Mission Impossible 4 and the Ilk

If there is one thing I really don't like in film, it's when they are "incestuous" in their plot devices, especially for films like Mission Impossible, and the ilk (family, class, or kind). I was a kid and a big fan of the original TV show. I like the actors well enough. I'm a big Jean Reno fan, from MI's first movie. And Simon Pegg, from this current installment, MI4.

But now they're doing it again. Instead of focusing on a good, solid story line about the team performing one of their impossible missions, they are dealing with being turned inside out yet again. Why?

The very first show in this series, put a traitor in their midst, on a team where that simply isn't supposed to ever happen, and should have been saved for possibly MI4. This is a team where it should never be a consideration that one of the team is a traitor. Yes, it's find to have them suspected, or even have one of the peripheral team members be bad, but not the core team. Not the leader. Certainly, as in the first film, not Phelps. I find it cheap and tawdry. I was highly offended by that first movie.

For the one team in the history of the world who are supposed to have their act together, these guys sure do have a lot of problems.

Let's see, producer/writer Josh Appelbaum is a TV producer and writer. André Nemec is the same. Interesting. Director Brad Bird has done blockbuster cartoon movies like The Incredibles and Iron Giant, but of which I did like. Brian DePalma directed the first film in the series and they had not a few writers on that project. John Woo directed MI2 and J.J. Abrams directed MI3. Both solid directors whom I like.

I don't know Brad Bird for this kind of film, but maybe, the director isn't the problem, yes? He has an Oscar, so he's no hack. I'm thinking culpability goes to Studio, Producers, Writers, in that order. It may not even be the writer's fault at all.

It wasn't that I thought the first film was bad, I just felt they started off on a false footing.

Raise the stakes! Let's make them have a mole in their midst. Let's make the leader, the bad guy. Do literally everything that can be done to guarantee we squeeze the most money out of the audience and the widest audience possible. Well, Hollywood, Frankly, Up Yours....

So, no. In my book, the playbook for this series is and has always been, that just doesn't (shouldn't)  happen. They are  loyal to one another, that is part of who this team is, always has been. Yes, we can think they have turned, but no, they don't turn. Maybe I'm a purist, but that was part of the original attraction to the TV show.

Again, maybe, some time down the road, when the franchise has become old and tired, juice it up a bit, but you just don't start out at the gate with it.

Now, in a similar kind of move, they have the team being disavowed because of blowing up the Kremlin. Really? They "get caught", that is, found out? Which to them is pretty much the same thing. They are shadows, ghosts, they don't exist, shit just happens. So, no, I don't think so, that simply isn't what they do (get caught, that is).

They are, the Impossible Missions Force! What don't you get about that? It makes me miss the original TV show. Yes, it could be cheesy and far fetched, but the spirit of the thing is what counts, and that now we can achieve what they were trying to do. But instead, they seem to revel in making them dysfunctional instead.

That's one of the things that is so interesting about the Indies. An independent film doesn't have to be a whore to the Hollywood (studio) paradigm. They have the ability to just made a good movie without pushing it to the point of being defective.

So why can't they just have them doing their impossible missions? Too impossible to write? Is it too hard kiddies? Perhaps they need better producers and screenwriters? Or an independent studio, if Hollywood can't handle their own genre/style of film.

This brings to mind the James Bond franchise. Always trying to be the end all be all, always trying to outdo itself, it bogs itself down in wasted money on pyrotechnics thinking that people can't handle real tension in a true thriller fashion, rather thinking people need bright shiny objects to grasp on to, in order for a movie to make a buck. Personally, I much prefer the human element against the larger than life situation, than explosions, which are frankly, overkill.

Much like the 9/11 terrorists action, I just wasn't terrorized. I was a worried at first, but the more time I had to think about it, the more angry I got. I wasn't terrorized, I was pissed off. It was too much, for what they were allegedly trying to do. Did they want to simply strike out, and damn the repercussions? Or did they have an agenda they wanted to pursue? Smaller things, in the right place, at the right time, are always more effective for your cause. Otherwise, it tends to backfire.

Give me a visceral feeling, against possibility, not the explosions, not the tearing apart of the team that is supposed to be perfect, unfathomable, indestructible. Fine, make them seem more Human, if you want, but the one thing they aren't to be doing, is turning on one another. Ya know? That, to me, was one of the two things that set them apart, because you find it hard to believe they would stick together like that to start with, that's a given.

The other thing about them, is being able to achieve the impossible, THAT's why they are the IMF! Making them THAT fallible, kind of ruins the entire concept to begin with, so the, what's special about them. Then they aren't the IMF, they become, the RDMF, the Really Difficult Missions Force. Not as cool, right? Tearing apart the team, tossing them in the waste basket, blowing up the world, is all much like what director Stanley Kramer once said in a seminar I was attending.

To paraphrase:

"When you shoot a close up to show emotion, never show the tears falling, only show the tears brimming up full in the eyes, nearly bursting forth; never drop that tear down the cheek. That tension of, "when is it going to fall", is priceless. Letting it fall, releases the tension, and throws away much of what you are building. To throw that buildup away in the tears racing down the cheek, is to waste a lot of effort for nothing."

Now, I'm not saying this current film will be bad, just that it is starting out on a bad conceit. Again, at MI4 I could buy this, that the team is being set up, but if it turns out to be someone on their team, or up the ladder in the government from them, I'm going to call in my own IMF team and take these producers out myself.

This is part of the problem with typical Hollywood formula films. Raising the stakes so high, that it's simply out of the ballpark for the character's filmic universe. What happened to the perfect special ops team? I could go more for MII4 than MI1 storyline, but still, just give us a good plot based upon what the team is supposed to be doing and leave the tired plot devices as in MI4 (and especially, MI1), for when you are burning out the franchise and have no where else to go.

Oh, wait a minute... are we there now? Seems to me, we started there with MI1.

NPR article on MI4

Stream of Consciousness, Friday night

My Friday night at home, alone.

Stream of consciousness (look it up) blog. Once in a while, I think it is good to take a break, diverge, take tangents, see where it leads you. I've come up with some very interesting things that way. Or so people tell me from the results.

Here we go:

I discover that Steven King has a new movie on, a mini-series, actually. Pierce Brosnan is in it, with Patty Duke's TV dad. Awesome, love that guy, but oh, God, he's getting old. Patty and her cousin, so funny, so long ago, so 60s.

So, I'm the guy, that wrote a play, wherein, the protagonist, was a frustrated playwright from New York, Manhattan. I'm an ex Manhattan-ite. Love Manhattan. Used to live on 86th and 5th. Anyway, in the play, the guy goes through all this crap with his girlfriend. In the end, he's had it. So, he leaves NY. He plants a nuclear weapon (okay, now, look, this is all metaphorical, and, I wrote it in 1983, in a screenwriting (or was it playwriting, yes, playwriting class). So, this guy, he blows up NY. Right? But then he finds out that Mr. King (for whom I have the most respect) has left for San Francisco. So, this guy, he blew NY up for no reason. Shit happens. Right?

I wrote that at Western Washington University. We were sitting on bleachers, in the downstairs stage, so there's a stage, an open part of floor, and bleachers. When the play is done being read, EVERY one in the class turns around and looks at me. No one says a word for a minute. One guy near to me, I think it was Mike Rainey, says,

"So, do you have a problem with Steven King?"

I responded, "No, I really don't, other than he is famous, and no one knows me." Everyone is quiet.

At the end of that class quarter, the instructor, Bob Schelonka, walks around and hands out slips of paper to eight students. I'm one of them. I said, when he handed it to me, "What's this?" He's says, "It's a slip for you to take part in an eight person, year long, special screen and script writing class. I've selected eight students out of this playwriting class, and you are one of them. If you're interested?"

I look at him, incredulous. "Seriously? You are choosing me?"

He gives me a questioning look and says, "Yes?" He smiles. I smile, I'm stunned. Understand, I showed up at this class, typically, at 28 years old, the oldest student in the class (this was after four years in the Air Force), usually, I had a cup of coffee in a paper cup, with a shot of 151 Barcardi in it. I was stressed out in this class, possibly the most stressful class I'd ever attended.

And that includes a solid year of Psychology Statistics.Horribly hard class. I mean, I took Psychology to avoid any kind of math, and they make me take a solid year of statistics! Miserable, but I learned a lot. Couldn't have made it through though, without my girlfriend Monie (Monica) and our friend Kim ("God", long story). I remember hours of studying our Psych stats book, drinks, study, filling up the mug with rum and coke, more studying. Then our primary Psych. Department Adviser, Dr. Rees, tells us, if you study high, you should take the test high.

But it's better to study straight (anathema), and take the test straight, he says. Okay, didn't happen. We studied and drank to kill the boring duration, then took the tests as straight as possible. I got a "B" first semester, "C-" second semester, but no "D", so I passed and left that nightmare behind.

Where was I?

So, I accepted. The year long screenwriting class. Best decision of my life. Well, one of them.

So, tonight, I'm watching yet another Steven King movie. And he never got blown up, just run over by a van with a drunk driver. A drunk driver who just sat there waiting for the police. Drunk drivers, are idiots.

Anyway....

King did a good job on this one. I'm a Pierce fan, so no worry there. When I heard Brosnan was going to be Bond in the movies, I thought, finally, good choice. I Loved Roger Moore as "The Saint" but he just wasn't Bond to me. Even though Ian Fleming wanted him initially, and hated Connery, but Roger couldn't get out of his TV contract. Sean, was the man.

But King. Well, don't get me started. Okay, I'm started....

During the misery that was that first semester of that Pyschology Statistics class, with the Professor that literally wrote the book for the class (and his Father, and Grandfather were both big names in Psych. Stats and he looked like some kind of  Cary Grant figure the girls literally swooned over, but he was such a nice guy, the guys couldn't be jealous over), I found a copy of King's book, "Cujo", left in the classroom.

So I took it, I read it. And I was furious afterward that I had wasted the time to read it. I took it back to class. I put it on the desk where I found it (someone left it for someone else, we did that a lot to help out other poor broke students so I always would leave a book to replace one, or return it). But this time, as I set the book down, I realized that if I left that, someone else will read it, and that would be a mean thing to do to someone, after all, our time was valuable.

So, with no one left in the room, I took it and threw it in the garbage can; that grey metal thing next to Dr. Thorndike's desk. Don't get me wrong, Steve is a genius, sort of. But he does go very long in the characterization and it puts me to sleep. And his prose ain't that wonderful. I'm more of a Clive Barker fan. Always have been and I have the letters on my wall from him to prove it. Even if he tells a boring story, you can't help but enjoy the prose for its own sake.

So, I'm watching Steve's "Bag of Bones" miniseries, all four hours at one time. In the end, a pretty good piece of work. Pierce, as always did a good job.

Melissa George, did a good job, too. I liked the show. Until the end. An old woman attacks Pierce, and takes a dire end. A LAME dire end. Seriously? Oh, God that frustrates me. A good film, and then at the end, you have to muff it up with some lame special F/X? Really? And she died too quickly for that kill shot. Temple shot, eye shot, whatever, but not that. They always have people bleed out too quickly. Like if you stab someone with a bleed out wound, they do NOT die within five seconds. It takes a Long time to bleed out. But then death in film is almost always so fake, so stupid, so, inaccurate. Unless it's something like "Blood Simple".

I have a rule, in life, in writing. If you try to kill someone be prepared for this, because they won't die, easily. But if you don't want to kill someone, they may very well die easily. Case in point. Some bad guy tries to kill you, you kill him back first. DO NOT simply walk away, make sure you overkill him, or he's probably going to get back up. In real life, people don't die easily, especially if they are motivated; they will run on until the batteries run out, or the oxygen in their blood burns out. If you are in a "friendly" bar fight, one punch, that person may fall and hit their head, then die, immediately. Suddenly, you're up for murder charges, when you only wanted to blow off some steam.

I had a guy try to pick a fight with me once in a bar (actually, he did this twice, another time a few weeks later). As things were escalating, I told him, I don't believe in bar fights. He said, why not, what's wrong with a friendly bar fight? I said, because, you are just looking for a "friendly" fight, but one misplaced punch, or someone falls and hits their head, and you have just unintentionally murdered someone. Drunk, he looked at me and said, "Good point." It de-escalated from there.

Okay, fine, whatever. So when the show is over, I switch over to NBC's "Grimm" Show. Kind of like it. Not so much, ABC's "Once Upon A Time". I argued that with my gay friend, John. But then, he's on the fence with that one too. Whatever. We like "Grimm" better

I miss, the original
Star Gate" show, so don't listen to me. Jack, was just a funny guy.
I miss, "Firefly". Thank you Joss.You're a genius.
I miss, my ex (Oh, please, not that again).
I don't miss this Brandy (good stuff, thank you very much)
And what is this "Blue Dream" stuff?
Life is good.

Of course, my 19 year old daughter is living on the beach in Athens. Aw, life is good. For some of us, who don't have to show up at work on Monday. I missed out on that when I was 19, I went into the USAF at 20. She took a better route. Perhaps.

So did my son. Rock on dude. He just got acknowledgement of his skills at work. Moved to a different testing project. They're starting to realize just how smart he is. What a guy! A chip off the old block, I suppose. My Prof at the University said, "You are, of the existing Psychology students, in the top 1% of the top 1%." Nice compliment (that was to the both of us, the girlfriend, and myself).

And he was a brain. He went to Brown University. He was in a "Think Tank". When the students wanted to protest, they asked his team, what is the next step. They had charts all over the walls, worked it all out, then told the student leaders what they had to do. Take over the administration building, shut down the school. The rest is history. Brown was shut down because of him and his student team of thinkers.

I tried to tell all that to my son tonight on the phone, but he didn't quite get it.

He was playing pool in his girlfriend's basement. Was he dense? No, just was humble. That is part of our way. I am not stupid, but it took until I got to college to even have a concept of that. So in his not "getting that", he was being well rounded, I think. Not conceited. Conceited to me, is thinking you're great, but your not. Thinking you are, or not thinking you are, and being so, are well, different things, right? The difference between my son and I, in childhood, was that I was told frequently that I was stupid.

With my son, we always told him he was smart, he just didn't want to do the work, or do it the way he was instructed to do it. My ex, told me one day, she was tutoring him in math in his room, he was in life, fourth grade, she came out, frustrated with him. She said no matter what, he has to do things his own way. It was a very clear math problem, and I agreed with her, she was teaching him the way, THE way. He would find that out. But he had to invent his own way, stubborn, just stubborn. Strength in character I think. He would try all different kinds of ways of figuring it out and sometimes would decide, the way he was shown, was the way.

But he had to figure that out on his own. Smart. But, time consuming, and after all, we, our society, is all about, saving time, even if it's wrong. Taking the long, hard route, is the smarter way, it's just not temporally economical, is it? I suspect, he's way smarter than I am. We talk about physics, metaphysics, and so on like that, and I hold my own, but he inevitably loses me. But you don't have to understand it all, to be able to help someone like that to solve their own problems.

At my old job, I used to help the programmers. I had no idea how to program in the language they were using. But time and again, I was called into someone's cubicle to help the get unstuck. I could always find the roadblock in their code. So, you don't have to know everything, or more than someone, to help them. Keep that in mind, it's important. There'll be a test later....

Anyway....

Friday night. I need more of these each week.

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

Nororius Atheist and advocate of positive Human relations, Christopher Hitchens, died this week. If you knew of him, he was either Satan spawn, or a breath of fresh air to you. I dedicate this weekends quotes to his esteemed self. If you decided to choose someone as a model for how to think, you could do far worse than Hitchens, in my estimation.

Thanks for everything Chris, and well, it's all over now, isn't it. I give you eleven of his quotes that I find interesting or entertaining; because eleven is one louder than ten, isn't it?

"[George W Bush] is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things." – Hardball with Chris Matthews, NBC, 2000

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
from his book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either."
Also from, "God Is Not Great"

And yet, I wake up every day to a sensation of pervading disgust and annoyance. I probably ought to carry around some kind of thermometer or other instrument, to keep checking that I am not falling prey to premature curmudgeonhood.
from, "Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays" (2004)

Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

There are several pleasant little towns like Abbottabad in Pakistan, strung out along the roads that lead toward the mountains from Rawalpindi...The colonial British—like Maj. James Abbott, who gave his name to this one—called them "hill stations," designed for the rest and recreation of commissioned officers. The charming idea, like the location itself, survives among the Pakistani officer corps. If you tell me that you are staying in a rather nice walled compound in Abbottabad, I can tell you in return that you are the honored guest of a military establishment that annually consumes several billion dollars of American aid. It's the sheer blatancy of it that catches the breath.

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals."

Hitchens once branded Mother Teresa “a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf” and said: “She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God.
“She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."
We have the same job we always had: to say that there are no final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours. (October 2011 speech at the annual Atheist Alliance of America convention in Houston, as he accepted the Freethinker of the Year Award)

Cannabinoids Kill Cancer and Our Government Has Known for 36 Years?

This is short, and sweet, or not. Bittersweet, really, I suppose. It just makes me sad. Not for the reasons some might think though. So many have suffered becuase of whomever has been doing this, perpetuating this lie, and it has cost us so much, so much we will never know just how much.

Here are two articles I just heard of that claim the US Government has known since 1974 that Cannabis cures cancer. I've been seeing this claim in the news the past year or two, from new research in other countries, Canada for one. But now we find out it's been known and covered up for decades?

Cannabinoids Kill Cancer and Our Government Has Known for 36 Years

Cannabinoids Kill Cancer And Our 'Government' Has Known for 36 Years

Apparantly, we've been jailing the wrong people. We shouldn't jail those smoking it, we should jail those officials in authority who hide positive health benefits from the citizenry, just because of their personal biases. Criminal. I tell you, that's worse than someone smoking a spliff behind a building or worse, in the privacy of their own home. From what I've seen in recent times, there are more criminals out in the open, in offices, and government offices at that.

Really, what the hell is wrong with speaking without a forked tongue? Why did the Surgeon General get fired for saying there is nothing wrong with masturbation? Or Pot? Why can't our country take the truth? Why don't we just start saying what is true? I'm sorry if this is against your personal belief system but certain things are okay. Sorry they are against your God, your beliefs, your desires in what you want to see around you, but if you don't like it, move to Iran where things are more cut and dry and orderly for you.

Is it really the demon it's made out to be? Uh, no.

Really, just because you can get high on Cannabis, even though it has health benefits, people in authority want to restrict the knowledge of that? Why would we want people in authority who act like that. This, would be criminal in any sense of the word. Not to mention, people who have suffered in jail for no reason. It's ludicrous, and I don't mean the rapper.

From one of the articles:
"That’s right, news about the abilility of pot to shrink tumors first surfaced, way back in 1974. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia."

Paying for Politics

What is wrong with our country? Why is it so biased away from the common people?

Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic Lost", says that politicians spend anywhere from 30 to 70% of their time trying to "shape shifting" to avoid doing anything that might drive the money away.

If you look at how politicians ran for office in say, 1850 compared to now, do you see a difference? People far from the city never got to see these candidates. Maybe they'd get to read them in a news paper. But there was no radio, no TV, no major transportation to allow extensive campaign travel. People had to choose on vastly different criteria.

Consider how TV has affected who wins elections. In the ultimate example, the Nixon / Kennedy debate in 1960, people said that Kennedy won, if they watched the debate on TV. But people who said they heard it on the radio, said they thought Nixon won. But Nixon was sweating, frankly, he has a "shify" look and he just didn't have great handsome, dynamic bearing like Kennedy did.
Politicians now have to have an answer every second and be quick with a snappy reply. In the beginning, some of our best presidents were horrible at many of those things. If you see a container that can hold only so much, you have to give something up, for something else to exist in that container (or brain).

Commedian, Actor, Politician, Al Franken

So if you want more than just a good administrator, and you also want an actor, and a commedian too, well, something's got to go. Sure there are the exceptions to the rule, but you have to understand, most of us are not an exception. And wouldn't it be NICE if we had more qualified and worthy people who could run for office, win, AND do a good job once elected?

Money given to campaigns doesn't usually buy power or sway opinion so much as it offers access to those politicians, and that translates to more opportunity to state you case, and therefore more chance of getting what you want.

So how do we fix this? We need to make fund raising a non issue. We need to not so much depend upon the media selling a candidate. We need the media, to be brought under control too, but let's face it, that's another can of worms.

Would it be better if We, the People, paid for politics and got the benefit of it, rather than the special interests, the corporations, and the banks? Maybe we Should pay for the opportunity to have fair elections, unbiased by big money. So perhaps, campaigns should simply come out of the public coffers. You get what you pay for right? Well, we don't pay for our elections, we expect them for free. Honestly, look at what you get for that? Yes, we've had great presidents in that way. But yes, we have had a lot of nightmares. Bush, was two nightmares in a row. Everyone should get equal time, or little time equally. Equal billboards, posters, travel, etc. We are then investing in our nation. Now it's like we open a garage sale and whoever has the most money ends up getting us to sign the title of our house over to them.

IF politicians no longer had to fund raise, they could only concern themselves with their campaign and spend more time on the important stuff, learning the position they are vying for. They wouldn't so much have to study acting, and performing; yes, they would still do it, but they would be able to decrease how much time is wasted on these things.

It goes on and on. There would be equal amounts of media on them, other than what the media supplies them. You can see it, we'd have candidates doing bizarre things just to get the media to cover their actions. Or maybe they'd go around volunteering and helping people, and bringing public consciousness up on topic because we'd have to have more discussion on real topics that were important to people. Corporations wouldn't have so much access, so much control.

We'd need to eliminate the incestuousness of government and corporations. There are many things we could do. We just need to do them.

Knights of Mahem and the Sport of Jousting

I don't know if you're heard about NatGeo's new show on cable, but Knights of Mayhem, is a hard hitting show. It's all about Charlie Andrews who has been trying to turn Jousting into an almost UFC, mixed martial arts type of sport.

And he may be right. I watched the first show and started to believe. Right now I'm watching the season finale and I have to say, whether or not you like the NatGeo show or not, the idea of Jousting as a professional entertainment sport, is valid.

Don't mistake this sport for that of something like "Medieval Times", which is a great venue, and loads of fun, but it is show business, and this jousting, is a full contact sport. It has everything, it has horses (for many people we can stop right there), it has anxiety, danger, a quick decision unlike baseball and football, it has explosive action and the real possibility of damage and death. I mean, really, what more do you need?

Okay, there is also armor, shiny or black. And that armor has weight, and strength, both of which add to the events. The jousting poles, the lances, literally explode when they properly hit the other knight. There is really a lot more to it, than just riding along, point a stick at someone, and hit them. A lot more.

One thing I would argue with, is calling the contestants, "Knights". But even if we grant them that title, I do think it needs to be earned, perhaps more than they do now earn it. Of course, one could argue, if you've seen this, that just to get armored up, on a horse, take the lance and ride toward someone who is trying to knock you off your horse, might be enough to earn the title.

But if you look at it obversely, from someone who deserves the title, and look down from his position, you really need to earn it.

In the show, there is Charlie Andrews, the current World Champion, and his teacher, Patrick Lambke, three time World Champion. Lambke is the protagonist on the show to Charlie's hero slot. Lambke even is called the Black Knight and wears the obvious shade of armor.

But Lambke, one time reining world champ, has problems, no doubt about it. The others talk about him, and you wonder, but in seeing the choices Lambke makes, ignoring his talk, he does have problems and is on the decline.

Charlie himself is a real piece of work. Very aggressive, in any setting, but he has given everything up in his life for this idea of making Jousting a major full contact money bloodsport. He may just do it. I was just about full of all of them by the second to the last show of the season but then last week, it got real interesting. Tonight, the season finale, we find out of Charlie retains his World Title. But I would have to say, last week's show was the highlight of the entire season. Watching the season leading up to it certainly enhanced that, but it was still a powerful show.

I wasn't as I said, much of a fan of anyone on the show, but in tonight's show, Charlie does something that stunned me. I didn't agree with him at first, and I really had to think about what he did. But after giving it some thought, I realized two good reasons, that I agreed with, for why and did, and why he should have done, what he did. And from that, I wouldn't say I became a fan of his, but I have a lot more respect for him. A lot. 

Now that the season is over, I can only wonder, will it be back next season? Because if it is, that means there is enough interest to carry it over. And if it gets carried over, will it grow as an event, one that big bucks go into, like with mixed martial arts?

Only time will tell, but I have to say, I kind of hope it catches on. I"m likin' it.

God is Dead. Is Energy our God now? Or the opposite?

It was written in the 19th century, that "God is dead" by Nietzsche, that may have been the beginning of the end. Many realized that. But maybe for the wrong reasons. At the same time, energy was becoming increasingly more important. Things we found valuable, were supplied by way of energy. People called it the Industrial Revolution, but they may have missed the real culprit.

Nietzsche wasn't saying he believed in an actual God who first existed and then died, or that we killed him. He was saying that God was no longer a viable source of any absolute moral principles. He may have been right. God may not have died, He was simply replaced. But rather than being replaced by other belief type principles, he was replaced by the God Energy.

Noam Chomsky, Writer, Speaker and Media Critic, spoke at FAIR, the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting group's 25th Anniversary. On April 28, 2011, at New York City’s Symphony Space, FAIR celebrated their 25th anniversary.

From FAIR's web page::

"FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled.

"Uniquely, FAIR works with both activists and journalists. We maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets across the country, providing constructive critiques when called for and applauding exceptional, hard-hitting journalism."

Noam Chomsky is Avram Noam Chomsky and was born December 7, 1928 and is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is one of those people who must of had the worst birthday ever, the year that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

For over 50 years he has been an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT. Mr. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics". He has been a major figure in analytic philosophy and his work has influenced areas as diverse as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

I remember reading him when I was getting my degree in Psychology, many years ago. The guy is pretty smart. I've quoted him in articles over a period of some thirty years now.

Among other things, Mr. Chomsky said that he had been reading declassified documents from the white house and had found some interesting things. Leading up to a point, he said that when 9/11 hit, Pres. Bush asked in a speech, "why do the Arabs hate us?" He answered his own question in saying, it was because they hate our Freedoms.

Not quite, "W". Close, but no Cuban cigar.

Back in 1958, Mr. Chomsky pointed out, President Eisenhower had asked his staff to find out why there is such a campaign of hatred against us by the Arab world. Their government seemed to liked us (our money), but the citizens didn't so much. The National Security Council came back with a memorandum, now declassified, to Pres. Eisenhower saying that it was our policies the Arabs didn't like. That there was a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports harsh and brutal dictatorships, and that we block democracy and development. And we do. We do it because we want to gain control of their energy resources. The memorandum went on to say that the perception was reasonably accurate and furthermore that's what we ought to be doing.

Yay, us!

After Bush had made that statement, he appointed a study group to find out what was up. They concluded that it's not that they hate our freedoms, it's that they hate our policies, and then went on to repeat what the NSC had said back in 1958. At that point Mr. Chomsky said that they hadn't gone far enough and they should also have said that we hate their freedoms, for the reasons given by the NSC.

It was realized back with Roosevelt's and Truman's advisers that if we can control the Middle East, we can control the world, specifically stating that, "We can gain substantial control of the world." Which, remains true.

This isn't however, aligned only with Republican administrations, but to American administrations, from Clinton's liberal side to Bush's, well, I don't really know what Bush was.

It was an interesting point of view, an informed point of view. Oil was a big motivator as we all have known. But it is energy, not oil, not gas of any form, but energy. We need to remember that.

Coincidentally, I was watching Fareed Zakaria this morning and it seems we are now looking at massively increasing Fracking here in America. In fact, they think we may become the world energy leaders for the next hundred years, replacing all others. That's a change. I keep hearing that Fracking is relatively safe, and this may be true. Yes, you hear about some pretty scary issues, people's water being made not just undrinkable, but unusable; the ability to light your kitchen tap water on fire; people's water tanks exploding, little things like that. Long term health issues in the forms of cancer or worse, will become obvious.

However, people don't realize how much Fracking is already happening. So that even with some bad regional issues, most may very well be safe. Though I'm not sure how you can consider pumping poisons into the Earth a good thing. [*Update 10/28/2012 see below]

It's not surprising how we are focused on energy as our all consuming concern in the world. If we run out, nearly everything shuts down. Many of us live out of town, commuting via internet or vehicles. We'd have a tough time getting food. People would have to start all over again and become an agrarian society again. Everywhere this would be happening. Smaller would become beautiful again. But what would those people do who have no drinking water now because of Fraking? Move, I would assume. Pretty quickly, too.

So, maybe energy is Satan, not God. 

How come no religious groups point at energy as the true evil in the world, other than, perhaps, the Amish. Wouldn't that be ironic, if they turned out to be the ones who were correct in their contentions to begin with. If we had fully replenish-able sources of energy, if you put a battery in your flashlight and it NEVER died, think how things would change. 

You wouldn't HAVE to work. You wouldn't have 90% of your worries. Your car battery would never go dead. There would be no energy based contentions between nations. People would get along better. No lacking energy, no one would be truly poor. Greed would lose at least some of its meaning.

Life would be good. Possibly.

So even if we don't have that now. Even if we can't have it yet because of lacking the technology (and no I don't think technology is Satan, just energy), perhaps just keeping that in mind and working toward that would change how we treat those other nations, those small communities getting Fraked water supplies. Maybe we would put more effort into losing electricity as the one thing running technology. 

No, I don't really think electricity is evil, just energy. But I'm addicted to it, too. I don't want to live without energy. I just want more of it, and free. I heard a while back that the next biggest breakthrough in science and technology will be in batteries. Which, surprised me. But think Star Trek and their phaser weapons. Think of the batteries those had to have to be able to supply that kind of power. Power that would run one of their space shuttles in a pinch. Now that is a battery!

Once that barrier has been breached, couldn't it be possible that things will get better in international tensions and relationships.

Just possibly? I think so. 

But then, we need to ask the next obvious question. Who then will be, our God?

*Update 10/28/2012: On Fareed Zakaria GPS today, Ann McElhinney, director of the upcoming documentary, "FrackNation" pointed out several interesting contentions that we didn't hear in the notorious documentary  "Gasland". She indicated that fracking has been going on sice 1948, and that there are literally millions of these fracking sites around the US. Opposing her on the debate was Amrahm Lustgarten, Environmental reporter for ProPublica, who said that the fracking that has been going on recently, in the last ten years is different than historical drilling. McElhinney said that the EPA has pointed out there is not a single incident of fracking causing methane leakage to people's water. Well, you can take that with a grain of salt, or not. I tend to give official sources credence until proven, or credibly indicated, to be otherwise.

The primary source of the documentary film "Gasland" that stirred up all this controversy was based in Dimock, PA. McElhinney went back there and said that reporters always seemed to interview the eleven litigants in the methane in the water issue; but McElhinney then also found 1500 families who said that the water there had always been "appalling" and had always had methane in the water. So the residents have started an organization called, "Enough Already" to have their voices heard and their side of the controversy heard. McElhinney also said, we're talking about 1% of the people there and the 99% want to have their voices heard. 

McElhinney also said when you consider the "truth" which her upcoming documentary is to point out, when put next to the need America has for the products of fracking, and the need to remove ourselves from buying energy products such as oil and gas from countries who seem to hate us, that it is a great benefit to be able to frack in our own country. Finally she said of course regulations are important and need to be there, and they are there now. Lustgarten returned that there is not enough known about this and there needs to be more research and attention paid to just what this can do to our environment 

Is there anything more important than our drinking water?

The other day a scientist was on the news talking about how there is one other element that is very important and being ignored. That being the effect of pumping all this water and chemicals, especially as there is so much of this being done now, and the effects this has on plate tectonics, the shifting of plates of land that cause earthquakes. There has been speculation for years about actually starting earthquakes using this kind of method, in proactively alleviating bad earthquakes . Bad earthquakes happen when two plates have too much friction to allow the pressure to be released more gradually, over time. When they get stuck, sooner or later they release that pressure with devastating results to human, living populations including animals and structures.

So there are things about fracking that we need to examine and continue to examine. Even though, in some cases it may already be too late. We just don't know enough yet. But, we will. Hopefully we will find out ahead of time, through research and not through some kind of environmental catastrophe. Fracking may indeed be the answer we need for the here and now, but we also need to expend the money for research to properly and scientifically evaluate the result of this much fracking.

Something we are not always so good at doing. There are many examples of our being lax in paying for services we don't really value highly as needing to be carried out. For instance, one prime example in another area entirely, is with our war veterans. We seem to be all for going to war when we deem it necessary, but when it comes to taking care in the aftermath or even during, to pay for our veterans to be properly integrated back into our society, to get the proper mental and physical healthcare they so sorely need, we tend to shy away from our responsibilities.

Let's do the right things, even if that means fracking, or going to war. But let's also spend the money we need to be spending, to protect ourselves and properly take care of our citizens whom we have or may have, put in harms way for our benefit.