The 'Girls' Thing

All of Iowa City is abuzz with rage, disappointment and other negative feelings following the University's decision to deny HBO's request to film on campus for their hit show, Girls.   Why would Girls be coming to our fair metropolis?  Well in the 3rd Season Cliffhanger, it was revealed that the main character, Hannah Horvath had, in fact, been accepted into the Writer's Workshop right here in Iowa City.

So why the denial?

Well, first came the rather weak kneed response about 'the potential disruption to campus.'  If they film during the summer, as I expect they probably will, then the disruption will be minimal, because, well, no one is here.  Denial reasoning:  weak.

Next came the rather laughable notion that the University had to say no to 'protect their reputation.' Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...  No, seriously.   They want to protect their reputation as the Number One Party School in America.  Denial reasoning: ridiculous.

Finally came the interesting one:  they had read the plot line and it wasn't necessarily a positive one- they are, of course, not going to reveal the plot line out of respect to the show's producers, but I think they might be on firmer ground with this one.  I'll admit I have only seen Season 1 of Girls, so I have no idea if the characters have developed any more (Lord, I hope they have) but if Season 1 was anything to go by, Hannah Horvath was self-absorbed, superficial, shallow and the most annoying person I've ever seen on television.  If I would have Hannah Horvath in real life, I would have avoided her like the plague or gotten mildly drunk with her, lost my shit and told her to STFU and get a damn job and quit whining so damn much.

Point is:  she's an East Coast Hipster type and I could buy that she would spend her time in Iowa City shitting all over the University and the town.  Which would make us look bad and be very annoying.  (Other possibilities include: she could get drunk and crazy down on the Ped Mall, she could get raped- I would hope not, obviously- but it's HBO, so I have no idea what goes into making a storyline for a character.)

But, there's also an argument that any exposure is good exposure and seeing Iowa City right there in HD on premium cable would have been pretty damn cool, I have to admit.  But, I get it.   They can't control the plot-line and if it doesn't make us look good, I'd say, 'take a hike.'

'Bird On A Wire' --A Review

I'm kicking it old school this week and going back all the way to 1990 to review the Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn thriller Bird On A Wire.   I stumbled across it randomly one morning on Encore and was so tickled to see it again, that I sat down and watched the whole damn thing over again, just for kicks.   To me, Bird On A Wire falls into that broad category along with movies like The Firm and The Pelican Brief that were genuinely decent to good movies that you might not actually run out and buy, but you'd probably sit down and watch them if you came across them randomly on television.

And surprisingly, Bird On A Wire holds up pretty well, even after these years.   Mel Gibson (you know, I kind of miss the Mel Gibson of the late 80s, early 90s before the crazy hit.   He should uncrazy himself and hook up with someone cool like Tarantino and get back into things.)  is Rick Jarmin, a small time drug dealer who helped put a crooked FBI agent, Sorenson (David Carradine) behind bars and has spent fifteen years in Federal witness protection.   He runs across his former fiancee Marianne (Goldie Hawn) at a Detroit gas station and soon, thanks to the help of a crooked FBI agent Weyburn (Stephen Tobolowsky) who is in league with the now released Sorenson and his goons, his pleasant, quiet life at the gas station is in flames (literally) and he and Marianne and reunited and on the run-with Rick getting shot in the butt for his troubles.

From Detroit, Marianne and Rick head across Lake Michigan to Racine to one of Rick's prior cover jobs (as a hairdresser) where he retrieves his address book to find his original FBI contact who got him into witness protection (who is now retired.)   From Racine, they make their way to yet another of Rick's prior lives, a farm somewhere in Wisconsin, where Rick and Marianne meet a former girlfriend of his, Rachel.   The goons catch up to them and after a shoot out and a brief helicopter versus crop duster battle, they flee again, heading this time toward St. Louis to hopefully clear this up once and for all.

Obviously (and perhaps inevitably) Marianne and Rick renew their romance but eventually, upon reaching St. Louis they discover that Rick's original FBI contact has developed Alzheimer's and doesn't remember who Rick is (or kind of does- either way, he's not much help) but he does remind Rick that he used to work at the local zoo and maybe that would be a good place to lead the goons too, as Rick knows his way around the place and would have the advantage.  Sure enough, Rick and Marianne have a climactic confrontation at the zoo involving waterfalls, lions, tigers, monkeys, pirhanas and pretty much everything else you can imagine.  Rick ends up dangling on a wire over a large cat pit and Marianne (when offered incentive of the happy ending she and Rick almost had fifteen years before) eventually retrieves him and they sail off into the sunset on a yacht named Mr. Wiggly. 

Overall:  This is a good 'there's nothing else on television' type of movie to watch and despite the general weirdness of having a thriller go from Detroit through Wisconsin and end up in St. Louis (hardly the exotic locale you usually expect in these types of movies).  Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn bounce nicely off of each other, the music is awesomely late 80s and early 90s and as always seems to happen in these movies, they sail off into the sunset on a yacht.   A pleasant blast from the past- but hardly Oscar winning material either.  ** 1/2 out of ****

This Week In Vexillology #74

I've been putting off writing this one for about a month due to the current, uncertain international situation but I can't put it off any longer.  So, this Week In Vexillology, we're going to cross our fingers that Russia doesn't  do anything crazy (like decide that they want the whole damn country back) and that this flag will continue to fly for years to come.  Yes, it's the flag of Ukraine:

Adopted on January 28th, 1992 for national and civil usage, the symbolism of the flag is very simple indeed: per Article 20 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the blue represents the clear blue sky over a yellow wheat field. What gets interesting is the long history of the flag:  it dates back to the 1848 Spring of Nations.  It showed up briefly in 1918 for the short lived Ukrainian People's Republic, but there was no official flag during the Soviet Occupation until the flag of the Ukrainian SSR was adopted in 1949.  The blue and yellow bicolor was readopted after independence in 1991.

While the flag of Ukraine might be relatively simple, the Coat of Arms of Ukraine is far more striking:

Known as the Tryzub, the national coat of arms features the same colors found on the Ukrainian flag, a blue shield with a gold trident.  It represents the triune God on earth and in heaven.  It was adopted on February 19th, 1992 as a representation of the seal-trident of Vladimir the Great.

So there you have it- the flag and the arms of the Ukraine and yes, it's my fervent wish that they continue to fly for many years to come.  So, until next time, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

The General Mess of 'Prosecutorial Discretion.'

Kids, I've been avoiding this one for awhile now, but I feel like I'm ready to take it on and dip my feet in the debate that's roiling local politics and leading to runs on tin-foil in the local grocery stores so that members of the Press-Citizen Commentariat have their hats all ready to go when someone sends a letter to the editor or writes another opinion piece about it.

Yes, I'm putting my two cents in about the race for County Attorney.  It's incumbent Janet Lyness going up against the challenger John Zimmerman.  While I'm more or less indifferent to Janet Lyness- she seems to do a good job and has shown a commitment to increasing alcohol and drug diversion programs in the county, which I think is a good thing, John Zimmerman seems to have embraced all the tendencies that I find absolutely rage-inducing about white Progressive Liberals.

First of all, it's important to note that Mr. Zimmerman has not yet passed the bar.  He hopes to by the time election day roles around, but so far, he's graduate law school, has a law degree but no license to practice law, which I'm also assuming means that he doesn't have a lick of practical experience working in the court room, which I think is sort of important for a County Attorney to have.

Second of all, his major beef and the main plank of his platform is that he wants to end prosecutions for marijuana possession and public intoxication in Johnson County.  This is troubling to me on several aspects- first, Mr. Zimmerman might be quite right and might indeed have the discretion not to prosecute these cases.  However, this discretion in no way extends to any law enforcement agency in the county.  He may well have the luxury of some discretion, but until state laws are changed, law enforcement does not.   This is what I find so hair-tearingly frustrating about Mr. Zimmerman's candidacy.  At a time when momentum for reform of our insane drug laws is building nationwide, the focus should be on changing those laws, not 'making a point' or 'taking a stand.'  Everything that Mr. Zimmerman takes issue with- all of it can be solved by merely changing the law.  You change the law and you change the enforcement- it's that simple.

Finally, there's the 'disproportionate minority contact' thing.  This is an incredibly vague term, to me-- in the scope of what law enforcement officers do on a daily basis, there's really not that much that officers initiate themselves.  (Traffic stops would be an example of something they initiate themselves.)  The majority of time, cops go where they're sent- which means, someone calls 911 and says 'HELP' and they go.  That's the job.  So where is this 'disproportionate minority contact' coming from?  Is it officer initiated?  Is it not? If it's the former then there should be a conversation about the DMC charge and potential racial impropriety on the part of the police, it's the latter, well then, that raises a whole different kettle of chips.

I think blaming the cops is easy- it's especially easy in a town full of Progressive White Liberals that pat themselves on the back and say 'I voted for Obama twice, there's no way I could possibly be racist'- but ignores a conversation that Iowa City has needed to have for a very long time indeed.  People talk about 'newcomers' or say things like 'Oh, they're from Chicago.'  Whole neighborhoods south of the highway are generally referred to as 'the ghetto.'  Does anyone really believe that people don't want the Post Office to move down to Pepperwood Place because it's 'inconvenient?'   For all it's pretensions at being a bastion of tolerance and diversity, pop the hood on this town and you'll find that Iowa City is exactly like every other small town in Iowa.  Back biting, gossiping, a distrust of outsiders and yes, thinly or not so thinly veiled racism can be found if you look for it.  So if you pick up the phone and call 911 because you don't like the look of the African-American teens walking around your neighborhood, is that the cops being racist or is it you being racist?

Don't get me wrong:  I'm not discounting the possibility that law enforcement has work to do as well- but I think it's incumbent upon law enforcement to always be looking for ways to better serve everyone in their community- including people of color.  And yes, law enforcement attracts all types of personalities, including some that fit every stereotype you can think of about cops.  But if I've learned one hard and fast rule about cops that is about as close to universal as you can get it's that they hate paperwork- and trouble- whether it's trouble they find on a traffic stop or trouble they get sent to via a 911 call always equals paperwork.  Not being a person of color, I can't discount (nor am I going to be so blind as to my white male privilege as to deny some of these stories aren't true) the stories of potential racial profiling on the part of local cops- but the narrative that local cops are always out 'looking for trouble' or 'looking for young, African-American males to harass' runs contrary to everything I've experienced while working in law enforcement.

Needless to say, I'm not voting for Mr. Zimmerman- in fact, it's awfully tempting to change my party affiliation just so I can vote against him- but to be fair to the guy, I was oddly neutral about it all, figuring that the Townie Elite would line up against the Libertarian-Lefties and back Lyness, but then I listened to an absolute trainwreck of an interview he gave on KCJJ and noticed that even John Deeth wasn't lining up behind this guy and I figured if you've lost Deeth, you've lost Iowa City and probably Johnson County.

As always, I speak for myself and myself alone with stuff like this.

Squeaaaaal!

You've seen the ad, right?  You haven't?  Well check this out:



Joni Ernst, for those of you not in the know like me is a Republican State Senator running for the GOP's Senatorial nomination and the right to take on Bruce Braley for the seat vacated by the retiring Tom Harkin in the fall.  She picked up an endorsement from Mittens a few weeks ago and now, with this ad, she has (in my opinion, anyway) leapt to the front of the GOPer pack. (She's also picked up another big endorsement from Sarah Palin and Bruce Braley had his first whoopsy-doodle of the race as well.)

The GOPers were getting themselves into a bit of a mess with the Senate race.  Seemed like everyone with a pulse was running for the nomination- or at least thinking about it.  Ernst's ad may not be everybody's cup of tea, but then again, it's not supposed to be.  This was aimed squarely at GOPer primary voters and checked all the boxes they'd want to hear about (balanced budgets, cutting pork, repealing Obamacare, etc) but now that it's gone viral, it's also upped her name recognition in a major, major way.  If you had no idea who Joni Ernst was, you do know.

Whether it vaults her ahead of the pack and starts clearing the field a little bit, I don't know- but if she was looking to get some buzz and attract some attention, well, then, mission accomplished.  (Lol.  Speaking of name recognition:  looked up that ad and realized that her name was JONI not Jodi.  My bad.)

10 Authors (In No Particular Order) Part IV

Homer:  Yeah, I'm going to go super old school with this one.  It might seem like a choice that somewhat out of left field, but I can honestly say that nothing has had a greater impact on developing my love of reading than the translation of The Illiad we had kicking around the bookshelves as a kid.   Yes, I requested that Mother Cigar read it to me when I was five years old and, together with The Odyssey, I think they form the touchstone of the foundation of classic literature.

I can't remember the exact translation of The Illiad we had- it wasn't in poem form, I know that.  Instead it was in literary form- with characters and narrative and sweeping, epic battles and action.  My favorite chapter was when the Gods and Goddesses came down to the battlefield and took sides, fighting with each other and by the end, when Priam goes to retrieve the body of his son Hector, I was pretty much hooked on Greek mythology.

The Odyssey was a natural book to read after that (my favorite part was when Odysseus shoots the arrow through the axe handles and then is all like "BOOM, I'm back and I know you've been trying to get on my wife!") and then I devoured all kinds of Greek mythology.

I got mildly obsessed with it.  To this day I can't watch the Disney atrocity that was Hercules without getting very very annoyed about it all.  I mean, first of all, the Greek pronunciation was Heracles, not Hercules and for crying out loud:  Hades was never the bad guy- if anyone was it was Hera- but given her philandering, douchey husband, she had a right to be majorly pissed off about it.

Brian Jacques: If The Illiad got me into Greek mythology in a major way, the original Redwall trilogy (Mossflower, Redwall and Mattimeo) probably marked my introduction to fantasy and science fiction.  Jacques was to my childhood what Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins and J.K. Rowling were to the kids of today.  New books in the series were events and one trilogy turned into another trilogy (Mariel of Redwall, Joseph The Bellmaker and Salamandastron) but eventually, sometime after Martin The Warrior, I lost interest and moved on to other stuff, but the original trilogy remains amazing- Mossflower especially is a standout novel that if I stumbled across it on a bookshelf somewhere, I might be inclined to sit down and read, just for the hell of it.

Brian Jacques actually came to town when I was young and we all gathered to hear him do a reading at Hoover Elementary and when it came to question time, I was so star-struck, I flubbed my question:  a hallmark of Jacques' books are the sumptuous feasts that his characters always seem to have and the descriptions of the food were always amazingly detailed and mouth-watering.  I meant to ask if he had any culinary background and that was why his descriptions of food were so good.  Instead, it came out as:  'Do you like to eat?'

Yeah.  Not my finest hour.

The Practical Guide To Entertaining The Cigarillo #5

After several months of hiatus due to the long, long winter, The Practical Guide To Entertaining The Cigarillo is back and better than ever and ready for spring and warm weather!   We sort of fell down over the winter months.  Our creativity was stretched a little bit:  the bitter cold kept us indoors a lot of the time and although we wanted to get The Cigarillo out sledding, we never got around to it.  (Personally, I think he's probably going to get a lot more fun out of sledding next year- but we'll see.)

However, we haven't been hibernating like bears either:

Tot Time
Mercer Park Aquatic Center

It's odd living as close to Mercer Park as we do that it took us so long to actually cross the street and go check out Tot Time, but now that we've been a few times, not only is it fast becoming a favorite of The Cigarillo's, but it's cheap ($1.50 a kid for anywhere from 1-2 hours of play) and every other day they trot out inflatable bouncy castles that the kids just go wild for.   Other than that, it's just basically a gym full of toys and play castles for the kids to go crazy on- but there are also enough Cozy Coupes in the place to fill up a car dealership and The Cigarillo hops Cozy Coupe to Cozy Coupe and loves nothing more than to sit back, relax and chill in them.  He doesn't really drive them all that much- but he does love them.

All in all, it's cheap, easy entertainment for kids and as it's just a hop, skip and a jump (literally in our case) away, it's a nice option to have in our back pockets for when the weather is colder or when we don't want to drive anywhere.

Walks
Various Parks, Trails, etc.

It may seem odd to just go for a mini-hike with your two year old, but it's something I stumbled across randomly one day.  It was one of the warmer days that have popped up now and again and I wanted to get out of the house and I think The Cigarillo did too, so after some thinking on my part, we put his boots on and headed to Hickory Hill Park and went for a walk.  And you know what?  He loved it.

There are some unusual challenges when going for a stroll with a two year old:  there's a ton and a half of new noises, sights and sounds that tend to slow things down.   He loves to stop and listen for strange bird noises.  He likes to stop and point at the mud and the last remnants of the snow.  Whenever he steps in mud, he has to announce that his shoes are now dirty ('doo!  doo!') and look at them carefully and whenever we met another person on the trail, it threw him for a loop in that:  'OMG WHERE DID THAT PERSON JUST COME FROM I'M A LITTLE FREAKED OUT BY THIS' kind of way.   In other words, it's doable, but it's slow going.  Lots of starts and stops and because The Cigarillo is a big boy now, even when he starts flagging a little bit, can I carry him to speed up the process?  Of course not.

So far, we've done a couple of rounds of Hickory Hill--  the second time I almost got us lost because it's been years since I've spent serious time in Hickory Hill and all the trails seem to have shifted ever-so-slightly but we've also checked out the Clear Creek Trail, which is paved and thus avoided excessive mud on the shoes, which is something I'm very much in favor of.   Hopefully as it gets warmer we can expand our repertoire a little bit and I know it will be very nice to go for walks in Hickory Hill without having to worry about so much slop and mud.

Introducing Churchill's Brioche

I love to cook.  I wish I could tell you that I had some sort of underlying food philosophy that I wanted to share or explore, but what it comes down to is that plain and simple, I love to cook.  Whenever my nights off align with the Missus' nights off, we both love cooking dinner together and there's nothing more I love than trying a new recipe that I've stumbled across.

And really and truly a lot of that is down to the Cigar Parentals.  Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting Mother Cigar has either tasted her cooking or seen her baking.  She practically lives there- and when it comes to cooking, it really ain't nothing but a family thing.   Her mother cooked, she cooks and she passed on to all the Cigar Siblings and I a love of cooking and being in the kitchen.

So, it's with a great deal of pleasure that I'm happy to announce that we're branching out here at The Cigar and all my food-related blogging is migrating over to our new Tumblr Site, Churchill's Brioche. Come check it out and if you're reading this and on Tumblr- follow along.  I'm always good for a follow back.

Bracketology '14: A No Good, Very Bad Sunday

I actually had hope yesterday.   My bracket was in surprisingly healthy shape yesterday.  The upsets that were screwing me were the same upsets that were more or less screwing everyone equally, so I've been sitting in the high nineties. percentile wise on ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge.

The bad news started yesterday:

Dayton won.  This wasn't really super-bad news for me as I had Ohio State going to the Sweet 16 over 'Cuse anyway- but it was still surprising.  Didn't see this won coming at all.

Villanova lost.   This one I had a feeling about.  Villanova is probably the shakiest of the number 2 seeds in the tourney and they proved it by losing to UCONN- again, a team that I didn't see coming at all.

The bad news was compounded today:

Kansas lost.  I seem to do this every year.   I always buy in to the whole 'Rock, chalk, Jayhawk' mystique and it bites me in the ass.  This year was no exception.

Wichita State lost.  Not unexpected, but still disappointing- but taking them to the Elite 8 was a calculated risk.  The way I saw it was that if they could get past Kentucky and Louisville then they could conceivably win the whole damn thing.   Test #1 was today and needless to say, they didn't pass.

Tennessee won.  I admit that I'm still being fairly chill about Iowa losing to them in the play-in game, but man.  Hard not to contemplate what might have been had they pulled off the win:  beat Tennessee, U Mass and Mercer and we could have been in the Sweet 16 playing Michigan, a team we waxed by 20 points or so at home.   In hindsight, of course, everything is 20-20 and I'm sticking with my position that crawling back out of the pit of darkness and back to relevance and respectability just by making the Big Dance is a win enough.  20+ wins and either NIT or NCAA appearances (though preferably the latter) is the benchmark for what I'd consider minimum standards for success for this program and it's a reasonable expectation for fans to have, I think.  But: bygones, etc, etc.

Creighton lost.  Damn it.

Despite all that, three out of four of my Final Four are still standing as is my national champion pick, so a Sparty Party is still possible and weirdly enough I'm still sitting at 92% in the ESPN Tournament Challenge, which really isn't all that bad when you think about it.

'Thor: The Dark World' --A Review

As with the first Thor movie, I found myself pleasantly surprised by Thor: The Dark World.  The usual suspects from the first movie are back-  Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Odin (Anthony Hopkins), Darcy (Kat Dennings), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) with Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Frigga (Renee Russo), Heimdall (Idris Elba) and The Warrior Three (Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi and Tadanobu Asano) along with Lady Sif (Jamie Alexander.)

This time they're up against Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) and the mysterious Dark Elves, who were destroyed long ago by Odin's father, Bor and the source of their power the Aether safely contained.  Some of them survived, however and now with the Nine Realms beginning to align once more the portals between worlds are thin and they are awakened when Jane Foster, investigating anomalies caused by the alignment, stumbles across the hiding place of the Aether and absorbs some of it.

Thor has been busy since the events of Thor and The Avengers- with the rainbow bridge between realms (the Bifrost) repaired, Thor has been fighting to bring peace back to the nine realms that have been thrown into chaos due to the broken Bifrost and the tumult stirred up by The Avengers.  His heart belongs to Jane Foster, despite urgings of his family to consider a longer-lived Asgardian alternative (Lady Sif) he continues to have Heimdall watch over her.   When she vanishes (when she stumbles across the Aether) Thor returns to check on her and the two are reunited.   With the Aether infecting her, Thor takes her back to Asgard to see if Asgardian technology can give them answers.

After some awkward introductions (Odin is all like 'lose the mortal chick, dude!') the Asgardians realize what has infected Jane and that it heralds the return of the Dark Elves and sure enough, sensing it's re-emergence, they come after it, attacking Asgard in the process, trying to find Jane.  Thor's mother, Frigga is killed protecting her and the Dark Elves are forced to retreat.  With Odin out for revenge and Asgard defenseless, Thor joins up with Loki and his friends to sneak Jane off world to lure Malekith and the Dark Elves into going after the Aether- where they will draw it out of her and be vulnerable enough that Thor might be able to destroy it.

Thor is unable to destroy the Aether and Loki is seemingly killed in the process- but Thor and Jane figure out that Malekith is planning to set off the Aether and the center of the convergence of the Nine Realms in Greenwich and in doing so, destroy the universe to restore the Dark Elves to dominance.  They make their way back to Earth and together with Jane's friends, they confront Malekith and Thor eventually transports him back to his world where he is crushed by his own ship.

Thor makes his way back to Asgard, where he tells Odin that he cannot be King and of Loki's sacrifice before returning to Earth to be reunited with Jane- as he leaves, Odin is proven to be none other than Loki in disguise.  (In the bonus scene, Sif and Volstagg hand over one of the Infinity Stones to The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) who, after they leave says 'one down, five to go.')

Overall: An excellent sequel that builds on the foundations set down in the first movie (and The Avengers as well) Thor: The Dark World shows us more of Asgard and deepens and fleshes out characters like The Warriors Three, Heimdall, Sif and Frigga that might not have had the most to do in the first movie, but get more to do here-  Frigga's confrontation with Malekith is especially badass- seriously awesome to see Rene Russo in this role, however relatively minor it might be- Heimdall as well gets more to do and as he's played by Idris Elba, it's well, awesome.  If there are faults with this movie, it's that the Dark Elves seem curiously one-dimensional in a way that the Frost Giants of the first movie weren't- they seem sort of slapdash and 'meh' in a way and for the life of me I can't figure out why.  The second possible fault is that the sequel is unapologetic about being a sequel.  It assumes that you've seen the first movie and The Avengers and if you haven't, you might seem a little lost-  I didn't see that as a fault though, but I could maybe see how people could.  But was I entertained?  Absolutely I was!  ***1/2 out of ****

This Week In Vexillology #73

Our journey southward continues, but first it's time for a pop quiz:  What was the largest country in Europe during the 14th Century?   If you said the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then you'd be absolutely correct!  And it's a good thing too, because this week in vexillology, we've got, you guessed it:  Lithuania!

Of all the Baltic States, Lithuania is somewhat unusual in the fact that for a very long time it was a proud, independent and very large country.  If you, like me had one of those 'say whaaaaa?' reactions, then get a load of this:

Yes, that's right-it even had a joint Commonwealth with Poland for awhile, but a series of devastating wars in the 18th Century cost the country about 40% of it's population and by the start of the 19th Century, the Commonwealth had ceased to exist, partitioned by its neighbors.  However, like the Baltic States, Lithuania did enjoy a brief period of independence between the two World Wars before being reoccupied by the Soviets and breaking away again- they were the first country to declare independence from the former Soviet Union.

(Random tangent/factoid:  Marko Raimius, the defecting Soviet sub Captain from The Hunt for Red October hailed from Lithuania, I believe.  Not quite sure why I remember that, but I do.)

Their flag was adopted for national and civil usage on March 20th, 1989.  The yellow in the flag represents wheat and freedom from wants.  The green symbolizes forests and renewed hope and the red symbolizes patriotism and courage.

So give yourselves a ping, one ping only please and give it up for the great nation of Lithuania!  And remember, until next time, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise!

Bracketology '14: Let The Madness Begin

I'm riding Sparty all the way to the brass ring this year- I'm hoping that's a decision that won't come back to bite me in the ass, but I feel good about it.  Sparty is jelling at the right time, they're healthy and they've got Izzo, who has tons of tournament experience is probably itching to cut down the nets again.  You give Coach K a healthy team and some momentum going into the tourney and he can do damage- maybe enough damage to win.  Same thing applies to Izzo.  In Izz I trust.  At least until next Monday when my bracket is sure to be in chaos and my brief hopes of bragging rights have turned to ashes.

So let's break it down and start in the South:

So far so good in the upper half of the region.  Florida worked up a sweat but pulled away from Albany.  Colorado and Pittsburgh made me sweat a little picking the bracket, but I went with Pitt and it paid off big as the game wasn't even close.  VCU-SF Austin gave me some pause as well but I went with SF Austin.  Hopefully that doesn't screw me.   I swallowed my bile and picked UCLA.  Ohio State screwed me a little by losing to Dayton, but 'Cuse came through and I'm liking New Mexico and Kansas going forward.

The South: Florida-UCLA, 'Cuse-Kansas, Florida-Kansas and Kansas goes to the Final Four.  In Wiggins I trust- rock, chalk, Jayhawk.

Over To The West:

Arizona to advance (obviously) but Gonzaga and Oklahoma State made me sweat a little- but ultimately, I gotta go with my 'Zags.  Oklahoma-San Diego State advance, I'm rooting for an all Nebraska implosion of basketball goodness with Nebraska and Creighton advancing.  And at the very bottom of the bracket, Oregon and Wisconsin took care of business to advance.

The West: Arizona-San Diego State, Creighton-Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Arizona and Arizona goes to the Final Four.  Sorry, Bucky.  I tried.

Down To The Midwest:

Let's see what the Shockers are really made of- personally, I think if they can get past Kentucky they can go the distance.  If they can get past Kentucky and Louisville, they can win the whole damn thing.  (So obviously, I picked Wichita State, Kentucky and Louisville to advance along with St. Louis- for the sheer pleasure of having the word 'biliken' roll off my tongue.  Obviously, Iowa's loss to Tennessee last night sucked, but I had the winner of that game getting past UMASS before running into the buzzsaw of Duke.  Then I advanced Texas and Michigan.

The Midwest: Wichita State-Louisville, Duke-Michigan, Wichita State-Michigan and Michigan goes to the Final Four.   Go Bl-...   Go Blu- man, this is hard.  Go Blue!  (Ugh.  Well that's out of the way.)

Finally, The East:

HARVARD!  Woot, woot!  That was very nice.  But, from the top:  Virginia, Memphis, Sparty, UNC, Iowa State, St. Joe's and Villanova all advance.  St. Joe's is going to make me nervous, but they're playing really well lately and a St. Joe's-Villanova clash in the 2nd Round?  (Or 3rd round or whatever the eff they call it now)  Philadelphia might literally implode. Or explode.  Or both at the same time.  I'm riding St. Joe's to the Sweet Sixteen, Iowa State to the Elite 8 and Virginia to the Elite 8 where they lose to Sparty.

The East:  It all comes down to Sparty and the 'Clones and Sparty takes it to go to the Final Four.

The Verdict: Sparty beats Kansas, Arizona beats Michigan and Sparty beats Arizona for the brass ring.

I'm going to enjoy this scenario for the next day or so before someone shits the bed and shatters it into a thousand tiny pieces.

Yep, They're Still Attached. I Checked.

There are many things that I resent and dislike about the older generation, but none more than their insistence on trying to impose their kaleidoscope of neuroses on the the younger generation- case in point:  this article I found from the New York Post which is a fan example bemoaning the allegedly emasculated state of today's men and blaming an obscure 70s television special hosted by Marlo Thomas of all people called 'Free To Be You And Me' for doing the deed.

First of all, I've never heard of 'Free To Be You And Me' and if the clips embedded in the article are anything to go on, it must have been awesome as all-giddyup to watch stoned off your ass.  Second of all, my balls are just fine, thank you very much-  they're still attached.  I checked.

There's whole reams of paper being written about the crisis of masculinity in this country- both for and against the idea.   There's a War On Boys, apparently and, Men On Strike as well- and then you have sexist dreck that passes for something called 'men's rights' and anti-violence advocates that meet with widespread approval in various feminist corners.  I haven't delved too heavily into this debate- I've read neither of the books I linked too above and when I was offered Jackson Katz as an example of a 'men's rights/male feminist' in a Women's Studies class, I sort of yawned.

I think what I've discovered about myself is that I'm not a joiner.  I don't want to be in your club, I don't want to join your political party and I don't want to be bound by your ideology.  So I get irritated when people (usually older) start calling me an emasculated, neutered, pathetic shell of a man.  You don't know me.  I don't know you.  So, step off, all right?

The supposed state of masculinity that I'm supposed to be striving for:  antiquated as shit.  I don't want to be the 'head of the household' and I don't feel the need to be the breadwinner necessarily, because my worth as a human being is tied to neither of those things.  I believe that marriages that last are partnerships-  I want to make these decisions with The Missus, not for her.  She's a thinking, breathing human being (who is perfectly capable of kicking my ass if she so desired) so who am I to impose some antiquated power structure on her or our marriage?

I need to be strong.  I need not to cry.  I need to be able to throw a punch.  Again:  antiquated.  Maybe that works for the old school generation that bemoans today's males as 'emasculated' but it doesn't work for me.  You want me to be strong?  Fine.  But real strength isn't throwing a punch, it's turning around and walking away when all you want to do is throw that punch.  Crying?  Meh.  Once upon a time, I never cried, but then I got better and now I can cry all the damn time.  I think it's healthy, myself- holding that shit in is probably why old men get prostate cancer all the damn time.  (Oh and for the record:  I shot a BB Gun once when i was a Boy Scout.  I'm not against guns and have never shot one (though I'd like too one of these days) but have never felt the need to have one.  Just in case the whole gun thing is included in these old school constructions of masculinity.)

I might as well tack the big ones onto this rant as well:  real men don't rape.   That's not masculine.  That doesn't make you more of a man- if you think forcing yourself on a human being is any way shape or form okay, that makes you a scum-sucking piece of shit.  I may share the same biological characteristics as you, but don't you dare try and pretend you're more of a man than I am.   Ditto for intimate partner violence. Real men don't hit either.

But at the same time, I have to admit that people are writing tons about this issue precisely because there is an issue.   Try as they might, lefties/prog types can't ignore that there's a crisis of masculinity in this country- and if I could put a finger on the reason why, I wouldn't pick some television special from the 70s as being it.  To me, I think the problem is that the educational system overcorrected itself.  When I was in high school, it was the age of Reviving Ophelia and the concern was about participation rates for girls in STEM classes especially and I have no problem with that.  But somewhere along the way, teaching became dominated by women and I have a feeling (totally unsupported by any hard data, of course) that when a lot of them have boys they don't know how to handle, they get labelled with ADHD and medicated to make them less of a problem.

I think a lot about this stuff- even more now that The Cigarillo is here and I worry about it a lot. How can you raise boys to be successful men in an educational system that's spent decades reorienting itself toward the needs of girls instead of the needs of all students.  Is gender segregation the answer?  Is private school?  I don't know- but I think it bears careful thought.  There's enough out there to convince me that there's a problem, but the bigger problem is that being a massive tool isn't the answer.   Swinging back to douchebaggery won't lead us to a healthier, more beneficial form of masculinity for our boys- and attitudes like this don't help them learn how to be good men.

To some extent, all we can do is be examples for them- what kind of man they become and what kind of man they want to be is up to them.

What I'm Reading #4

Alternate history, as a genre (or sub-genre, if you prefer) isn't something that I tip-toe into all that much.  I did go on a major Harry Turtledove kick a few years ago.  I've got a copy of Phillip K. Dick's Man In The High Castle (which, if you're going to read a book on alternate history, it should be this one.  Bonus points for throwing this one into the debate as well- I've never honestly seen a copy though.)

I sort of became disenchanted with the genre a few years ago.   No disrespect to the Almighty Turtledove, but I got bored with it, which was a shame.  His series positing what would happen if the South would have won the Civil War was brilliant at first, but it dragged on forever and I just got bored with it to be frank.  The early volumes are pure brilliance though (How Few Remain and The Great War Trilogy (American Front-Walk In Hell-Breakthroughs are well worth a read) However, I fell out of love with the genre when I stumbled across In The Presence Of Mine Enemies.   An alternate history depicting a world where Germany won the Second World War and is now on the edge of a Cold War style Soviet collapse, I didn't have issues with the story as much as I did the history--  the parallels with the fall of the Iron Curtain were almost exact- right down to the Boris Yeltsin-Mikhail Gorbachev doppelgangers.  It annoyed me.  It felt lazy and left a bad taste in my mouth, so I've kind of avoided alternate history since then.

But now, I think I've been drawn back in.  Yes, Kim Stanley Robinson is behind it all (seriously:  if you're not reading his books, what are you waiting for?)  and his alternate history might be the most intriguing one to think about that I've ever read.   Too many in the genre deal with old standbys:  What if the South had won the Civil War?  What if Germany had won World War II?  But Robinson goes big or goes home and the result (at least thus far) is fascinating, engrossing and difficult to wrap your head around, at least at first.

The Years of Rice and Salt imagines a world where Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague.  Now that you've taken Europe out of the equation, imagine the world that results:  the Mongols, the Muslim Caliphate, the Chinese Empire, various Indian Civilizations- all flourish.  (China hasn't discovered the New World yet, but I'm sure it's coming- I'm not that deep into this book yet.)  What stands out to me is the breathtaking ambition behind this concept.  Take what we generally consider as 'western civilization' out of the equation entirely and try and imagine the world that would result.  Conceptions of art, religion, education, politics- everything would be completely and utterly different.  It's got all the hallmarks of KSR:  big, sweeping, epic in scope, meticulously researched and beautifully written.  And it also might be the first 'alternate history' novel that might actually live up to the ideal of being a history that's really and truly 'alternate' in nature.

Stay tuned for the review in a couple of weeks!  I can't wait to get the rest of the way through this one!

Bookshot #74: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I loved this book.  I've had my eye on it ever since it came out- which was at least two or three years ago now but have only just gotten around to reading it and it was more than worth the wait.   The story of Oscar, a shy, overweight Dominican nerd growing up in New York City, it explores the struggles of Oscar's youth and how his disastrous bad luck and inability to fit in with the culture of machismo around him might be due to a curse (or, as the Dominicans call it, 'fuku') that has haunted his family for generations and followed them straight from the Dominican Republic, to America and back again.

As a character, I identified with Oscar immediately:  his love of books, writing and all things science fiction, fantasy and geek/nerd related can be something of a cross to bear, especially growing up.  (My own personal fortunes took a turn for the better when I landed in a school big enough to find a corner to hide in with people not to dissimilar to me.  I found my tribe, more or less.) And the pain and torment that Oscar suffers through, his growing struggles with weight, his inability to talk to women, are all conveyed through dialogue (the book is told from the point of view of narrator) that practically dances off of the tongue and is peppered with every science fiction/fantasty/geek and nerd reference you can think of.

Where the book really takes off is when the author, Junot Diaz begins to explore the origins of the curse that has tormented Oscar's family for so long.   (Mild tangent: before reading this book- as well as Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of The Goat what I knew about the Dominican Republic apart from it's geographic location and Sammy Sosa being from there could have been inscribed on the head of a pin.  I now feel comparatively more educated- especially to the tormented history of that country under the dictatorship of Trujillo- and it's a sad, pathetic reflection of the educational system in this country that I had to glean such knowledge from two very different but both excellent novels.)

Oscar eventually goes to college at Rutgers (and reading so much about Rutgers gave me a jolt:  that University on the banks of the Raritan will be one of our new B1G confreres, next year- so that was kind of cool- a fresh perspective on Rutgers other than their psychotic ex-men's basketball coach.) He ends up rooming with one of Lola's on-again-off-again boyfriends, Yunior, who keeps an eye on him while Lola, his sister is studying abroad in Spain.  (It's somewhat cloudy to me whether she actually does or not-  she might have told people that while she was in the Dominican Republic- but either way, the ambiguity neither bothered me or hurts the narrative in anyway.  Intriguingly, when the narrative focuses more on Oscar, Lola seems like the sibling with her shit together- always involved at college, having big dreams, etc etc.  When the narrative shifts to Lola's point of view, it's revealed that she has just as many runs of bad luck and foolish dreams as everyone else- she runs off with a boy and in the end gets caught, packed up and sent to the Dominican Republic to see the error of her ways.)  Despite the best efforts of Yunior, Oscar never really seems to find his footing with the ladies and after a particularly cruel heartbreak, attempts suicide by leaping off of a railroad bridge.

So both Oscar and Lola wind up their homeland and learn to true nature of the curse that has haunted their family- a truth tied intimately to the dark and bloody history of the Dominican Republic's past and just when the reader is left wondering if Oscar will find love at all, he falls hard for a neighbor of his abuela but the cost of finding love might be very high indeed, thanks to the family curse.

Overall:  This is a book that I really could have finished in one sitting, if I would have had the time.  The dialogue pops and is scattered with Dominican slang and a nice Spanglish patois that added to the authenticity of the narrative and you would need some kind of a flowchart to keep track of every sci-fi reference made in this book (and, awesomely so, in my opinion.)  Oscar is a character you want to root for and even at the end of the book, when you're left feeling dispirited and somewhat disheartened by the ending (minor spoiler alert: it's not exactly a shiny, happy ending) there's a coda that makes you smile.   Fun, happy, dark, horrifying, melancholy, joyful all at once, this was an amazing book that I would happily read over and over again.  **** out of ****.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's hard for me to get jazzed up for this holiday when I'm working and it doesn't help that I'm not remotely Irish.  The family has been Catholic from way back though, so I guess I've got that mild tie of commonality with our Irish confreres.  Either way, this one is kind of a bummer this year: I've got to work and thanks to Spring Break it's been especially boring this past weekend, so I'm hoping that the number one party school in the land lives up to it's rep a bit.  (I did get a cool new writing gig over at The Little Village though- so check that out.)

But as a bonus, enjoy this playlist.

'About Time' --A Review

A sweet and oddly melancholy movie from Richard Curtis (director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Notting Hill, etc) About Time is the story of Tim (Domnhall Gleason) an ordinary, run of the mill kind of guy- with a great family and a great life who grows up pretty normally until, at the age of 21, his father (Bill Nighy) reveals a family secret:  the men in his family have the ability to travel in time.

Initially disbelieving at first, Tim travels back in time to a recent New Year's Eve where he had been too shy to kiss someone and rectifies that mistake-  while his father says he uses the ability mainly to read as many books as he wants, Tim wants to use the ability to get girls- and when his sister has a friend, Charlotte come to stay for the summer, he does his best to do so- before, on one of Charlotte's last nights staying with them, she tells him that he's left it too late and should have said something sooner.  When he tries to go back in time to change that- he comes to the realization that Charlotte isn't attracted to him and no amount of time travel can change that.

Tim leaves home shortly after that to move to London to study law-  he stays with a friend of his father, Harry, a struggling playwright.  Some months later, when one of his friends come to stay for the weekend, the two of them go out for dinner at a Dans Le Noir establishment (which are actually for real things- it'd be interesting to go eat at one of them) and get paired up with a random pair of women.  Tim hits it off with one of them, Mary (Rachel McAdams) and when everyone emerges from the restaurant after dinner, Tim falls in love.  He gets her number but returns home and finds that the debut of Harry's play has been a disaster- and he uses his time travel abilities to fix it- but an unusual problem results.

By fixing Harry's play, Tim loses Mary's number and has to embark on a series of complicated, time-traveling assisted hijinks, but eventually the two of them wind up together, in love and married and eventually have a kid.  Tim learns some limits to his ability when he tries to spare his sister the pain of breaking up with her idiot, no-good boyfriend by making it so they never met- only to discover that he now has an entirely different child.   He learns that he can't change anything before his child's birth without every aspect of his life being different- but can go back in time and restore the original timeline and let his sister suffer through a bad break-up to get things back to normal.

Then Tim learns that his father has terminal cancer and had known for awhile, time traveling to effectively spend as much time with his family as possible- but is now ready to die.  He does so and Tim keeps traveling back in time to see him until Mary decides that she wants another child- which would mean that Tim wouldn't be able to see his father after the child is born.  He agonizes over the choice but eventually decides that it is the right one and keeps visiting his Dad via time travel right up until the birth, receiving one last piece of advice from his Dad:  to live every day- once with all the stresses and worries that everyone deals with and the second time, knowing exactly to expect from the day to embrace it for what it is.   Eventually Tim realizes that savoring each and every moment with the people he loves is the best way to live his life and stops time traveling all together.

Overall: I have somewhat conflicting emotions about this movie-  it's sweet and melancholy, but there's a touch of creepiness about it as well- especially when Tim rearranges time to make sure he runs into Mary again so they can fall in love- there's something vaguely possessive and stalker-ish about that that rubbed me the wrong way a little bit.  But even if you ignore that part, there's something conflicted about this movie:  should we be melancholy about the too-quick passage of time and how fleeting life is?  Or should we savor the moments of sweetness and romance that life offers us?  Or should we do both?   Don't get me wrong:  it was a good movie- but I feel like Richard Curtis could have done better- though with movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually to try and top, maybe that was too much to ask.  *** out of ****.

This Week In Vexillology #72

You know, I've got another shocking confession to make.  According to this recent quiz on Buzzfeed, this is the European country where I belong and its another European country that I know far, far too little about.   That's not to say I don't know anything.  It's capitol is Riga.  There.  I know that.  (Oh and thanks to the Winter Olympics, I know they're really good at bobsled, luge, skeleton, slide-y type of winter sports.) So buckle up everybody because this week in vexillology, we're hopping south across the border from Estonia right next door to it's neighbor, Latvia.

Adopted February 27th, 1990 (hey, Happy Flag Day, Latvia- though I guess they don't have an official flag day.   Boo!) for national and civil usage.  There are two interpretations to the meaning of the flag.   One says that the red represents the Latvians' willingness to defend their liberty- another, more interesting interpretation says that a Latvian leader was wounded in battle and the red recalls the blood he shed, while white represents the color of the sheet he was wrapped in.

Who was the Latvian leader in question?   No one seems to know- but this flag has been in use since the 13th Century which makes it one of the oldest flags in the world- and the interpretation about the wounded Latvian leader seems to date back before 1279, when Latvian tribes from the city of Cesis went to war bearing a red flag with a white stripe.   As with Estonia, Latvia had been invaded by various people over the centuries (Swedes, Poles and Russians among them) and enjoyed a brief period of independence between World War One and World War Two before falling under Soviet domination and breaking free again along with the other Baltic States as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.

So there we have it- the flag of Latvia!  And remember, until next time, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

Tony Benn, 1925-2014

Tony Benn was one of those names that would float in and out of my consciousness on my weekly perusals of the British media.  (Who are we kidding- it's pretty much a daily matter now.) A leading light of the British left, he entered Parliament when Clement Attlee was Prime Minister and retired when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.  He was an MP for 50 years, a Cabinet Minister under both Wilson and Callaghan and lead a campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage to go back to the House of Commons.  Beyond that Reader's Digest and lamentably short summary of the man's accomplishments, I know little.  I have little knowledge of how his critics view him, never had the chance to see him on my television screens, but from what little exposure I did get of him, I knew two things:

1.  He was very very very very left wing.  (The two extra 'verys' are for any American readers, lol.)

2. He was a fiercely principled politician that always stood by what he believed in.

Fiercely principled politicians are few in number on either side of the Atlantic these days and although Benn had retired from politics some time ago, when one of these lights goes out, it's worthy of pause and consideration.  I stumbled across this clip on YouTube-  I'm not even sure if it's the whole speech, but it's sort of sad that it was so sparsely attended.   This was a guy who could speak:

I've always been dubious about socialism-- it seems to cost an awful lot of money and in this country especially it lacks a connection to the real world.  The heartland of the progressive left in this country seem to be the province of urban areas on the coasts or isolated pockets of college towns where academia tends to skew in that direction politically anyway- it's also vastly outside the everyday experience of most if not many ordinary Americans.   For the vast majority of people, driving a Prius, shopping at Whole Foods and eating only non-GM foods are just non-starters.  Socialism in this country is less of an ideology and more of a fad for rich hipster types than anything else.  It costs money to be liberal- which is why so many people aren't.

But a funny thing happened when I watched this video-  in four minutes and forty-six seconds I saw the best critique of unrestrained corporatist oligarchy (I won't call what we have capitalism, because it's not.  If the government isn't regulating the free market it's sure as shit handing out subsidies and bailouts by the bucketload to cronies and donors of the left and right) that I've ever seen.   I saw a vision of a country where people mattered more than business and for one brief, shining, moment- I almost believed a little.

And that's something.

Bookshot #73: Fight Club

The first rule of fight club is, obviously, not to talk about fight club, which is going to make writing this rest of this review something of a challenge- but, I'm going to give it the old college try anyway.  ('I want you to write about this as hard as you can.')

Wow.  I really don't know where to begin with this book- I've seen the movie, of course- and this book made me desperately want to watch it over and over again and I think right up until the very end I was subconsciously comparing the book to the movie before the full weight of Palahniuk's brilliance sort of slapped me in the face and woke me up.  But first:

The plot centers on an unknown narrator (maybe named Joe- there are lots of references to 'Joe's boiling point' and 'I am Joe's wasted life') who works as a product recall specialist for a car company of some kind (though I think it took me awhile to piece this together, I eventually did)- because of the stress of his job and jet lag from numerous business trips he suffers from crippling insomnia and in an attempt to cure it starts attending various support group to share his problems.  He doesn't actually have any of the ailments that the support groups are for, but it does help his insomnia.

This works until he meets Marla Singer who's pretty much doing the same thing he is- being a 'tourist' at various support groups.  After a tense standoff where they both threaten to rat the other one out, they both agree to schedule their visits to avoid each other- but the insomnia returns and then, while at a nude beach, the narrator meets Tyler Durden.  After the narrator's condo is destroyed in an explosion, he asks to stay with Tyler, who agrees but on one condition:  'I want you to hit me as hard as you can.'  Both of them enjoy the fist fight that ensues so much that soon the start a fight club and the idea spreads.

Soon its all over the country and Tyler is using it to spread his anti-consumerist ideas and forming the dedicated members into something called Project Mayhem, which is an army Tyler wants to bring down modern civilization.  As the mental state of the narrator deteriorates, he starts to question his own sanity as his insomnia returns only to find out the shocking truth, that he himself is Tyler Durden- and Tyler is not, in fact, a separate person, but a separate personality that came alive whenever the narrator was sleeping and his plots and plans reach a terrifying climax that threaten the lives of Marla, The Narrator and the future of Project Mayhem itself are at stake.

The climax of this novel reveals the power of this story, to me.  You can take anything you want away from it.  You can see it as an anarchist call-to-arms against mindless corporate drone/slave existence and excessive consumerism.  You can see it as a critique of repressed masculinity or a commentary on masculinity and violence.   But I think more importantly, it's about life and living.  It's about taking a chance and doing something crazy, something so extreme that you feel utterly alive doing it.  What the narrator/Tyler Durden does is a bit extreme (well, very extreme) but the point remains:  in a society that places so much value on materialism, it's easy to become trapped in a box- Fight Club, to me, ultimately is about breaking free from that box.

Overall: Palahniuk is on my list of 'must read more books by this author' list of authors and I can't wait to read more of his stuff.   What an incredibly powerful book and it turns out that we do still have the movie lurking on our shelves, so maybe, this weekend, I might sit down and watch it again.  **** out of ****.

Stab Your Eardrums

So what I'm discovering about parenthood is that children's television is blessing and a curse.  Some programs are awesome.  Some programs not so much.  Some programs you avoid like the plague just to make sure that your child doesn't fixate on them and insist on watching them whenever and wherever possible.

The Cigarillo and I have been on a major Disney Channel kick lately- and it's probably time to double down on something like Sesame Street (I got excited when I saw that Clone Wars was on Netflix now- but he's probably a little too young for that.  I still consider it an epic win that he actually likes watching the occasional episode of Top Gear.)

Lamentably, he's not that into Jake and The Neverland Pirates- and I'll admit the first time I saw them my initial reaction was 'what the fuck is this dreck and why is it on my television?'  (You have to remember, my generation had that unbeatable Disney Channel trifecta of Chip N'Dale: Rescue Rangers, Duck Tales and Tale Spin) but after watching an episode or two, it started to grow on me.  It had all the educational aspects of Dora with none of the shrieking and it had a band.  I discovered that the two hirsuite dudes that popped up to jam out to pirate songs were actually called Sharky and Bones, and I think they might have one of the coolest jobs ever.  (DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba, close second.)

What he is into, however, is The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.   It's not awful, but man, after a week of him getting so excited and jumping up and down with smiles and cries of 'Me!  Me!' (Cigarillo Speak for 'Mickey' right now.) the theme songs get old.   And some brilliant, brilliant YouTuber has looped both of them together for one hour straight.  (Enhanced Interrogators at Gitmo Take Note:  You're so wasting your time with Metallica.)





And then, one day, I tripped and fell into the heart of cartoon darkness when I left the television on Disney and something called Sofia The First came on.



First of all:  what happened to her family?  Did they get to come along with her?  Did some new aristocrats like steal her and take her away?  And a school just for royalty?  WHY?  There are so many class issues to unpack just in the first five seconds of this cartoon.

I'd like to come back to the whole 'school for royalty' notion- how many monarchies are there in Princess Sofia's world?  Isn't there a Republic somewhere in the mix?  Shouldn't some band of contrarians be raising both their middle fingers proudly at all these monarchies and saying 'screw you guys.'  Or is this just a school for cartoon versions of the Kardashians and all those rich douchebags from shows like Laguna Beach or The Hills?  

It's all very confusing and I'm just happy that The Cigarillo hasn't latched onto this one like he has Mickey Mouse because the prospect of that happening really would make me stab my eardrums.

'Enough Said' --A Review

It's been a long time since I can say that I've thoroughly enjoyed a romantic comedy as much as I enjoyed Enough Said.  James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus light up this movie with a solid, romantic chemistry and a romantic comedy that feels mature an adult rather than getting lost in the typical cliches and tropes you find in a lot of other romantic comedies.

Enough Said is the story Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) who, while attending a party with her married friends Will (Ben Falcone) and Sarah (Toni Collette) meets a self-described poet, Marianne (Catherine Keener) and gets introduced to Will's friends Jason (Phillip Brock) and Albert (James Gandolfini.)  After the party, Albert calls Eva and asks her out on a date, while separately, Marianne becomes a client of Eva (who is a masseuse)-  the two eventually become friends.

After meeting Albert's teenage daughter, Tess, for lunch one day, Eva sees a picture of Marianne's daughter and realizes that Marianne is Albert's ex-wife-- a fact that she keeps secret from both Albert and Marianne- though gradually, she lets Marianne's perceptions of Albert alter and fray their relationship somewhat- but she still doesn't fess up to Albert.  However, when Tess arrives at Marianne's house one day, the game is soon up:  Albert confronts Eva, who admits that she had realized that Marianne was his ex-wife quite some time ago, but hadn't told him.  Albert tells Eva that he would have been happier if she had been honest and the two of them break up.

Some time passes and Eva sends her daughter off to college at Sarah Lawrence and some months later, when she is due to arrive back for Thanksgiving, she drives by Albert's house, to find him there.  The two admit that they still drive past each other's houses on occasion and begin to renew their relationship.

Where to begin with this gem of a movie?  Oh, I know:  the stars.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini (in one of his last roles- with the passing of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I almost forgot that we lost another talented actor, late last year in Gandolfini- whose range and abilities go far beyond and in fact, transcend his most famous role, Tony Soprano.)  These two have such an easy, perfect chemistry and are utterly believable.  They bounce off of each other, they seem fascinated by each other- they bond over shared battle scars as both are divorcees pushing into their 50s and both have teenage daughters.

Then there's the script-  director Nicole Holofcenter delivers an unusual romantic comedy in that it feels real and believable in ways that many others (i.e. How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days and it's ilk) don't.  There's a sense of the genuine that pervades this movie that I enjoy immensely:  the interplay of all the characters and the sweet, gentle nature of the budding romance between the leads- I had a smile on my face pretty much the whole way through and in these days where Nicholas Sparks movies pass for romance, it's nice to find a movie that's just so, adult about everything.

If I do have one tiny quibble with this movie, it's that Eva waits so long to tell Albert.  I suppose in that respect, while refreshing, Enough Said has to embrace one tiny part of romantic comedy trope-hood in that there's always got to be drama somewhere along the line.  It's incredibly frustrating as a viewer though:  you see these two, you see how good they are together and yet Eva can't figure out why anyone would want to divorce Albert, and when she figures out who Marianne is and starts pumping her for information, it becomes akin to a loose tooth or a scab she just can't stop picking at- so although there's a happy ending, you just wish she would have left it alone and just been happy- but in the end, she figures it out I guess.  Overall: **** out of ****  Don't know if this is Gandolfini's last role or not, but if it is, it's one hell of a swan song.  (I think it probably is, but he might have one last role in a movie still coming out.  Can't find out one way or the other.)

This Week In Vexillology #71

Last week, we checked out the flag of Finland and this week, we're hopping over the Gulf of Finland and heading southward into the first of the Baltic Republics with the flag of Estonia:

I have something to confess: I don't actually know all that much about Estonia.   I think their flag is pretty awesome- a lot of tricolors, horizontal or vertical tend to all use similar colors (red, white and blue in either French or Russian/Slavic style or Pan-African colors of green, red and yellow) so it's nice to see a country that breaks the pattern with a horizontal tricolor of blue, black and white- the shade of blue is especially unusual and striking.

Like Finland, Estonia moved around a bit before achieving independence between 1918 and World War II-- it was Danish for awhile (remember when we looked at the flag of Denmark and how it fell out of the sky at the Battle of Lyndanisse- that was actually in Estonia!)  Things got a little muddier during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade when most of Estonia ended up being part of something called the Terra Mariana and the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were running around the place before they consolidated into something called the Livonian Confederation. (This is the part of their history I wouldn't mind learning more about.  Things like the Hanseatic League intrigue me.)

Long story short (very very long story) the Swedes took over, then the Russians took over, there was a brief period (22 years) of Estonian independence and then the Soviets took over.   Decades of non-giggly authoritarian rule later Estonia they re-gained their independence in 1990 along with the other Baltic States in something called the Singing Revolution.

All right- my meandering, Reader's Digest version of Estonian history aside, now it's down to business: their flag was adopted for national and civil usage on May 8th, 1990.  The blue in the flag represents loyalty and Estonia's sky, sea and lakes.   The black is symbolic of the past oppression and the soil and the white represents virtue, the snow and Estonia's struggle for freedom.

So there you have it:  one of the most wired countries on the planet and a leader in e-government, all round cool country, Estonia!   Remember, until next time keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise!

The Magical Speculation Merry-Go-Round: March Edition

I keep doing my level best to avoid thinking about the oncoming storm of the next presidential campaign in 2016, however, it appears that I am fight a lonely, losing battle on that score.   Unless I chose to bury my head under a rock for the next year or so (or shit, maybe just wake me up when all of this is over and we've chosen a new President) it's impossible to avoid.  State races are shifting, rumors and speculation are abounding on the national level and CPAC is underway, so if you're a GOPer, this is like Shark Week for elasmobranchologists- a chance to look at the purported saviors of Team Red and see who can survive the expected destruction of Hurricane Hillary and Team Blue.  (There are rumors rumbling that Hillary's health problems are worse than expected and that she's not going to run. I'm going to chose to believe that when I hear it from her mouth, but it's an interesting hypothetical atom bomb that would upend the Democratic equation for 2016 in an instant.)

But, an interesting article caught my eye the other day on Politico.  It proclaimed 'Republicans Need A Champion In 2016'.   An accurate statement in my book.  The GOPers need to avoid the clown car catastrophe of 2012 and they need to find the right candidate to do it.  Moving the primary schedule around should help out some, but it's not a perfect cure for what ails Team Red, I don't think.

The article's premise seemed reasonable enough, but then it took a turn down crazy lane.  If the GOPers are forced to turn to a champion, their lonely eyes might turn to former Florida Governor (and I'm assuming the newly anointed one of the Bush Dynasty) Jeb Bush.   And at that point, I threw up in my mouth a little.   I, kids, have yet to decide if I'm 'Ready For Hillary' or not.  My biggest strike against her isn't her gender, it's that she's a Clinton.  And if elected that will mean that between 1989 and 2017, twenty years out of that twenty eight year period the Presidency of the United States will have been held by either a Bush or a Clinton.

That, kids, is a trend that should concern everyone- because if I'm handed a ballot with Bush versus Clinton in 2016, I don't know who I'm going to vote for, but I'm sure as shit not voting for either one of them just on general principle.  This is a democracy and in general, political dynasties make me queasy, but this is a trend that needs to end.  It's ridiculous that neither Team Blue nor Team Red can find no one else qualified to be President of the United States.  To be fair, Team Red has an ever-so-slightly deeper bench that Team Blue, but what pisses me off is that Team Blue has qualified women who can run (I think Gilibrand and Klobuchar could make some moves in the next few electoral cycles that could set them up very nicely for a run) all of whom get crowded out by, guess who?  Hillary.

I fought through the bile and nausea of the prospect of another Bush or another Clinton and kept reading, when another name was bubbled to the surface:  Ohio Senator Rob Portman.

It's an interesting name with some interesting policy positions for Team Red.   Senator Portman's son, Will, came out of the closet and his Dad had no problem standing by him and supporting him and doing so publicly- and if that wasn't brave enough, he also announced his support for same-sex marriage.   Portman has a great resume, it would be hard for Team Blue to trot out the usual attack lines about homophobia and sexism and racism (I mean, I'm sure they'd try, but how do you attack a guy that's onboard with marriage equality?)  It would be an excellent way for the GOPers to shed some baggage and make the election about policy instead of nonsense.

Problem is that I've seen loaves of Wonder Bread with more charisma than Rob Portman.  He is the whitest of white guys and name recognition is going to be a potential problem with the wider electorate.  But, a hypothetical Portman candidacy, paired with say Governor Susanna Martinez of New Mexico or Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire could be an interesting GOPer ticket indeed.

In statewide news, Mittens resurfaced to throw an interesting curveball into the mess that is the GOPer Senate Race- he lent a hefty endorsement to State Senator Joni Ernst.   What effect this will have on the crowded field, I don't know- but GOPer predictions that this seat could be poachable seem less and less credible to me the longer this goes on, so if it does clear up the field some, I think it's only for the best from a GOPer point of view.  (There was some excitement in GOPer circles that they had gotten their act together in the Colorado Senate race- whether it means that seat is now up-for-grabs, I don't know, but they were certainly plenty excited about it- and anything that brings clarity to the crowded GOPer field in Iowa is only going to help get the rest of us voters a peek at what kind of race we're going to be having in November.)

My apologies if this comes across as somewhat GOPer-centric, at least from a Presidential point of view- but until Hillary makes it official, there's really little to no action on the side of Team Blue- and if she does make it official, well then there will be even less action on the side of Team Blue.  However, if she doesn't run- things will get very, very interesting indeed- and apparently, here are 8 Democrats who might run, per the Christian Science Monitor.  Read 'em and weep, kids!

Until next time, keep chomping down Tums and avoiding political ads on your televisions.  And in the immortal words of Dan Rather:  Courage!  It's only going to get worse from here.

The Tao of Writing #4: Sequel Problems

Kids, I had a plan.

I got my outline together and I was all set to plunge headfirst into the sequel to The Prisoner and The Assassin when everything seemed to fall apart all at once:  my Prologue didn't gel.  My writing groove flew south for the winter and everything ground to a halt.  Now, obviously, I'm working on changing that- I'm churning out plenty on my blog and I'm feeling like I'm ready to take another run at starting the sequel again, but a recent conversation with The Quiet Man revealed to me the depth of my problem.   Namely, it's a sequel.

Sequels are tricky.   Everyone- whether fairly or unfairly to writers always goes to The Empire Strikes Back- maybe The Godfather Part II in a pinch as the gold standard when it comes to sequels.  My literary tastes tend to run toward genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, etc) and pure trilogies are rare.   Instead, two books turns into ten, twelve, fourteen books- it gets ridiculous after awhile.  Not that I want to know what Star Wars would have been like had George Lucas chose to stretch it out to twelve volumes, but whether you're working in film or print they present unique problems to consider.

First, there's the plot issue.   You've spun a wonderful web in your first novel and now you have to take all those threads that you didn't quite tie up but brought closer together and carry them over to another book.  You've got to keep track of all your characters, make sure what they're doing is consistent with what you started in the prior book and (if it's your final volume) you've got to tie everything up in a nice, neat bow.

Second, there's the expectations issue.   People have probably (hopefully) read your book and they might (hopefully) be interested in coming back for more- so you've got to raise your game.  You've got to bring everything that you brought to your first book to your second book and you've got to give them a little more.  Bing, bang, boom, ka-zom, explosions!  Something bigger, something better that elevates your characters to new heights- and hopefully takes your writing along with it.

Finally, there's the fear factor.  So many sequels are let downs.  So many suck out loud.  And you've got one hell of a task to keep everything straight, raise your game and write another book- a whole other book.   And you've got really, really good sequels to measure up too.  You're shooting for The Empire Strikes Back, after all but you could end up with  Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

So, in the spirit of contemplating all of those problems and trying to get all my proverbial ducks in a row before launching into the sequel, I took a step back.  I've been burying myself with other stuff, trying to iron it all out in my head before getting back onto this horse and trying this again.  I want to get this right.  I want the sequel to rock the socks of you, the (fingers crossed) readers.   I want the lightsabers and the hand amputation and the explosions and the dark, twisty surprises that you aren't expecting.

In short, I think I've spent enough time thinking and I might be ready to give this a shot again.   People around me are giving up things left and right for Lent- but if I'm going to give up anything, I'm going to give up this state of deep contemplation and the funk I'm in and get writing.