Indiana Jones

I figured if I was going to see the new "Indiana Jones" flick, I better see it fast, before the bad buzz and backlash overwhelmed any pleasure the film might have to offer. Smart move, since I had a good time with it despite its obvious inadequacies. Someone somewhere wrote that one should think of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" as a stand-alone movie, and the next three films - "Temple of Doom," "Last Crusade" and "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" - as the "Indiana Jones" trilogy. That works for me. The three films following "Raiders of the Lost Ark" are all pretty silly but enjoyable, and the new one is no exception.

That said, it is a pretty lazy movie. David Koepp in particular deserves a few minutes in the screenwriting penalty box, but in his defense maybe he did the best he could do. He's quickly become Spielberg's screenwriter of choice, and as such was dealt a pretty bad hand with "Crystal Skull." The movie had been in development forever, and went through several drafts from other prominent writers. It was Koepp's job to put all the disparate pieces together and satisfy taskmaster Lucas.

Here's a story for you. Years ago I interviewed Koepp. Right at the start I asked him about the mostly lame "Jurassic Park" sequel, which features a teenage girl using her gymnastics skills to best a killer beastie. "Whose dumb idea was that?" I more or less asked. Koepp took offense and got snippy. "Well, why don't you try writing something," he snapped. But later, after he mellowed out and I had proved I was more than just some jerk, he turned off my recorder and implied the sequence was totally out of his control, and he thought it was lame, too. He still took the check and the credit, mind. That's Hollywood for you.

Appalachia, so much to answer for

From the latest New Yorker:

“He’s a Muslim, isn’t he?” an aging mine electrician asked. “I won’t vote for a colored man. He’ll put too many coloreds in jobs. Colored are O.K.—they’ve done well, good for them, look where they came from. But radical coloreds, no—like that Farrakhan, or that senator from New York, Rangel. There’d be riots in the streets, like the sixties.”

Welcome to the 21st century, but stick to the mountain music and moonshine, guys.

Secretary of State

I think handing Clinton the VP slot would be a disaster, and so for many reasons won't happen. But I think Obama should give her the highest possible cabinet position, something like Secretary of State. I believe she would excel in that position, and put all her best qualities to good use. New York can easily get another Dem senator. Let Clinton move on the bigger, better things, away from elected office. A change, if you will.

Barack Obama, as quoted in Men's Vogue, 2006

"My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don't want to just be the president. You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president."


Time flies, but the guy has been nothing if not consistent.

The Great Leap Forward

I've always suspected that my generation and below really couldn't be bothered by the racial, sexual and gender identity issues that so perplexed and challenged those who came of age in the turbulent '60s and before. That same boomer generation has always wagged its finger at Gen X, Y, Z, etc., preaching that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but I think the assumption was that the younger generations were outright ignorant of polarizing political strife rather than indifferent to and beyond it. Those are two very different things. Barack Obama running for president (and likely winning), the slow expansion of equal rights of gay couples, environmental awareness and human rights issues ... these are the kinds of things that earn a shrug - "like, duh" - from young people but still get a rise out of the "before" generation, still fighting a losing battle of laws and rhetoric while younger Americans have increasingly muted the volume or changed the channel.

Well, I have a hunch this election cycle is one of the last gasps of that "before" generation, which, no matter who gets elected in November, will soon give way permanently to the "after" generation. There will always fundamentalists, reactionaries and extremists in self-imposed exile. But (West Virginian yokels aside) I suspect they're having more and more trouble hiding from humanism. They can keep their Bibles and "don't ask, don't tell" approach to anything that might differ from their ingrained but truly ignorant beliefs. The rest of us are, surely and steadily, moving on to a brighter future.

And that's not idealism, either. It's reality, which gets harder and harder to outlaw and legislate down to stalemate as time marches on.

Of course, some might argue our enlightened friends in Europe and elsewhere are there already, but I'm not so sure. The Europeans have the same generation gap that Americans have, but the young folks are, I suspect, more complacent, which in turn leads to stagnation. When you take progress for granted you stop progressing. America, on the other hand, really seems on the cusp of something. For the first time in at least a couple of decades if not as long as 60 years, we may have a chance to take the reigns of global leadership once again, but rather than use that power to rally troops and drop bombs, maybe for once we'll actually start trying to make the world a better place, not just for Americans but for everyone.

Now that, I'm afraid, is totally idealistic. But one can only hope, right?

Golfing in Hell

President Job, jackass that he is, claimed the sacrifice he himself made in light of all the men and women losing their lives in Iraq was to give up golfing. No, really. He actually said that. But like just about anything that comes out of Job's mouth, don't believe it. Indeed, apparentlyPresident Job couldn't quite resist the call of the clubs.

Could he be the worst President in U.S. history? Quite likely. Either way, the best thing about enduring eight long years of this destructive, divisive asshole is that I'll live to see his long descent into a sort of private hell. After all, his mistakes have already been more than adequately documented, yet obviously more and more mistakes, malfeasance and malicious activity will be unearthed once he leaves office and that shroud of arrogance and secrecy falls down around his ankles. Then the knives will come out. You think Nixon had it bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. This guy will have decades of shit dumped at his feet - if not on his head - again and again and again.

Acme

Anyone like me, raised on "Looney Tunes," will recognize the Acme brand as, among other things, supplier of Wile E. Coyote's faulty arsenal of anti-Roadrunner devices. Well, explore and relive the Acme catalog here. Me, I'm saving for the Acme Correspondence School of Boxing.

Bear Neccesities

Finally, after much hemming and hawing, the administration has conceded that, yeah, the polar bear deserves endangered status due to its rapidly shrinking polar ice cap. This makes the polar bear the first animal protected on the endangered species act because of the threat and nature of global warming. Of course, the decision followed several months of dithering, and required the intervention of a Federal judge to force the government's hand. And this also comes from the same government tools constantly ignoring scientific findings for political purposes. And the same government trying to stop California from implementing emissions standards more stringent than Federal requirements. And so on. But hey, it's start.

The Angry Earth

That's the headline at The Huffington Post, rounding up the natural global chaos as of that. Droughts, famines, tornadoes, cyclones ... I imagine one way or another many of these are linked to climate change, or at least could be. Earthquakes in China, on the other hand, can't be blamed on us dumb humans, though as I understand at least the Chinese government is making some effort to help out this time. Apparently, even they took a lot of shit for failing to respond quickly during the ice storms and surprise winter shock a year or two ago that killed thousands of farmers and other poor folks. This time, the Chinese leadership wants to be seen as if not responsible then certainly responsive. That certainly beats President Job sending out his wife to criticize the Burmese government over their response to the cyclone.

Yeah, like the current administration has been ace at responding to natural disaster.