Entertainment & Sports: November 2003 Archives

Here's a blog game that'll be fun, and give some exposure to some less well-traveled blogs: The First Annual Blog Scavenger Hunt. The idea is simple: I write up a list of topics, and you find a blog post somewhere that discusses each topic. You can't use any individual blog for more than one topic, and you can't use any of your own posts. Further, honor demands that you not take any action intended to initiate a post on a topic for the express purpose of using it as an answer. Got it?

The deadline will be Monday, December 1st. Answers will count even if the topics are discussed facetiously, and they don't have to match the list word-perfectly; use your best judgement. Of course, no post related to the contest itself can be used as an answer. All answers must be links to blog posts, not any other type of website.

Once you've finished your list (or gotten bored), post the topic list along with your answers on your blog and send me a link with "[bloghunt]" in the subject. I'll post links to all the participants, along with my own answers, after the deadline.

If you think you're too busy to play, just print out the topics and fill them in during your normal browsing. (And look, no cheating by stealing links from other people; it's just a game.)

Here's an example:

1. Bush is a liar.
Answer: George W. Bush: The Top Ten Lies at Lies.com.

Here are the topics you have to find:
1. A plea to get the attention of Glenn Reynolds.
2. George Bush is controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations.
3. Drinking diet soda makes you fat.
4. Each season of Survivor is better than the one before it.
5. The first president of the United States was really Adam Weishaupt.
6. Getting bullied can be good for kids.
7. Circuses are lame.
8. Water: Tap vs. Bottled.
9. Pros and cons of digital cameras.
10. Everyone should be investing in gold, because it's going to dramatically increase in value.
11. A funny thing happened on the way to the....
12. A personal story about a power outage.
13. Paper towels vs. blow-dryers.
14. Why I changed my cell phone service.
15. Ninjas vs. Pirates: which is better?
16. How to get free stuff from a company.
17. A depressing story about being broken up with.
18. Here's a great Movable Type trick!
19. The Democrat and Republican parties are the same.
20. I'm think I'm turning into a werewolf/vampire/&c.

Update:
The always-humble Megan would like it known that this idea was 15% inspired by her suggestion that we share a blog-themed birthday party.

Let's say Michael Jackson is completely innocent of all the charges against him: he's still shown some of the most phenomenally bad judgement I can imagine. There's four great examples in this single article.

Number 1: Nutso conspiracy theory.

"These characters always seem to surface with a dreadful allegation just as another project, an album, a video, is being released," Jackson said in the statement.

Sneddon dismissed Jackson's claims, saying the investigation had been underway for months.

"Jackson himself, I believe, has said this was all done to ruin his new CD that was coming ... like, the sheriff and I are really into that kind of music," Sneddon said.

What really needs to be said? Even if some kid wanted to hurt Jackson's career, why would the police go along with it and actually file charges if they couldn't find any evidence during their 14 hour search of the Neverland Ranch? Who even knew he was coming out with a new album? Maybe I'm just way out of the loop, but I sure didn't. Only a celebrity could come up with an egocentric explanation like that.

Numbers 2 and 3: Strange bedfellows.

It has been a tumultuous year for Jackson, whose talents as an entertainer have been eclipsed by his bizarre personal life. In February, he spoke in a British television documentary of sometimes sharing his Neverland bedroom with young boys.

?!?!?!?!!??!! Why would you do that and risk looking like a child molester, if you weren't actually a child molester? Why would you want to, and even if you did want to (for non-molestational reasons?!), why would you actually do it, knowing how it would look? And then, why would you go on TV and admit it like it was no big deal?! I can't possibly use enough question marks and exclamation points here to properly express my flabbergastedness.

Number 4: Superbaby.

In November last year, Jackson stunned fans in Berlin by dangling his barefoot baby from a hotel balcony.

I can't believe this wasn't some sort of crime. What if he had come to the balcony with a gun shoved in his kid's mouth? This incident is even more completely insane than the previous 3, and that Michael Jackson didn't even notice shows that he's criminally dangerous and should probably be locked up. What's to stop him from jokingly crashing his car into a hospital or laughingly taking a few potshots at a school?

I like some of his old songs; I even feel sorry for whatever mental problems he has that inclined him towards all the radical surgery he's put himself through. But look. At some point, I've got to stop feeling sorry for the millionaire Peter Pan and start getting concerned that he's a criminally insane lunatic.

Maybe he is insane, and he really can't control his behavior, but that's all the more reason to lock him up. Maybe his traumatic celebrity childhood is to blame -- who knows? Who cares? He may have a great excuse, but that's no reason to let him keep menacing the world.

Update:
Here's a new twist. Let's say your kid was dying of cancer and you had no way to pay for the treatments. Michael Jackson comes along and says he'll pay for everything, and your son will live... but you have to let him molest the boy later. Sure, in reality there may always be other sources of charitable funding, but a desperate parent may not know enough to find out, and may be really short on time. Even if you're against the idea and would rather let your son die, what if he insists on taking the chance?

Geek Press points to 20 things that only happen in movies, but the list isn't that great. I'm sure I can come up with better ones. (And if I don't, I can just delete my attempt before posting it.)

1. Any computer system can be hacked in 60 seconds.
2a. Phones always ring during a break in conversation...
2b. ... and the call is always relevant to the scene...
2c. ... and there's no call-waiting.
3. No one ever thinks of a better come-back to an insult the next day.
4. If you meet someone and arrange to go on a date, you'll offer to pick them up tomorrow at 8 but never exchange addresses or phone numbers.
5. Rogues are always lovable and endearing.
6a. All combat is eventually resolved hand-to-hand.
6b. The bad guys attack one at a time.
6c. Small, fast people can beat up large, strong people.
6d. When you punch or kick someone, they go flying across the room.
7. Stalking a woman makes her fall in love with you.
8. The dumbest, most annoying, most bumbling character will be a white male.
9. Breaking the rules always turns out well.
10. Anyone can jump a 10 foot chainlink fence with minimal effort (unless a dog is in pursuit).
11a. Getting thrown through a window is merely a minor annoyance.
11b. Likewise falling down stairs.
12. All offices have windows.
13. 95% of computers are Macs.
14. Cars are always clean, even if they're old and busted.
15. Pedestrians are never hit during a car chase.
16. Getting shot once anywhere by any gun will knock you down.
17a. Old people are amazed and confused by the antics of young people.
17b. White people are amazed and confused by the antics of black people.
18a. Caves and tunnels will never be pitch black, but will always be lit by concealed, indirect lighting.
18b. If you turn off the lights in a room at night, lights outside a window will turn on.
19a. It's easy to chop off a head or limb with one blow...
19b. ... and to cut through armor...
19c. ... and to jump onto a horse while wearing armor...
19d. ... and to run around in armor.
20. Animals are invulnerable.
21a. Kids are smarter than adults.
21b. Kids can drive cars.
21c. Kids can beat up adults using karate.
21d. Kids are always good judges of character.
22a. High school students are 25 years old...
22b. ... and still wear their backpacks on one shoulder.
23. Only bad guys smoke (these days).
24. Ugly people are just beautiful people with dumpy clothes and bad haircuts.

Not that these are all new or original....

James Pinkerton explains why I didn't like The Matrix or the recent Star Wars films.

Remember that allegedly climactic battle scene in "Phantom," when the good robots fought the bad robots? Or have you forgotten it already, because it's hard to care about machines fighting machines? As H.G. Wells, who knew something about sci-fi, once observed, you can put a familiar person in a strange situation, or you can put strange person in a familiar situation, but you can't put strange into strange -- because nobody will relate, nobody will care. ...

Don't get me wrong: I like a computer-generated images. But by now, thanks to computers, it's possible for a filmmaker to depict anything, and make it look, well, real. So now the challenge is to make people care about what's being depicted. And such caring requires a sense of scale and proportion. That is, one can show the Big Bang of the universe, or the Big Whimper, for that matter, but if it's just a bunch of constellations and gas clouds or whatever, then the viewer might as well be looking inside a kaleidoscope. What's needed, to make the depiction entertaining to human beings is another human -- or at least a mammal -- in the scene somewhere. Man is the measure of all things, said Protagoras, and so narrative-conscious filmmakers need a damsel in distress, or at least a cute puppy in trouble. If there's no danger, then there's no drama. Essential to suspense and adrenalin-rush is the feeling that bad things could happen to those we identify with; somebody, or something, needs to be rescued. Enter jut-jawed hero, the Seventh Cavalry, the Bush Doctrine, or what have you.

The Wachowskis forgot all these fundamentals of storytelling in the second "Matrix." Remember that fight between Neo and the 100 or so Agent Smiths? It was neat for awhile, but then, when Neo got tired of beating them all up, he simply flew away, like Superman. So much for any sense of Neo's limitations, any sense that he was in actual danger.

Mr. Pinkerton also impresses me with his correct use of double hyphens and spacing (" -- ") to create a proper emdash. Note: one hyphen alone is not enough indicate a break in sentence structure, and if you don't use spaces then it just looks weird and confusing.

Lileks has a lengthy Matrix 3 review up (in which he blasts Harry Knowles, of AICN fame), and he describes something many people noted about the series: it tries very hard to build a secular spirituality, but falls amazingly flat without any concept of God.

I took away something else from the Matrix trilogy: it is a product of deeply confused people. They want it all. They want individualism and community; they want secularism and transcendence; they want the purity of committed love and the licentious fun of an S&M club; they want peace and the thrill of violence; they want God, but they want to design him on their own screens with their own programs by their own terms for their own needs, and having defined the divine on their own terms, they bristle when anyone suggests they have simply built a room with a mirror and flattering lighting. All three Matrix movies, seen in total, ache for a God. But they can’t quite go all the way. They’re like three movies about circular flat meat patties that can never quite bring themselves to say the word “hamburger.”

One of the best ways to view the Matrix trilogy is to deconstruct it (argh) and examine what it really says about our culture. As Lileks describes, every note it strikes is philisophically discordant, and every morale pontification is conflicted and contradictory.

I haven't seen number 3, but the orgy scene in number 2 stands out particularly. Zion is the philisophical culmination of secular culture, with free, crazy sex, but Neo and Trinity don't partake -- instead they go off on their own and ick up the screen for 5 minutes. It's as if the writers really wanted an orgy, but then decided that a bilateral love scene would be more fulfilling... for some reason. Why?

As Lileks asks, why did the humans bother fighting the robots, rather than submit to the Matrix? What could they hope to accomplish, other than to eventually, after hundreds of years, raise their civilization back up to the level they could instantly experience in the machines' simulated world? There's an innate understanding that humans shouldn't be the slaves of robots, but within the mythos of the movie, why not? If there's some fundamental human dignity at stake, what's the source? Why struggle, fight, and die, just so your kids can be more miserable? What's wrong with living in a pleasant illusion?

The movies don't answer that question other than with some hand-waving, because they simply can't -- and modern secularism don't have an answer either. Survival of the fittest and evolution are praised academically, but no one wants to carry them to their logical extremes. Why bother helping the Iraqis, rather than just nuking them and taking their oil? They're obviously less fit than we are, and eliminating them would be good for the species. Doubly true for Afghanistan, since they don't even have oil. Nukes are cleap, compared to soldiers.

Why worry about healthcare for the poor? If they can't compete, let 'em die. Instead of an expensive medical system, we could form a Corpse Patrol to keep the dead bodies off the street. Abortion? Who cares! If a fetus can't fend for itself, too bad. Same for the handicapped, the insane, and so forth. Why try rehabilitating criminals? Just shoot them. Sure, some might be innocent, but on average we'll improve the population by weeding out as many deviants as possible.

All of these ideas are ludicrous, of course, but try to explain why from a secular standpoint. Social contract? Do you think society would fall apart if we let all the poor die? Nonsense, that was the policy of civilization for thousands of years. Besides, as long as it would be economically valuable to have a supply of poor people, capitalism would work to preserve them without the need for government intervention. (If you comment, please make sure your secular argument isn't simply a variation on the "social contract" idea.)

The point is that without God -- without some supernatural imposition of value from the outside -- a human is instrinsically worth nothing beyond his usefulness. And useless humans are therefore worth nothing. Most people (except extreme environmentalists) reject these conclusions, but with little rational basis. As Lileks said, we want the benefits of God, but we want to create him ourselves, to suit our purposes. We want to "discover" what "'God' means to me" and such. But a human-created God cannot reciprocally give value to his creator, and any philosophy built on such a construct will ring entirely hollow.

The VRWC flexes it's muscles and forces CBS to pull its Reagan documentary.

The flap over the $9 million miniseries, which was set to air on Nov. 16 and 18, began late last month with a story published in The New York Times revealing portions of the script that were unflattering to President Ronald Reagan and former first lady, Nancy.

That led to a firestorm by Republican-based political groups and Reagan supporters, some of whom threatened to boycott CBS and the products advertised during the program.

The Media Research Center (search) asked major advertisers to review the script and consider not buying commercial time on the show.

In an unusual move, CBS officials said last week that portions of the movie were unfair and the film was being re-edited.

It is rare for a network to substantially rework a completed film just weeks before it is scheduled to be shown.

As soon as CBS made the decision to cut portions of the film, director Robert Allan Ackerman opted out of the editing process and lead actors James Brolin and Judy Davis — who were to play President and Mrs. Reagan — refused to do any publicity interviews for the miniseries, according to a report in Newsweek magazine.