Green Light for Bigots

So, if you can present your bigotry as a "sincere religious belief," and your goods and services as "expressive," you can refuse any customers you like.

I suppose at least the Church of Satan can make some mischief with this.

(Oh, and while I'm here -- shout-out to any college applicants out there trying to to write an essay that's compelling at the same time it doesn't trip an admission board's fear of a lawsuit. Assuming they can still afford to apply for college.)

An Emotional Walk in the Park

Netflix's recent dramatic mini-series, When They See Us, brought the infamous case of the Central Park jogger back into the news. It was a brutal 1989 assault for which five juveniles were wrongfully convicted, men who then spent decades in jail and endured calls for their execution (including a high-profile one from Donald Trump) before finally being exonerated.

When They See Us received broad critical praise, and it's still on my list to check out at some point. But its arrival first sparked me to go back to a documentary on the subject that came onto my radar a few years ago. The Central Park Five -- a documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon -- was released in 2012, and was perhaps the first piece to look at the exoneration of these convicted men with anything remotely approaching the zealotry with which they were condemned in the early 1990s.

This is far from the first "documentary of the falsely accused" that I've taken an interest in: there was the Paradise Lost trilogy (plus West of Memphis, a separate look at the same case), and of course the sensations of Netflix and the podcast world, Making a Murderer and Serial. A key difference with The Central Park Five, however, is that these falsely accused men are now conclusively known to be innocent. All those other examples I cite weave elaborate tales (albeit very persuasive ones) of conflicting evidence and rushes to judgment that nevertheless cannot definitively or forensically establish an objective truth. It is possible -- though unlikely -- that you those other documentaries might not persuade you of their argument.

The Central Park Five is thus an anomalous exception. The evidence is threadbare to non-existent. The documentary doesn't have to present you much in the way of an alternative theory of the case, because the main theory of the case is so lacking. This is not a deep dive into crime investigation, nor even on errors in the justice system. There simply isn't much material to work those angles.

Instead, the film really focus on the wrongly convicted men themselves, and on the terrible impact on the lives of their families. The film is about injustice, but it focuses on the injustice at a personal, emotional level. Sprawling into multiple episodes, Making a Murder and Serial can both get caught up in things like "ooo, but the crime scene photos showed this!" -- which, admittedly, is much of the appeal of these sorts of stories as "entertainment." But the emotional cost is just one piece of those sprawling stories. Here, it's very much the story. I certainly understand and appreciate that approach, as these men never really had their stories told in this way before this.

The Central Park Five does succeed in agitating your emotions, your sadness or your rage; it doesn't give you much to do with it. One vital part of all those other movies and series is that all of them spend a lot of time explaining why and how people are motivated to confess to crimes they did not commit. This really feels like a huge takeaway to me that might have actual, practical value in many peoples' lives. I'm not talking about if, heaven forbid, you ever find yourself in a police interrogation room... or even if you find yourself on a jury evaluating the truthfulness of a confession. It's more a tool of empathy that belongs in any human's emotional toolbox -- understanding why people sometimes don't say what they mean, even to their detriment, and understand why that happens and what it looks like.

So ultimately, though I found The Central Park Five compelling, it felt somehow less... essential(?)... to me than some of those other efforts. Perhaps it's a bit ghoulish to think about someone's real suffering like this, on such terms. Perhaps even more so to rank or grade it. But here it is: I'd give the documentary The Central Park Five a B. It's worth a look for those who respond to these sorts of tales, though it's not the most skillful telling of such a tale I've come across.

Plane Spoken

The Oscar nominations still haven't been announced, but enough of the precursor awards have made their nominations that the likely landscape is taking shape. One movie that now seems to be on the margins is Sully, the tale of airline pilot "Sully" Sullenberger and his emergency landing on the Hudson River. It was a headline so omnipresent that everyone knows the story, and that presents an interesting challenge for this film adaptation.

There's little point in spending a whole movie on pre-emergency Sully leading up to the crash. Nor would it work to start with the Hudson River landing and then let all of the tension out of the film in the hour to follow. So scriptwriter Todd Komarnicki made the decision to tell the story out of order. Post-crash investigations are shuffled together with fragments of the event itself, which is gradually unfolded from different perspectives. Brief flashbacks to a much younger Sully are also stitched into the patchwork. The results do work, to some extent. It is remarkable how events you know well (and have even seen earlier in the movie) can play out with taut suspense. Credit the skillful directing and tight cutting of Clint Eastwood.

But Komarnicki's script and Eastwood's directing have some flaws as well. Like Eastwood's last movie, American Sniper, it seems not to be enough to show someone displaying heroism in the course of "just doing their job." They have to be persecuted too; the movie is almost aiming at deification. Much of Sully's scant 90-minute run time is devoted to a witch hunt looking to railroad Sully for his ostensibly bad judgment. It does work as a story point, but it's hit on awfully hard for not really being the emotional core of the tale.

That core is how seriously Sully takes his role safeguarding the lives of his passengers. And unfortunately, the shuffling around of the narrative delays any real examination of this until quite deep in the film. The "big moment," if you will, comes when Sully learns whether there were any casualties in his emergency landing, and that comes more than 2/3rds of the way into the movie. This might not be as noticeable as it is were it not for the phenomenal acting of Tom Hanks. In many ways, the scene echoes Hanks' amazing work at the end of Captain Phillips, perhaps being even more impressive in being more subtle and straitjacketed. In any case, the scene gives the movie a shot of emotional adrenaline that propels it into a moving final act. But by that point, the audience has had a bit too long to drift into a place of wondering "what's the point of all this?"

The movie otherwise balances elements on opposite sides of the scale. There's a deep cast of great actors including Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, and more... but outside of Aaron Eckhart, no one but Hanks really has much to do. The visual effects are quite convincing, but the music is a bit over the top. And so on, pluses and minuses.

All told, I'd say it works out to around a B-. Tom Hanks again proves how great an actor he is, but I can otherwise understand if the film gets left out of the Oscar hunt.

Horrific Act

The Act of Killing is perhaps not a widely known documentary. Among critics who have seen it, though, it has a sterling reputation (and an Oscar nomination and BAFTA win to go with it). I was curious to see what all the fuss was about... and found myself challenged by the results.

The documentary is a look back on mass killings perpetrated by a gangster/paramilitary group in 1960s Indonesia. Imagine if members of Hitler's inner circle -- Himmler, Göring, or Hess -- were alive half a century later to tell their story on film. That is The Act of Killing. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer focuses mainly on one man, Anwar Congo, who is thought to have personally killed over 1000 people. Oppenheimer gets Anwar to talk extensively about his experiences, and even to play director himself. The bulk of the documentary tracks Anwar as he films reenactments of his own deeds, portraying himself as a glamorous Hollywood gangster.

I'd like to think of myself as someone really willing to be confronted by a thoughtful piece of entertainment. Give me substance, not just cheap thrills. Well, there could hardly be a more Important Film than this... and I couldn't watch it.

Here was my reaction as I watched the movie. I found it repetitive, like a short subject stretched out endlessly to feature length. The same beat kept playing out over and over again: exposing this man Anwar as a horrifically callous individual. (And wouldn't you have to be?) My attention started to wander, until I ultimately fast-forwarded to the much talked about ending. (In which -- SPOILER -- Anwar actually begins to grow a conscience, breaking down and vomiting in horror as a tiny bit of what he has done finally begins to sink in.)

Afterward, I felt guilty about my reaction. How could I possibly view this documentary as a piece of "entertainment," and fault it for not engrossing me by some set of narrative rules? Isn't it enough that the movie's existence made me aware of historical atrocities of which I had little or no knowledge? That it now exists as an act of historical preservation, or to memorialize the victims? Isn't it enough that it made a true monster of a man begin to realize his monstrosity?

And yet, I couldn't watch all of this documentary that many have proclaimed as a modern masterpiece.

I think I'm going to forego giving a conventional grade on this one. But I do feel compelled to make more people aware of this movie's existence... and so here it is. The Act of Killing is horrific and incredible. Unbearable and necessary. I think I'm glad it exists, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. You'll have to decide for yourselves.

Four's Score

Citizenfour was last year's Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature -- and while the Academy never reveals actual vote totals, the feeling from the commentators seemed to be that this must have been a landslide win. But now that I've watched the documentary, I feel that people were voting for the subject matter, not the movie itself.

Citizenfour chronicles the leak of the NSA spy scandal by Edward Snowden. It's distinctive in that director Laura Poitras didn't actually seek out her subject. Having previously made two other documentaries on the abuse of government power, she was actually one of Snowden's first journalist contacts in releasing his information. Thus, Poitras isn't trying to tell the story after the fact -- her film is a documentary in the most literal sense, documenting the actual events as they unfolded.

The resulting film really makes you feel like you're there for actual Important History taking place. Sadly, this story may not be that important in the grand scheme of things, since people seem alarmingly unconcerned at the unlawful invasion of privacy. (And on his HBO show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver memorably demonstrated how few people actually know who Edward Snowden is or what he did.) Still, it feels like someone is showing you previously unknown footage of say, Chuck Yeager in his cockpit as he broke the sound barrier. It's instantly compelling to look behind the scenes like this.

But "right place, right time" seems to be the one big thing the movie has going for it. As an expose of what Edward Snowden leaked, and what the NSA was doing, it feels surprisingly light. Seeing this movie probably wouldn't inflame someone's passions about the issue of privacy; it's for those "already inside the tent." It also feels quite loosely paced. It's like we're watching the unedited video account of what happened, and there are times you really want to fast forward to "the good parts."

Different people have different opinions of Edward Snowden. But if you take him at his word (and I for one do), he never wanted this story to be about him. He wanted the focus to be on the NSA's overreach, not the man who exposed it. Unfortunately, the movie feels like it's exactly what he didn't want. Because it's light on the details, and because it's not tightly edited, you inevitably end up thinking about the man and not the story. The film even encourages this, with long and unnecessary scenes of Snowden in his hotel room -- shaving, staring out the window, doing generally nothing. It's silently demanding that the audience contemplate the man behind the news. (I mean, look at the poster!)

In the end, Citizenfour is like many non-documentary films: a compelling story in need of better editing. I can't believe it was truly the most deserving documentary in the Oscar race. "Important" as it may be, I give it a C.

Freedom, Rings

Unless you've been hiding in a rainbow-proof cave, you've heard by now that yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the nationwide right to marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. The case of Obergefell v. Hodges will go down in history, much like Loving v. Virginia, the case which in 1967 struck down bans on interracial marriage.

But there's a key difference between the two cases. The correctness of Loving was manifest even at that time: the verdict from the Court was unanimous. The majority opinion in Obergefell, in sharp contrast, was supported by only 5 of the 9 justices. The other 4 justices offered up not just one dissent, but one dissent each (and each variously endorsed by other dissenters). And each is a flawed bit of rhetoric.

At the risk of seeming ungrateful, I'll extend that criticism to the majority opinion itself, authored (as was expected) by Anthony Kennedy. It is, without a doubt, peppered with stirring flourishes. The closing in particular is a powerful piece of writing:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.   In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.  As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.  The Constitution grants them that right.

But in between lofty passages of the Obergefell ruling, there's not nearly as much legal reasoning as there ought to be. I had similar criticisms of his Windsor ruling, though it turned out that many lower court judges would later read between its lines to infer the correct answer to the larger marriage question. But it's exactly what all those judges wrote -- dozens of district court rulings, and several circuit court rulings -- that makes Kennedy's work seem somewhat lacking by comparison.

If you read any of the opinions from the lower courts in the last two years from the marriage cases leading up to this (and I have -- every one of them), you'll find many examples of judges who articulated the argument more clearly than Kennedy. On the more technical side, there were rulings like Judge Shelby's at the district level in the Utah case, Kitchen v. Herbert -- which systematically refuted every argument made by the other side. Or on the more philosophical side, Judge Posner's ruling for the Seventh Circuit pithily detailed the injustice of the situation, and was loaded with brilliant rhetorical flourishes for the layman. ("Go figure.")

I guess I'd expect a Justice for the Highest Court in the Land to do better. But maybe everything had already been said as well as it could be. In any case, Kennedy's Obergefell ruling is a bit like swiss cheese on the substance, and the dissents all pounce on this. But of course, the dissents are all even worse in their own ways, and only able to get away with being worse because they're not actually engaging the arguments -- they're simply crossing verbal swords with Kennedy. The result is four dissents that seem even less worthy (far less worthy) of the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Roberts' dissent tries to cast this ruling as having no basis in the Constitution, and compares what the majority has done to the "Lochner era" of the Supreme Court. You can read all about that case and the years that followed in The Case Against the Supreme Court (which I recommend). Suffice it to say that Lochner is generally thought to be right behind Dred Scott (defending slavery) and Korematsu (upholding World War II internment of Japanese Americans) as one of the worst and wrongly decided cases in Supreme Court history. Roberts is making a bold claim to compare Lochner to this same-sex marriage ruling.

And moreover, he's completely ignoring why Lochner is considered to be so wrong. Lochner involved laws established to protect employees at a bakery from inhumane working conditions. The laws were designed to equalize the power balance between the employees (who had to take what job they could get) and the employers (who had no reason to treat their employees well). The Supreme Court in that case crafted an upside-down ruling that would boggle even the Mad Hatter, striking down the laws as unconstitutional infringement of the weak employees' "right" to take a worse deal if they chose to.

In short, Lochner is reviled in legal circles not because it represents judicial overreach, but because it preserved power for the powerful. Roberts' now cries "judicial overreach" without awareness of any irony, after a decade-long string of cases which have cemented power for corporations and the wealthy -- the real repeat of the real travesty of Lochner.

And the dissents only get worse from there. Scalia uses his to flog his pet cause of constitutional originalism -- the idea that people today should be bound by the conceptions of those who wrote laws centuries ago. And his irony detector is even more damaged than Roberts'. He scolds Kennedy for writing an opinion designed to be memorable, when it's he himself who always peppers his opinions with dollar words and bon mots.

Alito wastes a few pages quoting his own dissent from Windsor, and arguing that the real injustice here is that he and others who believe as he does may be branded as bigots. His core argument of course being the very definition of bigotry: "I have nothing against you, I just sincerely believe that you don't deserve the same rights I have."

Worst of all is Clarence Thomas, who pretends that government can neither bestow nor deprive dignity on an individual. He believes he has made this point perfectly with this shocking declaration:

Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them.

If you don't believe slavery or internment are deprivations of dignity and humanity, it seems pretty clear you don't understand a thing about dignity and humanity.

Where have I been going with this lengthy, meandering post? (And kudos to you, if you're still here.) Just this. Yesterday, four Supreme Court judges made utter asses of themselves, and committed their dumbassery to print for all time. And even Kennedy, who at least got the outcome right, revealed himself (in my view) as less knowledgeable and less articulate than dozens of judges on lower courts.

My point: it's time to refresh the Supreme Court. Of course, there's no scheduled mechanism for this. Only when a Justice retires or dies in office does the sitting president then get to nominate a replacement, subject to approval by the Senate.

Think about this next time you're voting for your Senator and for the President. Choose accordingly.

Road Deconstruction

In chronicling our exploration of Yellowstone National Park a few weeks ago, I noted that the park is constantly changing. A news story hit last week illustrating just how true that is: one of the roads in the park has suddenly melted (not our photo, obviously):

Apparently, an underground geothermal feature intensified, which damaged the road above it. This happened on Firehole Lake Drive, one of those one-way side roads we took to explore what was a little off the main paths. There were some neat sights back up there too, like the Firehole Spring (our photos):

The unusually blue Surprise Pool:

And the Great Fountain Geyser:

I guess until things cool off and they repair the road, the things we got to see there will be a bit more exclusive.

It's a Gas

Last year, I wrote about the documentary Gasland, which delves into natural gas mining through hydraulic fracturing. Director Josh Fox is back this year with Gasland Part II.

The first film focused more on the process itself, demonstrating the dangers of it, and presenting a case that the supposed safety measures surrounding it are insufficient. Now, years after he made that film, far more people know what fracking is, so the thrust of this film is decidedly more political. It lays out the lobbying machinations of the big fracking companies, and examines the attitudes of government officials on the subject -- which are basically shown to range from sadly ignorant to willfully corrupt.

I noted in my review of the first Gasland movie that it showed the signs of being a novice filmmaker's work. Josh Fox was at times a stale personality in his film. He had a passion for his subject, and had clearly done research to become knowledgeable on it... though he wasn't always successful at conveying that passion and knowledge.

In Gasland Part II, Josh Fox has found his voice. Unfortunately, it seems to be modeled off the more shrill, grandstanding moments in Michael Moore documentaries. (You know, not the moments where he's making a reasonable point, but the moments where he's ambushing a half-senile Charleton Heston at his house.) In his new film, Josh Fox spends still more time showing people lighting their water on fire (well covered in the first film), and caps it all off with storming a congressional hearing with the apparent desire to get arrested (and he does). It's style without substance.

And it's a shame, really, because Josh Fox really does have good points and a worthy cause here. I suspect he's gone to this frustrated place due to the opposition he's faced in pursuit of this cause over the years. For example, when he went on Real Time With Bill Maher to plug this very documentary, he was basically denounced as an idiot by all three panelists, who shouted their prideful rejection of his facts without ever letting him finish a complete sentence. So I get his attitude.

But with a more attentive audience as he has in someone who has decided to watch his new film? I just wish it presented a better case in a more compelling way. Gasland Part II is perhaps even more important than its predecessor, but has even less polish. I give it a C+.

A Step Forward

Today was the big day at the Supreme Court, when two rulings were handed down in major marriage equality cases: United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry. I felt that I couldn't just do a "normal" blogging day without acknowledging the rulings... and yet my opinion is considerably more reserved than the chorus of "We did it! Equality!" I see across my social media.

Reviewing is what I do here at the blog the vast majority of the time. In that vein, if I were to review today's two Supreme Court rulings, I'd give them a C+.

There's no denying that yes, progress was made today in the slow march toward marriage equality. Legally married couples in the 12 (now 13) states that allow same-sex marriage will now enjoy the full benefits of their marriages -- more than 1,100 federally granted benefits, only one of which (inheritance tax exemption) was at issue in the Windsor case. Also, adding California to the "win" column is huge. It's the most populous state in the U.S., and adding it to the other big equality wins of the last nine months now means around one-third of the country's population lives in a state recognizing marriage equality.

Of course, it leaves two-thirds of the country, living in the other 37 states, with more battles to fight. And the nature of the court rulings today don't provide a great deal of additional ammunition in that fight.

The ruling in Perry was, as many expected, a punt. The Supreme Court ruled on a jurisdictional aspect of the case, avoiding entirely the question of whether it is constitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. Instead, the Court found that the proponents of the ban itself, having lost their case in a lower district court, could show no injury enabling them to appeal their loss to any higher courts. That's of course true, and a major point in the equality debate centers on that: "how does allowing other people to marry in any way negatively impact your marriage?" But it leaves us without any kind of precedent on which to hang future court cases.

Windsor was little better, failing to establish valuable legal precedent for gay rights on two fronts. First, like two big Supreme Court cases before (Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas), it declined to establish gays and lesbians as a class worthy of anti-discrimination protections similar to those in place on the basis of race, gender, national origin, and so forth. That would have been the brass ring that would have made nationwide marriage equality an imminent inevitability.

Second, the Windsor ruling did not rely exclusively on Equal Protection rights -- the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that all people are equal under the law. Instead, it conflated that principle with the Tenth Amendment principles of "state sovereignty," that marriage has always been left to states to decide for themselves, and that therefore the federal government had no business passing a law (the Defense of Marriage Act) to enshrine a nationwide definition of marriage. Had the Court been solely on Equal Protection ground, a clear legal path forward would be laid out. Instead, this "states rights" hedge provides a substantial handhold for the argument that states are perfectly within their rights to pass marriage bans. Essentially, both sides got points to cite for the next round of legal wrangling.

So really, today's rulings amounted to almost the smallest possible outcome that could still be considered a win. Worth tossing back a drink in celebration, but not worth partying in the streets. A C+. As of tonight, the best path forward is probably the same as the one we had a few months ago: hope that Justice Roberts, Alito, Thomas, or (please, oh please) Scalia retire or die by the time the next big gay rights case reaches the Supreme Court.

Morally Straight

Last week, the Boy Scouts of America altered their standing policy against allowing gays in the organization... sort of. In a vote that reportedly broke 61-38%, they decided that openly gay youth within the group will be allowed, while openly gay adults serving in leadership roles will still be banned. The decision smacks of the need to do something to address the corporate sponsors that had discontinued their charitable donations to the Boy Scouts due to the old policy. And yet, it's a decision assured to appease virtually no one.

It has at least served to expose the lie (admittedly, an already transparent one) of the organizations that claim to be "pro-traditional marriage" and not "anti-gay." After all, what possible reason should the National Organization for Marriage have, given their stated charter to protect marriage, to care what the Boy Scouts do for their membership policy? But in the wake of the vote, NOM president Bran Brown issued a brief but predictably hateful press release that concluded with: "It's the beginning of the end for what once was one of America's noblest organizations."

For those of us who support equality, it's difficult to mark this one in the "win" column. Yes, boys and young men will now be able to be a part of Boy Scouts without having to lie in direct contradiction to the stated values of the organization to be honest and moral. But if young gay men with their Arrows of Light freshly in hand then want to then turn around and give back to Scouts by becoming a leader and mentoring the next generation, they can forget it. What sort of organization holds that its own former members are unfit to be leaders?

What's unfortunate here is that this policy change is some especially dark bigotry masquerading as tolerance. On paper, it looks like progress, that "at least now the kids can be accepted." It looks and feels like, say, Colorado legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples, where you know that marriage itself is still banned by the state constitution, so you celebrate the incremental victory.

But when you ask yourself what sort of thinking informs the decision not to allow gay adults, that's when the ugliness is revealed. This is more of the fearmongering, that belief that gay people are also pedophiles... or at best, that they're somehow out to "convert" more impressionable youth to their "lifestyle." And not only is that complete nonsense, the thought process is exposed simply by the fact that adult women are allowed to lead scout troops. No one seems afraid that a straight woman is going to molest a young Scout in the way they fear the same from a gay man. And what if the female Scout leader is a lesbian? There's no possibility at all of attraction there... but the woman is a lesbian, and not allowed to be a Scout leader under the new policy.

So overall, this one doesn't feel like cause for celebration to me, not like the recent three legislative votes in Rhode Island, Delaware, and Minnesota that have made same-sex marriage legal there. No doubt for the Boy Scouts this is indeed a stepping stone to get to true equality, but until that happens, I withhold my enthusiasm.

Defunding the Arts

Last month, it was announced that the game studio LucasArts was being closed. It's always sad when a company in my industry shuts its doors and its employees lose their jobs, but I felt especially sad over this closure because of all the great LucasArts games of the past. I had many great hours of entertainment thanks to this company.

My first encounter with a LucasArts game was playing the original The Adventures of Monkey Island back in high school. The game had a fantastic sense of humor, and very clever storytelling. The game might have had my favorite fighting mechanic of any video game I've ever played; you learned to cross swords with enemies by trading insults with them. After a brief exchange of blades, your opponent would throw you an insult. If you had heard and learned the correct comeback from another opponent, you'd take control of the battle, drive him back, and get a chance to toss an insult of your own. If your opponent didn't know the comebacks to your insults, you'd eventually win the battle; if he did... well, perhaps the fight would go long enough for you to learn a few new insults for your repertoire.

The best thing about playing Monkey Island was that it wasn't a solitary affair. This game was long before voice acting was a given in PC games, so all the dialogue simply appeared on screen. I played with a small group of friends from school. We'd go over to a friend's house after class or on lunch break, crowd around the computer, and all cast ourselves as different characters in the game, reading the on screen dialogue. That included the "TM" conspicuously displayed after each appearance of the phrase "Monkey Island." The biggest laugh for us in the entire game occurred when -- one time -- it appeared they had left "TM" off the end of "Monkey Island," and we all screamed, pointed, and marveled... only to have, after a pause, the letters "TM" appear on screen all by themselves.

There were plenty of other great LucasArts games too. We played Loom, a too-short, but wonderful game that revolved around music. That came at a time when my high school buds were all actually composing our own songs on a synthesizer; we loved that game.

I found their adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which managed to be inventive and fun even if you knew the movie well. (Not every puzzle was solved as you saw it in the film.)

There was Maniac Mansion, and its sequel, Day of the Tentacle. There was the then unheard-of idea in Day of the Tentacle to find a computer in game on which you could play the complete original game.

There was Full Throttle, a big step forward in which all the characters were voiced by actors. We didn't get to crowd around a PC and entertain each other, but we did get to enjoy the wondrous vocal work of many great actors, including Mark Hamill (before he was cast as the Joker on the Batman cartoons and more people learned, "wow, he's really good at this voice acting stuff!"). And to this day, I can hear the delivery of lines like "I'm not putting my lips on that", "You know what might look good on your nose? The BAR!", and "I fixed your door... it was sticking" -- and I smile ear to ear.

I suppose, since all these games I'm talking about are in the neighborhood of 20 years old, that I've already said goodbye to LucasArts in a way. Nevertheless, I was sad to hear of their closure. They're a beloved chapter of my history.

And the Nominees Are...

This year's Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and gave me a full realization of just how far behind I am in watching movies right now. Usually, by the time the nominees are announced, I've seen at least half of the Best Picture candidates.

This year, I've seen only one out of nine: Midnight in Paris. And I've only seen a sprinkling of the nominated Actor and Actress performances.

But I still found a few things interesting about the nominees. First of all, there was the fact that Hugo received the most nominations -- 11. More often than not, the film most nominated is the one to beat for Best Picture. If true, then this year's race may be a bit more fluid than some of the critics have predicted. Most have been pointing to The Artist, with those who can't believe a silent movie will win in this day and age pointing at The Descendants instead. Could we really have a three horse race now?

I believe for the first time since the Best Animated Feature category was created, Pixar had an eligible film that didn't make the cut. And "deservedly" so there, since Cars 2 was absolutely feet and ankles below the rest of their catalog. (By the way, do you buy "feet and ankles below" as an opposite of "head and shoulders above?" I wasn't quite sure how to put that.)

A real flaw in this whole "let's nominate more than five films" thing they've been trying over the last few years is that it's really easy to just look at the five Best Director nominees and know which of the Best Picture contenders are the "also rans." Interesting that Steven Spielberg's omission this year puts War Horse in that category.

There are only two nominees in the Best Original Song category this year. It seems to me that all Oscar categories should expand or contract in a given year to incorporate worthy nominees -- or a lack thereof.

Looks like I have some serious catching up to do if I want to have anything remotely like an informed opinion next month.

Revisiting Paradise

Early last year, I wrote about two unsettling documentary films, Paradise Lost and its sequel. The films dealt with the murder of three young boys in an Arkansas town, and the three teenage boys convicted of their murders, dubbed the "West Memphis Three." The documentaries paint a compelling and chilling picture of a gross miscarriage of justice. It seems abundantly clear that the wrong people were convicted for the crime, and on prejudicial and circumstancial evidence.

The documentary filmmakers have been at work on a third installment in the series, to debut at a film festival this later, and then run on HBO starting next January. As of today, they have a new ending for their film. The West Memphis Three have been released from prison.

Though it seems the right thing was finally done, it's hard to look on this as anything like justice being served. For one thing, the lives of these three are still irrevocably ruined. True, not as awfully and finally as the lives of the three victims, but they nevertheless have spent half their lives in prison. And they're not even truly vindicated now. The legal technicality on which they've been released is not an exoneration. As I understand it, their "Alford plea" requires them to plead guilty and take credit for time served, even as they simultaneously maintain their innocence. They've done nothing wrong, but had to accept the penalties of saying they did in order to go free.

Even if they had been exonerated, they'd still be unlikely to ever settle into anything like a normal life. The moniker "West Memphis Three" will follow them forever, brandly them falsely as killers. On news sites such as CNN, that ran stories about their release, the comments threads were dominated by people ignorant of the facts of the case, who likened this situation to the recent Casey Anthony saga, lamenting "still more people getting away with murder." (And they weren't talking about the actual killer in this case, who remains at large and unconfirmed -- and probably always will be.)

I'll close by recommending one more time to check out at least the first of the two Paradise Lost documentaries. Before, watching it was sure to just leave you with an unfulfilled sense of outrage. Now at least there is some rough semblance of a happy ending in the matter.

End of a (Space) Era

The Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off this morning, marking the final launch of a shuttle before the retirement of the program.

On the one hand, I have no problem with the idea of retiring the Space Shuttle itself. It's a 30 year old method of launching people into space -- older by a good margin than the entire history of manned space flight prior to its creation. If you own a game console, it's more powerful (by a lot) than the computer in the shuttle. Granted, the shuttle isn't prone to the "Red Ring of Death," and there's a lot to be said for that. Still, it seems a little crazy to me that the crew of a shuttle mission has to load separate programs for launch, orbit, landing, and other such tasks one at a time, because the system can't hold any more. I got rid of my TI-99/4A ages ago, and it feels to me like it's long past time for NASA to do the same.

That said, it's sad that there's nothing waiting in the wings to immediately replace the Space Shuttle as our vehicle to the stars. It seems most people see no value in space flight, and that's both sad and ignorant. Even if you don't subscribe to the notion that exploring space has its own intrinsic value (and I do), the fact is that many inventions used every day here on Earth were first created for use in the space program. Scratch-resistant lenses for your glasses, memory foam for your mattresses and pillows, ear thermometers for your infants, cushy insoles for your running shoes, cordless power tools for your garage, water filters for your faucets --- and for crying out loud, the entire modern concept of global telecommunications. All these things and more might not exist (or, at a minimum, would not be so advanced) if they hadn't been developed first for use in space flight.

And yet it's hard for me to get too indignant over the now-essentially-hibernating U.S. manned space program, when I'm truly honest about my own level of enthusiasm for it. I lovedlovedloved everything about space, space exploration, and space travel as a kid. I continued to be interested in it, even when it had become clear it was nothing like a career path for me. But I haven't actually watched a launch in well over a decade. Not even the final launch today.

For years, I've never really known at any given time whether a shuttle was in orbit or not. I haven't kept abreast of what the objectives of any given shuttle mission were. I haven't always been up to date about the latest discoveries from manned or unmanned space flights. And that's me! And I can still truthfully say that yes, I'm interested in this stuff! To lift a quote from the movie Apollo 13, "They said we make going to the moon about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh." If I apparently can't muster any real enthusiasm over space flight, how can I really blame the attitude of the average person who thinks space travel should be cancelled altogether to "focus on problems here on Earth?"

So, yeah... lots of thoughts and feelings about this inauspicious occasion. But one thing I know for sure. Here's hoping we're back in the manned space flight business (and not just hitchhiking on foreign launches) sooner rather than later.

Rapturous Applause

Lots of people are talking about it, so I feel sort of obligated to discuss tomorrow's impending Rapture. (Oh br-rother.) In particular, a lot of people have been making fun of the places offering post-Rapture care for your pets. And why not? It's a veritable comedic gold mine!

Here's my attempt to mine a few veins too:

First, why bother? Don't we know that All Dogs Go to Heaven? (Also, Sheep Go to Heaven -- though goats go to hell.)

But more importantly... if you truly believe you're going to be Raptured up to heaven, do you really want to entrust the care of your pet to one of the heathens who was left behind? "Meh, he's not good enough for God, but he's good enough for Fido." And do you really believe that a person who wasn't honorable enough to go to heaven will somehow be honorable enough to keep his promise to watch your pet for you? While there's hell on Earth and a short fuse lit to the end of everything?

Wait. My bad. These people believe the actual Rapture is going to occur tomorrow. Belief in a person who will watch their pet for them makes total sense by comparison.

Fold

Yesterday, the FBI dropped the hammer on online poker, indicting three of the largest online poker web sites and their top brass with bank fraud, money laundering, and a variety of other charges. This is all pursuant to the law passed by Congress about four-and-a-half years ago (which I mentioned at the time) -- a last-minute rider grafted into an unrelated port defense bill (that no elected official would vote against for fear of looking "soft on terror").

There are so many arguments why this is wrong, you can have your pick. Why prohibit something online that's legal and acceptable in person? Why is it okay for states to sponsor true gambling in the form of lotteries, when they prohibit the decidedly more skill-based poker? Why not allow it and tax it as a source of revenue in these times when so many claim to be concerned about budgets?

The bottom line is, regardless of the outcome of these charges, these three sites are surely done for. Most of the others will probably fold up too, being too reliant on U.S. business and too afraid now to risk a similar fate. There may be some sites that keep rolling on the strength of non-U.S. players/customers, but we'll have to see.

We sure can't have people enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes, dammit!

Where Were You When...?

Today marks 25 years since the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. I've seen quite a few friends post about it on Facebook today. Someone noted that this was the first "remember where you were" moment of their life, a comment that got me thinking.

First, it was indeed a "remember where you were" moment for me. I was home sick from school that day. I have no idea whether the live satellite feed into schools was something that had been set up at mine; I was at home watching Superman (recorded on VHS off of a television broadcast) and fighting not to throw up. My father called from work to give us the news, and I spent the next several hours watching coverage unfold. (Not that anyone would really come to understand what had happened any time soon.)

But on a deeper level, after recalling my "where were you?" story, I got to thinking about other "where were you?" moments in my life. And it seems to me that all such moments in my lifetime have been negative ones. Where were you on the day of the Challenger disaster? On September 11th, 2001? My parents have "where were you when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon?" But I can't think of a positive "generational moment" in my lifetime -- not really any at all, never mind one that could come close to comparing with walking on the moon.

Have I overlooked something obvious? The fall of the Berlin Wall, maybe? Except that I can't remember where I was for that. Is an Eeyore-like side of my personality showing here?

Terminology and Technology

Every once in a while, a sports-related story comes along that gets plastered all over the news to such a degree that even a sports-disinterested person such as myself is forced to take notice. So it was today with the already infamous botched call costing Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a no-hitter.

First, there's all the kerfuffle about whether instant replay should be expanded into wider use in baseball. I don't really understand the argument. I'm a gamer. Baseball is a game. (It's also a sport, but it's a game.) Games have rules. These rules are meant to be followed. If a tool exists that can ensure a more correct enforcement of those rules, why would you willingly not use it? If you question the rules while you're playing a board game, you go and check the rulebook, or even check online if your question still isn't answered. Arbitration of the rules isn't part of a game; it's completely separate from the game.

No, I found this question completely cut and dried. My question is, if batters can still hit the ball and then be thrown out at base, why the hell do they call that a "no-hitter?" To me, "no-hitter" implies the pitcher single-handedly won the game. (Well, okay, he had to have the catcher there.) Alright, maybe foul balls shouldn't count, but if the ball is hit to another player, who then must take responsibility for getting the batter out? I don't care whether the statisticians mark it in the "H" column or not, it sounds like a hit to me.

Clustershag in the Parliament

I've been following the results of the recent election in the U.K. with some interest, not just curious because I know some people who live there, but because like the Canadian kerfuffle about a year-and-a-half ago, it's just interesting to compare and contrast it with American politics.

As with Canada, the major difference in comparison to the U.S. is the presence of more than two political parties with a measurable amount of clout. But even though there are three parties in play in the U.K., it seems to me from what I have read that none of them embrace positions as "far from center" as the two American parties. The Conservatives who have just taken the majority (but not an absolute one) seem not to be as far right as American Republicans, nor do the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats seem to be as far left as the American Democrats. (Indeed, both of the latter seem to be widely characterized as "center-left" in everything I've read. Or rather, "centre-left," in the Queen's English.) I marvel at (and am possibly a bit jealous of) a political system in which not only are there more than two viable choices, but they're all congregating within an area less polarized than the extremes of the politics I'm exposed to daily.

Where it gets weirder to me is this new "coalition government" that's coming as a result of the election. Because the winning party didn't attain a majority all on its own, they're having to play nice with the third place party to get that majority. As near as I try to imagine this, there's no analog for this in recent American politics. Not since the days soon after we became a nation has there been a concept of "first place becomes president; second place becomes vice-president -- even if they're of opposing parties." But that's what we have here... a step removed even, since the new Deputy Prime Minister's party actually placed third. Imagine if, after winning election in 1992, Bill Clinton was forced to take on Ross Perot as his Vice President to form a workable government. Odd, to say the least.

From what I gather, the Liberal Democrats are the more centrist of the two left-leaning parties in the U.K. (though I'd be happy for someone who knows more than I to clarify), so perhaps it's not too odd for them to try and seek common ground with Conservatives. Still, you have a party that's fundamentally "right" having to work together with a party that's fundamentally "left" to govern. Cooperation is forced here. Another notion that (I think in this case for worse) is lacking in U.S. politics.

But when I read about the positions of these two U.K. parties in general, and of the two party leaders in particular -- David Cameron and Nick Clegg -- it doesn't honestly seem like they have that much to find common ground about other than the shared desire to step into power and stick it to the Labour Party. "As long as it's not Gordon Brown running things," seems to be the subtextual tone of this whole thing. "I can get along with this guy, or else risk being voted right back out of whatever power I have in a few month's time."

Perhaps there's some ignorance on my part leading me to this conclusion. Perhaps I'm working too hard to project my American political sensibilities onto the whole thing. But like I said, I find it interesting to watch.

Pad People

My title is not a Bostonian talking about "pod people." No, it's a reference to tomorrow's big day -- the day for all the early adopters to run out and buy their iPads. CNN.com has posted this helpful guide to tell you which iPad you should get.

Personally, I find this flow chart far more helpful.