Author Archives: The Night Writer

Obligatory Vikings post

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I don’t know why I don’t write more about sports. Sports are certainly a major interest of mine and occupy a lot of my free (and not so free) time, but I apparently get enough venting done watching the local teams play so I don’t have to blog about it. I now realize that our teams are all struggling because I’ve kept my insights to myself instead of giving our coaches and team owners the benefit of my wisdom. In the hopes that 2006 won’t be as dismal as 2005, I’m going to plug in a series of posts about our Minnesota squads, beginning with these deep thoughts on the Vikings. Please, hold your applause until until I’ve dissected every team.

Vikings: Yeah, the way Zygi fired Mike Tice was about as ham-handed as Tice’s own efforts to psychologically motivate his players, but it’s not the embarrassment some people portray it as being (and believe me, we Vikings fans know embarrassment when we see it). With 8 coaching openings in the league, Zygi knew every minute was going to count (the top coaching and GM candidates were, in fact, locked up and out of the Vikings reach immediately). I don’t know that much about the coaches that are left except to be suspicious of all the hype. I won’t pretend to be an expert based on reading a two-paragraph biography of each of the names out there. From what I’ve seen over the past few years, though, I’d love it if they could find a way to get Herm Edwards from the Jets, even if it costs a high draft pick, because he’s a great combination of class and ability. My overall concern, however, is that there is no way there are enough “geniuses” out there to fill all the coaching openings and the Vikes will end up in a worse situation than what they had.

I’m feeling better

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From “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

A potent drink invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox. The effects have been likened to having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

How long have I been out?

Either somebody slipped one of these combustive potions into my morning mouthwash yesterday, or I’ve mysteriously experienced the effects of the drink without any of the fun of meeting the Z-man.

Don’t worry (or should I say, “don’t panic”), I’m feeling better. Blogging will resume. WHAT is that unholy, pounding racket?!

Stupid keyboard.

Oooooo – look at the pretty lights!

Does it come in black?

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You’d have to be Bruce Wayne to afford this bat-out-of-hell-mobile, but this baby actually exists (New York Times free registration required to view link). It’s the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, and if you’ve got a million bucks under your sofa cushions, and an excellent relationship with your local Highway Patrol, this is the car for you.

Go to the link for a picture and full driving report, but here are a few numbers:

1,001 — (horsepower)
16 — (cylinders)
7 — (speeds, automatic)
10 — (radiators)
18 — (mpg, highway)
9 — (mpg, city)
2.5 — (seconds to go from 0 to 60)
7.3 — (seconds to go from 0 to 125)
55.6 — (seconds to go from 0 to 253)
12 — (minutes it takes to empty the gas tank at top speed)
1.2 million — (dollars to drive one home – taxes not included)

And, like the Batmobile, it has certain special features:

The car’s everyday top speed of 234 m.p.h. is enough to make it a king of the road. To be the performance emperor, though, the driver must resort to a second ignition key to the left of his seat.

The key functions only when the vehicle is at a stop. A checklist then establishes whether the car – and its driver – are ready to go for the maximum speed beyond 250 m.p.h. If all systems are go, the rear spoiler retracts, the front air diffusers close and the ground clearance, normally 4.9 inches, drops to 2.6 inches.

And no, MD, we’re not getting one.

HT: Cake Eater Chronicles

So that’s what she’s been doing…

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Good news, blighters: Kelley at Suburban Blight is blogging again after taking a couple of months off, and boy, does she have news.

The world is a more interesting place when Kelley is blogging … not to mention funny, in your face, and a bit raunchy at times. And always, always honest. Welcome back, Chickadee.

New Year’s started fine … and went downhill

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So. My New Year’s Eve was rather uneventful. Just out to eat with my family and my friend Casii, coming home to Dance-Dance ‘til we dropped, watch Uptown Girls and the Ball drop (at eleven), and making my dad nervous with talk of going out to find someone to kiss at midnight. Oh, and several games of Spit (if you don’t know what this is, you are really missing out).

It was New Year’s Day that got me, and now I am oh-so-sore!

I am starting to get more interested in snow/ice related sports, so Sunday my mother, sister and I went cross-country skiing for the first time. ooOOoo, big whoop, right? WRONG! The first thing is actually getting the skis on, which I did really without incident. Actually, I am quite proud to say I didn’t fall down at all… until we somehow wandered off the beginner trail onto what I’m sure was, like, Devil’s Canyon or something. I seriously had no idea how to turn while going downhill, resulting in some amazing acrobatics (and, dare I say, contortionism?) that would have been great footage for some sick show like America’s Funniest Home Videos, but there was nobody taping me. In fact, there was nobody around at all. I had left my sister, who was being helped along by my mother, far behind.

I wasn’t scared. Mostly I was just annoyed with the layout of the trail. Seriously, why would anyone plant a thorn bush there? Get that stupid tree out of my way! I am relieved to say that I made it back to the visitors center alive and in one piece.

Anyway, I had a blast, it was beautiful outside, and I did really well until we started sky-diving off snowy cliffs into sharp thorn-infested forests…

Yeah, so I’m pretty sure that I’m going again next weekend, but this time I’m bringing Casii so as to have some emotional support. Hopefully I’ll be able to walk normally by then, too.

Peace out, homeys.

Winter Reviews: Chronicles of Narnia and cross-country skiing

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I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia a few days ago, so here is my movie review:

The movie was pretty good, but I liked Lord of the Rings waaay better. Some parts of Narnia are kind of sappy, like the part where Peter is about to go into battle and he shouts “For Narnia!!” like he’s got his nose plugged or something. The grown-up King Edmund was ugly, but grown-up King Peter was cute. And Susan was really pretty. The woman who played the White Witch played the part really well. She’s a good actor.

I was a little disappointed in how they showed Aslan. I thought he was kind of ugly. His face was really long, and his mane reaches to about the middle of his back. Was it just me or does it seem like the whole movie was based on something out of the Bible? Or at least it was based on a book that was based on the Bible, if that makes any sense to you.

Speaking (well, not really) of things that have to do with winter, me, my sister, and my mom went cross-country skiing yesterday. It was my first time and I fell down about 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. I think even Mr. Tumnus could have done a better job! This one hill was especially tough and every time I tried to get up, I’d fall back down again. I was so mad at that hill. (Call that senseless anger, but I was really frustrated.) Mom only fell down once or twice.

On the trail we saw a guy that was also skiing that helped us/me. He didn’t say what his name was, but he was flirting with mom. *wolf whistle*. He gave mom his card, and he wrote his home number on it. He’s a dentist (Dad said something about that being a lucky thing for that guy, whatever that means). He did tell me how to go up steep hills and how to slow down when I turn while going downhill.

I’m not sure if I want to go cross-country skiing again. I think one thing is for certain – if we go again my Dad’s coming!

Ciao for now!

(Note: Tiger Lilly is my youngest daughter who has “come home” to the family blog after blogging on the MAWB Squad (which is on hiatus). Samples of her previous posts can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. NW)

O, Stranger, where art thou?

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As reported in the New York Times the other day, a provision in the border-security bill just passed by the House makes it a federal offense for anyone to offer assistance or services to illegal immigrants, punishable by as much as five years in prison and confiscation of property and/or assets. Churches, social service agencies and advocacy groups are raising an outcry.

Add my voice to that list.

While I strongly agree with providing the manpower and other resources to enforce our immigration laws and protect our borders (and agree that this is one of the powers of a federal government), this particular provision is both immoral and overreaching and my objections are not just philosophical but personal.

Here’s part of the story: In March of 1995, a man named Vladimir entered the U.S. illegally, using a fake passport — and then turned himself into the Immigration office in Bloomington, across from the Mall of America, and applied for asylum. He was processed, told to keep the office informed of his whereabouts, and shown the door. Within a couple of weeks through a series of bizarre, even miraculous, circumstances I met Vlad at my church and took an active interest in his situation. His story had begun several years before with him fleeing in fear for his life from what was then the Soviet Union. Still ahead, at the time we met, were another 20 months where the two of us would navigate the Immigration Service bureaucracy until a judge would ultimately rule in Vlad’s favor. I won’t go into all the circumstances and twists and turns of this ordeal here, but I do want to focus on one part of what happened and how it applies to this misguided law.

Once I and others from my church got involved and understood Vlad’s situation, we stressed how important it was for him, although in the country illegally, to obey the laws while he was there and his case was working its way through the system. Sounds simple enough, but in practice a significant challenge quickly arose. Vlad had some money with him, but certainly not enough to live on for however long it might take to get his status resolved. Fiercely proud and independent as well as handy and industrious, he wanted to work to earn money to live on and – once it was determined there were no legal aid groups available to assist him – pay for his legal counsel. Being undocumented, of course, meant that it was illegal for him to do that. Technically, the government was allowing him to stay while his case was pursued, but not allowing him to support himself while he did so. Hard as it was for Vlad to accept it, we were able to find homes where he could stay and the people in our church opened their hearts to him, blessing him with a bicycle and other gifts to help him get by more comfortably. When his hearing neared our small congregation also, in a single service, collected some $3,000 to pay for his attorney. Many of us wept in joy with Vlad when asylum was finally granted.

As I’ve stated here many times, my belief is that the government gets into far too many areas that ought to be left to individuals and to the church or communities of faith and that its intervention is usually disastrous when it comes to actually achieving what it hoped to accomplish by getting involved in the first place. God requires us to show mercy and compassion to others, including those “strangers who dwell among you” (see Leviticus 19:34 and 24:22 for starters) and to apply the same laws as those that citizens live under (implicit in this is that “stranger” receives the benefits and the requirements of those laws, hence our insistence that Vlad not work illegally). In Vlad’s case a small group of people – not the government – got involved to support him physically, emotionally and spiritually — and every bit of it would have been illegal if the proposed law had been in effect then.

The debate over what immigration laws are necessary and constitutional is multi-faceted and there are good arguments to be made from various perspectives in reaching a result that is just and merciful as well as practical. This particular provision in its current form, however, is simply wrong.

Challenging Word of the Week: Bête noire

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bête noire
(bet nuh WAHR) n., adj.

This is a French expression (literally, black beast) taken into English to describe anything that is a pet aversion, a bugbear, a thorn in one’s side. A bête noire can be a person, an object, a chore, anyone or anything that one simply can’t stand. To a child, spinach can be a bête noire. The caption under a Carl Rose cartoon in the December 8, 1928, issue of The New Yorker (mother and child) reads:

“It’s broccoli, dear.”
“I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”

To some, Wagner may be a bête noire; to others, hard rock may qualify. Contemporary painting is a bête noire to countless thousands, nay, millions. Choose your own: ballet, corned beef and cabbage, Liberace, politicians, wine connoisseurs; long airplane trips, missiles, New Year’s Eve parties, children in TV commercials, all TV commercials, books about words…

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Friday Fundamentals in Film: Sense and Sensibility

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For the next-to-last film in this series for the class of junior high and high school aged boys I departed from the war, western and sports genres for a classic “chick flick”: Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. This dramatic shift in direction led one of the lads to ask, “Are we being punished?” I told them that that wasn’t the case, but there were a number of reasons why I wanted them to learn the lessons within this movie.

For one, I said, the emotional and internal battles fought in this movie, while non-bloody, were every bit as intense and devastating as any war film we’d watched and were far more likely to occur regularly in their own lives than the scenarios in the the so-called “action” flicks. I also wanted them to see examples of the different ways that men and women think and act and the consequences of things said and unsaid. And, I added, “there are going to be times in your life – if all goes well – when you’re going to have to sit through a ‘chick flick’ and this is good practice.”

The story, of course, comes from the Jane Austen book and describes the hardships and romances of two sisters and their mother when the patriarch dies and, by law, his estate goes to his son, the sister’s half-brother from their father’s earlier marriage. While the father made the son promise that the women would be well provided for, the son – influenced by his grasping wife – ends up allocating them a pittance, setting the stage for all that comes after. The two sisters have different outlooks on life and love (the “Sense” and “Sensibility” of the title) and both undergo severe but different trials in the process of getting to the happy ending.

The story is an interesting character study not only of the time period but the way “power” between the sexes is divided and applied. There are heroes and scoundrels among both sexes and while the men supposedly have all the legal power and advantages, the main authority figures driving most plot changes in the movie (in terms of dictating what is going to happen) are women.

While there was some initial grumbling and groaning as the movie started, I soon noticed the boys were rapt in their attention and angered by the outrages and bad behavior, grieved by the near-misses and miscommunications, and, finally, looking around sheepishly at each other by the end of the movie as if afraid to show that they cared how it turned out.

Key Points:

  • Emotions are serious matters not to be trifled with.

  • The importance of honor and keeping your word, even unto your own hurt.

  • Our actions – even when we’re young – can have far-reaching effects on the rest of our lives and on the lives of others.

  • Even scoundrels can appear decent and honorable for a time, but substance and integrity (or lack of it) will ultimately be revealed.

  • Neither men nor women are inherently noble by reason of birth or their sex, but must make choices.

Some Questions to Answer:

  1. How did John Dashwood’s behavior at the beginning of the movie set the stage for the rest of the movie?

  2. Many are harmed when someone doesn’t keep his word. Edward’s decision to keep his word, however, also causes problems. Why?

  3. Both Edward and Willoughby made decisions when they were younger that dramatically effected their lives later. What were the decisions each made? How did each respond to the consequences of their decisions?
    Why does Marianne reject Col. Brandon initially? What does she come to value in him eventually?

  4. What did Col. Brandon mean when he (speaking to Miss Dashwood) said Edward was “proud, in the best sense.”

  5. Contrast the way Willoughby would talk about Brandon when he wasn’t present to the way Brandon spoke of Willoughby – even after describing him as “the worst of libertines.”

Points to Ponder:

  • Who has he power in the movie – the men or the women? Why?

  • Was Lucy Steele really in love with Edward Ferrars?

  • Who was “Sense” and who was “Sensibility”? What is the difference?

  • Which character in the movie do you think is the most like you? Why?

The Monkey shines

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I’m taking this week off from work and decided to go see King Kong yesterday. I would have gone the day after the Christmas with family members but my wife, sister-in-law and daughters proclaimed it “Girls’ day out” and left my brother-in-law and myself with the small children. You can imagine that my face looked a lot like Kong’s watching Ann Darrow rowing away when I received that pronouncement.

The movie was a bit long, but I enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s instant classic status but it was an excellent adaption of the original and Kong is fantastic. His hair and movements were incredibly realistic (at least, as realistic as a 25 foot ape might be). This was certainly miles ahead of the 1976 version which had a Kong no more realistic than Bumbles the abominable snowman from the Rudolph tv show (I mean, a gorilla that walks upright? Too bad the Jets couldn’t use him). Naomi Watts was also a dramatic improvement over Jessica Lange. Yeah, Jessica turned it around later in her career but even the monkey was more emotive than she was. Watts communicated a lot with just the expression on her face and the physicality of her actions (not just the stunts).

Another pleasant surprise was Jack Black as Carl Denham. He, too, showed he can get a lot across without saying a word (and without being a gross caricature). That said, the biggest disapointment – and it is a major failing in my book – is Black’s absolutely wrong rendering of the last (and crucial) line in the movie. I can’t believe that Peter Jackson, with all of his attention to detail and feel for the story, selected such ineffective and flat reading of “It was beauty that killed that beast.” (Ooops, sorry for the spoiler).

As far as the length of the movie is concerned, I liked seeing the way New York was reproduced. I know some have said this was were the movie should have been cut, but I found it interesting. Also, the addition of the reunion between Kong and Ann in New York was a strong addition to the story that almost went on too long. Where it did go too far is in the action sequences on Skull island. As intense as the action was, and as well done the special effects were, it was just too much overkill. I mean, having not just one, not just two, but three T-rexes bordered on jumping the shark (which is about the only voracious animal that we didn’t see in the movie).

All in all, though, a very entertaining movie and a good job by Jackson that should be a great relief for anyone concerned that he would not be able to follow the Lord of the Rings saga.