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