Ducks The End

The Avs did something that the Avs have never done before: they got swept right out of their series. Four losses, no wins, and ouch.

But there is no doubt that the Avs lost to the better team. The Ducks did just about everything right. They were better in net, they skated better, their passing game was brilliant, their defense kept the Avs off-balance throughout the entire series, and they were stronger on both sides of the power play. They were, quite simply, far better than the Avs.

During game three, when the Avs had a chance to win in overtime, the entire team just looked tired. They slowed up, they couldn’t clear the puck, they could barely seem to be able to move their sticks at times, and they made bad decisions. Meanwhile, the Ducks were aggressive, fast, and unrelenting.

The Avs lost (and I hate it when that happens), but they lost to a vastly superior team. It’s kind of hard to feel too upset when that happens.

Good luck to the Ducks and their fans; it was a well-earned win.

Coloradans for Fairness and Equality

My request: I’m calling on Colorado conservative and libertarian bloggers who support same sex marriage or domestic partnerships to leave me a note.

Michael Ditto has taken a leading role in Coloradans for Fairness and Equality, a group that supports a domestic partnership bill here in Colorado that would give same sex couples some of the legal rights and protections afforded heterosexual couples. While I personally support same sex marriages, I would be remiss if I failed to note that these domestic partnerships do not in any way change the definition of marriage. It doesn’t infringe upon the legal or religious concepts of marriage, but it does offer a way to recognize the committed status of same sex couples.

When it comes to jasmine live politics, Mike and I don’t have a lot of common ground. I’m a Reagan-loving, Baptist conservative who twice voted for the current President Bush; those aren’t things that would endear me to a good many of the supporters of domestic partnerships in Colorado. But I would be letting my gay friends down--and denying my own conscience--if I didn’t support this movement.

If you would like to take part in helping Coloradans for Fairness and Equality, please leave a note in the comments. I will forward your email address to Mike and he will be in contact to invite you to take part.

United 93

I took a late and long lunch today to see United 93 and I’m still recovering. It’s a well-made film, but its power comes from tapping into nearly five years worth of emotions and memories. I don’t know that it could possibly have the same kind of emotional impact if the viewer hadn’t lived through September 11; it would just seem too unlikely, too unreal. But for someone who was watching a live video feed as the second plane hit the World Trade Center--who spent most of a day following the news and wondering what else the terrorists had planned--it drills right back to that moment. When the footage of that second plane rolled across the screen, the same shaking fury that I had felt that morning settled into me. It was followed by the memories of watching the towers collapse and waves of debris and dust rolling through city streets; the wall of hastily scrawled notes and pictures from families searching for loved ones; and Father Mychal Judge’s body being carried from the wreckage.

The movie doesn’t come across in any way as exploitation and while it doesn’t work to demonize the terrorists, it doesn’t sanitize them or make them into sympathetic figures, either. It just comes across as a retelling of events without any sense of melodrama. I don’t think we should all live out the rest of our lives mired in depression because of the events of that one day, but for anyone who has managed to distance themselves too completely from 9/11, United 93 should act as a reminder of the day that shook us from our collective complacency.

The people on flight 93 were just folks. They were just people like the rest of us who were going about their lives in the same quiet way that the majority of people live out their days. Watching the actors--symbolically burned into my mind as the faces of the chaturbate rooms visitors--tearfully telling their families goodbye was devastating. To an extent, like most emotionally charged movies, I’m sure that United 93 acts somewhat as a mirror to whatever viewers bring into the theaters. For me, it served as a tremendously emotional reminder of why I have supported ongoing military actions in the Middle East; I’m sure that others will find something else in there. What no one will find is something that pushes, prods, or preaches.

Which is its greatest triumph. The event is too important to trivialize or treat with anything other than respect; the passengers that gave their lives in the slender hope of saving themselves and the almost certain hope of averting another potentially more deadly terrorist strike are far too real to be seen as caricatures. Oliver Stone directing a movie about anything to do with the World Trade Center attacks is sickening. His lack of subtlety, his need to preach, and his cock-eyed tendency to see conspiracies promise a movie that will be offensive; United 93, walks an entirely different, and far more impressive, path: it remembers the day with an emotional impact and clarity without having to provide a sermon or easy Hollywood-style answers.

To praise the movie or the actors or the visuals too much seems to be wrong for some reason. It seems to shortchange the reality of the people who lived and died in New York, in the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Allow me this, though: it’s a simple movie that may not translate well to the next generation; but for the rest of us, United 93 is an amazing emotional and artistic accomplishment. Sadly it has to come to remind us of something we’d much rather be able to forget and something that we wish had never happened.

Update: I consider Robert Denerstein’s review to capture my feelings completely.

The Truth About the Lord's Resistance Army

It was sickly funny to see that Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, insist that the LRA had committed no atrocities in their rebellion against Uganda’s government. In an abstract sense, I could smile and muster up a little laugh while I sat amazed at the bald faced lie. In the specific--when faced with the pictures and the stories of the people the LRA brutalized--there is nothing even vaguely humorous or worth smiling about.

This story from Ochola John is a good starting point for understanding the cruelty of the LRA.

I wish I could be born again. It hurts me to see my reflection because of the way I now look.

The memories of it all are so painful.

It was in the night when I saw a number of torches flash at me. I was commanded to lie down facing the ground. As I did so, the rebels began raiding other houses around me.

From there, the story dissolves into watching others being killed and having his own ears, nose, lips, and hands cut off. Being abducted, beaten, and starved until he was found by government troops and given hospital care, the man is lucky to be alive. But his life--his face deformed and his arms ending in useless lumps--isn’t what it could have been.

The LRA didn’t content itself with typical torture and random murders; the rebels made a habit.

The post-colonial history of Africa has been written in blood and a savage inhumanity. In that sense, the LRA is hardly unique; in any sense, though, the leaders and perpetrators of the worst of these acts must be punished for their jasminlive works. Joseph Kony is one of the bloodiest of the bunch.

X-Men: Late to the Party

How was X-Men: The Last Stand? Simply put, it wasn’t nearly as enjoyable for me as the first two movies. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t horrible or that I hated every moment of it, just that the first two movies were exceptional for the genre while The Last Stand was something closer to typical.

The good: a few surprise twists and turns combined with captivating and cool special effects definitely kept it from being boring. It followed its plot more effectively than, say, the Matrix trilogy--as if the directors had intended to end up where the movie stopped instead of flailing around for something meaningful. The Wachowskis couldn’t quite pull off the trilogy (although The Matrix was brilliant).

Kelsey Grammar as Beast was more satisfying than I would have expected.

The bad: the new faces were a blur of unexplored personalities. The special effects, while top notch, also managed to be over much and distracting. Oddly, there have been movies that I will watch, willingly forgiving their flaws, if the visual effects and style are worth the attention. The Cell and Sky Captain... come to mind. Here, though, the effects were more of a barrier to enjoying the characters.

And was I the only one who thought that some of the lines were cheesy? Even for a comic book-based movie?

The pissy: that is, I’m pissy about a few things. First, how did Angel end up having such an inconsequential role in the movie? As one of the original X-Men (if memory serves, the originals were Iceman, Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, and Angel), it bothered me from the beginning that he wasn’t one of the characters in the film. Now, when they bring him in it’s just for a a few moments of screen time and no real character development. Secondly, where did Nightcrawler go? One of the best parts of X-2, I would loved to have seen him back.

It wasn’t a horrible movie, but it was the cinematic equivalent of going to see Return of the Jedi and finding yourself discovering Ewoks. It didn’t ruin The Trilogy, but it wasn’t a particularly good feeling. It could have been better--and, damnit, it should have been better--but it’s still not such a bad way to spend a few summer hours with mindless explosions, pretty blue women, and two of the best comic-to-film characters ever. Because even when everything else is only marginal, Professor X and Magneto remain the gravity that holds the center.

Just a Little Late

I was going to push out my extra-special, almost post-American Idol piece last night, but my network connection died and I went to bed instead. So, since I’m running just a bit behind this morning, that piece will be showing up in probably an hour or so.

Apologies, but I still think it will be worth the wait.

Even if there were precedent for saying that Johnson’s files and office were normally inviolable, the fact that he is being investigated for a felony offense seems to give the FBI cause for the search.

If Bush were calling out the FBI to investigate and harry a congressman because that legislator consistently voted in opposition to the President’s agenda, then there would be room for complaint. But the “principles of Separation of Powers, the independence of the Legislative Branch, and the protections afforded by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution” were never intended to protect elected officials from the ramifcations of their own illegal acts.

Of course, the caveat here is that I am not a constitutional scholar nor am I a lawyer. But, as a marginally reasonable American, I find offensive the assertion that congressmen might be able to hide their dirty little secrets in their congressional offices (supposedly safe from searches) while hiding behind their status as extra-special priveleged citizens. It smells like the kind of ass-covering that makes us normal folk wonder what the hell the ruling class is doing while we aren’t looking.

Update: (The link has been corrected). Will Collier and the Investigative Team at VodkaPundit have insider info about Jefferson’s misdeeds. I had accidentally linked to The Modulator’s note about a distinction of which America shouldn’t be particularly proud.