi ad featuring P. Diddy, i was just amazed that they would do this. I think that this is like the fame thing. Enough is never enough in our society. I have some level of respect for Jim Carrey because he seems satisfied to not do anything but act. He's only done (to my recollection) one sequel. He DID appear on American Idol some seasons back in a Horton the Elephant outfit, but to his credit, he didn't look happy to be doing it. I think that's a case of the studio holding him to some contractual obligation, though, and not because he wanted the attention.

And then there are the fame and money junkies for whom i have some respect, like Gene Simmons. If you read his autobiography, he's pretty clear about the fact that everything that he does has one of two goals: to make more money for him or to increase his fame. And the amazing thing is that everything that he does (including the Diet Dr. Pepper commercials), such as his books and his Kiss merchandising and his TV Show "Family Jewels" are all VERY entertaining.

So i wonder if it's possible for us to take some talentless hack like Paris Hilton or Sarah Palin, or someone who has ruined their career and has no interest in straightening themselves out like Charlie Sheen and simply stop paying attention to them. Robert Downey Jr. is a prime example of someone being rewarded for behaving well instead of badly. He was years ago almost exactly where Charlie Sheen is now. The difference is that he straightened out and salvaged his career, and he's now one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood.

Peace.

Randal

Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

Year: 2012
Director: Gary Ross
Writers: Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, based upon Ms. Collins' novel
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence
Josh Hutcherson
Woody Harrelson
Donald Sutherland
Toby Jones

I always like to list Toby Jones when he's in a film. The man is an amazingly underrecognized character actor. He played Karl Rove in "W", Truman Capote (perfect casting if it ever existed) in "Infamous", and, of course, was the voice of Dobby in the Harry Potter films.

The film, for those who haven't read the book, is about a dystopian future where the remaining 12 districts of a country are forced to atone for their rebellion seventy odd years earlier by each sending two of their kids (one girl and one boy) between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight one another in the Hunger Games, from which only one child is allowed to emerge alive.

The main character, Katniss Everdeen, volunteers to take the place of her younger sister, Primrose in the games when Primrose's name is chosen.

That's all that i'll say about the story because i don't want to be accused of spoilers.

This is an excellent film. It is almost 2 1/2 hours long, and i barely noticed the time passing. Starting with the screenplay, which was co-authored by the author of the book, to the performances to the special effects, the only gripe that i have with it is the directing, which i'll get to later.

Jennifer Lawrence is perfect as Katniss. She looks and acts exactly as i imagined Katniss would when i read the book. She's been acting for six years, including playing Mystique in "X-Men: First Class", but i still hear reporters refer to her as "unknown actress Jennifer Lawrence". Well, maybe that will change now. Josh Hutcherson was cast as Peeta Melark. Let me say this about Mr. Hutcherson... his forte seems to be walking around looking stunned and that's unchanged here. He wouldn't have been my first choice as Peeta, but he works since the character only seems to exist in the book or movie as a catalyst for Katniss. Donald Sutherland is wonderful as president Snow, and Stanley Tucci rocks as Caesar Flickerman, the master of ceremonies for the Hunger Games with the biggest set of artificial teeth that i think that i've ever seen on the screen.

There is also a hint of political commentary in the film. We are rapidly turning into a society of plutocrats and everyone else and this is evident in the film. When you see the ramshackle, falling down houses that the people of district 12 live in and then the absolute splendor of the inherited wealth and position of the capitol, you can't help but think about the people who make millions or billions of dollars per year in our society by depriving their workers of all but the bare essentials of existence.

THE GOOD: I think that the filmmakers did an excellent job of turning the book into a film. Purists may not like the changes that were made, but purists in my opinion don't seem to understand that if they just turned the book into a film word for word, the film would be ten hours long. They did a great job of hitting the highlights of the novel while jettisoning or changing those things that were necessary to the main story. Trust me, purists... everything that you loved in the novel is here.

THE BAD: I wasn't really crazy about Ross' directing. This is only his third film, and his first in nine years as a director, so i hope that his style is evolving and will even out some in the coming films. My biggest gripe with the directing was his overuse of hand-held cameras. I understand that directors use these with increasing frequency to put the viewer "in media res" (in the middle of things), but, when used to the extent that he uses it in the first hour of the film, all it really did for me was to make me nauseous. Fortunately, for the rest of the film, he shows real restraint in his use of hand-helds.

THE UGLY: The film is brutal. I guess that the novel could be seen as brutal as well, given the subject matter, but the novel was bereft of the splattering blood and explicit scenes of teenagers hacking each other to death with bladed weapons. I think that this is a perfect example of what's known as "ratings creep". In other words, ten years ago, this movie would have been rated R, and i think that it should have. I think that part of the reason that it wasn't is because the books are classified as "young adult" novels, so about half of the anticipated audience would have been locked out by an R rating. If i had a fourteen or fifteen year old, i would definitely let them read the books, but not watch the movie.

All in all a terrific film for older teenagers and adults, but, like the new crop of Batman movies and the Harry Potter films, be cautious about bringing your younger teenagers and kids to it. It is very violent and moderately bloody.

Peace.

Randal

Movie Review: Hugo (2011)

Year: 2011
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: John Logan (Based upon the novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick)
Stars: Sasha Baron Cohen
Ben Kingsley
Chloe Moretz
Asa Butterfield

Where to start with this film, that somehow almost completely escaped the movie-going public last year? I mean, it's a kid's film in 3-D directed by Martin Scorsese and co-starring Sasha Baron Cohen. How the heck was this not a huge runaway hit?

Well to start with, the movie is clever and well-written. I realize that's a problem with modern films, especially kid films, where the height of cleverness seems to be poop jokes. It is refreshingly devoid of potty humor. The cleverness even extends to the title, and the lead character's name, Hugo. Hugo is a boy who is persecuted by a train station security guard. The novel "Les Miserables" by Victor HUGO is about a man named Jean Valjean who is persecuted by a police officer. And there isn't a wasted scene in the film. For instance, early in the film, Hugo and his friend Isabelle (Chloe Moretz, who was wonderful as Hit Girl in "Kick Ass") watch the silent film "Safety Last" where Harold Lloyd dangles above New York City from the hands of a clock, and later Hugo dangles from the hands of a clock over Paris.

And what about the cast? In addition to those listed above (in order that they appeared on the movie poster), it also stars Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jude Law and Richard Griffiths, all of whom turn in outstanding performances. Moretz in particular made me wonder in this film if she's a British girl who gave a heck of an American accent in "Kick Ass" or an American girl who gave a heck of a British accent in "Hugo". Turns out that she's from Texas. Good job, Ms. Moretz. You should have been awarded an oscar for your performance here.

The basic story is about an orphan named Hugo Cabret who lives in a Paris train station early in the 20th century. He spends his life trying to escape the clutches of the train security guard (Sasha Baron Cohen) and a toymaker from whom he has stolen clockworks to rebuild a mechanical man that his father (Jude Law) bought from a museum. The toymaker, to whom we are introduced as "Papa Georges" is played by Ben Kingsley. (Minor spoiler alert!) The toymaker turns out to be filmmaker and magician Georges Melies, and is the godfather and guardian of Isabelle (Moretz).

THE GOOD: Just about everything. The film is amazing. Coming from Scorsese, this shouldn't be a big surprise, but the film also turns out to be a love letter to movies, especially the films of the silent era when the film takes place. The writing, directing (of course), music and special effects are all excellent. It made me want to read the book, which i had never heard of before this.

THE BAD: Only peripherally attached to the film, i would like to see Sasha Baron Cohen do more films like this or Sweeney Todd where he is really able to stretch his legs as an actor and (in Sweeney Todd) a singer. When he gets the reigns of a film, he basically does the same movie over and over. Borat, Bruno and The Dictator are all basically the same film with different lead characters. I enjoyed Borat, couldn't watch all of Bruno and have no interest in The Dictator. Mr. Cohen, you are better than this. PLEASE stop repeating yourself. You're basically turning into the Stephen King of cinema.

THE UGLY: I will never understand why American actors choose to affect a British accent in films about France simply because you are surrounded by British actors. The same thing happened in the excellent film "Quills". The main difference is that the American actor in "Quills", Joachim Phoenix, gave a broad, unbelievably bad British accent, while the American actress in "Hugo", Chloe Moretz, gives an excellent accent. You are supposed to be speaking FRENCH, which, like most languages, has a variety of accents.

The upshot? Watch this movie. Especially if you're a film lover. Watch it with your kids. It's a GREAT movie.

Peace.

Randal

My Two Cents Worth...

Okay, after the Rush Limbaugh nonsense, i feel like i have to weigh in on this health care/contraceptive issue.

First off, let me say that what Limbaugh said didn't shock me. Him calling a girl that he doesn't know a "slut" and a "prostitute" because she supports the mandate for contraceptives for women being covered by employer's health plans. This just sounds like the usual crap that falls out of Limbaugh's mouth. Frankly, it would shock me more if it was reported that he behaved in an at all civilized fashion toward someone. Also, several of his sponsors yanked their sponsorship over this issue, causing Limbaugh to offer an insincere on-air apology. I hope that they don't reinstate their sponsorship on the one hand, but on the other why were they sponsoring his show if they didn't want to sponsor incendiary hate speech? I mean seriously. Did they NOT know what they were getting? It's like a story that Bill Cosby tells about Lenny Bruce. He said that he was at one of Bruce's shows, and about halfway through, apparently offended by Bruce's rough language, a lady stood up and said "Well, i never!" and walked out. Cosby said "I wonder who she thought that she was seeing?" That's what i wonder about these sponsors. Who did you think that you were sponsoring? Mr. Rogers?

Okay, as far as the bill goes...

1) It is not about religious freedom... at least not in the way that you think. The Catholics are trying to say that this is an infringement of their religious liberty. That is not the case. If the government were requiring Catholics to USE birth control, THAT would be an infringement on their religious freedom. Kind of like the Catholics trying to use this denial of health coverage to PREVENT their non-Catholic employees from using birth control. We call that religious persecution. And by the way, the argument that it is their religious right not to cover contraceptive health care is sheer bull. If a Scientologist employer were to say "Well, we disagree with all medical treatment, we think that all illness should be prayed away, so we're not providing ANY health coverage" i think that our national response would be "We can't let those nuts get away with that." Well, we can't let those Catholic nuts get away with this.

2) It's not about sex. There are a number of reasons why a doctor might prescribe "the pill" for a woman, including to shorten a long menstrual cycle, to alleviate a painful menstrual cycle, and to help with inter uterine polyps and cysts.

3) And if it IS about sex, SO WHAT? Last time that i checked, sexual intercourse between consenting adults is legal. And, if i read my Bible correctly, is actually ENCOURAGED between married couples. Doesn't God "consecrate" the marriage bed? So what about married couples that can't afford to have children? Or simply don't want to? When God told Noah and his people to "go forth, be fruitful and multiply", there were EIGHT people on the face of the Earth, if you buy the story literally. According to the US Census bureau, there are now almost a billion times that many people on the Earth today. I don't think that God would mind if we slacked off on the whole "fruitful" thing for a couple of generations. Also, Rick Santorum, who is very vocal on this has only seven children. Does that mean that he and his wife have only had sex seven times? Actually, with his personality, i don't find that all that difficult to believe. I'm amazed that he found ANYONE to marry him. And argue me no arguments about this, okay? My mom and dad DID practice birth control, and there are six of us over a ten year period. A guy that i used to work with had FIFTEEN children, because he and his wife didn't practice birth control. The oldest worked with us and the youngest was in diapers. And he was only in his forties. This nutjob that i saw on TV in Alaska had TWENTY children. That's what happens when you have sex without birth control. And what about the married women for whom it is actually dangerous or fatal to bear children, but struggle to afford birth control without the help of insurance? Are they and their husbands to be denied the God-gift of sexual pleasure because her Catholic employer doesn't want to provide health coverage for it?

So can we PLEASE drop this particular political football? It, like homosexual marriage is a smoke-screen to keep us from seeing (and, therefore, talking about) more important issues.

Peace.

Randal

Movie Review: Finding Bliss

Year: 1998
Writer: Julie Davis
Director: Julie Davis
Stars: Leelee Sobiesky
Matt Davis
Denise Richards
Kristen Johnston
Jamie Kennedy

Two notes on this film. 1) If you are easily offended by sexual references, do not watch this film. 2) If you are only watching in the hopes of seeing the lovely and talented Leelee Sobiesky naked (which is, i confess, what got me to watch it initially) don't bother. It doesn't happen. Frankly, i think that she's probably never going to do a nude scene, much to my sorrow.

But i'm glad that i did watch it. This is a very funny and charming film. On one level, it's your typical "girl meets boy" story, but there's a lot more happening here than that.

The basic plot is that a talented young filmmaker (Leelee Sobiesky) graduates film school with a script that everyone loves, but no one is willing to take a chance on. Unable to find work in Hollywood as a director, she takes an editing job at a "small, up and coming" studio called Grind Productions that turns out to be a porno studio. Hilarity ensues.

This is Director Davis' fifth film. Her prior efforts included the critically acclaimed "Amy's Orgasm", which blue-nosed Americans insist on calling "Amy's O". Kind of like Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", which ended up being marketed as "Zack and Miri". I think that this is a mistake in every case. I mean, let's face it, for any of us familiar with "The Story of O", "Amy's O" sounds way naughtier than the full title. And my grandmother might go see a film called "Zack and Miri", thinking that it's a nice love story. And it IS a love story. just not a very NICE one.

THE GOOD: This film is brilliant. And the reason that I'm reviewing it three years after its release date is that i had never heard of it. I think that most of America hasn't heard of it because it doesn't star a cartoon character and doesn't have a number or the word REVENGE in the title.

I pride myself on not being too impressed with low humor, but the low humor in this film (and there is quite a bit of it) is handled well and cleverly, mostly because of the performances, especially by Ms. Sobiesky, Kristen Johnston and Jamie Kennedy.

The film also makes trenchant observations about both Hollywood and the adult film industry. For instance, Kennedy (as porn star Dick Harder) says to Sobiesky at one point "You're the best director that i've ever worked with... and i've made 400 films!"

As i mentioned before, the performances are all stellar. Even small parts, like Caroline Aaron and Tim Bagley as Sobiesky's parents are brilliantly written and acted.

THE BAD: There's maybe one too many cliches in the film. I'm not saying that there are a lot, but they're there, and, like Sam Mendes' use of roses to represent sexual frustration and rose petals to represent sexual gratification (WE GET IT ALREADY, SAM!) they're a little hard to miss.

THE UGLY: Jamie Kennedy. And i don't mean his performance. It's flawless. He just consistently looks like such a dumbass in this film that he's hard to look at without laughing. And he's naked WAY too much in the film.

Find this movie on cable. Rent it. Buy it. Get it from Netflix. It shouldn't be overlooked, and, sadly, it has been for far too long.

Peace.

Randal

Two Sacred Duties

I was having a conversation with my nephew over Facebook the other day about our political system. My nephew was talking about what a difficult time he has voting (has never voted, in fact) because of his disillusionment with our political system. As far as I'm concerned if we, as Americans, ever have a chance of getting our political system back from the special interests, we have two sacred duties: one is to vote and the other is to serve jury duty when called.

I voted for Obama in 2008. Like a lot of other people, i was pulled in by his rhetoric, and hoped that i was voting for the first truly liberal president since Jimmy Carter. It turns out that, even if he is a liberal (which i believe) then he has allowed his beliefs to be co-opted by special interests. Like many others, i am disillusioned with the job that he is doing. For the record, i do NOT believe that he is doing anything extra-Constituional. Unlike most Americans, i have actually read the Constitution, studied it in fact, instead of simply allowing someone else to tell me what it says or what it means. The only argument for this is that the requirement for people to buy health insurance (with which i disagree) violates the commerce clause. That may well be, i'll leave that to legal scholars, but if that's the case then every president since the 80's has violated this by requiring us to buy auto insurance. Personally, i've looked at the numbers and i know that if our government provided health care to everyone in the country, we'd be spending less on health care than we do now.

But our political system IS badly messed up. So how do we fix it?

1) VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! If you can't find a candidate who exactly matches your beliefs, then vote for the candidate that most closely matches your beliefs. Small steps. It will take us a long time to fix our system, but it's taken us a long time to mess it up.

2) Think for yourself, don't allow a political party to do your thinking for you. I was talking with someone in 2008 about how the TV manufacturer Vizio has their call center in California instead of India. He said that that he wished that more manufacturers would return jobs to the US. I mentioned that Obama said that he would close the tax loopholes for companies that outsource our jobs. He said "Oh, i'm on the other side." In other words, he was going to vote for McCain, who hadn't even addressed the issue, because his party told him to. THINK FOR YOURSELVES! And if you don't like either of the major candidates, then spend some time researching the "third parties" and see if you like one of them better. I was hoping that the republicans or the third parties would field a candidate that i liked better than the president, but they haven't.

3) THROW THE BUMS OUT! If your representatives do something that you don't agree with, don't reelect them! Years ago in Washington state, i had a supporter of Patty Murray almost in tears because i was supporting a different democratic candidate for her seat in the primary. The reason? Ms. Murray supported the Bush administration's agenda straight down the line and i didn't.

4) Get involved! Be aware of what's happening in your government and get vocal with your friends and your representatives about it. For instance, a few years back the supreme court made a decision on behalf of a company called Citizens United that basically allows special interests to spend unlimited money on behalf of a candidate or proposal. This is a bastardization of our process and needs to be overturned.

5) Protect your rights! I have watched every administration over the last 30 years gradually strip us of our rights, from the right not to wear a seatbelt or a motorcycle helmet to restrictions on where and when we can smoke, and i'm sick of it. I firmly believe in a small government and part of that is not allowing our government to tell us that we can't smoke in certain places, whom we can marry or how we can get high. For the record, i'm a pleasure cigar smoker who despises cigarettes. Smoking legislation started off reasonably enough by trying to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids and has transmuted so badly that in one town in California you're not allowed to smoke in your own apartment or car! That's insane. When the law was passed in Washington state that banned smoking in ALL indoor public areas, it included at least two restaurants who had segregated cigar rooms, one of which was hermetically sealed! We have to protect our rights or what else are we struggling for?

6) Stop bickering! My best friend is a moderate conservative and i am a moderate liberal. We frequently disagree, but have remained best friends despite that, and frequently wonder to each other why the heck our government officials can't do the same thing. I love to watch the Canadian parliament on TV because they're so darned civil to each other. Respect each other's views people. It's the only way.

Peace.

Randal.

Book Review: Stephen King's "11/22/63"

At first glance, this looks like King is back up to his old trick of replacing quantity with quality. Writing, as one reviewer put it in his review of "Under the Dome", publishing his work by the pound instead of by the word. But, with "11/22/63", that is a false impression.

For those who don't know right off the top of their heads, 11/22/63 is the day that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy in Dallas, TX.

This book is about a man who discovers a time "rabbit hole" in the storage room in his diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Every time that he goes through the hole, it takes him to the exact same time and place: a little before noon on a September day in Lisbon Falls. He also discovers that, no matter how long he stays in the past, only two minutes pass in our time, and no matter what he does there everything with the exception of one hobo is exactly the same as it had been before, what he thought of as a "complete reset". After a few jaunts to the past just as a novelty, he starts thinking that maybe he can do something that makes a difference. In this case, he decides to save President Kennedy. Unfortunately, as he's progressing on this endeavor, he is diagnosed with lung cancer, and has to return to the present. So he engages a young friend of his, our main character, to save the president. I won't say anything further about the story. I don't want to be accused of spoiling it.

THE GOOD: Pretty much everything. This is probably the best book that King has written in decades, at least since "Bag of Bones" and possibly "The Stand". It is well-written and well-paced, with some good shocks and characters that you actually come to care for. By the time 11/22/63 actually comes, you find yourself so drawn in to the world that King has created that you don't want to put the book down.

THE BAD: This book is BIG. Almost 900 pages. Don't get me wrong, they are, for the most part, 900 very enjoyable pages, but still... almost 900 pages. When you read this book (and i cannot recommend strongly enough that you do), you will find it a very rewarding experience.

THE UGLY: King's perpetual self-reference. He can't seem to avoid popping little "Easter Eggs" into his books that link them together. There are two that come immediately to mind here. The first, fairly innocuous and enjoyable, is an occasional sighting of a white over red 1958 Plymouth Fury ("Christine"). The second, much more annoying to me, is a side-trip that our main character takes to Derry, Maine where he encounters Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier from one of my least-favorite King novels, "It". There is absolutely no reason for these characters to be here, and the side-trip could have really been placed in any small town. Heck, why not give us a look at a much earlier Castle Rock than we've ever seen? I like Castle Rock much more than i do Derry and would love to see what it looked like in 1958.

All in all, well worth a read. If you buy books, buy it. If you're a library patron, check it out of the library, but be prepared to renew it unless you give yourself much more time to read than i do.

Enjoy!

Peace.

Randal

State of the Union 2012

In the interest of fairness, let me start by saying that I voted for President Obama, and i don't regret that i did. I haven't been entirely pleased with the course of his administration, and probably wouldn't vote for him again if i were given a better option (which it doesn't look like i will).

Let me also give the republicans some kudos here. One thing that really bugs me about the state of the union address in recent years has been the tendency of the senators of the party of the president to give everything that he says a standing ovation while the other party sits and looks dour. It's the same this year, but a lot of the time, although the republicans remain seated, they at least applaud a lot of these statements, which is more than the democrats did for Bush during his state of the union addresses. I still don't like it. Applause is fine, but i wish that they would stay seated to cut the running time of the address by ten or fifteen minutes.

As i type this, the speech is about ten minutes in, and so far what i've heard is a lot of the same kind of tough talk that we heard from during the 2008 election, which has, so far, turned out to be empty and meaningless. A lot of times, these issues that he talks tough on, like making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, come to nothing. The president basically folds like a house of cards, like he did on health care.

I will say that i was glad to hear him mention Master Lock, and their plans to increase their American manufacturing base. He also talked about increasing taxes on companies that outsource and decreasing taxes on companies that remain in America. This is one of the main of his campaign promises that got me to vote for him in the first place, that he has done NOTHING on since he took the oath of office.

I will also say that John Boehner, for whom i have developed a grudging admiration, has found himself nodding at talking points that have become democrat issues, such as keeping American workers employed.

Looking at vice-president Biden, looking positively pasty beside the president and Boehner, with his glow-in-the dark spray-on tan makes me wish again that the president would dump him in his re-election campaign and offer the job to someone who could and would actually exert some authority in the role. A year ago, before his troubles, i would have said Anthony Weiner. Now i think either Corey Booker, or, to be a real ground-breaker, John McCain.

Now the president's talking about something that is long overdue... removing the ability of American students to drop out of school before they are 18. The stipulation was originally put in place during the agricultural times to allow older kids to be more help on the farm. Guess what? We don't NEED that anymore. In order for our economy to be strong now, we need these kids to stay in school, and get an education so that they can compete in a world market. For the record, i also wish that he'd end daylight savings time, which was started to give farmers an extra hour in the morning during planting season and an extra hour in the evening for harvesting. We don't need it anymore. It's also a little like a quote that i read a while back from an Indian chief, whose name i can't remember. He said "Only a white man could think that you can cut a foot from the top of a blanket, sew it on to the bottom of the blanket and think that he has a longer blanket."

"Higher education isn't a luxury, it's a necessity that all American families should be able to afford." Right on, brother.

It was nice to see the president greet Gabrielle Giffords before the address, too. I watched her internet address where she announced her resignation from congress and almost cried at the recovery she has made since she was shot a year ago.

It makes me a little angry, though, to hear the president and other people canonize Steve Jobs. The man only employed a handful of Americans, and the company that built his Ipods and Ipads in China, Foxcom, is one of the worst of the low-grade sweatshops in the world. In the first five months of (i think it was) 2010, ten Foxcon workers committed suicide. As far as i'm concerned, American companies that have their stuff made in a place like that deserve to be run out of business, not praised.

One quick note on a phrase that every president since president Reagan has used at the top of the address... "The state of our union is strong". Bush even said this in 2008, when our economy was falling apart like an American car. What president Obama said, which i admire a great deal, is that "the state of our union is getting stronger".

Now he's calling on AG Holder to start a "financial crime unit" to bust business people who are doing things like the crap that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Good luck, let's see if he actually follows through on this one.

Well, now he's just spouting a bunch of jingoistic nonsense about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, so i think that he's getting ready to wrap things up. I really start getting bored about this time in the speech every year, with all of the patriotic chest-pounding and "gee, ain't we grand? You should reelect us."

Okay, he wrapped up with the usual "God bless the United States of America". As a Christian, i really wish that ALL politicians, democrats and republicans alike, would quit calling on God to endorse their endeavors.

Thanks for reading. If you haven't, please click on an ad or two. It won't cost you anything, but will go a long way to helping my dream of making my living with my words.

Peace.

Randal

Reading List 2011

For anyone interested, here are the books that i read/listened to/started/finished in 2011.

I read a total of 58 books. Usually my fiction and non-fiction runs about 50/50 with the majority running to non-fiction. This year was a little different, partly because i read most of the Sookie Stackhouse books this year. So i read 37 fiction and 21 non-fiction.

Lamb by Christopher Moore
Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume 1 by Greg Cox
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume 2 by Greg Cox
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
The King's Speech by Mark Logue/Peter Conradi
To Reign In Hell by Greg Cox
Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
The Next Decade by George Friedman
Dead To The World by Charlaine Harris
Why You Should Keep Your Farts in a Jar by David Haviland
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Neffinegger
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Dead As A Doornail by Charlaine Harris
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Next 100 Years by George Friedman
The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan
Buried Prey by John Sandford
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Ur by Stephen King
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
White House Diary by Jimmy Carter
Skin Flutes and Velvet Gloves by Dr. Terri Hamilton
Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
Iron John by Robert Bly
Then Everything Changed by Jeff Greenfield
My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
Malcom X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
God, No by Penn Jilette
Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks by Richard Christian Matheson
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
007: Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Armageddon In Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
The Art of War by Sun Tzu translated by John Minford
Seventh Son: Alvin Maker 1 by Orson Scott Card
That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Red Prophet: Alvin Maker 2 by Orson Scott Card
Prentice Alvin: Alvin Maker 3 by Orson Scott Card
The Darwin Awards: Countdown To Extinction by Wendy Northcutt
The Litigators by John Grisham
Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth
David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer
Rant by Chuck Pahlaniuk