07-25-2008

"George Bush doesn't care about Dark Elves."

-puck

Someone took my greencard today when I was up in Miami. Luckily, I was getting sworn in to become a US citizen at the time, so it looks like I won’t be needing it. It was a pretty long ceremony, as they had people stand up by nation in mostly alphabetical order (Cuba being last, probably because they were the loudest group). There were a total of six Canucks and over 400 Cubans. There was a big projection screen that they used mostly to show footage of a giant American flag fluttering. We recited the oath, said the pledge of allegiance, and then all of a sudden it turned into Lee Greenwood karaoke time. They didn’t use the screen for the oath or the pledge, but by god did we need to have the lyrics to God Bless the USA handy. As we were leaving, several people with clipboards offered to fill out my voter registration card and mail it for me, probably at the expense of giving me party affiliation. I wonder if I can do a write-in for the Bull Moose party.

The New Yorker has an article about the rise of nationalism among Chinese youth and how the Internet has not spread the ideals of democracy as predicted. Perhaps the people who predicted that didn’t expect the creation of the Great Fire Wall of China. When the Chinese government can filter the content, how can democracy spread? That kind of Internet can only feed the fire of nationalism. I hope China and India, another nationality who I’ve observed having strong nationalism, won’t have to learn the perils of such sentiments the hard way. Perhaps they don’t teach enough about WWI and the follies of the Europeans enough in China and India. It is disappointing to see the two rising stars in our world make the same mistakes that were made almost a century ago. It is especially scary to think that they’re neighbors, the two biggest nations in the world, and nuclear armed.

It is validating for a liberal like myself that education increases liberalism. But I often find some sense in the point of view of my blue collar boss from a summer job that liberalism is the result of untested, out of touch years spent with lopsided education.

I’ve lately had to take the conservative side on some of the issues which my extremely liberal roommates are dogmatic about. The arguments tend to push me further in the conservative side than I start out being, but in the end, having extreme liberals around has been more enlightening than just always agreeing with everyone about politics.

One principle I’ve discovered that I had all along was that reform has to be made incrementally. Extreme changes, such as “we should switch to socialism” or “we should go back to being hunter gatherers” can only come at once through revolution, which takes the worst gamble with what Burke called “unintended consequences”. One should only hope for the most sensible increments in each progressive direction. “Test one variable at a time.” says Francis Bacon. Or “Risk the unintended consequences of only one increment in each direction of progressivism at a time” says Edmund Burke.

Wow. Just wow. Batman Begins was excellent and it would have been hard to top. For a long time I ignored Batman movies because they were all so damn ridiculous but Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan’s Batman is excellent. The reboot was the right choice and won me over.

If they had made a movie as good as Batman Begins I would have been quite happy but they exceeded my expectations. Heath Ledger’s Joker is easily one of my favorite villains. This Joker has what many villains and the previous Joker lacked — depth. He wasn’t simply crazy or evil; there’s a deep philosophical side to him in the Dark Knight. There is reason to his “madness” and he adheres strongly to that philosophy. There are psychological quirks to this Joker but he’s never irrational. He is as one of my friends stated, Batman’s opposite and his twin at the same time.

The plot just slithers around. It was a continuous mind game between Batman and the Joker. The Joker always appeared to be one step ahead of Batman. This was perhaps one thing that annoyed me a bit. The Joker almost appears omniscient. His plans and execution are so flawless that it almost seems unfair. In making the Joker such a good villain a deus ex machina would be needed to defeat him. Imagine if they combined Hannibal Lecter with Keyser Söze; that would be the new Joker.

Ultimately, the Joker might have stolen the movie because he’s the truly interesting one. Batman is still the same Batman but with different equipment and tricks. You still have the usual cast from the previous movie, with the exception of Katie Holmes being replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal (a good choice in my opinion). Harvey Dent is new but he’s not nearly as interesting because he doesn’t really gets enough time to really shine.

Since everyone was potentially flocking to the theaters to see either The Dark Knight or Mama Mia, I figured it was a good enough time to finally see the new Hellboy installment, The Golden Army.

Visually, it’s one of the most imaginative flicks I’ve seen in a while. Hellboy 2 has more weirdo trolls, faeries, and magical crap than any movie to date except maybe Stardust. I think I preferred the first movie for its Lovecraftian take on Men In Black (or MIB take on cosmic horror), but this time around, I’d easily trade an elf for a shoggoth or two.

I didn’t realize that they’d replaced David Hyde Pierce, so I was a little suprised to hear Abe Sapien not sounding like Frasier Crane’s brother. Doug Jones did a great job physically portraying him but I prefer Niles. Also on the character quibble side, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) has a really stupid haircut all of a sudden. Seth Green joined the cast to voice the semi-corporeal Johann Krauss and did a great job. There were some elves and crap that I couldn’t really relate to or care about, but who cares as long as they’re doing jumpkicks and flipping out like an albino ninja on PCP.

I didn’t care much for the story but it helped move things along from one sprawling action sequence to the next. Unfortunately, the cinematography occasionally suffers from Gladiator syndrome when there’s some crazy fight going on that I can’t focus on because the cameras are shaking, switching angles, and cutting to closeups so fast. I don’t think they screened this one for epileptics.

Overall, a good popcorn munch with some laughs, a few scares, and a crapload of intricate set design.

Check out some of the most dangerous roads in the world. I especially like the hiking path in China. I had a similar experience in China when I was six years old. My crazy mother dragged me across a very narrow “bridge” linking a hill to another peak with no guard rails. The only thing you had was a metal bar to hold on to. All that so we can get to the other peak for a stupid picture.

There’s currently an initiative for a ballot to rename a sewage treatment plant in San Francisco to “George W. Bush Sewage Plant”.

Found this comic strip, “Here’s a Question…” to be quite funny in a dark way.

A list of the top ’70s guitar solos as decider by the readers.

Not that I think any of our upstanding readers would be interested for anything other than research purposes, here is the list of the best hotels for having an affair.