The Wizard just gazed into his crystal ball got out of a meeting with a vendor at work. The vendor in question just sold $17 million worth of widgets to Facebook. The reason for this? I learned the following stuff about Facebook's website:
1) Facebook users spend 16 billion minutes on the website every day.
2) Facebook users click on over 1 million photographs that are hosted on the site every second.
Wow! Now that's some wizardry!
Last Wednesday evening, the Wizard spent the hours in the way he likes most - wiling the hours away with the Wednesday Knights, playing several rounds of 10-20 minute chess at a Houston area restaurant. The Wizard won one game and lost two, but due to a peculiar set of circumstances, I still took home the third place pidling trophy for my efforts.
Since the Wizard was doing something more important than watching TV or paying attention to politics Wednesday evening, the Wizard missed President Barak Obama's nationally televised address on whether the United States government should pass legislation on mandating that Americans must have universal health insurance coverage.
The reason why the Wizard didn't bother to watch the President's televised address was because he knew that he wouldn't miss much. That belief was validated when I picked up my old fashioned, fish wrapper version of the Houston Chronicle yesterday morning before I headed off to work. The front page story, carried from over the news wires, was of South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, who cried out "You Lie!" when President Barak Obama stated that the new universal health insurance legislation would not cover or benefit illegal immigrants.
Much commentary has been inked and typed over Congressman Wilson's outburst, which he later offered an apology to the President that Mr. Obama accepted. Fairly typical of the commentary offered was by this guy, who complained about the halls of Congress no longer being a place of civility. The Chronicle editorial board spoke of the idea that there was no room for such rudeness in the debate over the future of health care and one-sixth of the American economy.
The Wizard takes a bit of a different view over Congressman Wilson's outburst. It wasn't that Mr. Wilson was rude to the President of the United States - he was. But plenty of people are rude to the President (or for that matter, just about any politician) every day in many sorts of ways. Often that rudeness towards others could be justified in some way. Sometimes we read about it in print, or we never hear about it as they may be words whispered between friends in private. To the Wizard however, it had a lot more to do with the idea that one man called another man a liar to his face in public.
Politicians do lots of stupid things, much like the rest of us. Age is no barrier to doing stupid things, thinking of stupid things to do, or for that matter not knowing how to run your own life. Back in 2001, the Wizard worked many hours on the City of Houston TABOR / Revenue Cap proposition drive. After City Secretary Anna Russell failed to verify, after 48 days, that we had 20,000 valid signatures to place the proposition drive on the November 2001 ballot, I suggested to our most prominent plaintiff in our lawsuit against the City of Houston that we get a mob of people out and drive our cars in circles around City Hall, honking our horns as we went. This gentleman, who happens to be older, much wealthier, and wiser than I was (and am) threw water on the idea. He said to me something that I never will forget. He told me that "Republicans just don't do that sort of thing."
I got the message, but it's a message worth repeating to myself. Even when something does not go your way, try to learn from it and move on. Don't try to act like a jackass.
So, fast forward eight years and what do I find Republicans doing? Well, I find that lots of people who call themselves Republicans acting just in the same way that I suggested they do eight years ago in front of City Hall. They are running around holding rallies, flash mobs, and acting like a bunch of jackasses. Those mobs and rallies are being attended by Republicans who tell me that they deserve their Social Security check because they've paid into it, or that they don't want politicians to touch Medicare because they like it. Every time they do that, they're acting like a jackass. Every time a Republican politician proposes some expensive new public welfare entitlement, they're acting like a jackass. In my view, that means that both Bush the elder and Bush the younger were a pair of jackasses. Arguably, the last politician who wasn't a jackass was Ronald Reagan.
And so it is. Hearing things like Congressman Wilson's outburst, or learning that California assemblyman Mike Duvall having to step down because he was caught on tape telling salacious stories of his romps with mistresses lobbyists, point to a political party that has been electing too many guys who turn into jackasses once they get into office, but has not been doing enough intellectual thinking, offering new ideas, alternatives, nor is it a party with members who have spine. Otherwise, the future of the Republican party will belong to the Mike Duvalls, and the Joe Wilsons of the world, and that's not a party worth paying attention to or voting for. Why? Because deep down, those guys (and they constituency they represent) are no different from the jackasses who happen to be sitting on the other side of the aisle.
Wizard
Addendum: In today's Houston Chronicle, the newspaper carries the AP wire story about President Obama now holding the bullhorn. The story states that
Keeping Americans safe, the president says, is "the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning; it's the last thing that I think about when I got to sleep at night."
Bush used to say the same thing.
That's too bad, because both men didn't swear an oath upon ascending to office to keep Americans safe. They swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
Further addendum: A story just came across the wires from Politico. It wonders whether petty GOP cranks are dominating the public debate.
Well gentle readers, the Wizard just got back from watching the movie Up. I wish I had seen this movie earlier. My supervisor at work, as well as a couple of friends all raved about this film. If you really need a lift, or want to watch a film that will make you cry, or wash you soul clean, then go see this one.
Wizard
This past Friday at the Houston Property Rights Association luncheon, a long time HPRA member, Ronnie Samms, brought in Raw Prints, his 1961 yearbook from Landrum Junior High School. The reason he brought his junior high school yearbook to the gathering was because he wanted to show us that there was a Rifle Club at the school! Guns were kept at the school, in fact they were locked up in the shop. According to Ronnie, the club had after school shooting practices.
Ronnie was not a member of the club, but he did know some people who were. At some point he told me that he would send me a photo copy of the photos that were taken of students who were members of the club. I did see the picture. There were some 20 students who were kneeling down, holding their rifles up above and out in front of them. If I do get the photo copies, I'll rewrite this entry to link to the image.
Needless to say, much has changed. As another HPRA member noted, how much legislation gets passed on the grounds of we have to do X because we need to be sure that X never happens again.In this case, guns were taken out of schools, probably on grounds that parents would sue the district in the event that any violence would take place on account of guns being on the school premises.
Enough for now.
Wizard
This past Sunday, the Wizard took his weekly stroll down to the nearby HEB grocery store, a walking trip that is about 12 minutes in length. I came back home with three of my eco-friendly, reusable HEB grocery bags (promoted by Eva Longoria!) full of groceries that set me back about $70. It was a bit of a strain, as one of the bags had two twelve packs of soda in it. The reusable bags are easily strong enough to survive such a jaunt, but it's never easy to walk home with 2 twelve packs of drinks in one bag. That is, unless that's all I am carrying. One twelve pack is fine, even when packed with lots of other groceries. Nonetheless, my exertions were enough to invoke sympathy from a neighbor of mine, who opened the door for me towards the end of my trip home.
Houston has long been crucified as being completely auto dependent. Complaints abound about Houstonians having to make a proverbial mile drive just to get a quart of milk, or so goes the urban legend. Actually, my grocery store is only about six-tenths of a mile away from me. Better yet, I have access to two convenience stores within 300 yards of where I live, both of which will sell me a quart of milk albeit at a higher price than HEB will. But then again, that is why they are called convenience stores. You pay for the convenience.
Yet, even that relatively short walk is enough for many of my neighbors to notice that I do this. The girls seem to be scared about walking to the store for fear of getting robbed, even though they would be walking down the greatest and busiest street in Houston. Some of my neighbors seem to think that walking to nearby places makes one look like a homeless bum in the eyes of others, but I could give a damn what others think. Still others find quaint amusement over the fact that I walk around the neighborhood to get my stuff done, like one couple who waived merrily to me recently one morning before work when I came walking back after picking up my dry cleaning.
And yet, it turns out that my area of town is quite walkable. There is quite a bit of stuff that can be reached within that 12 minute walking radius from around my abode, including quite a few restaurants, my dentist, my dry cleaners, liquor stores, shopping for hardware, office supplies, some furniture, physical fitness gear, not to mention convenience stores. I have considered buying a bicycle, which would make the Galleria, at 2 miles distance, reachable within 12 minutes or so. I sometimes wonder why my neighbors don't walk more to get to nearby places, but it doesn't bother me too much. They have their reasons. Some might cite trying to scurry across eight lanes of traffic across Westheimer, but even fraidy cats could be invited to walk if skyways were built that crossed the length of the street.
So how walkable is my neighborhood? Well gentle readers, there is a website now out there now called Walk Score that attempts to answer that very question. The website declares that it has an algorithm that it uses to measure how walkable your neighborhood is. Just punch in your street address and presto! you get a score on a scale of 1-100 which measures how walkable your neighborhood is. The higher the score generated, the more walkable your neighborhood.
So, how does the Wizard's neighborhood measure up on this walkability score? I punched in my address and discovered that, lo and behold, my neighborhood comes in at a very respectable 77 out of 100, indicating that, yes, my neighborhood is very walkable. According to Walk Score's gradings of cities around America, my neighborhood would come in at at #4 out of the top 40 cities, beating out every other city with the exception of San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Indeed according the the Walk Score website, I am able to get around without owning a car.
I could conceive of trying to live in my neighborhood without a car. If I lived within a distance of 2-3 miles of a job - say if I worked in the Galleria or off of Post Oak Boulevard - I could just about do it. Even if I had kids, they could take a bicycle to nearby schools. My main problem would be getting to and from my various social activities, as many of my friends live and meet some distance from where I live. As it is, I drive only about 6,000 miles per year, a figure low enough to prompt an auto mechanic friend of mine to say "Wow, you really baby your car!"
Walk Score has a Walk Score map of Houston, so you can look up your neighborhood. My old neighborhood scored an 86 out of 100, which was no surprise to me since I used to walk to a Borders bookstore, as well as a Blockbuster, Book Stop, the post office, a grocery store, and a bakery. And yet, again, none of my neighbors walked around my old neighborhood except to walk their dogs, much like my neighbors do where I live now.
So why won't Houstonians walk when according to Walk Score, they live in perfectly walkable neighborhoods? I've stated some reasons my neighbors have given me above, but who knows? Maybe my old neighbors just didn't feel like walking to the grocery store then and my current neighbors don't feel like walking to the grocery store now. Better yet, one wonders why the City of Houston planning department has poured an enormous amount of time and money planning urban corridors, with the expressed purpose of getting people to walk, when they already live in what are arguably walkable neighborhoods.
Wizard
Well, well, well. I'll be adding addendums to this blog entry as the day wears on, but as gentle readers know, the Wizard was working the Houston Tea Party events as a member of the welcoming committee. It was my job to act as a crier, encouraging tea party attendees to sign up so that we could get an accurate head count of the number of people attending.
One of the members of our committee took all of our sign in cards and sheets home. She told us that there were so many people waiting to get in at the start of the event that two women volunteered on the spot to join our committee. She stayed up until 3:00am this morning counting the number of signatures.
We collected 8,532 signatures for the event. We filled up 248 single pages of 20 signatures, 31 pages where signatures filled up both sides of the sheet (40 signatures), and 139 sign in cards. The discrepancy between the numbers of sheets filled up and the total attendees is accounted for because some people signed in for themselves and their spouses, boy or girl friends, children, or other family members. Since some people indicated to us that they did not want to sign anything but rather just attend the event, we believe that there were probably about 10,000 people who attended the Houston Tea Party.
Incredibly, we had 389 people check off the "I want to volunteer" column, indicating they want to work for future events. We may well put them to work, as we are contemplating holding an event for July 4th.
More later. It's time to go back to work.
Addendum: Here is a photograph of the Wizard at work at the April 15th gathering.
Wizard
And so the world awoke to news of the death of the King of Chess, Bobby Fischer. There is little I can add here that probably hasn't been written elsewhere, other than to add that it somehow all seems so right that Bobby would leave us at the numerical age - 64 - which also happens to be the number of squares that are on a classical chess board.
I have vague memories of the tall, lanky, intent, and striking looking Bobby when he was at the height of his playing powers. I can dimly remember as a small boy that my older brother was wrapped up in following the 1972 Spassky-Fischer match up. I remember that he used to play with my mother and that I would watch them, wondering about this strange game and how it was supposed to work. I do remember watching Bobby play tennis with Gail Goodrich at a tournament, but then it seemed that he disappeared from the public consciousness. I went to a parochial school where athletics was the past time of choice and none of my neighborhood friends played chess. In another time and another place, I might have become a master level player myself, but we were fated to play the newly created type of game called role playing games as teenagers. We then saw the onset of video game arcades in the 1980's, the precursors of today's home computer games. As it was, my memories of Bobby had faded like a ghost.
But it need not have been that way, and much of whether young people a generation ago might have picked up chess as a past time would in fact have depended upon Bobby Fischer. Chess, as a past time, has to compete with all other past times for time, money, and social attention, in order to thrive. In that sense, the Royal Game is no different in needing a charismatic figure than basketball needing Earvin Magic Johnson or Michael Jordon, or golf needing Tiger Woods. As it was, since he dropped out of the game, and out of public view, the surge of interest in the game - the "Fischer Boom" - was brief, like a fiery comet in the night. Bobby was literally fielding offers to play chess in Vegas for millions of dollars in the aftermath of his 1972 triumph. Anatoly Karpov became the first man to become a chess millionaire, but Fischer would have beaten Karpov to that title by 15-20 years had he stayed playing. It is a widely accepted observation that Fischer was literally 20 years ahead of his time when he was at the height of his game. Most people have no idea how much effort Fischer put into studying the game. Frank Brady wrote in Bobby Fischer - Profile of a Prodigy that Bobby owned some 480 chess books and thousands of chess magazines from all over the world in his apartment, many of which written in Russian, a language which Bobby taught himself how to read. He wrote that nearly all of the books had annotation notes written by Bobby under their board position diagrams. He had to part with some of them because he didn't have enough room to store all of them.
My thought is that Fischer, had he been a different person, would have held the title until around 1990 or so, probably losing it to a late 20's Garry Kasparov, who by that time had finally broken through the 2800 Elo rating barrier. What a match that would have been! Even today - 35 years later and armed with 3 gigahertz, 1 terabye sized disk computational power, and research assistants at their disposal - there are only perhaps 4 players in the world (Vladamir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, and Veselin Topalov, as well as Kasparov) who have achieved Elo ratings that are generally equal to or greater than that which was achieved by Fischer, who incidentally did all of his analysis on his own in the final age before the advent of personal computers.
Fischer could have easily amassed a fortune of over $100,000,000 had he kept playing, and could have been a hero to two entire generations of young American children. Instead, he found that once he had achieved the summit of being recognized as the greatest chess player in the world, he found that he literally didn't know what to do with himself. He gave a good chunk of his 1972 Championship winnings to a church which he then denounced (and with good reason) for malfeasance. Interest in the game cooled down after Bobby refused to defend his title in 1975. The game never really recovered and as a result, most really strong players struggle here in America to earn enough money to pay the bills. An acquaintance of mine who is a master level chess player has told me that there are only about 200-300 master level players in America (with an elo rating of 2200 or higher) who actively play the game. Most simply retire or go on to do something more lucrative.
It's hard to say where Bobby's anti-Semitism started, but it seems to me that it probably had the same roots which caused Bobby to be so difficult with his rock star, prima donna like demands which he imposed on tournament directors and game promoters. Maybe the rage from having been brought up in an unstable, fatherless household was too much for the chess board to bottle up, but that's an issue for the psychiatrists to chew over. As it was, I still find it hard to believe that he is gone. I hope that God has forgiven him and that he has left us for a better place.
Bobby Fischer - RIP.
Wizard
This is the fourth of a series of redirects from previous static web pages from which I had written book reviews. Wizard
========================================
January 6, 2004: The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and The Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman.
Bear in mind while you read this review that I am an agnostic.
Charles Freeman has written a book about an extraordinarily important historical matter, one that is almost always glossed over in the history books. That question is, Why was it that Europe went through a 1000 year period known as the Dark Ages, and later the Middle Ages, between the Fall of Rome and the Renaissance?
Although I love reading history just as much as the next history buff over, I had never seriously considered what the real answer to this question might have been. For years, I assumed that a standard answer (if there is one) to this question would have been something like this: Rome was sacked in 410 A.D. (and again in 476 A.D.), and with it books were burned by a bunch of barbarians like the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths who were not accustomed to living a cultured life the way that the Greeks and Romans were. Ergo, the wealthy and civilized Roman Empire in the West faded into memory, and its cultural achievements were not appreciated by those who came thereafter, learning didn't pick up again for a 1000 years.
Buzzer goes off. AAAAA wrong!
Actually, I was kinda sorta close in a few regards. In his book, Freeman leads the reader through the classical Greek age of the competitive city states. He relates how the Greek civilization of the 5th century B.C fostered a remarkable culture and spirit of tolerating intellectual inquiry into every sphere of human interest. This went for the sciences, math, philosophy, rhetoric, religion, and architecture. Indeed, there was something of an atmosphere of one upsmanship and competitiveness amongst the Greek intellectuals which would accept the achievements of the great, while trying to improve on previous achievements.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Greek civilization and rationality asserted itself. The Greeks, especially Aristotle, denoted boundaries between what was knowable and would could not be known. They ascertained and denoted the ideas of deductive and inductive reasoning. They also tolerated inquiry while remaining pious to religious (and to remind the reader that the Greeks were pagan) tenants. There was tolerance between Muthos and Logos. This spirit of inquiry survived through the age of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander "the Great," and eventually spread to other areas of the classical world where Greeks eventually settled, such as Alexandria and Sicily.
The Romans picked up on this spirit of the Greeks when they conquered the Greek peninsula before the coming of Christ. I've read elsewhere the when the Romans encountered the classical Greek culture, they were definitely had their eyes opened. Some aspects of Greek life, such as participating in sporting events in the nude were abhorred, but Romans loved rhetoric (think Cicero), and added their own achievements, such as road building, public baths, and architecture. Scientists such as Ptolemy continued to make advances in fields such as astronomy.
Moreover, in the sphere of religion, the Romans were as tolerant as the Greeks about the faiths of conquered peoples. Deities were swapped and matched between faiths, and faiths such as Mithraism were widespread. However, one faith that was founded during this time was not tolerant of others - Christianity.
Freeman's book lays the downfall of inquiry and reason in the Roman world at the feet of Christianity. Mind you, it was not the teachings of Jesus Christ that were to blame for this. Jesus, being without sin, preached in his ministry the message of love, forgiveness, charity, and walked with sinners and the downtrodden. The stellar ethics of Jesus were those of Excellence. They were worthy of one whom could be a Son of God.
Freeman blames much of what turned into what we know of as Christianity today at the feet of the apostle Paul. He points out that Paul had a bit of a precarious position amongst the early Church leaders, as Paul did not have personal knowledge of Jesus the way that Peter and others had. Freeman characterizes Paul as someone who seems uncomfortable with sexuality, to which this day is still a hot button issue in both Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. Also, Freeman believes that when Paul went on his ministry to spread the Good Word, he eventually reaches Athens, where Freeman thinks that Paul may have taken an intellectual beating at the hands of the wise and learned in the Great City. Freeman thinks that this leads to Paul articulating a strain of thought within Christianity that frowns on the thinking of human philosophers. Better to not strain the brain about the world around you. Place your trust in God as man will not profit from inquiring too harshly of the world around us. Indeed St. Augustine warns of and condemns the "dangers" of having a mind of curiosity in his Confessions, written some 400 years later.
Two other major developments warrant mention. The first is that eventually the emperor Constantine makes the decision to adopt Christianity as the state religion in the year AD 323. Freeman characterizes this decision as one of pragmatism on the part of Constantine, who is trying to keep the empire together. Indeed paganism continued to flourish for some time.
However, the early Christian Church was a church that was plagued with many internecine wars. These wars were due to the fact that an entire swath of ideas and versions of Christianity had sprung up in the centuries that followed the death and resurrection of Christ. Writings and movements, such as the Gnostic Gospels, Arianism, and Donatism all had wide followings. Eventually accusations of heresy were tossed between the followers of various Church movements, which threatened the stability of the Church and broader social stability within the Empire. Added to this potent stew of social unrest was the fact that after Christianity was adopted as the state religion, there was money to be made via patronage. Eventually, various emperors in the later days of the Empire step in to enforce their own version of orthodoxy in an effort to quiesce matters.
All of these matters combine eventually to stifle the atmosphere of tolerance that was needed to sustain the freedom of inquiry that is so crucial to progress in other forms of human endeavor. Reason was squashed in favor of Faith. In all, Freeman's book is a must read for non - academic students of history.
Addendum: In one of my earliest blog entries, I exchanged emails with Mr. Freeman, which he allowed me to publish.
Wizard.
As noted earlier, this blog entry is part of an ongoing redirection of old static web pages of book reviews. Wizard.
====================================
Febuary 1, 2004
It took me about 2 weeks to get through Elaine Pagels' 1979 academic smash, The Gnostic Gospels. It wasn't because the book is long. At 151 pages, it isn't. It mainly had to do with the fact that I had other things going on, which made my reading of this book come in fits and starts.
Pagels, a professor of Religion at Princeton University, is famous for having written a series of book length studies having to do with the the discovery of the so - called, Nag Hammadi books, after the area in which these documents were discovered. Pagels starts off The Gnostic Gospels by telling the riveting story of how in December 1945, an Egyptian peasant named Muhammad Ali al - Samman discovered a meter high jar while out in the desert. Inside were 13 papyrus books that were bound with leather. He took them home and laid them on the ground next to the family's oven. His mother later admitted that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with straw to kindle fires.
Reading that fact makes one's heart sink after finding out what was on those rolls of papyrus. For indeed, amongst the texts were such priceless writings such as, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to the Egyptians, the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Phillip, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Secret Book of John, amongst many other texts. They were written in Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christians, and were probably translations of earlier Greek writings. Pagels later writes that scholar Frederik Wisse has suggested that monks in the nearby monastary of St. Pachomius may have had the Nag Hammadi texts within their Devotional library. In 367, when Athanasius, the Archbishop of Alexandria sent orders that "apocryphal books" should be purged, the St. Pachomius monks may have hidden the books and buried them on the nearby cliffs, only to be found 1600 years later.
Nearly as insane was the political and academic wars which were set off by the discovery of these texts. The Egyptian government claimed control of the texts, which had leaked onto the black market. Meanwhile, scholars battled for access to the Gnostic Gospels, which they recognized would make their careers. Reading this early part of Pagel's book easily beats anything found in a Hollywood film.
Pagels divides The Gnostic Gospels into six chapters, each pertaining to important questions which the Gospels raise about the early Christian Church. The texts raise questions over whether the death and resurrection of Jesus should be viewed historically or symbolically. There were battles over what the roles of an institutionalized church and its officially ordained bishops should play in guiding faith. There clashing views over the role of women in the faith and the church. The early members of the Church was often persecuted. Should believers be martyrs, or should they spare themselves? What is evil? Is the faith one of self knowledge and the pursuit of spiritual self discovery, or is it a faith where you share your beliefs and participate in a wider community? Pagels' book shows that there were many, many sharp dividing issues which split the Christian church in its first 400 years.
Pagels also believes that the institutionalized church is what preserved the faith. Otherwise, the teachings of Christ may well have fallen by the wayside, as have the teachings of so many other faiths throughout history. She goes on to give other reasons why the Catholic Church prevailed over the Gnostic teachings. Among them are ideas such as the issue that the Catholic faith was non - discriminatory in whom it taught, whereas some Gnostics were very judgmental in whom they believed were ready to receive teaching. Also, the Catholic faith tried to make the faith touch you, whereas the Gnostic teachings required more of an effort on the part of believers.
Pagels shows what kinds of heretical charges were tossed between Gnostics and the Catholics. She goes on with this issue, showing that it was quite probable that heretical charges - and what types of heretical charges - were often tied to the political and social situations in which theologians found themselves in.
The Nag Hammadi texts have reopened an entire Pandora's box of questions regarding the followers and teachings of Christ. Pagels points out that it is rather extraordinary that these texts were found in our time, which is one of atheism, agnosticism, and belief in man's power. It would have been an entirely different story if these texts had been found 1,000 years ago. In all, Pagels has written an admirable introductory book to subject that should fascinate all open minded people, the subject of the foundations of Christianity.
British classicist Anthony Everitt, a professor, arts council advisor, and a writer for the European press about cultural matters, has greeted the Third Millennium by writing a wonderful introduction to the life and times of the man many people think of as the greatest Orator and lawyer of all time - the classical Roman politician Marcus Tulllius Cicero. The book Everitt produced is - at 330+ pages - easily accessible to modern readers, explaining not only the life of his subject in a clear eyed, lucid manner, but more importantly Everitt takes time out to explain the breathtaking and momentous events in Roman history in which Cicero himself was a player. It was Cicero's fate, to have lived (and died) in the death throes of the Roman Republic, when it finally collapsed into being an dictatorial Empire.
Everitt starts his story on March 15, 44 B.C. where he tries to describe the scene of the assassination of Julius Caesar from what it must have been like for Cicero, who happened to have a front row view of the grisly scene. But in a deft manuever, Everitt quickly shifts his tale to a 12 - 13 page synopsis which covers of the overall socio - political situation that Rome finds herself in during the last 100 years before the failure of the Republic. He shows us the Roman Constitution, describing the formal political posts within the government, including the Roman Senate, the roles of Tribunes (representing "the people"), Quaestors (officials who collected taxes), Adeiles (which put on civic events - at their own expense!), Praetors who acted as Judges and administered laws, all of which had to be served before one could run for Consul - the supreme executive in the Republic. During this part of the story, Everitt also discusses the origins of the terrible problem of land reform and redistribution within the Republic, which threatens powerful vested interests. By doing this, Everitt provides the reader a clear eyed account of the the main tectonic forces which were causing the Republic to tear itself apart. He plainly states his belief that the Roman Constitution had too many checks built within its system and that major social questions and problems of the day were left to fester simply because they could not be resolved within the political system as it was during Cicero's day.
Everitt then starts his tale with Cicero's beginnings in 106 B.C. when he was born to a well to do provincial family in the town of Arpinum, which was about 70 miles southeast of Rome. Cicero and his brother were given a good education by their father and when they came of age, their father arranged to have his boys educated by some well regarded rhetoricians of the day in Rome itself. Cicero's background as an provincial outsider, who did not belong to any of the old time prominent families of the city, was to have an interesting effect on his career. It was remarkable that this outsider was, within a span of 20 years, to go from being an unknown lawyer to reaching the highest pinnacles of power within the Republic.
Along the way, Everitt shows us glimpses of Cicero's teachers, such as Scaevola, Diodotus, and Philo. We see the young Cicero meet his wife Terentia, his children - especially his love for his daughter Tullia, as well as some of his contemporaries, - the young Julius Caesar, Pompey (whom he met during his brief military career), and his greatest friend the urbane Titus Pomponius Atticus, known to us simply as Atticus. It is to Atticus that we owe a huge debt of gratitude for much of our knowledge of Cicero. For it was with Atticus that Cicero kept up a 25+ year correspondence of letters, many of which have miraculously survived and have come down to us.
We also get to see Cicero, who was an extremely precocious boy, got swept up in the excitement of watching the great orators of the day slug out in (often corrupt) legal duels held the legendary Roman Forum. Early on, Cicero resolved that he too would be a lawyer. Cicero worked hard at studying rhetoric and perfecting his oratorical style, eventually writing a book on the topic. It would be his sheer ability to persuade jurists and public opinion that would bring him to the pinnacle of Roman life and ensure his memory.
Everitt shows us the effects of the acts of the ruthless dictator Lucius Felix Sulla, Consul when Caesar, Atticus, Pompey, and Cicero were in their teens and twenties. Sulla, was to cast a long shadow over the career paths of each of these men. Sulla was an army general and politician, who among other things had instigated a proscription amongst the Roman elite when the boys were young. This was to have differing effects amongst the young men: Caesar was to become something of a radical, who eventually decimated the Republic. Atticus, though staying involved at the edges of public life, essentially moves to Greece and settles into a life of making money and living Epicurean values. Meanwhile, Cicero who was horrified at the chaos and turbulence that afflicted his youth, became attached to a conservatism in which he felt the Republic had to be saved by means of bringing the various social groups together and uplifting "better" men into public life.
Everitt guides us through the long arc of Cicero's career, where after he reaches the pinnacle of power, he is ruined by a political rival, Clodius, then later rehabilitated. Early on, we see Cicero's famed corruption trial against Verres, the governor of Sicily, by which Cicero first comes to public notice. We see Cicero being banished from Rome by Clodius and later on govern a province. Everitt shows us Cicero's interest in training and promoting the careers of younger men, his retreat into books when things weren't going well, and he covers Cicero's incredible burst of writing in the last years of his life before he at last falls victim to a new Civil War era proscription by Marc Antony and Octavian at the age of 63. Everitt also touches points at times in his narrative on some of the great "what if" questions that might have changed the fate of what happened. Everitt includes a post mortem, where he concludes his narrative over the outcomes of the Roman Civil war between Caesar and the Republican forces.
This book is a first rate book for those who want to read a solid introductory tale of what classical Roman life was like. Everitt also includes a bibliography for those who are interested in further reading into a topic of Roman history and the lives of its notable citizens, as well as including some questions that readers can discuss (or ponder) once they have finished his tome. Trust me, Everitt has written a book that is a page turner. Once you have started reading this book, you just can't wait to see what's going to happen next. And that's how every biography or history book should be written.
The Wizard rates this book an A+.
Wizard.
I am wishing everyone out there a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The Wizard is celebrating some of his 2007 Christmas by doing a bit of site clean up. Notably some static web pages that I have had hanging out there for years, and which look as though they were created in 1997, are being redirected to my blog page. Hence, the next 5 entries to be found here are redirects from elsewhere.
Enjoy!
March 27, 2004
Some time in 2002 or 2003, I was at home one evening watching The History Channel on television, when a curious television program came on. The program was entitled A History of God. Broadly speaking, the program was essentially about how our ideas of God have taken shape over time and what forces may have been involved in how the process took place. Being the history buff that I am, I was absolutely spell bound by both the subject matter and by the things that some of the people who appeared on the program had to say. In particular, there was one dignified British woman by the name of Karen Armstrong who enunciated some fascinating thoughts about the matter of God, and how our concepts of the Divine have both stayed stable and how they have evolved. The program mentioned that Ms. Armstrong, a former nun but who is now practicing writer / journalist, was the author of a book called "A History of God," so I wrote down this information and promptly headed over to a nearby bookstore to hunt down the book.
As for the book itself, I've read a lot of books in my life, but A History of God is a challenge to read. The paperback version of Armstrong's tome tops off at 399 pages, with another 60 pages of definitions, citations, notes and bibliography thrown in for good measure.
The book is composed of 11 chapters. The book's first 5 chapters start, as one might imagine, at the beginning of faith, and take the reader through the time of Muhammad. All of this was worth reading. However, in chapters 6 - 7 (and part of chapter 8), she writes about how God became the God of the philosophers and mystics during the era of the Middle Ages. This part of the book proved to be rather difficult to read because there are a few times where she - in a sense - repeats herself because by this time, many of the ideas of God that our ancestors had are now familiar to the reader. The book does pick up towards the end when in the last 2 - 3 chapters, she starts to approach more recent centuries. She begins to write about the rise of human rationalism and science. Topics like the "death of God," what ideas may we have about God in the future, or whether God even has a future are examined.
This is a difficult book to review, not because the topic is difficult, but because it is hard to distill so many ideas and thoughts into a relatively short review that touches on the many topics and ideas in this book. I may find that I might rewrite this book review sometime in the future in order to encompass matters I might have missed, or to extend the review so that I write more about the last half of the book.
I should clarify what I mean by the book being a challenge to read. The book is in fact quite readable and quite extraordinary. Ms. Armstrong has a gift of being able to delineate and get to the root of some complicated matters involving monotheism (the book does touch on Buddhism and Hindu ideas too), and do so in a way that a layman can grasp. Where the book becomes a challenge is that the reader has to make sure that he / she is staying alert and following along with the vast, ongoing train of Ms. Armstrong's great story. Readers encounter many personages, nation states, conceptual ideas, and conflicts that Ms. Armstrong covers in the course of this book. For example, at different times in history, men of different times and places have reached similar ideas about God, but in order to remember who had reached these ideas before, one has to look back at who had reached such conclusions before and why they had come to these conclusions. I found that in order to really get the most out of this book, I had to reread the book a second time and take notes in order to keep track of everything.
Armstrong starts the book off with her own story of her religious and spiritual journey. She clearly had some experiences that I think most people can smile at. For example, she writes about how easy it is for most people to conceive of Satan, but how are we to conceive of God? Or, for that matter, isn't the majesty of God supposed to be inconceivable to begin with?
I myself went to a parochial school growing up and I had to chuckle at Ms. Armstrong's efforts to "find God" when she was a nun. We all know full well that Satan is a red colored fellow with horns, but are we supposed to think of God as some huge, old, bearded fellow with a book that has everyone's name in it. Doesn't God look down on us from the heavens, waiting for us to die so that He can look at our report card and check off whether we are allowed into Heaven? Well gentle readers, things are not quite so simple in this world, and I'm sure things aren't so simple in the next one either!
There have been many theories about the origins of religion, but Armstrong writes about the idea that the ancients may have had ideas about religion because they may have been trying to deal with issues of the Unseen. She writes that what makes religious belief come alive for people is that religion works for them. Ideas and thoughts that may be relevant at one point in time might very well make little sense years later. People are spiritual animals, Armstrong points out that there are other ways in which we can have deeply meaningful experiences other than those experienced by religious belief.
Armstrong writes about the influence of Babylonian and Sumerian gods and their influence on monotheism. The Babylonians (and later the Greeks) thought that gods were not distant, unaccessible, or shut off from humanity. Ergo there was not any need for revelation. Faith wasn't something intellectual, or organized into Dogmas. Rather faith for the ancients was something that was held because the God Yahweh (or any other belief that was held) made good on his / her promises. Because of this view about faith, the Israelites had quite a struggle trying to let go of their old deities like Baal, and embrace Yahweh.
The God Yahweh was, as many Christians know, a jealous God. He (Armstrong traces how God became a "He"), also is a partisan God. Yes, Old Testament incarnations of Yahweh were later to be a source of frustration and consternation to later Jews and Christians. Similarly, the Unmoved First Mover of Plato and Aristotle seemed to many to be elitist. Later admirers of Greek thought, including educated Muslims and Jews, were to admit this. There must be some kind of Anthropormophism in religion, because we won't be able to identify with any faith that doesn't have such an element in it.
Religious faith needs to be effective in order to be successful, writes Armstrong. We watch while as the Israelites are overrun and exiled to Babylon, Yahweh makes a transformation. Yahweh becomes a Mover of History. Even enemies of the Israelites are His instruments. And yet, God relies on Man to act in the world, which became an important idea in Judiasm.
Later, we see the encounter of Greek philosophy with the Jewish faith. Armstrong devotes an entire chapter to the coming of the New Messenger, Jesus of Nazareth. She writes about the slow development of the concept that Jesus was Divine, which takes place over the next four centuries. She writes about the theological struggles that took place in early Christianity as Christian thinkers from all over the Roman empire battled to come up with a "workable" theology of The Trinity, which could encompass the story of Jesus and how Jesus the Man could also Divine.
Some interesting issues that Armstrong writes about were about how Jews, who used to be proselytizers of their faith, stopped doing so. This was because groups of monotheists, called God Fearers, who did not want to adapt all of the "baggage" of Judiasm, such as diet and various Laws, eventually convert to the new Christian faith. Jews became much more suspicious of converts. There were many converts to the new faith, but in the early centuries, such people were often slaves or lower classed people. What Armstrong believes brought "socially better off" people towards Christianity was the impressive social welfare efforts of the Church, as well as the intellectual efforts on the part of some educated Romans to expound on the new faith. Eventually of course, Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Armstrong also delves into the difficult legacy that St. Augustine left Christianity, especially regarding the roles of women and sexuality. Of course, this was only part of St. Augustine's legacy. St. Augustine was having to deal with the world shaking fact that Rome herself had been sacked by barbarians in the year 410 A.D. This event literally marked the end of the empire, and nobody knew what was going to come next. His great polemic, The City of God, was partly written to answer the charge made by pagans that Rome had abandoned her earlier gods, which had protected her for over 1100 years. It was when the new God had been adapted, so went the thought, that Rome fell.
Another strong area of the book revolves around the story of Muhammad. She writes about the changes that were going on in Muhammad's world, and about how the Last Prophet, who had never read the Bible, nor had ever heard of any of the Patriarchs, ended up having a story that nearly parallels the stories of all of the previous Prophets and Messengers of God. She writes about the political genius of Muhammad, who managed to weave together a workable faith that synthesized the traditional laws and customs of Arabian tribes, along with a strong element of togetherness. His message was that all men were the same before the One God. All peoples of God, including Jews and Christians, were to be seen as brothers. This chapter is a must read for anyone.
The story of Muhammad reminds me that one of the strongest points of this book is that it gives just enough insight into the character of each and every person who makes an appearance to make the book nearly as much a history of religious figures as it is a history of God. There are many more figures in the later half of the book. I will not write about the last half of the book because that would make this review twice as long as it already is. I hope that reading this review will give you enough of a feel about what the book is like to read. I may add a "part II" to this review in the future.
If that is not enough for you, I will end this book review with one last story. I purchased two additional copies of this book for two co - workers who were the type of people who I thought would be interesting in reading Ms. Armstrong's book. One of my co - workers was a girl, a college student in her early 20's, who happens to be from a practising Muslim family. She told me that this book just absolutely blew her away and that this was one of the best books she has ever read! She told me that her father, who is a highly educated man, saw her copy of this book and immediately stole the book out of her backpack! She told me that her father was so amazed and enthralled by this book that he would not give the book back to her so she could finish it. This book was a New York Times best seller and the Wizard highly recommends that you find yourself a copy and see for yourself why this is so.
Wizard.
It was front page news the Wednesday before Thanksgiving on Houston's paper of note that Archbishop Daniel DiNardo will be vested into the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. Somehow it seems appropriate that the good Father will receive his appointment into the august body the weekend after that most American of holidays.
I was raised in a house of Protestant Lutherans. I was an occasional church goer as a kid, but I've had many people tell me that despite my cranky acerbic attitude towards a lot of things that I really am a sweet heart. So my religious upbringing might have done some good after all.
But one thing that attending 9 years of Lutheran school, nor 4 years of public high school tell me was that all that schooling really didn't give me a truly rounded understanding of things like faith and how religious beliefs had riveted human societies from time immemorial. It wasn't until I had gone through some long conversations with some of my school friends (who were raised Catholic), had watched some amazing History Channel programs, had traveled to other parts of the world, and done an enormous amount of reading on the ideas and doctrines of religious faith that I truly began to understand what the Roman Catholic Church meant to the world and why it is the way it is today. So I write this entry about Archbishop DiNardo's elevation to the Cardinal hood as a somewhat interested outsider, a wide ranging and curious layman if you will.
I have no special insider knowledge of the the ideas, troubles, or counsels of the Catholic Church of today. For some, most likely very secular lawyers, the Church has been only of interest when the some sexual abuse scandal erupts. For others the Church is a target of historical anger, whether because of forced conversions to the Catholic faith from their own indigenous beliefs or because of the Crusades it led to recapture the Holy Land. But what many people short change or overlook is the quiet piece of mind the Church has given literally billions of people over the past 2,000 years. It may never cross the minds of the Church's detractors of the countless newborn or infant children who were left abandoned to die by anguished parents, but were rescued by the Church believers. Even to this day, by the Church's own account the American branch of the faith alone assists more than 7 million people. Despite what many readers of this blog might imagine, I would far rather have dinner with someone like Cardinal DiNardo than with any computer programmer or politician.
So what to make of the Archbishop's promotion to the College of Cardinals? Well, what is of interest is that the College itself was expanded by Pope John Paul II when he was alive to 120 members (others say 180). The Catholic Church of America has some 70 million members, but already has 13 ordained Cardinals. Considering that this hoary Church has over 1 billion adherents, and that it becomes quickly clear that America is overrepresented in the College of the Cardinals and Europe is even more so.
Does this lack of democratic representative fairness matter? Well, one could argue both yes and no. The Cardinals choose who shall be the Pope, who in turn chooses who shall be in the College of the Cardinals. The yes side of the democratic fairness argument says that the Eurocentric focus of the Cardinals detracts from where the attention of the church should be, while the no argument says that Pope Benedict has made it expressedly clear that a substantial focus of his papacy is going to be to shine a light on the - if you will - spiritual impoverishment and to combat what he sees as the dangers of moral relevantism of today's Europeans and Americans. As such, who said we were talking about having a Democracy here anyway, given that that Church was a European faith whose aspirations were universal? What was interesting is that when Pope John Paul passed away, it did not take very long for the Cardinals to choose Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope. That could be seen as a signal that Church leaders were largely united in their deliberations on where they wanted to go and focus their energies on. DiNardo's appointment can be seen as a continuation of the struggle against moral relativism and as a nod to the fact that Hispanics in America are often Catholics. I attended the funeral of the mother of a Hispanic former co-worker last year, who was given Catholic rites, including a rosary.
I've traveled to Brazil, the Phillipines, Argentina, and to France, all of which are nations with substantial populations of Catholics. I've been inside some cathedrals in places like Rio de Janeiro which are hundreds of years old and are nothing short of works of art. Despite all of the concerns about the affairs of the West, it would have been interesting to see the election of a Brazilian Pope, or a Pope from Africa or Asia. I suggested this to a Catholic girl I used to work with who was from Trinidad. She went bananas, telling me that it wasn't right that a Pope be anyone but from Europe.
To me, what made John Paul so successful was that he was seen as an every man's Pope; a man who came from a modest background and whose life was colored by the fact that his homeland was under the thumb of Communism. People from all over the world loved him. A successful Pope has to not only have convictions, but also has to have a kind of identifiable charisma which John Paul had in spades. So far, Benedict seems not to have that magic touch that his predecessor had.
So I suppose one might say that yes, in the larger scheme of things, DiNardo's appointment makes some kind of sense. If the church allows some creativity for DiNardo's role, one could see him as a kind of ambassador for Americans to those south of our borders, strengthening the bonds of the Church throughout the Americas.
Enough musings for now about the affairs of the world's largest religious faith. I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as I finish this. Y'all have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Wizard
On the eve of election day 2007, I found myself tonight going over to pay a visit to my fellow Houstonian Tory's blog and reading about his ideas for what to do with Houston's original grand temple to the Sports gods, the Astrodome. I also digested commentary from others who visited his blog.
This of course put the Wizard into contemplative mode. Hmmm. So what to do about the Dome?
We all know the story. This past week the politically powerful Houston Texans and Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo stuck a fork into the idea of reusing the Astrodome as a $450 million massive convention center and hotel. It should go without saying that both parties probably want the Astrodome demolished and I'd have to say that I cannot agree with them more. I have come out before saying that the Dome should be demolished, possibly either for parking space or for possible construction of some sort. Moreover both parties probably saved we peasantry from having to shoulder yet another levy being slapped on our backs by the political classes via having to taxpayer finance such a ridiculous scheme.
But despite of my Libertarianism, I am also enough of a political realist to know that the Dome will not be torn down anytime soon, mostly because the Harris County Commissioners are scared to death of being accused of demolishing the Dome. At the same time, we the peasantry are paying for a $1.5 million per year levy just to keep the Dome in modestly environmentally usable condition.
So what to do? Tory's ideas are going along the right path, along with his back of a napkin financial analysis of any massive hotel complex. The problem is that this is politics and for decades there has been this desperate hope amongst the political classes in this city that somehow they can turn Houston into a convention city. Never mind that the convention business has been dominated for years by Orlando, Las Vegas, New York and Chicago, and that the political classes in dozens of other cities in America have all been building convention facilities in a desperate battle over the convention market scraps despite the fact that trade show attendance has been dropping off.
Tory suggests turning the Dome into a speakers facility in addition to opening up the Dome for festivals. The speaker idea probably isn't too bad, though there are lots of places where speakers can be heard. As for the idea of holding festivals in the Dome, my intuitive feeling about festivals (in addition to those comments made in his replies) is that festivals are more of an outdoors type activity. There is also a kind of ritual to holding festivals. Most festivals are held annually (or semi - annually) at set times during the year. They serve as a kind of marker that we have come full circle reached another season in the cycle of our lives.
However it is along the right track. The idea is a low risk, low cost idea. If it fails, then Harris County taxpayers are not left with an even larger white elephant hanging around their necks. Moreover, we can say that we tried the idea and if it doesn't work out, then we haven't lost all that much.
Which brings me to my idea. What if the Dome authorities were to simply throw the doors to the Dome open to holding weekend bazaars at the Dome? Perhaps they could be held Friday nights, Saturday all day, then Sunday afternoons? They would not be held when the Texans were holding their football games, when other sporting events would be scheduled, nor when the Rodeo was in progress. And come to think about it, isn't the Rodeo itself a festival?
Running with the shopping bazaar idea, parking could be charged at a nominal fee, say $2-3 (or even free), to encourage attendance. Booth fees could be collected, in addition to beverages, though one might think of being careful about this and simply collecting sales taxes on lower priced items. The organizers themselves could be held responsible for cleanup after each weekend. Other ideas would include the possibility that if this idea were to become successful, then expansion would simply be done through allowing new booths to operate outdoors.
The beauty of this idea is similar to Tory's. The bazaars could be held nearly every weekend. Marketing the idea would probably not be too much trouble as everyone knows where the Dome is. This also would have the added attraction of being a low risk idea, which if it were to not be successful financially, then the operation could be shutdown quickly and taxpayers would not be left on the hook for a massive sum of money.
On the downside, I can imagine that some would object to turning the Dome into a marketplace simply on emotional or symbolic grounds. Their hearts might break at the thought of their cherished Dome being used for such tawdry commercial reasons, though it was exactly for commercial reasons that the Dome was put to during the glory days of Nolan Ryan and Earl Campbell. So what's the difference?
Another possible downside might be objections from other flea market or open market operations around town. More tellingly, maybe the Dome authority and the Commissioners themselves might not be happy, on the grounds that they might not be able to reward their campaign contributors with fat contracts from the building of some new fancy facility.
While stewing over this idea tonight, I was struck by the issue that the Dome (despite the fact that I think it should be torn down) at least symbolically means a lot to people in Houston. I have to admit that one of the most special days of my life when I was growing up happened at the Dome. On December 3rd, 1982, when I was a teenager, I along with a few of my friends attended my first rock and roll concert at the Dome. And Who was the band that we went to go see that night, the ones who initiated me and my friends into the joys of concerts and the nightlife? Let me give you a hint - I've already told you the name of that band.
Ah yes. One cannot imagine how emotional that night was for me. In fact I can still remember it nearly 25 years later as though it happened yesterday.
So what is all this nostalgia leading to? Well how about this. If people are so tied up emotionally in a mere building, then if we Houstonians are going to keep the Dome in operation for symbolic or emotional reasons, then why not use the Dome for emotional reasons? How is this for a suggestion: Why not allow Houstonians buy space along the walkways of each of the levels of the Dome where they can put momentoes of their most cherished memories of their times that they spent in the Astrodome? For example, for $200 why not allow a person or a family to purchase a 2 square foot wall area of the Dome walkways where they can etch images or hang photographs along the walls where they can tell stories of their experiences? Why not allow for larger spaces for a higher price, say a 5x5 foot mural space for $1,000? In my case, I would tell everyone of what happened to myself and my friends that night and why the Dome means so much to me. Others might tell of watching the Oilers play the Pittsburgh Steelers during the days of Luv ya' Blue. Maybe some of the old Olier legends like Dan Pastorini or Earl Campbell could add their own memorabilia. Maybe fans could see the famous Monday Night Football footage where a solitary Oliers fan gave the camera the finger on national television.
In other words, why not turn the Dome into a kind of museum where the people of Houston would share their fondest memories of what happened there? Proceeds from the sale of mural spaces could be put into a fund which would be invested in bonds which would draw interest that in turn could be used to help offset the costs of operating the Dome. Since the Dome is 710 feet in diameter, that would mean that each level is 2,230 feet in circumference. I could see 5,000 or more murals decorating each level of the Dome, maybe more if we would allow the concrete walkways to be decorated. I could easily see $5 - $10 million being raised by such an idea. Augment that with parking fees, sales taxes from weekend bazaars and you may actually have a viable operation which would pay for itself.
Enough for now. It's time for me to lie down and face another day.
Wizard
Over the past several months I've been steadily become addicted to watching The Mad Men, a television series about the going's on at a fictitious small to mid sized advertising agency called Sterling Cooper located in - where else - New York City.
Before going any further, I should say something. I am not someone who follows television shows. My preferences when it comes to watching television include (of course), the History Channel, watching football, basketball, and track and field events. I also enjoy watching the Discovery Channel, and a few others. I used to watch current events programs long ago, such as C Span and the Sunday morning talk shows, but long ago gave up doing that since I came to realize that my life was not going in that direction and there was little I could do to influence things. I'd rather read academic journals and magazines for political information, but my time in this world dwindles by the day and there are other things worth doing other than becoming a walking encyclopedia of knowledge which I can't make money off of being.
Getting back to shows I do watch, I did follow Dallas when I was a young teen but quit doing so when I entered high school. I also watched Twin Peaks at the beginning of the 1990's. For comedy, I enjoyed watching Dream On and Reel Wild Cinema.
So what is it about the Mad Men that I find so alluring? Well, I will be the first to admit that the program will not appeal to everyone. One could visit the blog page of the show and read bucket loads of comments from the show's watchers. Clearly this show might have a fairly small audience, but that audience has a wild passion for this program. Clearly AMCTV has listened and has picked up the program for a second season. YES!
My own favorite character (and I should say that I like all of them) is the primary character, the handsome, wildly complicated, but 1950's Organization Man looking Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. My own favorite scenes involving Draper include his telling off the hippie boy friend of Midge, how he punched Roger into remembering his wife's name after he suffered a heart attack, and most memorably, when he displays his awesome creative genius (which pays the salaries for the entire boat of everyone working at Sterling Cooper) when, in a mind blowing late night piece of inspiration while talking to Rich, he dreams up the name and sales campaign for the Carousel which is presented to Kodak executives. Draper's presentation is so inspiring, it causes Rich to depart the sales pitch meeting in tears because he is having trouble with his own girl friend. It causes the entire rest of the company, including the fiercely ambitious Pete Campbell to tip their hats off to him.
The women have their own dramas, constrained by the roles that were allowed to them by the America of 1960. Don's wife, an independent former model named Betty, slowly wakes up to the realization that her world has shrunk to that of being a housewife. Meanwhile she also (correctly) intuits that she might not be enough of a woman for her husband. That is because Don has also fallen for the strongly independent Midge and Rachel. Meanwhile back in the office, his secretary Peggy has displayed her creative talents, but fell pregnant with a baby she didn't want (remember this was before 1973). She however, admires Don for giving her the chance to be the first woman to get out of the steno pool since before World War II and has allied herself with her unwittingly visionary mentor against the younger hound dogs who size her up and think she should be put in her place.
It's rather amazing. Don finds himself at the end of the first season struggling to keep the hound dog younger 20 something men at bay, while trying to keep his wife and family in their place in suburbia despite his own indiscretions. At the same time he is attracted to women who are not constrained by the conventions of the era. Meanwhile, he has run away from a boyhood which he hated (he is revealed to be the son of a prostitute) and which he seems to have been treated a bit poorly. But at the same time he has a younger step brother (whom he disowned and who subsequently hanged himself) who adored him. My goodness, that has to weigh on anyone's conscience.
There were complaints early on that the show almost tried too hard to display everyone smoking and that nothing really happened. I dismissed these criticisms right away. I realized quickly that this was a show that could incubate a horde of problems and issues. Mad Men was a program that had an immense potential to mine a bunch of rich issues, such as the fact that a pair of lowly staff cleaning people, who were black, were fired for the discretions of a late night office party.
It's almost as though this program is a modern version of All in the Family, but made 35 years later and recast as a serious drama instead of a comedy. Whereas Archie Bunker was a bigoted working class man stuck in his ways, Don Draper is an any man American who has managed, both by the whirls of fortune and dint of genius, to reinvent himself and work his way into a star struck position in American society. Still, Draper finds himself surfing the waves of a swirling and rapidly changing world, though he and everyone around him don't realize how it is changing right below their very feet.
So, the Wizard heartily recommends watching this absolute gem of a program. You can download episodes, but I can't wait for the second season of the Mad Men.
Wizard
On Friday, September 21, 2007, the Houston Property Rights Association welcomed Houston trial attorney David Mestemaker, who is representing Houston area mobile food vendors in a federal lawsuit challenging new state laws which have enabled the City of Houston and Harris County to pass new stringent regulations surrounding the operations of taquerias.
Mestemaker, a personable fellow perhaps in his 50's, opened his talk by saying he first came to Houston in 1980 from Michigan. He got a job in the oil business, working for Tenneco. The company sent him to law school, but the company was sold just as he was completing his school work. Mestemaker mentioned that he has been practicing law for 18-19 years, but that the taco truck lawsuit is the first time he has had an opportunity to claim a United States Constitutional claim. Mestemaker mentioned that he would only have about 1 hour to speak to the group, as he had his (very noble) weekly appointment to read to the blind. He said to the group that when he first received the call that he was dreading the idea of speaking to such a group, thinking that he would be speaking to a bunch of landlords who would be telling him that their clients needed to get their trucks off of their property. He said not to get upset if anyone was offended. We at HPRA instead gave him our usual cold water welcome we give to our guest speakers and I informed him we were equal opportunity offenders, ergo he later on admitted that he had a great time speaking to us.
Mestemaker said that the taco & mobile food truck Constitutional claim was based on the 14th Amendment, specifically its due process and equal protection clauses. Mestemaker said that Constitutional claims are often very complex, but broadly the issue is whether a statute or ordinance is, either on its face or in its application, biased towards certain groups? If so, then such laws are violative of the 14th Amendment.
Mestemaker said that the new state statutes enabling local ordinances to be passed were originally authored in March 2007 by Duane Bohac and Kevin Bailey. As one can see by reading the legislation, the statues apply only to counties with a population of 2.8 million or greater - i.e. Harris County. Mestemaker said that representatives received substantial campaign contributions from the Houston area restaurants and associations. However a quick lookup on the Internet revealed that, though yes Duane Bohac received at least $3,800 worth of such monies, that was less than 2 percent of the $222,000 he raised during the period leading up to the 2007 State legislative session. So take that as you will. Kevin Bailey received a lot more money from labor unions and both Bohac and Bailey received more contributions from home builders than from food vendors.
All the same, the issue is still before us. Mestemaker said that the ordinances state that the mobile food trucks have to have written permission to be on a piece of land or property, that there needs to be a toilet within 500 feet of the business, and that they need to be inspected everyday.
A short time ago, a hearing was held in the court of U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas. Justice Atlas asked the Harris County representative what they intended to do to enforce the new rules. Mestemaker told HPRA that the Harris County attorney said something to the effect that "this is an unfunded mandate and if they (the State of Texas) will not send us any money to enforce it, then we won't do a damned thing about the matter." Ms. Atlas then asked the City of Houston attorney what it intended to do and the CoH attorney said several things:
1) The CoH will empower the Houston Police Department to inspect and ticket taquerias - something Counsellor Mestemaker wondered whether the rank and file of HPD would really care to be doing when real criminals are roaming the cityscape.
2) The City intends to enforce the rule that a bathroom must be within 500 feet of the taqueria.
3) The building owner who has the bathroom where the taco truck is parked must have a signed notarized statement authorizing anyone can use that bathroom. More on this particular rule in a moment.
4) The mobile taco truck must be inspected everyday.
5) If the truck owner intends to be on a piece of property for 90 minutes, then the owner must have written permission to be on the owner's property. More on this later.
The City lawyer was asked by an AG lawyer in one hearing what would happen if violations would occur? The City attorney said that
1) A fine would be imposed.
2) Their medallion (which acts as a permit) would get yanked.
3) A felony charge would be slapped on owners and operators.
4) Then finally the City would shutdown a truck which continued to violate ordinances.
In Mestemaker's words, the City's attitude was one of "it's just a minor thing", no big deal. There may be a different point of view from the point of the truck operator or owner.
Mestemaker said that there were an estimated 17,000 restaurants in Harris County and only 43 full time food inspectors. In comparison, there are an estimated 1,500 taco trucks or trailers operating in Harris County, ergo that makes the taco trucks about 9 percent of all the food establishments in the Houston area. About 500 of these are licensed and are operating in the City. More are unlicensed, while others are admittedly downright illegal. Meanwhile, there are a total of 15 commissaries in Harris County which the taquerias get their food and utensils from, as well as functioning as places where trucks can get cleaned. 14 of these are in the City, while only 1 is in the County. Also, only one of these commissaries is open 24 hours per day.
As things stand today, the taco trucks are supposed to be inspected once per year, if an inspector shows up (and that can happen at any time), or if there is a report that they are in violation of an ordinance. These requirements are not too terribly far different from those facing fixed location restaurants, but one big difference between taco trucks and fixed location restaurants - and this gets back to items #3 and #5 above - is that the bathroom on the premises of fixed location restaurants must be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. In other words, the ADA compliant bathroom must be accessible to those with handicaps.
Some HPRA members at this point brought up ideas. One member asked what was the difference between a Taco Bell with a drive through window doing after hours business, but whose restaurant was closed? Not much it seems. This is an issue because many of the taquerias in fact do walk up trade and have no place to sit down. Ergo, there would be no need for customer toilets.
Mestemaker went on to say that prior to the new ordinances, the requirements for the trucks were that they needed to have a wastewater tank which had a capacity of at least 33 gallons. This is because such trucks do not have a grease trap, something that normal restaurants are required to have. These tanks could be serviced at a commissary or via vacuum truck whose purpose is to clean clogged grease traps at fixed location restaurants and to clean tanks for mobile trucks.
Mestemaker went on to describe the demographics of who actually operates these mobile food trucks. A small number are operated by blacks, who mostly offer barbeque type fare on their menus. Some are operated by Asians who offer Chinese food, but about 85 percent of the trucks are operated by Hispanics. Mestemaker said that in January 2006, two elected officials, CM Toni Lawrence and Duane Bohac, made statements to the effect that, "these taquerias are springinig up like daisies and are making us look like a third world country." So, yes there is a contention that there is a racial motivation behind the enactment of these ordinances.
As noted above, Mestemaker said the County passed an ordinance saying a bathroom had to be within 300 feet of the taqueria, while the City requirement was that a bathroom had to be within 500 feet. The trucks can no longer be cleaned by a vacuum truck, but now has to go to a commissary for cleaning. As noted above, there are 1,500 trucks and only 15 commissaries. During ealier court hearings, Mestemaker asked a City witness on the witness stand how long an inspection takes and the reply was an inspection takes 20-45 minutes per vehicle, so you do the math. Imagine a commissary is open 16 hours per day. Can all 1,500 trucks get inspected in an average day? That aside, my notes say that the commissaries pay for the inspections, which I would imagine would imply that the truck owners themselves would ultimately bear the cost for these inspections as I would think that the commissaries would pass on the cost of the inspections onto the truck operators (I did not get this part of the story clearly). That leaves these truck owners having to drive for perhaps 30 minutes to the nearest commissary, then wait in line for their daily inspection, then pass the daily inspection before they can go home for the day.
One HPRA member asked whether these rules are in effect for trucks operating in San Antonio, Richmond, Victoria, or other urban areas in the state? The answer of course is no (from reading the statute), which begs the question of why are these rules in effect for trucks operating only in Harris County and Houston? Are the trucks in Houston any dirtier than those operating elsewhere, or is the incidence of sickness resulting from patronizing these places any worse than in other areas in Texas?
CM Toni Lawrence said to Counsellor Mestemaker that City ordinances have been on the books since 1999 regarding inspections. Mestemaker told the audience that the ordinances that have been on the books have to do with the operating of wastewater tanks, not the requirement of everyday inspections. Mestemaker went on to ask why is the solution of wastewater tanks still not viable and why can't they still ply their business? Mestemaker asked City Council whether there had been any reports of sickness from patronizing the taco trucks in the past 5 years. The answer was no.
Mestemaker told the audience that most property owners have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the taco trailers (not necessarily trucks). Many collect rent from trailer owners and sell gasoline to them. They are happy that they are there, but they are not happy with the new requirement that the mobile food units need written permission from them to operate because of the fact that the ADA approved bathroom requirements are stiffer for a restaurant than for, say, a gas station. Mestemaker did say that some of these facilities are of a semi-permanent nature, complete with water meters and have leases with the property owners.
When Mestemaker was approached by the taqueria owners about taking on the case, he told them that they could not afford him, but he has been proven wrong. These people have come on strong because they know their livelyhoods are at stake. Mestemaker said that there are an average of 3 employees per truck, which means that 4,500 people's jobs are at stake here. Many of these trucks are operated (but not necessarily owned) by single mothers and most of these trucks are not making a great deal of profit from what they do. These trucks do not carry a great deal of food because they regularly replace their food stores from their commissary visits. The freshness of their food stores and the fact that they do not store their food supplies for long helps to account for the fact that patrons almost never get sick from eating the food on offer.
Mestemaker said he has few problems with the requirement that taquerias have written permission from property owners to be on their land. However he did bring up the scenario of whether a new construction site which has the lunch truck roll up would be able to satisfy such a requirement? Also, some of these trucks operate on parcels of land which have not had paid any taxes for many years and, if one were to look at the HCAD website, there may be doubt as to who may be the title holder or owner of the property in question. In other words, the land is probably vacant. How would one secure permission to operate on such premises? One HPRA member then asked, almost in outrage, why should this be a City requirement? If he owned a piece of property, then if he didn't want them there, then he (as the property owner) would evict them. No government intervention would be necessary.
One HPRA member who happens to be a practicing attorney asked about the 14th Amendment claims surrounding this case. Mestemaker said that the precedent was founded in 1886 when the City of San Francisco passed an ordinance prohibiting the operation of laundries in wooden buildings. They had to be operating in brick and mortar ones. Ergo, it was alleged that the ordinance violated the 14th Amendment in its application by denying a same playing field. The United States Supreme Court ruled that if the effect of a law denies equal footing, then its gone. Mestemaker says that these ordinances and statutes, in their application, chill the ability to do commerce and force taqueria owners to spend several hours per day - every day - of their time in complying with them. Furthermore, neither the City nor the County specifically asked for empowerment from the State to enact them.
Mestemaker has talked to many people about the matter, including fixed location restaurant owners. The general consensus about the matter amongst the public seems to be that if people aren't getting sick or if these mobile food trucks are not dumping wastewater down sanitary drains, then leave them alone. The other matter at stake is Premises Liability Law. Mestemaker said that if you are a property owner, but that something happens on your property without your permission, then you are not liable.
One HPRA member said that the politicians in question are really trying to follow the wishes of their voting constituents. In other words, there are plans being made for areas where the taquerias are numerous and that the populace in those areas do not want them operating there. What are the politicians in question supposed to do? Another HPRA member though said that this sounds like one of those matters where we just have to do something about those people.
Finally, there is a hearing on the suit on October 24. December 1 is when the ordinance is supposed to become enforceable. Mestemaker wrapped up his story by telling of something that happened at the end of one hearing. The Houston Chronicle reporter asked if if he knew whether Homeland Security was here? Mestemaker said no, was he on the watch list and would he not be able to fly anymore? This was because some 60 truck operators showed up for the hearing. They were, in Mestemaker's words, the nicest and most well behaved people in the court room, but our government pulled out the stops and rang the fire alarms in reaction.
I will say here that more than 20 years ago I worked for a Domino's franchisee for 2+ years. The company operated (and still operates) an area wide commissary off of 610 North Loop where dough, meat, card board delivery boxes and vegetables are all distributed by truck for standardization purposes. If you every happen to see an 18 wheeler with the Domino's logo on it, then that truck is on a run from the commissary delivering food orders to company stores . Each of our stores were inspected maybe 2-3 times the entire time I worked for him. I had to attend a City mandated restaurant sanitation course.
Having stated all of this, I will say that the entire idea that these trucks must get inspected every single day is absolutely preposterous on its face. Instead of the public paying for the burden of having government employees going out to perform what are perhaps annual inspections of restaurants, we will have effectively turned the tables by having the taqueria truck owners and operators bear the burden of having to report for a daily inspection. This is a classic example of using governmental regulatory powers to shut out your competition, using the usual rationale that we need to protect the public. One might want to read these threads from Blog Houston. One HPRA member suggested that Mestemaker talk to the Institute for Justice which works on economic freedom type cases.
I will wind up this rather lengthy epistle by saying that this case has drawn considerable attention throughout the country. Mestemaker has given interviews in Spanish. KPRC, the Chronicle, and the New York Times have all done stories on the issue. Mestemaker told HPRA that he has not had more fun as an attorney than he has had in his entire career, on the account that he genuinely believes that he is right and that he has gotten himself involved in a rather weighty issue here.
So stay tuned!
Wizard.
I present to the public a photo story book of a Tolkien literary pilgrimage I made to Oxford in January 2007.
Several months ago wrote of my visits to the United Kingdom on behalf of the Big Evil Company. Two items which I never got around to writing about were a pair of visits I made to visit the places of legend where J.R.R. Tolkien lived, taught, worked, and wrote his stories. My first trip occurred during the weekend of January 20-21, 2007. I made a follow up visit on February 3, 2007. I had to make the follow up trip because of several factors. First, I took a train to get to Oxford since renting a car would have been a pain in the rear to do. The train which I had originally booked from the Paddington Station was canceled, leaving myself and dozens of other passengers stranded. One British man traveling with his girlfriend was less charitable. "God Damn!" he shouted. I caught the next train, but that train was a slow one which stopped at about 8-10 places before getting to Oxford. The trip took 1 hour and 45 minutes one way to only go 67 miles. One trio of 40-something British men who got on at Reading talked about the girls they thought were hot and how Felicity Kendall was the hottest thing they ever laid eyes on. They also complained that they could have gotten to Oxford faster if they had taken a car.
So I get to Oxford at perhaps 1:30pm. This gave me only 3-4 hours to make my trips. I eventually wended my way through the town to St. Giles Road and found the Eagle and Child pub. As the Wikipedia entry notes, I am now a marked figure amongst the fans of Professor Tolkien.
From there I made it to the Tolkien's house at 20 Northmoor Road. I wandered around the neighborhood that day, soaking up the feel of what the Professor's world was like. I saw St. Aloysius Church where the Tolkien's would sometimes worship. However the day turned cloudy and it started to drizzle. It was a brisk day and the weather reminded me of how I always envisioned Frodo's travels through to Rivendell in Arnor. I decided it would be better if I made my way back to London since I was on foot.
Because my time had been cut short, I had not been able to locate Tolkien's grave. I made a considerable effort to locate all six of Tolkien's homes as well as where he taught school. I made a second trip on February 3, 2007. This time I was able to find Wolvercote Cemetary. I had planned to purchase some flowers to lay at the Tolkien's headstone, but that thought got pushed out of my mind as I walked along the road. Incredibly, I didn't realize that the Tolkiens had lived at 22 Northmoor Road, right next door to 20 Northmoor Road, so I stopped by the neighborhood again before I made my way back.
So there you have it. I never thought I would be get around to making this pilgrimage and I will never forget those two days as long as I live. Having walked those streets of that ancient university town helped me understand how it was that the man whose stories of magic, fantastic races and creatures, war, conflict, romance and heroism which had entranced me as a teenager growing up in suburban America could have written them. The Professor wrote of what was all around him, but as a boy growing up in 1970's America I never understood that. We didn't have the Internet, nor the wave of secondary literature which has been produced over the past 15-20 years to help Tolkien fans understand what the Professor was writing about. As I wrote in one my of my photo notes, it became clear to me that there was no way that Middle Earth could have been invented by someone living anywhere else and not by any other man.
And that is my Ode to J.R.R. Tolkien.
Wizard.
Kevin at BlogHouston picks up the Houston Chronicle story about financial collapse of Infernal Bridegroom Productions.
I have some personal knowledge of what it takes financially to survive in the local stage world. A girl I know wrote a play several years back and entered it into a new playwright talent competition that was judged by a panel of professional theater folks. Her play won first prize and was later put on in an abridged form on a few occasions by several local theater troupes at some small theater houses here in town. She crafted a few others before stopping her work to concentrate on furthering her formal education.
To cut to the chase, there were problems with venues, the terms which theater house owners would put on allowing her play to be staged, and so on. Moreover this girl had some ambition. She wanted to do some rewrites to her play and then put on a full length run (3-4 weeks) at a larger theater house. It turned out that she located 2 venues that were interested at the time, but they wanted (if I remember correctly) a minimum of $500 per night to put on her play. That would have meant that a 4 day per week run for 3 weeks would have had a starting price tag of $6,000 to stage and that did not include such small things like props, lighting, advertising, and so forth. However those items would have been donated for free by sympathetic travelers and allies. As for the cast and crew receiving payment for their efforts, well I made it clear to these youthful idealistic souls that he who had the gold was the one who made the rules - right? They soon got the message that they were not the ones in the drivers' seat when it came down to talking about money.
I told this girl that I was willing to put up the money for staging her play on the terms that I would have gotten 100 percent of all ticket sales up to my initial investment and would have split anything beyond that 50 / 50 with her and her troupe. I would have also been given Executive Producer credit for my investment risk. It later turned out that there were scheduling issues and several troupe members who worked with her went off to do other things, ergo the enterprise eventually drifted apart.
Still, the experience gave me a new appreciation for what many entertainers do on the Houston theater and arts scene. Starving artists had their own self help groups back in Ancient Rome. Two millennia later I found that little had changed and their spiritual descendants here in H-Town still suffer for their art and willingly at that. As Kevin sort of alluded to, many times established theaters or troupes will put on well known plays just to pay the bills and upstarts have to fight tooth and nail just to get started. I would venture to guess that IBP's following might have been growing older and moving on with their lives. However, not having ever seen any of their work I would not be certain of the validity of my belief.
The exercise really does go to show how hard cultural types have to work in order to make it in the free market for entertainment where they compete for your discretionary spending dollars with television, movie theaters, home videos, hobby past times, music venues and nightclubs, and so on. Many talk the talk about Houston being a great place for culture, but little do they know how hard it is to put your money where your mouth is and walk the walk. Maybe I should revisit the idea of becoming an arts entrepreneur and make another run at bankrolling some hopeful artists. Stay tuned.
Wizard.
So I am up right now during the small hours doing some opening line studies because I am thinking about entering the Houston Open next weekend. VH1 is on and I've just seen the video for Rehab by Amy Winehouse for the second time in about 90 minutes.
I have to admit something here. I am one of the few Americans so far who have had the privilege of seeing Amy Winehouse perform in person. I went to see her play to a jam packed gig at the Camden Crawl while I was in London in April. What caught my attention was hearing Rehab playing while I was in a Boots store buying my chocolate fix for the day at VLICA. Amazing how it is with certain songs that you will always remember where it was when you first heard a song. Well, it does seem bizarre and rather out of place that I would have first encountered Amy's work in a pharmacy store of all places. Still, Rehab was good enough for me to head on over to a record shop that night, nab a copy of Back to Black and listen to it about 42 times in a row. I then proceeded to drive my colleagues at VLICA nuts the next day by playing the album over and over again on my laptop.
Amy's stuff was all over the airwaves when I was in the Sceptered Isles. It strange, but I went to the UK for the first time in May 2002 on holiday. While watching the BBC one night, I watched a music show and was star struck by a then unknown woman named Norah Jones. She played a slow sounding wistful ballad called Don't Know Why. Norah had everyone in that audience in the palm of her hand that night and that included the show's host and the other artists. I couldn't believe that Norah wasn't a monster back home, but that trivial matter was settled by that summer.
The Brits have a way of digging up and giving an airing to really great stuff that often doesn't make it over here. I didn't know about The Jam until I was in my mid 20's, even though I came of age in the early 1980's and would have died and gone to heaven had I known of them.
But I digress. When I saw Amy play at the Crawl, I witnessed a small girl with a big whiskey soaked voice (and a nice rack and big bouffant hair do to match) get the entire crowd going with sing along songs. I fell in love with Amy on sight. Once again Britain came through for me on the cultural front.
Her website shows that Amy is supposed to play a series of shows here on our side of the pond. Too bad she isn't scheduled to show up in Houston (though she does have a habit of canceling shows) because I would love to see her again.
To me, Winehouse is what Scarlett Johansson would have been had she been a singer instead of an actress. She is one of those young women artists whom you get so scared about. You just don't know whether Amy will hang it up, crack under the pressure, burn out artistically, or careen off the rails on drink. All you can do is sit back, soak in the emotions from her songs, and hope she finds out what makes her happy. What a Star!
It seems impossible to escape the onslaught of coverage surrounding the incarceration of Paris Hilton. The front page of the Houston Chronicle carried a photo of Ms. Hilton sobbing away at the prospect of spending a mere 45 days in the lockup, crying that it was "unfair". She looked like a six year old girl.
Since Ms. Hilton has made it impossible to escape paying any attention to Hollywood, culture, cinema or celebrity without having her vapid face appearing in front of the cameras, I made a conscientious decision a number of years ago to quit paying attention to what she was up to since she wasn't worth following anyway. She can't sing, she can't dance, she cannot act, she cannot paint or do computer wizardry. Ms. Hilton isn't even that good looking. As such, I had no real idea that Paris Hilton was even in trouble with the law. So I figured a timeline was in order so I could reconstruct the chain of events which has led to her incarceration:
1) Paris was stopped September 6, 2006 for driving under the influence.
2) Paris pleaded not guilty in January 2007 at her arraignment on the DUI charges. She ends up getting probation for DUI.
3) Paris then proceeds to get arrested again. This time it is because she failed to live up to the terms of her probation, which included not driving under a suspended license. She then refused to accept responsibility for the matter and blamed her publicist, saying that she had been told she could drive for work related reasons. Her mother called the sentencing disgusting.
4) Fans and arm twisters apparently made an appeal to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to get him to commute the sentence. It appears that the Terminator refused to grant their demands.
Sorry folks, but the whole point of probations is to slap you on the wrist and let you off easy. Paris Hilton didn't even live up to something as simple as that. It's too bad that she won't be able to stay in one of California's more upscale lockups.
While watching Simon Schama's A History of Britain on the History Channel several years ago, Schama recounted that one of the better investments a well off man could make in 17th and 18th century Britain was to put money into prisons. That was because convicts were charged for the privilege of staying in their hotels from hell on a daily basis. The more money you put up, the better arrangements you got. You might have even had the chance to stay in a private cell with a pot to go to the toilet with, along with a barred window where you could toss out your - ahem - wastes. If you couldn't cough up, then you got to sleep with the rats and 30 other cell mates. You might have even gotten a chance to eat something during the day.
But it seems poor Paris won't get a chance to buy her way out of this one. I doubt she will be scared into behaving any better, but even I have occasionally been wrong. After all, any publicity is better than no publicity at all.
Well, yesterday's Grand National came and went. And how did the Wizard fare? Well gentle readers, I hate to admit that the Crystal Ball was cloudy when it came to viewing this event, but me thinks that many had clouded visions when it came to picking winners yesterday.
A brief rundown on the Grand National yesterday. Of the 40 horses which entered the race, only 13 finished. There were several false starts and the Brits don't start the horses out of a gate when running this race.
I put a total of 200 pounds down on three horses, Point Barrow, Dun Doire, and Le Duc, none of whom finished. Point Barrow was heavily backed, but stumbled jumping over the very first grass fence! There are thirty grass fence jumps in this 4.5 mile race. Dun Doire pulled up at fence 23, while Le Duc unseated his jockey at fence number 6. The winner finished in the 4.5 mile distance in 9 minutes and 12 seconds and had 33-1 odds. The horse who finished fourth had 100-1 odds. In all, I think the bookies went home happy, as did the tiny number of those who actually bet on the long shots.
In other news, Prince William and his longtime beau Kate Middleton have split. How sad. Ms. Middleton has that classic Brit Girl look to her which makes my head turn. Somehow I hope that the two of them will reconsider maybe in another 3-4 years and end up getting married anyway.
Two Tolkien related items of note:
1) Yesterday afternoon I watched a soccer match between Sheffield United and West Ham United on the BBC-1. And guess who happened to be in a private box at the stadium enjoying the match?
The answer: Sean Bean. It seems Mr. Bean had childhood dreams of being a football star and playing for the hometown team.
The first TV shot showed Sean Bean with a bit of an unhappy look on his face, but the score was 0-0. Later after the Sheffielders put in a few through the net and won the game 3-0, Mr. Bean got just as pumped up as the rest of the crowd and went home with a smile on his face.
2) Today I took a long walk this afternoon to Camden Town and happened upon the famous street markets which stretch for many blocks. If any of you ever have a chance to come to London, you really should make an effort to see the Camden markets. These markets are probably the biggest hidden gem that tourists and short time folks like myself should see, but rarely do since they aren't widely advertised as part of touristy London.
Anyway, as I wended my way through the stalls and houses, I found myself walking into a place which advertised lots of old maps. I love looking at old maps (though I rarely buy them), but I so happened to stumble onto a used book store which was right next to where the maps were kept.
I had stumbled upon my own mines of Mithril.
For 30 pounds cash, I will be burdening myself on the trip home with the following books:
1) A 1985 Unicorn / Unwin Paperback version of The Silmarillion.
2) A 1981 copy of The Tolkien Quiz Book, compiled by Nigel Robinson and Linda Wilson.
3) A 1993 copy of The Tolkien Companion by David Day.
4) A 1968 copy of Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, written by William Ready.
5) Four copies of The Hobbit, including a 1975 edition which had artwork depicting Smaug from Tolkien himself; a 1993 edition which has cover artwork depicting Smaug from John Howe; a 1988 edition with cover artwork depicting Smaug from David Garland; and a 1989 edition which has cover artwork depicting Rivendell from Ted Nasmith.
6) And last by not least, my Precious! I found a 1995 printing of a one book edition of The Lord of the Rings which is none other than the one with the classic John Howe portrait of Gandalf on the cover. I thought I would never find one of these. I fell in love with it on the spot and I already know that this version will become my favorite of all my Tolkien collection. The cover artwork has a dark green tint to it, but I consider this to be priceless.
As it was, I also threw down money on some incense, a City wide map of London, and some t-shirts from British rock bands The Jam, the Cure, and Joy Division which you just can't get back home. I ended up dropping about 100 pounds today, but had a blast doing it!
Ciao for Now.
Wizard
You would think that an American, especially a relative Anglophile such as myself, would know a lot of what goes on in a country like the United Kingdom. Wrong! This morning while eating breakfast with my colleagues at VLICA (the Very Large Industrial Corporation of America), I took a look at the television only to discover that tomorrow afternoon is the annual running of The Grand National horse race. The race, held at the Aintree Racecourse, promises to be quite a spectacle for a sometime gambling man such as yours truly. My colleagues told me that the premier race to be held tomorrow will feature 40 horses running in the race over a course of 4.5 miles. Furthermore, the horses have steeplechase type barriers that they have to clear! This ought to be blast to watch.
Clearly a 4.5 mile race with steeplechase barriers thrown in is a major endurance test for horses and predictably the animal rights freaks have come out squealing. Nonetheless, they should realize that nobody wants to see horses come to a nasty end over a mere human passion.
Though I am not in shape, I have done distance running for many years. If there's anything I know, that is that endurance races of all kinds throw the field wide open. There are so many things that can go wrong, especially in a race like this, that it only makes watching the spectacle that much more exciting.
This evening the BBC had a program where the sports writers made their picks as to who was going to win. They did expose spots on famous trainers and jockeys. I discovered that the Brits allow amateurs to race with the pros in the event, though an amateur hasn't won the race in 17 years. All of Britain's major newspapers have Grand National pullouts and guides in tomorrow's editions. I am getting pumped up!
I briefly thought of trying to get to Liverpool in order to see the race in person, but I'm thinking that I'll have to get up pretty early in order to make it up there. On second thought, I think I'll just stay and watch it on the telly.
But watching the Grand National at the hotel doesn't drain all of the excitement out of the event. I just need to make sure that I peer into the Crystal Ball first, take a look at the field, then go to a Ladbrokes and plunk down 50 or 100 quid on a 100-1 horse! Why not? After all, even the horse many think has the best chance of winning, Point Barrow, is being offered 11-1 odds over at Ladbrokes.
The World Awaits!
Wizard.
And what kind of person did you think The Mighty Wizard is?
You are an alchemist. "Alchemists are those who seek Truth. Judges, scientists, and philosophers (who are a kind of scientist, though they have forgotten it) and even a few clergymen are Alchemists."
Naturally!
Yours truly has been in glamorous London for the past 10 days or so, on business for VLICA. Many things have happened here, including David Beckham signing a deal with the L.A. Galaxy soccer team for a cool $250 million, not to mention a possible split being possible between England and Scotland right on the 300th anniversary of the Acts of Union which founded the United Kingdom. But more on all topics Britain in future blogs.
Tonight's blog entry has to do with an otherwise boring story which has managed to blow into an international diplomatic row. It seems that there is a TV show on ITV channel 4 here in the UK called Big Brother. From what I can gather, the show appears to be one of these reality TV shows where you throw a bunch of disparate and otherwise incompatible people together into a house and watch voyeuristically while the friction starts. I got back to my hotel, ran a workout, then turned on the telly in time to catch the last 10 minutes or so of tonight's episode.
Well, the main sauce surrounding this TV show is that this program features, as one of its cast members, a certain smokin' hot Indian Bollywood actress by the name of Shilpa Shetty.It seems that some of Ms. Shetty's local British house mates can't pronounce her name, they don't like how she carries herself, they don't like her accent, they don't like her looks, and for that matter they just don't seem to like the fact that Ms. Shetty is Indian. Meanwhile word has it that the cast members themselves seem to be blissfully unaware of the controversy that their own behavior is generating, being effectively being isolated from the outside world.
The uproar over charges of racism has generated enough heat that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has had to comment on the program in the House of Commons. His finance minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown (timing is everything in politics) just happens to be in India while all of this is happening and he finds himself having to condemn whatever is happening on the show in front of protesting Indian mobs. There is a certain irony to all of this. And what is that irony? That irony is that neither man has ever seen the TV show, yet find themselves having to fend off charges that their country is full of racists and that the program be perhaps censored, condemned, or taken off the air completely. Back in Britain, the TV watchdog group has received over 10,000 complaints about racism on the program, with 2/3rds of those complaints coming from non-Indians.
With all the fuss, what is The Mighty Wizard's verdict on the program? Well after 10 minutes of watching the program, I was ready to watch something else. It wasn't because of racism or fireworks mind you. It was because I found the program to be incredibly boring! The best part of the program was watching Ms. Shetty strut her bod around. She is hot! Otherwise, if it weren't for this controversy, I would not be able to figure out why anyone would watch the show. Amazingly I was watching CNN tonight and saw a reporter ask a British MP about how it could be that Mr. Blair had never seen the show? I couldn't believe that a CNN reporter (I'm sorry but I didn't catch the woman's name) could ask a question like that. The MP replied (quite truthfully for once - not bad for a politician) that Mr. Blair was a very busy man and that if he did watch TV, then the PM was probably watching programs like The West Wing.
As far as I can tell, this is nothing more than a bunch of women (and men) living under the same roof, and you know what you get when you do that - lots of catfights! It seems Ms. Shetty did this at least partly as a career move, but she did receive over $700,000 to do the show so clearly money was a factor too. Ms. Shetty said on the show the other day that she is sad about what has happened on the show, but I suspect that at the end of the day that the matter will blow over and in a year or two nobody will remember that this ever happened. By that time Ms. Shetty will still have both her money and a bad taste in her mouth about people from Britain.
Ciao for now from a rainy and blustery London.
It is now the beginning of a 4 day weekend for me and I've spent quite a bit of this evening doing some good ol' surfin' of the Net. It isn't too often that I sit down and surf like I used to back in the late 1990's when I would spend hours and hours just following thousands of sites just for the hell of it. Ah, the good ol' days of the Internet when the world was young...
One site I visited today which I hadn't dropped in on in a while is none other than a site which I link to - The 2 Blowhards. In today's entry entitled "The Birth of Rock and Roll?", Michael Von Blowhard pays tribute to various artists like Chuck Berry, Roy Brown, Sister Rosetta Thrape, and Ruth Brown.
So what does The Mighty Wizard have to say about this topic? Well, the birth of Rock and Roll should be something that should interest all Americans as it really is an enormously important part of our cultural history. I did do a little digging on the subject a number of years ago (don't you ever forget that yours truly is an extraordinarily learned fellow), and found a true gem of an artist in Big Joe Turner. Don't forget to visit this site on Big Joe, which includes a You Tube link showing Big Joe playing his original bluesy version of Shake Rattle and Roll.
When you listen to Big Joe sing "Roll 'em Hawk", "Corrine Corrina" and "Shoo Shoo Boogie Boo", you can hear a die hard bluesman struggling to lead us to Rock and Roll Nirvana. All I can say is that Big Joe richly deserves his honored place in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. If you need to be turned onto some good stuff, then take a tip from The Wizard himself and spend a few nickels on some juke joint stuff from Big Joe. You won't regret it.
Last night I went to see the first of 2006's summer blockbusters, Mission Impossible III.The film is everything you have come to expect from the MI franchise - the IMF (impossible mission force) secret government agency which actually does it's job competently, the explosions, the wild ass technology complete with exploding human injections, the twists and turns that come at you like a freight train, and who's screwing around whom (especially within the agency!), as well as some personal development for Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt.
The film starts off with a mission gone bad for one of Hunt's proteges, Lindsey Farris (played by Keri Russell). Hunt is asked by his former team, led by Luther (Ving Rhames - one of my favorite actors) and given marching orders by Director Brassel (confidently played by Laurence Fishburne) to go rescue her. The mission itself is botched when they lose Farris, who is being held by Owen Davian (the film's amoralistic and ruthless villian, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Brassel wants Davian dead and it's up to Hunt and his team to get him. Of course, this wouldn't be MI without everything seeming to be what is seems to be, so you find out there are some problems in getting Davian along the way. The primary issue is that Davian finds out about Hunt's marriage to Julia (a doctor played by Michelle Monaghan), and tells Hunt that she is in trouble too.
The film's twists and turns lead our team of heroes to the Germany, the Vatican, Shanghai, so we get our fill of exotic worldwide scenery. The film credits state that Tom Cruise co - produced the film. If so he did a first rate job, as the action scenes are shown as though the camera is being rocked around. This gives the action sequences a gritty and tumbling uncertainty to them. It feels as though there is a ton of things going on around you, even though it might only be one event happening at the moment. The supporting cast of Maggie Q, John Rhys Meyers, and others all play their roles competently, though Rhames is the only one whose character seems to be fleshed out.
So what's the verdict? Well, many in the audience clapped after this one was over. So take your date, buy a big bag of popcorn, and fasten your seatbelt as Tom Cruise takes you on the best action flick I've seen in a long, long time. The Mighty Wizard gives MI 3 a 9 out of 10. I am predicting this one will gross at least $700 million worldwide. Enjoy!
Ciao for now.
Yesterday, Thanksgiving evening here in America, I went to go see the latest Harry Potter opus, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Mighty Wizard, always intrigued and impressed by films about his fellow wizards, was a sucker to see this new installment. I have to say that I thought that this was the best film of the entire series. Why? Well pull up a chair and I will tell you, gentle readers!
I have to admit that I have never read any of the Harry Potter books. At the insistence of several friends, I tried to start on the first one several years ago. I quit after about 50 pages, as I could not warm to Rowling's writing style. I keep promising myself that one day I will try and I might actually do it after reading some supplementary material that I found over the Internet that piqued my interest.
But back to the film. So what's there to like about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? The producers of this film - perhaps in an effort to condense what is probably a very long story (remember, I haven't read the books!) - dispensed with both the Dursley's (Harry's "Muggles" family), and with Dobby the annoying house elf. I don't know how much the Dursleys and Dobby figure in the book, but I know I could do without Dobby. We know the Dursleys are horrible, treat Harry like rubbish, and live on #4 Privet Drive in Whinging (is this a play on the Australian term "Whinge", which means a whiner or complainer)? So what is there more to know about the Dursleys that we don't need to know?
But the good parts don't stop there. Upon watching the first Harry Potter film, I came away with the idea that these stories were sort of like the school kid murder mystery Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books of years gone by with magic thrown in. The Houston Press did me one better. They wondered whether Ms. Rowling was getting her inspiration from the old Scooby Doo cartoons. You know the story. "Those dratted kids! If it weren't for that goof ball Ron Weasley, that know - it - all Heromine Granger, and that star child Harry Potter, I, Lord Voldemort, would be ruling the world by now!"
Until now. It is now clear that with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that the series has taken new and much more interesting directions. Much has been made of the kids growing up and starting their nervous cakewalk through the pitfalls of adolescence. Much has been made of the return of Lord Voldemort. Both of these aspects of HP and the Goblet of Fire are wonderful. But in the background we are starting to see a not so subtle critique of government. We see that the Ministry of Magic, which is excellent at propagating rules, jailing prisoners like Sirious Black who are probably innocent, keeping tabs on everyone in general, but cannot keep the school kid wizards safe who are under its care. The Quiddich tournament grounds are turned into a wasteland by the Death Eating supporters of Voldemort. And what is it with the kid's Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers? How many times now have we seen that these teachers turn out to be either flat out dangerous (like Professor Lupin) or Voldemort supporters like Professor Crouch? What kind of a Ministry keeps doing this stuff? Well, maybe its every ministry that keeps doing this stuff. One wonders whether Rowling might have been smiling at the non - performance of America's FEMA when Hurricane Katrina came a knocking.
As a brief aside here. News came today (November 25, 2005) that the (former) head of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown, a Bush crony who once previously held a post as Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association before being named as head of FEMA, has started his own disaster consultancy organization. Hooray for Iron Triangles. I feel safer already.
With those thoughts in mind, I recommend that you visit the Social Science Papers network to read the abstracts of what academics are saying about Rowling's work and these films. You can see them here, here, and here. Hence the title of this entry, Harry Potter and the Half Crazed Bureaucracy.
But back once again to the film. The kids are getting to be much better at their roles, but it's a shame that this film is very "Harry Potter centric". Emma Watson was a true star in her scenes. It is a shame that she and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) don't get to do more in this film. The same goes for Tom Felton as Potter nemesis Draco Malfoy. And what about that handsome young fellow, Robert Pattinson, who plays the ill fated Cedric Diggory? I would put my money down that young Mr. Pattinson and Ms. Watson both have some real futures in film ahead of them if they so desire.
Ms. Rowling does a wonderful job at catching the differences between boys and girls. The teenaged guys travel in one's and two's, while the girls travel in packs. Sorry girls, I know better and so does Ms. Rowling. Y'all don't start traveling in two's until you hit the night clubs at 18 and later.
In a similar vein, the adults make their appearances, do their jobs, but they complement the kids. They don't try to take over or dominate their scenes. Watching Maggie Smith (Professor Minerva McGonagall), Michael Gambon (who should have been given the role of Gandalf in LOTR) as Dumbledore, Robbie Coltrane as the love stricken Hagrid, Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, Pedrag Bjelac as Igor Karkaroff, Miranda Richardson as the vicious journalist Rita Skeeter, Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, and in particular Alan Rickman as Professor Snape are all marvelous.
I am a bit irritated that the spell to bring back Lord Voldemort required forcibly taken blood from the enemy (Harry Potter), but why could such a dastardly deed be not done sometime in class, or at some other time? Why did it take the TriWizard tournament port key scenario to do this? It seems to overcomplicate the story.
The special effects in this film are also sensational. Harry's dragon confrontation scene is absolutely terrifying and the underwater ship seems absolutely real. I've really come to enjoy the style of these films as time has gone by. As a swipe at Harry Knowles of "Ain't it Cool News", he wrote a while back that the film has a gag at the end. So I waited a good 10+ minutes after the film ended, wading through the endless film credits and looking for the gag. There was no visual gag, but there is a statement at the very end of the film credits declaring that, "No dragons were harmed in the making of this film." I thought I would write that so that nobody else would waste any of their time on any snippets like that which Mr. Knowles would write about.
But overall, these films are getting richer and more interesting. Ms. Rowling clearly has veered off the safe and beaten path of "Harry and friends vs. Voldemort" formulas which made the first 2 films near repeats of each other. I have to admit that I am now beginning to look forward to the next films and might manage to cough up the enthusiasm to plough through Ms. Rowling books.
I have more writing to do about Hurricane Katrina, but I decided to take a break from the ranting business for a while and devote a bit of time to a subject which I've been mulling writing about for a while now - the Star Wars Prequel saga and The Revenge of the Sith (ROTS).
I saw the original Star Wars film in 1977 when I was 11 years old - a perfect age to be taken in by the great space opera. It was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my childhood, along with discovering Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons. I had been the first person at my school to see the film, as my older sister, her soon to be husband, and their friends had heard about the film. I went back to school the following weekend (it was the next to last week of the school year when Star Wars came out) and was screaming about the film to all my friends because I couldn't believe what I just saw. Sure enough when I went back to school the following August, it was the only thing everyone was talking about.
And so it was. I was not quite as thrilled with The Empire Strikes Back (ESB) and The Return of the Jedi (ROTJ), but they were good films in their own right and I liked them. I enjoyed the idea that the "science fiction" of Star Wars was always more fiction than science. How many times did we hear that the reason our heroes' machinery didn't work was because there was "a bad motivator"? And what - pray tell - exactly is a "motivator?" How funny! I even managed to enjoy the classic "Who's your Daddy" moment in The ESB. I was a fan of George Lucas, but I thought that the saga had ended and that was that. When I heard in 1999 or so that Lucas was in the process of making three more films that were to be prequels of the original Star Wars films, I didn't get nearly as pumped up as I was about the imminent coming of The Lord of the Rings.
I didn't know what to expect when I saw The Phantom Menace (TPM), but I did know that at some point 5 or so years ago that A) the Clone Wars (I had for some reason always thought that these were really "the Klone Wars", named after something called "Klone", which could have been a planet, a person, a territory, or some extremely rare and powerful substance which brought vast wealth) would have to take place since Obi Wan Kenobi "was a hero of the Clone Wars", and B) Darth Vader would have to make his appearance at some point or another and that he was a pupil of Obi Wan Kenobi.
As time went on, the possibilities for surprise obviously narrowed. By the end of Attack of the Clones (ATOC), we could go into ROTS knowing that:
1) Anakin Skywalker would be transformed into Darth Vader.
2) The Republic would crumble somehow and we would see the birth of the Empire, though not the death of the Senate because that happens in Star Wars.
3) Palpatine would get disfigured somehow, or we would perhaps witness that his use of the Dark Side of the Force was ravaging his body and facial features.
4) We would presumably see the deaths of Count Dooku, Mace Windu and the other Jedi on the Jedi Master Council, Padme Amidala, and perhaps some of the Separatist leaders. I thought several years ago that it would be the death of Anakin's mother that would drive him to madness, but that left Padme as the final source of Anakin's madness because he didn't turn in AOTC.
5) The Jedi order would be extinguished except for Kenobi and Yoda. My thought was that Yoda would be caught fleeing some battle and his space ship would be shot down over that swamp planet (Dagoba system?) where Luke finds him two films later. Obi Wan Kenobi would survive more or less intact from the Clone Wars.
After witnessing the creation of the Clone army in ATOC, my suspicions were that either A) the Jedi order would be worn thin by losses in the Civil War or B) that Palpatine, who had attained control of the State apparatus, would orchestrate a massacre of the Jedi by mustering hundreds of thousands of Clone troops to execute the heinous task.
6) We would witness the birth of Leia and Luke. Obi Wan Kenobi would watch over Luke and that Leia would be adopted by the noble "Organa" family. I wasn't aware that there was a Senator Organa, but we did know that Leia was a princess.
So, it is hard to get that pumped up over a film where you knew a pretty fair amount of what's going to happen before it happens. But we Star Wars fans had slogged through this much, so we might as well finish the job off right?
The biggest flaw about these three films is that they have practically none of the humor of the original Star Wars films. That is understandable since these films are about the rise and fall of the tragic Anakin Skywalker, the Clone Wars themselves, and the failure of The Republic as it disintegrates into an empire. Bundle all of those topics together and you don't get a lot of laughs. It's almost like the task that Peter Jackson faced in trying to squeeze in workable humor into The Lord of the Rings, but thank the heavens for Gollum.
I ended up seeing ROTS three times in the theater and came away thinking that ROTS truly was one of the most severe and intense movies I have ever seen. I had to be since the film was dealing with the failure of The Republic and the general destruction of the Jedi order. If you have read any history at all, you may well know that some of the most emotional wars that have been fought by mankind have been civil wars. The American Civil War, the English Civil War, the War between Julius Caesar and the Republican forces led by Pompey for dominion over the Roman world (an empire in all but name after the final defeat of Carthage in 146 BC), all were conflicts of unbelievable fury because so much was riding on the line for all of the contestants.
Another big problem that has plagued these films is that there is a great deal going on in the background - the general political atmosphere of what's happening in Republic, the Senate, how certain things come about such as the creation of the Clone army, all have to be shown. All of these events eat into screen time and do not allow too much time for the rather large array of characters to fully develop. This is similar to the problem that anyone would face in trying to film The Lord of the Rings - so much happening, so little screen time. Contrast this to the original three films, especially the first two films, where to be honest not a great number of events happen. Irwin Kershner, who directed ESB, and Lucas himself in Star Wars, both have time to establish the characters and pull out their full personnae over the course of the movies. Instead, the actors of the prequels have to establish something of their characters with relatively little screen time.
Because of the situation described about characters not getting too much screen time, we are somewhat cheated in not seeing their full selves. Most of the good Jedi come off as mildly interesting personnae. Yoda is familiar with his Daoist preachings and his mangling of English grammar. Qui Gonn Jin comes off as something of a authority snubbing, appealing gambler who calmly bets the farm away on the boy Anakin Skywalker in TPM. Mace Windu is perhaps the most conservative, but collected and composed of the good Jedi. Windu doesn't loose his cool even when three of his comrades are sliced down by a raging Palpatine in their ultra high stakes confrontation during ROTS. As for the bad guys, we do get to see just enough of the emotional, but corrupted and fabulously wealthy Viceroy Gunray. We only catch glimpses of the quiet, focused assassin, Darth Maul (it is notable that Darth Maul is the only Jedi - or Sith Lord - who does not engage in the obligatory trash talk that Sith / Jedi hurl at one another before commencing to do battle via light sabers). Most intriguing of all, we don't get to see enough of the the elegant, confident, and worldly Count Dooku. But one redeeming aspect of these stories is that Lucas manages to convey the idea through this mismash of characters that the games of politics and the struggle for political power are fought over primarily by the ruthless. Politics is not a game for the faint of heart.
There are some quarters out there in the galaxy that may think that the Star Wars prequels were the greatest thing in history, but if box office receipts are any indication of film quality then it becomes clear that the Star Wars prequels were not great films. In general, I would out of gut instinct give TPM a 6.5 out of 10, the AOTC a 6 of 10, and ROTS a 7.5 out of 10. By now there are probably thousands of websites out there that have meandered on and on about the idea that George Lucas can't write a film script and that this is the reason that these films did not live up to their true potential. I tend to give some credence to this idea. Don't get me wrong. I do enjoy hearing the obligatory, "I have a bad feeling about this" in each of the Star Wars films, getting a little smile out of every time I hear the line. But it seems to me that the so called "bad dialogue" issue is tied in with bad acting to a much greater degree than many people want or care to admit to.
Examples: Natalie Portman (Padme Amadala) didn't do too bad of a job in TPM, as her role in that film mainly required her to act as a youthful, yet dutiful monarch. However Portman was just awful in the AOTC. It is absolutely painful watching her try to act as though she is romantically in love with Hayden Christensen in AOTC and Christensen duly returns the favor. They do get mildly better at their jobs in ROTS, but it helps significantly that the love story of Anakin and Padme is not the heart and soul of ROTS. Yes, there is awful dialogue spoken between the two at points, but Portman often looks like she is either amazed or wondering how it was that she got into these films. I will say that she does lay down a good line in ROTS when upon hearing that Palpatine will reorganize the Republic into an Empire that, "so this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."
And that line leads me to a really REALLY big gripe that I have with Star Wars fanatics. When most people go out to see a film, there is some hope that people will respect some social courtesy by keeping reasonably quiet during the film while reacting appropriately when the film goes along. In other words, laughing at funny scenes, remaining quiet during serious scenes, and if scenes leave you wanting to cry, then cry you can.
Not so with Star Wars fanatics. I have never met a group of fans (even J.R.R. Tolkien fans) who have more desperately desired to add their own sound track to a film as the film is in progress. Examples?
1) During the above mentioned line delivered by Senator Padme Amidala in ROTS, one guy who was sitting one row back of me and to my right loudly declared, "Cliche! Cliche! Bad Writing!" Was that line really a cliche? If so, then what the hell have you done to promote liberty and freedom pal?
2) During an early scene of ROTS where Padme greets Anakin with the news that she is pregnant (after he and Ben Kenobi have successfully "rescued" Palpatine from General Grievous and Count Dooku), one 30-something gentleman sitting one row in front of me turned to his girlfriend / wife and said in a loud whisper, "She should have said, I am with Jedi! Ah, Ha, ha." It must be great to laugh at your own cleverness.
I could go on with probably 10 more examples of SW fans adding to the movie soundtrack while the film is in progress, but this should be enough for you to get the picture.
Of the Characters and the Acting:
The Bad Apple: To get on with the acting, I could not help but wonder whether Lucas should have made Anakin and Padme older in the first two films. It's hard to swallow that the boy who yells "Yippie" in TPM will eventually turn into Darth Vader. On the other side of the pantheon, in ROTS the role of Anakin Skywalker becomes so significant that it really requires a world class talent in order to pull off a monumental task. Hayden Christensen does fine in some scenes. His fighting is good and I particularly liked when he tells Padme off after she says to him that she thinks that the war is due to a failure to listen. But rather than pulling off a Hamlet, we end up getting a mid level rent performance instead. Then there are the times during the prequels where Anakin as a character comes off as a spoiled brat, such as complaining about Obi Wan "holding him back" during AOTC. Hardly someone I would pick to be The Chosen One who would deliver the Galaxy from darkness.
One very controversial aspect of ROTS (which by no means is Christensen's fault) that I will address deals with the rather jarring sequence of events by which Anakin finally decides to join Palpatine and become his apprentice. Many have commented that Anakin's decision seemed out of place and happened so quickly. One scene he is speaking to Obi Wan about how appreciative he is of how he has trained him and the next he has been christened Darth Vader by the chilling, haunted voice of Darth Sidious. The standard defense of Anakin's conduct is that he is lost, confused, and not sure where to go. Moreover, he is overcome with what has happened concerning the death of Windu.
After mulling this issue over, I came up with two possible ideas that might make the matter of Anakin's turn to the Dark Side somewhat clearer, if not any more satisfying to ROTS viewers. One really big issue hanging over the entire scene that people might be forgetting is that after Palpatine triumphs over his Jedi enemies, he promptly asks Anakin to become his apprentice. One might ask what would happen if Anakin had said "no"? Well, we know from context that Anakin realizes that Palpatine is the Chancellor and that if he was attacked by Jedi, then he could use this as a pretext to use the State / Imperial powers at his disposal to deal with a Jedi arrest / assassination attempt as he saw fit. Of course this is exactly what happens in the film. In this context, Anakin would not only be acting out of weakness and grief over the death of Windu, he would have been acting out of mere self preservation. Since he was a Jedi, the thought could have gone through Anakin's head that Palpatine would have lumped him together with the rest of the Jedi as an enemy, and thus as a target of elimination if he had said no. Of course many would cry that Palpatine had singled out Anakin as a target for recruitment, but again one has to think of what Palpatine might have done to Anakin if Anakin had said no. Remember, at the end of ROTS there are only four known adult Jedi left. Early in Star Wars, Grand Moff Tarkin remarks to Vader that "The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You are all that is left of their religion." Thus Anakin is bowing to Palpatine under pressure.
The other idea that comes to mind is that Anakin saw that Windu had left with a posse of 3 other Jedi to arrest Palpatine. It may have occured to him that as he walked into Palpatine's chambers that only Windu was left and that Palpatine was even greater of a figure than he already realized (he did say to Windu that Palpatine was very powerful and that they would need his help to rein him in). Such an idea would have led to Anakin bowing to Palpatine out of awe, and of the hope that he would in fact reach his potential as his apprentice.
I won't go into the issue of deciding to include characters like Jar Jar Binks or of the "stereotype" controversy that dogged the various characters of TPM. There are other fish to fry here.
The Dutiful Soldier: Ewan McGregor seems to have grown a bit during these three films. We see him try to add a touch of humor to ROTS via wry observations at the end of various scenes ala James Bond, but sadly much of the verbiage falls flat (criticism about bad dialogue taken). Sadly as events escalate during ROTS, Obi Wan seems to stay a bit to the sidelines when things get tough surrounding Anakin and his issues with the Jedi Council.
The Fearsome Machine: I could not help but wonder whether General Grievous was something of a created character which had to be hustled into ROTS in order to make the film work. My means of reasoning are that since the story mainly revolves around Anakin turning to the Dark Side, that meant that Count Dooku would have to meet his end with a fair amount of screen time left during the story. That would have left the Separatist movement in the hands of Viceroy Gunray and his associates. While Gunray was a wealthy businessman, he probably would not have made a worthy villain in the eyes of many. Ergo another compelling fighting or commander type character needed to be hustled in. Nonetheless, the character of Grievous was interesting, especially the obvious tension that was felt between Gunray and Grievous which burst out after the death of the Count. One gets the feeling that there would have been quite a bit of infighting within the Separatist camp had the war gone on for a longer period of time than it did.
The Caped Crusader: And speaking of the Count, Christopher Lee seemed to be the only person at times who could act in AOTC. I still remember seeing the film when it first came out and thinking that it really wasn't until the end of the film that we really find out that Count Dooku is a bad guy. It was easily the most subtle and interesting performance that Lucas managed to capture out of any of the Star Wars films. It was a shame that the Count was dispatched rather early in ROTS, but Lucas had lots of other irons in the fire that he had to deal with in this film and it seems per force that things had to be that way.
Still, it would have been more fun to have seen a 30 minute longer version of ROTS and see The Count somehow get worked into several more scenes. I have read that Dooku walked out on the Jedi order after getting bent out of shape over corruption in the political system. Since the Jedi serve The Republic, then his order is implicitly condoning what is going on around them. One could say The Count was in fact an idealist.
One could also say that The Count was also fiercely ambitious. In one of the geniunely shocking scenes of the entire prequels, Dooku literally gives away the farm and tells Kenobi the goods about Palpatine! It was a brilliant scene from several perspectives. First, if Dooku was looking to split the Jedi order, then what better way to do so then to tell them that the Galactic Senate is led by the great Sith Master. It's one of the best recruiting tools one could think of. In fact, Dooku says nearly the exact same words to Kenobi that Vader uses to try to recruit Luke to join him three films later. In both cases, Vader and Dooku may well have been thinking of trying to bump off Palpatine and were thinking that they could use some help in doing so. Hence that would be the way to move up in the world. There is no honor amongst thieves. Maybe that is the reason the Sith decided that there would be only two Sith Lords, as having any more would have done nothing to advance the cause. They would have spent all of their time trying to bump off each other, whether individually or by alliance with each other.
Count Dooku was clearly a potent figure. He threw Ben Kenobi, a reasonably strong Jedi master, around like a rag doll not once but twice in their confrontations. He was particularly strong at using The Force to manipulate physical materials, as I thought that Kenobi was going to end up spending part of ROTS in a hospital recovering from paralysis after Dooku broke that metal stairwell and brought it down on the senseless Kenobi.
There is also the idea that Dooku was a Count. Not having read very much of the Internet blather about Star Wars, it would seem that Dooku was a member of nobility and perhaps heir to land, an estate, and fortune of sorts. This is in stark contrast to the Jedi in general. While many talk on and on about the magical powers that various Jedi have, they seem to seldom wonder about another source of power - money! The Jedi, outside of their temple and library (which may have been paid for by the Senate out of Galactic public monies), seem to have taken vows of poverty and chastity. One imagines the public anger that might have come down on the Jedi order as a whole if it became public knowledge that individual Jedi were found to have been using their mind tricks to gain sexual favors! There are serious ethical issues involved with having such powers, something that the films do not explore in any meaningful way. One can easily imagine that Sith Lords would have used such skills with gusto to advance their cause.
Count Dooku, in renouncing his allegiance to the Jedi Order, would have perhaps been renouncing an earlier, youthful ideal to give up his titles, lands, and fortune to serve as a Jedi. In old age and his anger about the Galactic political situation, he decides that perhaps his temporal fortune might come in handy after all. That money would be useful in funding the construction of Droid foundrys and factories. The Count's fortune would be even more useful if it were combined with the wealth possessed by the Trade Federation to promote bribery, secure alliances with star systems, and so forth. The combination of money, worldly wisdom, and Jedi abilities make Dooku a fascinating figure.
In the end of course, Palpatine sells Dooku down the river as he does everyone else. One co-worker of mine has said to me that the whole setup behind the "kidnapping" of Palpatine at the beginning of ROTS was to set up a showdown between Count Dooku and Anakin Skywalker. It is clear from film dialogue that Dooku is both aware of this and was looking forward to dueling Jedi again. But why would he willingly put himself in such a position? Other than to bump off a potential rival to ruling the galaxy, I cannot really see why Dooku would want to be on that ship when he could serve his own ambitions by rallying more star systems to the Separatist cause. The only idea I can come up with is that Palpatine may have threatened to hunt him down and kill him anyway if he didn't kill Kenobi and Skywalker. Palpatine might have been trying to use Darwinian methods of getting the best apprentice he could find after having to deal with the setback caused by the death of Darth Maul. Darth Maul would not have gotten Palpatine to the summit. It was quite conceivable that Palpatine would not have reached his goals without Count Dooku.
Living Double Lives: Ian McDiarmid performed evenly in TPM, but turned a bit ham handed in AOTC. All is forgiven though because McDiarmid turns out to be the star of ROTS. If we could have gotten Hayden Christensen to perform on McDiarmid's level, ROTS would have been a much better movie. We see Palpatine, like the good politician he is, tell Anakin everything he wants to hear. Contrast this to Yoda's good parenting by tough love approach. Nobody wants to listen to that.
In a strange twist to the saga, we see where Palpatine seems to fool nearly everyone as to his double life. Clearly it was as Dooku said that The Dark Side of the Force was clouding the Jedi vision, but one could also say that it was befuddling everyone else's vision also. It would be hard to understand the actions of General Grievous and those of Viceroy Gunray if they had known that Palpatine was also Darth Sidious.
Although I know nothing about the entire backdrop of the Star Wars galaxy, it seems that Palpatine was the only Sith Lord smart enough to figure out that in order to fulfill the ambitions of their order and destroy the Jedi, you have to work within the system and use it to overthrow your enemies. Hence his entry into politics and his efforts to use endless conflicts which he starts to amass more and more political power. In this sense Palpatine somewhat mirrors real world example of Adolf Hitler, who after his failed Munich putsch in 1923 decided to play the Weimar democracy game by the establish rules - albeit with Brown Shirt intimidation involved to tilt the playing field in his direction. When Hitler did reach the edge of legitimate power in 1933 after the Nazi party received more than 30% of the vote in the 1932 elections (quite a feat since the Weimar Republic was a proportional representation parliamentary democracy), Hitler then used that power to take care of some unfinished business. That meant silencing vocal opponents from the past, shutting out the competition by banning all other political parties, and then overthrowing the old Weimar Republic by intimidation and force. By these means, a monopoly on the coercion power of The State was finally achieved by the Nazis and was maintained until 1945. We are never told in Star Wars why it was that there was a rebellion against the empire (high taxes, eminent domain exercised on entire planets, an unfair judiciary?) but we are left to infer that it is because Palpatine just becomes the ultimate evil dictator who cannot be tolerated anymore.
We also see a beautifully ambigious scene when McDiarmid describes the tragedy of Darth Plagues. Was Palpatine Darth Plagues' apprentice? If Palpatine was Darth Plagues' apprentice, the idea arises that Darth Plagues could have exacted revenge on Palpatine from the beyond by creating Anakin. Wow! Then there is the issue of whether one really could stave off death by using the Dark Side. Palpatine, perhaps spending quite a bit of time and Dark Force power trying to divine exactly what it is that Anakin wants, hands out the apple to Anakin of saving people from death, then turns around after his conversion to say that he doesn't know exactly how to cheat death. How insidous! Indeed, one wonders why Anakin didn't start having his doubts about Palpatine right there since Palpatine had effectively lied to Anakin on the spot. But do you know Anakin, don't you, that if you do the dirty work of leading my Clone armies against the Jedi and subsequently massacre the Separatist leaders, then you just might be able to discover the secret of saving the dying.
And speaking of the "Night at the Opera" scene between Palpatine and Anakin, I have a suspicion that the main meaning of that scene for many Star Wars fans was getting the chance to be served another slice of canon in learning about the existence of Darth Plagues. Some might note that this is where Palpatine starts his pitch to Anakin via telling him about the power to stop death, while the scene also throws mystery into the matter of whether Plagues (or perhaps Palpatine himself) had created Anakin (I think Lucas has debunked these ideas). Perhaps Palpatine is saying these things as he himself might have been dwelling on the issue of whether Anakin was created by the Force itself (as did Qui Gonn in TPM), thus hinting to Anakin that if you join the Sith, then you will discover the secret of your own birth and existence. It would also provide an answer to Anakin about the purpose of his own life, something he himself seems to be searching for as all young men do. Heady stuff here...
But most people are missing perhaps the most important aspect of that scene. And what - pray tell - was that? Well, the second reason that Palpatine decided to tell Anakin about the tragedy of Darth Plagues was that Anakin had just asserted that the Sith relied on their passions and only thought about themselves, while the Jedi were selfless and cared about others. The second reason why Palpatine decided to tell Anakin about Darth Plagues was because he wanted to show that the Sith were also capable of caring about others and that the Sith had in fact discovered the greatest gift that one could use to show that one does indeed care about others - by saving them from death. For good measure, Palpatine also throws in a wry warning to Anakin about the costs of thinking too much about others and not watching out for number one when he tells Anakin about Plagues' murder.
Of course, one might say that wielding the power to stave off death requires not only great knowledge of The Force, but immense wilpower and personal strength with The Force. One could argue that Anakin had in fact personally discovered that power at the very end of ROTS, but he was only able to use it one time - by consuming much of his inherent strength with The Force to preserve himself after Ben Kenobi had sliced his legs and arms off, not to mention that he had been scorched by lava and fire.
In the interest of bringing up another topic of discussion, there is the issue of what happened to Palpatine's appearance during his confrontation with Mace Windu. The reason for doing this is that Lucas, like Tolkien and other storytellers, has mastered the art of leaving many issues ambiguous and open to numerous personal and public interpretations. Without a doubt, Lucas has discovered this is perhaps the best way of keeping true fans interested in his work.
My own impression, which I share with Ian McDiarmid himself but which was discounted by Lucas, was that Windu's barely successful parry of Palpatine's use of Force Lightning at close range revealed Palpatine's true face. This was Darth Sidious scarred by the use of the Dark Side of the Force, unable to use the Dark Side anymore to cloud the visions of others and to hide behind the countenance of the elderly, beloved Chancellor Palpatine. It is notable that we never see Palpatine again, though one might say that Sidious may have decided that he didn't need to bother anymore with the charade. Nonetheless, Sidious ends up having to explain himself before the Senate. In essence, I thought that Windu had in fact bested Palpatine and that it was fate that decided whether the galaxy would fall into darkness. Another idea would have been that wars and conflicts end up making men do things they normally would not do - in this case the otherwise conservative Windu ends up deciding to be prosecutor, judge, and jury of Palpatine.
An alternate explanation of what happened was that Palpatine sensed the presence of Anakin and basically decided "to hold back" his last ammunition to perform a final lure on Anakin. "Oh help me! I am too weak!" Palpatine, like nearly all dictators and would be dictators, have no problems in spending endless sums of tax monies and killing off millions in the pursuit of power, but turn out to be chickens when it comes to the matter of facing the absolutely certain prospect of their own deaths.
One aspect I liked about Palpatine was that he was almost like a Julius Caesar, or any one of a number of Roman generals who ruled the Roman Empire in his wake. What I mean by this is that Palpatine schemed endlessly for greater power during the three prequels and took a number of significant personal risks in the process, any of which could have gone wrong. When his initial plans were foiled by Queen Amidala and the boy Anakin, he simply kept going and moved on. After all, the trade dispute had vaulted him into the Chancellorship. Then there was the idea that the Jedi rescue in ROTS might not have worked. Anakin might have crashed General Grievous ship during their fiery landing. Then there was the matter that Palpatine did prevail - with help from Anakin - against a 4 on 1 attack by Jedi. Though I wrote above that Palpatine was obviously afraid of Windu when the prospect of certain death reared its head, he did show that if there was some uncertainty as to situational outcomes that he was willing to assume personal risks to advance his position. In a similar vein, there is a strand of historical thought that says that Caesar had to take risks in order to make a run of it in Roman politics, though it would be a mistake to think that Julius Caesar had planned from his youth to overthrow the Roman Senatorial order in order to achieve his greatest ambitions in the same way that Palpatine was scheming to do with the Galactic Republic. I suppose one could say that the Force really was with Palpatine.
And so the circle is now complete, warts and all. My own opinion held from day after seeing ESB is that Lucas never had a full vision of what Star Wars was going to be like, especially the backstory. Caught off guard from the monster success of the original Star Wars film and doubtless from an adoring public who simply could not wait for more stories from the far far away Galaxy, Lucas found himself having to sketch out new (?) or more material. Hence the inconsistences between films such as the fact the Kenobi asking Yoda in ESB whether he was any different than Luke when Yoda was training him. If that was the case in 1980, then what's the deal with Qui Gonn? I can now understand that Anakin might not know that he had a daughter, but why was it that nobody (even Padme!) seems to have never known that she was carrying twins during ROTS? Did she never visit a doctor? Remember, this is the Galaxy which has mastered intergalactic space travel and had noble knights who could partly divine the future. And what's the story with Leia telling Luke that she barely remembers her mother when she would have had no memories at all because Padme died shortly after they were born?
We will be nice here and let these matters drop. The films were good Mr. Lucas. The Star Wars saga leaves us with the same delimma that Tolkien left us at the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth. The Big Bogeyman has been defeated and the magic has been burned away, leaving Tolkien and Lucas as creators (and us as fans) with a hard task of coming up with any new compelling stories to tell. Maybe it's finally time to come back to our own dreary world from those events of long, long ago which happened in a Galaxy far far away.
I belong to a Tolkien Meeetup group here in Houston, which I have attended for the past 2 years or so. Actually we have a fairly active group which includes such luminaries in the world of Tolkien fandom like Literature Professor Jane Chance of Rice University and Tolkien researcher Michael Martinez, both of whom have published works on Tolkien.
At last month's meetup, it was agreed that we would have a Trivial Pursuit contest. I haven't read too closely the works in quite a while, but a little brushing up should get me into fighting shape when it comes to a Tolkien Trivial Pursuit contest. Ah yes, I once knew every spell of Elves, Men, and Orcs for opening such doors. I can still recall 10 score of them even without searching my mind...or something to that effect.
More intriguingly, Mr. Martinez suggested that we present some ideas as to where Tolkien might have gotten some of his inspirations. Many people who are familiar with Tolkien's works know that Tolkien was inspired by the Finnish myth the Kalevala, and by Beowulf. But what about some possible ideas from other writings? Well, it seemed to The Mighty Wizard that Mr. Martinez might be slyly looking for help with future writings, so I have decided to use my trusty weblog to publish some ideas as to where I think Tolkien might have gotten inspiration and have them on the public record before anyone else does. More to the point, my musings might raise some eyebrows because it is highly likely that the very few of the Sci - Fi / Fantasy crowd which read the Classics. What a shame because they really are worth reading.
----------
My first essay as to where Tolkien might have gotten inspiration from comes from Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is found on page 309 of the Penguin Classics edition of Gibbon's work. The year is A.D. 270 and the Roman Emperor Aurerlian is fighting a Germanic People called the Alemanni. After improbably defeating them in three battles, the most important of which was the Battle of Fano, the German Barbaric hordes reasoned to themselves that they simply could not have lost to the Roman Emperor on their own. It was noted that in this time of extreme danger to the Western Empire, the Roman Senate had ordered that the Sibylline books be consulted. Any sacrifice would be offered by the Emperor and the Senate to appease the gods. But to return to the subject of Tolkien inspiration, I invoke Gibbon's timeless writing style:
"However puerile in themselves, these superstitious arts were subservient to the success of the war; and if, in the decisive battle of Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of spectres combatting on the side of Aurelian, he received a real and effectual aid from this imaginary reinforcement."
Hmmm. It must have been that the Roman Emperor could invoke supernatural ghosts to his aid, which is what really defeated the Barbarian hordes. Wow! Does that idea sound familiar to Tolkien fans?
It seems that that Mighty Wizard is a deeply learned fellow...
Ciao for now.
I was watching the electronic mind control box (aka the television) when I heard the news that author Hunter S. Thompson killed himself with a self inflicted gunshot wound. HST was 67 years old.
The obviously prewritten obituaries that are often written for famous people and celebrities by the mainstream media have duly noted that Thompson was the inventor of "Gonzo Journalism", usually described as a form of journalism where the author interjects him/ herself at various points into the story. Anyone who has read anything of HST's work can surely agree that HST was just as much a part of the story as anything or anyone he wrote about.
I first was turned on to Thompson's writing by my closest circle of friends that I had in high school. This group of friends were all really bright guys who had various levels of academic achievement, but were bright in the sense that we read stuff like HST's work. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the rest of my cohorts in suburbia were clueless about the existence of someone like HST.
But I digress. A pair of friends that I had, David and Steve, discovered and subsequently turned me on to Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when we were all 16 years olds. I found myself magnetically attracted to HST's style of writing.
My group of friends were all so excited with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that we had to get our hands on anything that Thompson wrote. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail was my favorite, while David and Steve tended to enjoy The Great Shark Hunt more. I think that a lot of this had to do with the idea that I was already something of a political animal when I was a teenager, while my friends were more into adventures and going to exotic places. Also, I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of someone like Thompson sitting in a limo with Richard Nixon and writing about the tale afterwards!
At the cost of reiterating something that I just wrote about, I really cannot overemphasize that Thompson appealed to my friends and I because he appeared to be a rebel who was simultaneously a part of - and apart from - "the system." It escapes me now, but how was it that Thompson was known as "Doctor" Dr. Hunter S. Thompson? My friends and I all used to chuckle and fantasize about the idea that we would be "Doctors" of something or another. Why not be a "Doctor" of Journalism?
To go on with this idea, it has been noted that many of Thompson's problems with Rolling Stone magazine editors had to do with the idea that Thompson was racking up vast expenses while often not doing much to complete a story that he had been assigned to write about. Of course such behavior would cause turbulence, but great art always causes turbulence.
IMHO - later writings by Thompson didn't seem to match up to earlier efforts. I remember reading about Thompson covering the Honolulu Marathon once and not being impressed. As time went on, I drifted away from reading Thompson as my reading tastes were changing. I wouldn't mind one day going back and rereading some of those early works of HST's, if for no other reason than trying to reconnect with my youth.
One critique that I would write about Thompson's writing style is that (although I didn't know it at the time) Thompson was effectively writing in a somewhat comparable style to what the so - called "Modernist" writers such as Virgina Woolf were writing in. The reason I make this statement is that Woolf and cohorts (I did take a course in British Literature from 1790 - to the Present, BTW) would write in a kind of strange, somewhat disjointed, "stream of consciousness" style. At times Thompson's work could resemble such writing, but having read both Woolf and Thompson, I would have to say that Thompson beats Woolf's writing hands down.
In all, it doesn't surprise me one bit that Thompson decided to take his own life via a shotgun. After reading so much of his work, it almost seemed natural that Thompson would do such a thing. If Thompson judged that he had had enough and that his life wasn't worth living anymore, then so be it. The time had come to end it.
Hunter S. Thompson - RIP
As the whole world knows, Johnny Carson, legendary host of The Tonight Show, passed away from emphasyma at age 79. Tonight, I watched Don Rickles and Bob Newhart join Carson's successor, Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. Here is a great line from Rickles regarding a meeting he had with Frank Sinatra:
"I had to laugh at Frank's jokes because if you didn't then your family would get hurt!"
One thing I would like to say about The Tonight Show when Johnny was in command. I can remember when I was a boy, perhaps aged 6 or so, when I could stay up late and watch the show with my father and my oldest sister. My mother would go off to her night shift job at a nearby hospital and I was too young to worry about school. I can still remember one night when a boring guest Johnny had on the show told a poor joke and immediately after that, our pet parakeet keeled over and passed away on the spot. It was sooo funny!
I would have to say that as I got older, I would come to judge that the era of the late 1960's to early 1970's were the real heyday of The Tonight Show. The reason I say this is because that was an era when morals were steadily being relaxed. One could watch Carson's gentle humor he displayed on The Tonight Show, along with the sometimes hot babe actresses who would appear as guests. There was something of a guilty pleasure to be had in watching the show during that era that people could indulge in. It was something your father watched late at night during the onslaught of the sexual revolution, followed later by cable television, and so on.
Part of Johnny's secret was that in addition to his gentle humor, he was a master of timing, could always get a good laugh out of government and politics (no matter who or which party was in charge), and didn't mind taking a shot himself once in a while. In his younger days, he could hold a good dance with the best of the ladies. Carson made it all look effortless.
Reports are that DVD's and CD's of Carson's tenure are suddenly selling like hotcakes. No tribute to Johnny could be a greater one.
Johnny Carson - RIP, and I hope you are still keeping them laughing in heaven.
Ciao for now.
TMW
On Saturday, December 10, 2004, Arthur Lydiard passed away. Many of you are probably wondering who in the Hades is Arthur Lydiard. Well partner, if you aren't into running then you probably will have no idea who Arthur Lydiard is. If you are and don't know who Arthur Lydiard is, then it's time you received an education.
Arthur Lydiard was a runner and coach from New Zealand who during the 1940's and 1950's developed the general form of training that is used worldwide today. To appreciate Lydiard's achievement, it is necessary to write a brief history on how training methods have progressed in the sport of track and field
In the early decades of the 20th century, runners strongly tended to keep their training secrets to themselves. As such, we know fairly little about how such sport legends as Paavo Nurmi achieved the results they did. We can imagine that people back in those days had to perform more manual labor than most people do today, ergo it was possible that talented athletes of the late 19th and early 20th century were able to achieve their results with possibly lighter training loads than those that are practiced today.
We do know that in the 1930's Swedish athletes were publicizing such training methods as fartlek, a form of distance running where runners throw in surges and pick up the pace for various amouts of time and distance. In my younger days, I used to enjoy running fartlek workouts of 7 - 9 miles, where I would typically throw in 12 - 20 minutes of surges. For example, I would start by running 2-3 miles at a steady pace, then I would run hard for 2 minutes, jog for 2 minutes, pick it up for 3 minutes followed by 3 minutes of jogging, then a 4 minute push followed by 4 minutes of easy running. Then I would go back down the ladder.Of course, surges and recoveries could be of any distance and unlike interval training (see below), fartlek is meant to be somewhat unplanned and spontaneous. Runners of the 1930's were able to get close to breaking the 4 minute mile barrier with this form of running before World War II disrupted progress in the sport.
Following World War II,a Czechoslavakian runner named Emil Zatopek achieved legendary status in the sport by winning the 1948 London Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 meter golds. Zatopek followed up his "distance double" achievement by winning the 5 and 10k distances again in 1952 in Helsinki. To boot, Zatopek finished off the 1952 games by winning the marathon. Such an "Olympic triple" will probably never be repeated. Additionally, Zatopek broke first the 30 minute barrier in the 10,000, then the 29 minute barrier in the 10,000 meter distances.
Of course with such great achievements, people wanted to know who the Czech machine trained. Zatopek let it be known that he used what became known as interval training. Interval training is where a runner runs hard for a certain distance (or time), followed by a rest of a certain interval. Usually this is done around the track to control for distance and recovery.
What people were to discover later on when studying Zatopek's training was that Zatopek in fact sometimes ran "slow intervals" of 80 - 120 seconds for 440 yards / 400 meters in training. This training technique helped Zatopek achieve a form of long steady distance without him realizing it. This is an important observation because the entire rest of the world drew the exact opposite conclusion from Zatopek's training methods. Everyone else theorized that since Zatopek was running at certain paces during workouts, say 20 x 400 meters in 65 seconds, then if his competitors ran 20 x 400 meters in 63 seconds, then logic would dictate that they would run faster and start winning.
Such was the state of elite training in track and field in the 1950's after Zatopek retired from the sport. The tough minded souls of the sport, such as Gordon Pirie of Great Britain and Vladimir Kuts of the Soviet Union, would run brutal track workouts every day of the week. These men (women weren't allowed to participate in events longer than the 400 meters until 1972) achieved some great results, but their careers were often over by the time they were 30. The mind rebels at doing such hard joyless work. All over the world, thousands of young high school and college aged runners of the era became burned out on the sport before they really hit their prime years because they followed such mentally difficult training regimens.
And then Lydiard came along. Lydiard had been running long steady "jogging" type workouts through the 1940's and 1950's, often running 100 or more miles per week. In the 1950's he started experimenting with running track workouts after he had spent time building a solid conditioning base with long distance running.
The regimen worked. Lydiard found himself winning New Zealand national marathoning championships when he was pushing 40 years old, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by his competitors who were often 10 - 20 years younger than he was. Soon runners were coming to him looking for guidance. Two of his best runners, Murray Halberg and Peter Snell, struck gold in the 1960 Rome Olympics in the 5,000 meters and the 800 meters respectively. Snell went on to win the 800 and 1,500 meter races in Tokyo in 1964. Lydiard also was instrumental in getting runners from Finland to start running hard again, and in 1972 Pekka Vasala won the 1,500 meters, while Lasse Viren took the 5,000 and 10,000 golds. Viren famously nearly repeated Zatopek's triple in Montreal in 1976, where he took the 5k and 10k golds again, while coming in 5th in the marathon.
Meanwhile in the 1960's and 1970's, scientists in the then burgeoning field of exercise physiology were discovering why it was that Lydiard's methods worked. At the cellular level, the body's cardiovascular system needs to develop networks of capillaries and efficient distribution of oxygen in order to develop its aerobic capacity. Once this is developed, the body's ability to withstand the anaerobic pressures placed on the body that are created by running at great speeds are greatly enhanced. Essentially Lydiard, through experimentation, led us to the mountain top of human endurance running.
But Lydiard was not someone who was satisfied only with working with elite athletes. He took his ideas and training methods to the general public. American coaches of the 1960's, such as Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, legendary coach at the University of Oregon, went to New Zealand and started spreading Lydiard's message and ideas. That message was that everyone could take up the sport and participate. Everyone could train to a point where they could achieved good results, or could see what the limits of what their talents were. Not only that, running was a sport that could be enjoyed. It was no longer a sport of punishment as it once was. This directly led to the running boom that took off in the 1970's and 1980's in America and the Western world.
So, as you see, if you or anyone you know has ever taken up the sport of jogging or running, then you have been influenced by a great man and fearless experimenter whose light has now left us. I myself have now been running for nearly 23 years and hope I never tire, of or quit the sport. It was a shock to hear that Lydiard passed away here in Houston. If I had known of the fact that he was going to be here, I would have made an effort to meet him. As such, I will have to be satisfied with remembering Lydiard when I go out and run.
Arthur Lydiard - RIP.
This afternoon, I went to go see the film Sideways. The film is a quiet romantic type film, but having said that you shouldn't get the idea that this is some kind of chick flick. This film is really a film for all adults.
The film is about two middle aged men, Miles Raymond (played by Paul Giamatti) and his college dorm roommate Jack (played by Thomas Hayden Church). Miles physically reminds me of the father of two guys whom I grew up with - having lost some of his hair, slightly paunchy, has eyes that protrude just slightly. Miles is an English middle school teacher, who has had ambitions of being a writer for the longest time, but is on the verge of failing. We also learn that his wife divorced him just a short time ago, and it is clear that Miles has some confidence problems. Meanwhile his buddy Jack, who is on the verge of getting remarried, is fairly good looking, has had some success (but not THAT much success) in acting. His is the type of success where people recognize him if he prods them a little.
The film revolves around a week long road trip that Miles and Jack decide to take before Jack gets married. The film takes place in California, where they head off into wine country. Miles, who happens to be a wine connoseur, takes Jack around on a tour of the area, educating him on the ins and outs of the wine business. Meanwhile Jack tries to get Miles laid and help him out of depressed state of mind. During their week long expedition, Jack and Miles proceed to get themselves into a series of shenanigans which reveal much about their personalities and about the fact that they really are each other's best friends. Both of these men end up doing some rather reprehensible things, but the film also makes it clear that they aren't going to get off so easily for their wrong doings.
I know, I know. It seems that anyone could have made a film like this, but the fact is that NOBODY has made a film like this. There are a number of unusual facets about this film that make it good. The situational comedies in the film make for subtle, but genuine laughs. The cinematography is subtly blurry, setting the stage for a kind of "softness" that permeates this movie. The background musical score has a bossanova, jazzy froth to it. Also, since the film is somewhat narrow in scope, you really get a chance to get into these characters and their faults. To round out the film, Virginia Madsen plays Maya and Sandra Oh plays Stephanie, both late 20 - early 30 something women who happen to work in the restaurant / winery industry. The film makes it clear that both women have been around the block once or twice romantically, and this fact adds unexpected flavors to the films' romance. And in the end, things more or less work out in favor of our protagonists!
What rating does The Mighty Wizard give Sideways - an 9 out of 10. Don't waste your time seeing Alexander. Go see this terrific film!
Ciao for now.
While I was on holiday recently, I found that there seems to be a renewed interest in the life of Ernesto "Che" Guavara. Before I left for my uncle's funeral and my subsequent vacation, I went to go see the film The Motorcycle Diaries. The film was a decent one. Having traveled there once on holiday, it was especially nice to see the stunning natural beauty of South America on film.
As always, when watching a film based on someone's life (or on a book for that matter), you have to wonder what is really going on. While on holiday, it seemed to me that Che t-shirts and clothes were being sold everywhere. I also found "The Motorcycle Diaries" in its book form in the San Francisco airport while waiting to travel to Asia. I was tempted to buy it, but I also saw Karen Armstrong's "Buddha" and decided to buy Armstrong's book instead as I only had room for one more book. I may yet get around to reading Guavara's story as I love reading books from which movies are made.
It is clear that there is a certain romance that has somehow been attached to Che and his life to which people really need to examine more closely. I should defer here to this article in the New Criteron written by Anthony Daniels that would do more to explain the phenemon than anything I could write. I was not so much struck by Daniels' contrasts of the book verses the film as I was concerning the idea that Guavara and (older road trip companion) Alberto Granado's attitudes towards life and their professional occupations. Daniels quotes Granado from The Motorcycle Diaries saying:
[Guevara] and I remarked that this was pretty much what our futures would have been—me a small town pharmacist, he a doctor treating the allergies of wealthy ladies—if it weren’t for that certain something that made us rebel.
And so it is. Were Granado and Guevara nothing more than a bunch of rebels? If so, then that would explain much of their allure for many people. Indeed one has to wonder about the observed characteristics of the Al Queda movement, headed by figures like Osama Bin Laden (civil engineer by schooling if I remember correctly) and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (a doctor). Many have remarked that the 9-11 attackers were also educated, not desperate angry types with poor prospects. Bin Laden and his cohorts could have more in common with Guevara and Granado than one might think.
Ciao for now...
I have posted a new book review on Anthony Everitt's Cicero. You can read it here.
Yesterday morning, I got up to go to work only to find that the air conditioning in my Honda Civic CRX - SI stopped working for the second time in a month. This is disastrous news when you live in Houston Texas and its July. Since I work downtown and the nearest garage is several miles away, I decided to wait until this morning (Saturday) and take the car into my trusted mechanic. The Honda, which has 154,000 miles on it, needed an oil change anyway. But the air conditioner problem turned out to be really bad news. There are leaks near my condenser and evaporator. Since my car is 16 years old, it will probably need the entire air conditioning system replaced in order to comply with new regulations and use newer forms cooling.
Total cost: $1600 with labor. My mechanic put some more freon into the car and told me to think about the matter, since it's probably time to start thinking about a new car.
Meanwhile while I was waiting for the bad news, I decided to walk down to The River Oaks Theater, and catch the matinee showing of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. A number of (mostly leftist and idealistic) co - workers and friends of mine told me that I MUST see it. I've seen Moore's previous films, Roger and Me, along with Bowling for Columbine on video. In both cases, I saw these films some time after the films were finished with their theater runs. Ergo, at my age (38), and with my vast and clear vision of what government really is, I already had a good idea of what to expect out of the film.
There are some good things that come out of the film. My favorite part is towards the end, when Moore along with a Marine Corps vet whom actually served in Iraq, approached members of Congress and asked them if they could talk their own children into serving in Iraq. Anyone who has read my weblog already knows my position on this matter. It was probably a good thing that the public was reminded that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and not Iraq. When a few months after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration started talking about Al-Qaida and Iraq in the same sentence, I knew we were headed for a detour into Iraq and away from Afghanistan. Polls showed that in the run up to the Iraq invasion, large numbers of the American public had come to believe that the attackers were from Iraq.
I also liked the woman from Flint Michigan whose son was killed in Iraq. She was finally coming to her senses that a lot of people really don't know what's going on in politics. I have long since come to the point that I do not trust the words of ANY political figure or ANY lobbyist. All they have are agendas and they will say anything to make sure that they get what they want.
For example, surely we've heard plenty of sob stories about how bad medical care is in America from Democrats and that it is mandatory that we nationalize the health care system. The lies come from both sides of the aisle. The shoe could clearly be on the other foot.
A great and well deserved part this film was spoken by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, who finally seconded a word that my Libertarian Hero Harry Browne wrote in his 1996 book, Why Government Doesn't Work. In the film, Conyers finally explained to Michael Moore - on camera mind you - that NOBODY - Congressmen, Senators, or the President reads the legislation and bills that they dump on the rest of us. Conyers admitted in public that it would take forever for anything to get done if everyone DID ACTUALLY READ THEIR LEGISLATION! That statement alone is proof to me that we need to cut our federal government back drastically and stop sending untold billions to Washington D.C.
Incidently, Harry Browne promised that if he were elected President, he would read every bill that was sent to him - up and down. Too bad Mr. Browne wasn't elected, but don't blame me because I voted for Mr. Browne twice.
Another thing I liked about the film was that it showed how in 2001, Bush administration officials talked about how the terrorist threat was not significant. Never forget that we spend scores of billions of dollars to keep 16 government intelligence agencies and the FBI well ladled with everything they need to make sure that they are ultimately not accountable for the fact that nobody is responsible. You can't fire government bureaucrats, ergo any talk of "reforming" government agencies is a simple misnomer. The only thing you get to do is vote for your next oppressor in the next election.
And speaking of oppressors, Moore shows how the Patriot Act was shown to cause Americans to infiltrate and apprehend other Americans who either gathered in groups to advocate peace related policies, or to simply voice anti - Bush opinions. Over at The Marginal Revolution on July 28, 2004, Alex Tabarrok also has posted some of the joys of what The Patriot Act has been used for - such as shutting down a Stargate website and to fine the innovative PayPal folks $10 million for Internet gambling. Don't forget our RICO laws, which were used by the likes of Rudy Guillani to make his way into public life during the 1980's via prosecuting Wall Street types like Boesky and Michael Millkin. And then there are the "War on Drugs' laws, but that's for another time...
One part of Moore's film that I didn't like were that he went on for a while about the fact that the Saudi's had an estimated $850 billion invested in the United States. Well if you had a bunch of oil wealth, where would you invest it? In Afghanistan? The point here is that I have no problem with foreigners investing in the United States. That shows that America attracts capital that we then put to use. Oil wealth (and other forms of mineral wealth) have often been misused (Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iraq anyone?) and has often proven to be more of a curse than a blessing. The only thing I can hope is that the Saudi's are actually taking some of the proceeds of those investments and trying to build a better society with that money. Alas, it seems that bulk of the wealth is still in the hands of the House of Saud and that Saudi Arabia is teeming with internal tension.
I'm tired of writing about this topic today. I may write a part II review of Moore's film sometime soon. I can say that this film has now reached the $100 million mark in ticket sales. I can also say that the members of the audience clapped after they saw this film, which of course rarely happens in most films. It would seem that 1) the film is being seen by people whose beliefs are "being confirmed" by what they see - i.e. the film goers already share Michael Moore's view and 2) Nonetheless, the film has proven to be a success in the free market and I can't argue against anything that is a success in the marketplace.
Maybe I should also say that Moore now lives in Manhattan, far away from his hometown of Flint Michigan...
Sorry about not posting again for some days. Lately, I've been moving to finally close in on some property, while at the same time I've been busy at work trying to improve on my Unix operating systems skills - particularly in programming.
Yesterday the news came that the one and only Madonna decided that from now on she wants to be known as "Esther." Good grief, Madonna, it's time to hang it up. Esther sounds like a name that your aunt goes by!
Once upon a time, circa 20 years ago, Madonna was a hungry 20-something dancer and singer from Detroit who moved to New York and took the entertainment world by storm. Madonna is decent looking, but not the best looking woman in the world. Her voice had a limited range and her acting skills were spotty at best. But Madonna did possess attitude in spades, a knack for writing great dance hits, and she could back up her songs with good dance performances. And don't forget that talent for constantly "reinventing" her personnae and image.
I loved Madonna. I have 6 - 7 of her albums. I once had a close encounter with her here in Houston in 1990. I was running a workout in Memorial Park and Madonna was starting her world tour here in Houston. There were "Madonna watches" going on all over town. What happened was that I was running in the early afternoon (I worked 2nd shift at my job at the time) and saw a well toned woman running with a massive body guard in the opposite direction. As I got closer, I recognized her as I must have done 16 double takes just to make sure it was who I thought it was.
Madonna's "formula for success," for a lack of a better term, worked for about 13 - 15 years. But by the coming of the Millennium, Madonna was living in a British castle / mansion, raising two kids, and was married. There isn't a lot of time to get out to the dance clubs to see what's going on when you're living that kind of life. You would also have to remember that she is by now a good 20 years older than your typical club goer. She hasn't had a true hit since circa 1998 with "Ray of Light." The newspapers now say that she is about to release her second children's book. In my view, she should be doing that rather than trying to change her name. Don't run away from yourself, Madonna. It's ultimately impossible for anyone to do, especially for someone as famous as you are.
A wise man once said that if you become really famous, you have 10 years of being in the spotlight before your career starts to slow down. That was a wise observation. The ever fickle public does begin to tire of seeing the same names and faces. People and audiences age, kids come of age, and the world moves on. In my view, Madonna's time is up. Her audience is well into their 30's and 40's. Even her website advertises that VIP seats are still available for all shows.
The best that an entertainer or famous person can really hope for is to somehow have a second wind in his / her career, or to continue to work steadily with occasional streaks of renewed interest from the public. But in order for this to happen, you have genuine talent and still have the fire going in order to continue to be creative. Carlos Santana, Aerosmith, Christopher Lee, and Cher are all entertainers who have proven that it's possible. But even then you are going to take your lumps when the public isn't interested in what you are doing.
I think that Madonna should just drop out of the spotlight for a good 10 - 15 years and just let her kids grow up. Then she startle us with some new idea or endeavor which nobody ever thought up of before. Now that would be a way of staying relevant.
When I saw last winter that there was going to be a big budget epic of the Trojan War starring Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, et.al, I was both skeptical and excited. I was excited because, being a reader of Gibbon, Pilny, Cicero, Thucydides, Seneca, Plato, and Aristotle, I couldn't wait to see Hollywood make another stab at doing films about the greatest story of Western Civilization. Of course, there's always the skill of the director (the film is directed by Wolfgang Peterson), actors and actresses to worry about...
The Houston Chronicle gave a C+ to Troy, which I think is something of an understatement. Troy starts off modestly, showing only a map of the Agean and the various Greek city states. No storyline about Brad Pitt (Achilles) as a son of a god here. It whiffs through Homer's classic story starting quickly with Orlando Bloom (who plays Paris, prince of Troy) seducing Helen of Sparta (played by Dian Krueger) and bringing her back to Troy. Menelaus (Brendon Gleeson) and king of Sparta asks his brother Agammenon (Brian Cox) to amass the armies of Greece to get her back. Agammenon in turn asks Odysseus (a stand out role, played with great confidence by Sean Bean) to solicit the help of Achilles to destroy Troy and get his brother's wife back. As we all know, in the end the peninsular Greeks resort to trickery to win the war by giving the Trojans the "Greek Gift" of the Trojan horse.
Some people may have been a bit let down by the special effects, but I thought they were servicable and reasonably believeable. That is really all I ask for these days out of special effects anyway. The film's music isn't too memorable. I look for whether the story is good (or in this case, since the hard work has already been done by Homer, can the director imbue the story with the dignity it deserves) and whether the actors and actresses are up to snuff.
Brad Pitt is in a tough situation here. Everyone knows he is a pretty boy, but he is fortunate in that he is part of an ensemble here, so he doesn't have to carry the entire weight of the film on his shoulders. His acting was a bit wooden at times, but he's clearly working hard. I give Pitt a B- here.
Eric Bana, who plays Paris's older brother Hector, gets a 110 / A+. In my opinion Bana is the real star of this film. Bana, whom I first saw in the rather poor Ang Lee version of the Incredible Hulk, and whom I honestly didn't expect too much out of, surprised me big time with his performance. He looks like he belongs in this film, and Wolfgang Peterson gives Hector a hard edged realistic outlook where he doesn't exactly put too much stock in the gods of men. Hector brings down 3 great warriors before being whipped by Achilles.
Which brings me to the fight scenes. I enjoyed the fighting in this film. There was rather little of what I call "Hollywood Heroic fighting" where one man kills 397 men at one shot. I absolutely despise this. Of course Achilles is supposed to do this, so that is forgiven. To go on, much of the combat, especially the one - on - one fight scenes were very well shot and acted. I especially liked watching the fight scenes with Ajax. I really got tense watching them.
Orlando Bloom, another pretty boy, starts off as a real wimp, but grows up fast once his brother dies. Peter O'Toole shows his age and too many facial contortions, but also shows his dignity. Diane Krueger looks pretty, but doesn't get to play the full role which she has in the epic, where Helen eventually comes to regret what her actions have led to. Her lines are a bit banal, but that's not Krueger's fault.
An significant, adapted role is given to actress Rose Byrne, who plays a Trojan priestess taken in by Achilles. Hers is a role to watch for. I was visually taken in by British actress Saffron Burrows, who plays Hector's wife. Another Brit Babe actress to fantasize over.
In all, I give Peterson's adaption a 7 out of 10. If you don't catch Troy in the theater, go rent the film when it comes out on video.
Sorry I haven't written in a week, but I've been busy. Also, I like to think that when I post to my weblog, I have something interesting to say. You can read my longer entries, verses the typical journalistic weblog stuff where would be pundits post 20 times a day and are constantly cutting each other down.
This week, film goers have been bombarded with advertisements for the movie Van Helsing. The film apparently did quite well in its opening weekend, raking up $54 million at the box office and another $53 million in 41 other countries. The fact that the film cost $160 million to make, with another $40 million in good measure for promotional costs, means that the film will probably have to clear somewhere around $400+ million at the box office. Failing that, DVD sales will have to make up the difference. It still is likely that DVD sales will bail out the film, as these days many films are nothing more that advertisements for DVD sales.
I'll probably go to the theater to take a look at the film. The main attraction for me will be looking at Brit Babe Kate Beckinsale. Ravishing in her brunette hair, dressed up in black bustier, and knee high boots, that's enough for me have daydreams of having her make me lick those boots! Too bad she's engaged and has a kid :(
And so it is with other Brit Babe actresses I have a fetish over. If I'm in the mood to fantasize over young babes, there's Keira Knightley. If I'm in the mood for for a touch of class, there'sOlivia Williams, star of the film Rushmore. When I'm in the mood for a Brit Babe with a Cadillac Body and serious wit, then I watch Elizabeth Hurley. When I'm in the mood for classic television, I'll occasionally watch an episode of The Avengers. This satisfies my fix for watching Diana Rigg in her 1960's iconic role as Emma Peel. As Rigg herself, acknowledged in the above linked interview with Salon, she was in fact quite tasty.
I think the reason why Brit Babes rock my world is that they have their classic mannerisms and style of speaking. Aussie Babes like Cate Blanchett run a very close second. Also, all of these women also have dark hair, with the exception of Ms. Knightley. Even Ms. Knightley though can put on a dark haired wig, as she did in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, and still look smashing.
American women are crass by contrast. American women have to get by on looks, since it takes many American women so long to become interesting, or to have any personality for that matter. It's also just about impossible for me to imagine most American women making a comment that they would consider themselves "looking quite tasty," as Ms. Rigg did in her Salon interview. Most American women are so hung up these days about being considered a sex object that they would never utter such a remark in public. Blah.
Am I buying into a fantasy? You can bet my last movie ticket dollar I am! Isn't that Hollywood's job? So The Mighty Wizard will go back to his dream world and dream on.
Tonight, on St. Patrick's day, I went to go see Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. So, what does The Mighty Wizard think? Well gentle readers, read on...
The story primarily covers the last 1 - 2 days of Christ's life. Flashbacks are employed here and there to show times and events of the life of Jesus. The film was shot in an earthy, slightly darkish tint, which makes the film have a "historical" flavor which I enjoyed. The film is not spoken in English, but either what I took to be Latin, Hebrew, or Aramaic.
And speaking of history, the film gives a reasonably good account of the politics and overall situation that led to Christ's Crucifixion. The Jewish leaders are suitably upset over Christ's sensational appeal. Judas takes his payoff, but once he sees what's going down, he tries to renege on what he has done. Pilate is painted as a man who finds himself in a bit of a bind over what to do with The Messenger.
Besides the controversy that will always surround any artistic depiction of the Life of Christ, the main element of talk revolves around the bloody portrail of Jesus' last days. The film graphically shows the beating and torture that Jesus took at the hands of his fellow Jews and their Roman rulers. It was nearly tearful watching The Virgin Mary, accompanied by Jesus' brother James and the other Mary, follow her Son as He lives His final days. There is a reason why this film was called The Passion.
To be honest though, I didn't really like the film. I would give it perhaps a 6 out of 10. The emphasis on blood and Martyrdom, in my view, took away from the awe and inspiration that the story of Christ is meant to convey. Some of the flashback scenes show Christ giving his messages to his Apostles, but again the emphasis on blood seems to drown out the messages of Hope, Love, and Comfort. Only the message of Forgiveness seems to come through.
The acting in the film was reasonably good. Although I didn't catch names, the fellow who portrayed Christ was right on. Herod makes an appearance as a somewhat effete figure. In several scenes, there is an androgynous figure who follows Christ doggedly, which I took to be Satan. The final scene with the Satan figure shows "him" alone, looking upwards, and screaming. In the war over our souls, we know who won that Game.
And with that, I would say that the film merits a look. But when you are done, if you haven't already done so, go sit down and read (or reread) The Gospels and their story of THE REAL DEAL. The Bible is the one book which has been, and always will be, better than any movie.
French - Canadian film maker Denys Arcand has recently released this delicious little joie de vivre of a film. The film's subject involves watching the cancer stricken last days of Remy, a 50+ year old Marxist (and every other "ist" as those "ists" and "isms" come into and out of fashion) leaning university history / literature professor. Remy tries to make amends with his well off son, who works in the trading business in London. We also get to see Remy's wife, a wide cast of friends, female daliances and lovers, and his daughter via satellite who happens to be sailing the Pacific when the bad news comes through.
The Barbarian Invasions is so much fun to watch because it really is what one would imagine French film is SUPPOSED to be like, but never is. The film is full of great characters, deep thoughts and conversation, beautiful French women, saucy dialogue, and contains a serious dollop of social commentary. Along the way, we get to see the joys of socialized medicine - complete with waiting lines, overcrowded hospitals, overworked medical personnel, unused resources, theft of personal belongings by hospital employees, bribery, excuse laden bureaucrats who wield jargon as to why they can't do this or that, and "I don't give a damn about you" labor union employees. In the end, Remy's son finds out from a doctor friend that using heroin will make the pain of the final descent far easier to bear than legal morophine. Ergo, his son ends up skirting the law in an effort to make his father's last days easier and ends up getting him out of the clutches of the hospital system.
Note to Paul Krugman and the New York Times editorial board. Maybe you can explain to readers how my brother, who survived a heart attack last week thanks to American medicine, would have made it through the waiting lines in France, Canada, the UK, or anywhere else.
But the real joy about the film is that it ends with nearly heart rending end to Remy's life. His wife, son, and friends are all there, so he is comforted. As Remy's death approaches, our word obsessed professor desperately searches for reasons as to whether his life had any meaning and whether he had made any mark in this world worth bothering about.
Verdict from The Mighty Wizard: Forget about the subtitles and go see Barbarian Invasions. It's a 9 out of 10!
I awoke late today and had to get out to an art class I take on Saturdays. I was really fatigued since I had gone through a tough week at my job. I sat there watching the VH1 music television channel, when a very interesting program came on.
VH1 apparently has this new show going on where they get long lost bands back together for one night reunion shows. Today, they went searching for the 1980's band Romeo Void. WOW! This is cool!
I am a child of the early 1980's. I listed to The Who and other 1970's bands as a boy, and liked a lot of stuff my older brother brought back from college, like The Doors, Santana and Cheap Trick.
As I went through high school, my tastes changed under the influence of a few friends I met. I still liked some of the famous bands, but I felt myself pulled towards what was then the "underground" of 1980's music. MTV, newly christened in 1981 and piped into my family's house by early 1982, also played a part.
I really wonder whether young people realize how big of a thing MTV was in its early years, say from 1981 - 1987. Every new video was an adventure to watch. It was like painting on a brand new white canvass. If you were good looking, you could make it big, while others ended up on the losing end of the matter. Prince, Billy Idol and Duran Duran were big winners in the early MTV sweepstakes. David Bowie, The Kinks, and some other established big guns also successfully made the leap, thanks to their sheer talent.
Returning to the matter of my tastes, it so happened that I started treading new musical paths. The great punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and The Clash (more reggae and not so punkish) took their place alongside the old favorites. Moreover, there were a ton of bands that came out that I fell in love with. The Jam, U2, The Pretenders, Ultravox, Sixousie and the Banshees, The Alarm, Big Country, Stray Cats, and The Cure all became my new faves. I used to spend a fair chunk of my barely above water wages on LP's at record stores.
So when I saw the Romeo Void show on VH1, I tuned in. I had 2 Romeo Void albums (both were stolen by old acquaintances), but I still have a "best of" CD called Warm in Your Coat. Romeo Void's singer, Debora Iyall, hit the nail on the head when she said that the band has a sound all its own. Once you hear a Romeo Void song, you know it's them. Iyall's thoughtful "personal story" style lyrics, coupled with Benjamin Rossi's full / jazzy saxophone, and a flexible musical sound that allowed the other band members to define and drive songs made for catchy and listenable music.
Moreover, their music has stood the test of time. Around 1997 or so, I brought my copy of "Warm in Your Coat" to a party that was thrown by a couple I know. 6 or 7 people asked me who it was that I had playing on the stereo. The unanimous consensus was that Romeo Void was pretty cool.
It was sad to see the Benjamin Rossi now has hearing problems. As for the demise of the band, they admitted that it was partly egos and partly a loss of backing from their label. Apparently, too many powerful people thought that Debora Iyalls physique (today, we call women like her Big Beautiful Women) was an intolerable issue and that they were a band with no future.
It's so sad that in the eyes of many, beauty trumps talent. Benjamin Rossi shared a story on the program where their song "Never Say Never" is now encoded into the home video game "Grand Theft Auto." Rossi went on to say that his nephew, after hearing the song on the video game, left a message on his telephone saying that his music was awesome. I wonder how many people will hold a similar opinion of Christina Aguilera's current music 20 years from now.
What's my best memory of listening to Romeo Void? Around 1988 or so, I went out one Friday night with some girls I used to know. It was about 11pm, when I made a left hand turn onto a major thoroughfare here in Houston. As I did so, "Never Say Never" came on the radio! Romeo Void was rarely played on the radio, but when the song came on, all three of these girls let out what could only be described as Witches Laughter! The night was young and we were young. I can't remember a god damned thing about what happened thereafterwards, but it must have been great!
Listening to their music today, one can't help but think that Romeo Void still had a number of good albums left in them when they broke up. I suspect they could have held together for another 4 - 5 years or so, had things not turned out they way they did. It would have been cool to see what else they could have come up with.
On January 6, I posted my first book review. My review was of British author Charles Freeman's recently released book, The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and The Fall of Reason.
Much to my astonishment, when I came home from work yesterday, I found a note in my webmail from Mr. Freeman himself! With his permission, I am publishing what he wrote:
Dear Mighty Wizard,
Thank you taking so much time and care reviewing my book The Closing of the Western Mind and I am glad you feel you learned something from it. Let me know how you heard of it.
Your review was very more thoughtful than some -see some of the comments on
amazon.com. You must keep at it. All good wishes , Charles Freeman.
P.S. The second edition of my Egypt, Greece and Rome ,Civilizations of the
Ancient Mediterranean is out in the US in March. It might be of interest to you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
At first, I had to admit that I was skeptical that the email I had received was from Mr. Freeman himself. After all this is the Internet. So I then decided to look up the address of the ISP which Mr. Freeman had written from. Sure enough, it belonged to a British ISP, so I took this communication to be genuine.
I wrote Mr. Freeman back, introducing myself. I told him specfically what I enjoyed about the book, adding that it was easy to see how some people would be rather upset at what he had postulated. I also wrote where I had heard of his book and that I planned to read Edward Gibbon's massive opus "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
Freeman replied to my email saying where he lived and that I would enjoy reading Gibbon. He had been made to read him many years ago in school. He told me he has a copy of Gibbon that was passed down from his great great grandfather to his great grandfather back in 1867!
I have to admit that this was a most zestful and immensely pleasureable experience!
