Sheesh

As a religious person of a fairly orthodox theological persuasion, I am amused when people like me are accused of trying to make the US some kind of theocracy -- a place where our religious ideas will have the force of law. Dissent will be crushed, diversity eliminated, tolerance not tolerated and everyone will have the Ten Commandments mounted on their ceilings. Or something. I'm never sure what kind of religious government we're supposed to want to create, except that "all you evangelicals," which means me, I believe, want to make one.

OK, so I want a government and a society where a religious expression isn't mocked, belittled, marginalized and ignored. Which I more or less have now, although on some days and in some parts of the nation it's a lot less than more. But even if I had everything like that I wanted out of my government and my society, it wouldn't come anywhere close to a theocracy.

This, Good Reader, is a theocracy. Religious scholars determine that men are using pets as a way to "make passes at" women and "disturb" families. So the government enacts a law that dogs and cats may not be sold anymore. Period. Own a pet store? Out of luck, bucko. I'd give you a job sweeping sidewalks but without any dogs on them, there's not so much to sweep anymore. And I seriously doubt the law's effectiveness. A guy who's figured out how to make "I live with cats" a successful pick-up line is a guy who can probably adapt his tactics.

I don't think the distinction could be drawn any more clearly. In Not a Theocracy, a religious leader who called for a ban on selling dogs and cats because men were using them to make passes would get laughed out of his or her pulpit. As well as a serious talking-to by the church women's circles, which own more poodles per capita than any group in the world, and some pointed questions from the spouse about why they just had to rescue that pup from the pound. In Theocracy, the same fruit-basket-turnover of an idea is not only taken seriously as theology, it actually becomes law.

Sure we've got some nutty laws on our books. But at least we haven't blamed them on God.

(Edited when someone pointed out to me that using "over here" and "over there" gives impressions that don't have much to do with my point and might also be uncool)

Something Good

So, having harshed on local radio a few weeks ago, I'll send the media some love this week.

Being back in the OKC area means picking up KGOU, which means from 1 to 5 PM on Saturday and Sunday can be dedicated to Hardluck Jim and The Weekend Blues.

Hardluck plays a sweet combo of blues of all categories: classic, new, jump, piano, guitar, Chicago, swamp, jazz-tinged, soul-flavored and every other kind of music that has at its roots an unfaithful lover or jealous spouse.

The station's an NPR one, which means it receives public funding. I'm not so sure how I feel about public funding of the arts, since everyone's tastes are their own and I don't know why they should pay for stuff they may not think much of. Heck, there may even be some benighted souls out there who don't appreciate the six-string pathos of the blues.

But as long as public funding for the arts gives Hardluck Jim eight hours a week to give us a tour through this great music, I'll call it a good trade.

Hello, Mr. Kettle? This Is Mr. Pot Calling...

So, it seems the NFL doesn't much like the idea that Charles Woodson has his own wine.

According to their statement, Woodson's interview about his winery and its products could be seen as an endorsement of alcohol and have a "detrimental effect" on young NFL fans. Um, waitaminute. This is the National Football League, which has an official beer (Coors) and which has more beer commercials per game than offensive linemen have broken fingers.

Yup, nothing tarnishes a pro sports league's image like someone who decides to open a winery that will produce a high-end boutique wine and try to compete with some of the field's top producers. Much better to have some guy who's an obvious longtime beer customer dance around in the stands with two product-placed cans attached to his hat.

You stay classy, NFL.

Hey, Thanks, Mickey...

So the good folks at Disney will be giving me a particularly noxious birthday present this year, as their new version of the longtime movie review show At the Movies will bid goodbye to people who know how to use words in favor of people who know how to be on TV.

Truthfully, I haven't watched the show regularly in some time. I remember catching it on PBS a lot when I was younger and it was called Sneak Previews, because our family enjoyed watching these two nebbishy guys trade opinions about movies with a healthy dose of sauce. And unlike a lot of people who insisted on being called film critics and turned up their noses at stuff that makes it out of the art houses, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel would review movies you might want to see. Since both of them were reviewers in print before they ever started a TV show, they could communicate some particularly complex ideas in their back-and-forth. I took one afternoon when I was in college in Evanston to visit the different Chicago sites they used in the show's opening.

Siskel, who died in 1999, was my favorite of the pair. I found my tastes more often in sync with his and he also seemed to have a lower tolerance for stuff that bordered on degrading or sleazy. But Ebert was also worth a listen, and his smackdown review of Rob Schneider's awful Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is a classic. Richard Roeper never did a lot for me, and he came along at about the time I had begun to feel I would probably see whatever I wanted to see and like it if I wanted to like it and pshaw on people who insisted on only seeing Important Films, and double pshaw on garbage like Deuce Bigalow's Stepbrother asks Dude, Where's My Car, Because I Left it Running With an American Pie and Zohan Inside It. So I'd stopped paying a lot of attention to pre-movie reviews and mostly read the ones that hammered things like the aforementioned epic, just to see how caustic the writer could be.

Now cancer limits Ebert to written reviews and Roeper has decided to move on as well. And rather than letting the franchise have a dignified end, Buena Vista Entertainment has decided to replace the hosts with two new fellows, one of whom works for E! Television and is unfortunately not Joel McHale. It really doesn't matter who the other guy is, because an E! Television correspondent will be bad enough for any two ordinary people.

And all of this will take place on my birthday this year. So take a hike, mouse. I always liked Warner Bros. better anyway.

Out of the Office, out of My Mind Pt 2

At camp again, back on Friday. Peace-iness!

It Was a Dark (And Stormy?) Knight

OK, so I was apparently the only person who liked my Mr. Movie Person Dave Barry homage, so I'll consign it to the past.

It could also be that no one really cared that much about the opinions Mr. Movie Person expressed, but if people who wrote blogs stopped writing unless people cared about their opinions, we would have maybe four blogs total in the whole world.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm leaving out any real spoilers, but I may still cross the line the way some people see it. If you're a nervous type about that sort of stuff, by all means wait until after seeing The Dark Knight before reading this.

I'm not as negative as the man at the urinal next to me who flipped open his cell phone and in the midst of the Flushing Chorus told his friend, "It sucked. (Whoosh!) But at least now I know." But I was disappointed. On the one hand, the Second Coming couldn't live up to this level of hype (I thought the Last Trump went a little flat, didn't you? No breath control). On the other, even if I spot the movie a few points to make up for the mandatory over-marketing, I still walked out with a shrug and a "meh."

The Dark Knight isn't bad -- too many talented people involved, all working pretty hard at stuff they're good at. But it did meader murkily for more than two-and-a-half hours, creaking under the weight of multiple plotlines and digressions to make Important Philosophical Points. It featured some pretty neat action set pieces as well as some of the blitzkireg-cut fight scenes that directors have been in love with recently. It needs some serious cleaning up, in other words.

The late Heath Ledger makes a fine Joker, although people who talk about giving him an Oscar for this should probably have their own heads examined. He's in no way as cartoonish as Jack Nicholson in Batman, but Christopher Nolan lives and works in the real world a lot more often than Tim Burton does. Christian Bale is also good, drawing the line between his Bruce Wayne and his Batman down to every detail, including vastly different voices for each set of lines.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is head and shoulders above Katie Holmes. Her character of Rachel Dawes has to carry some heavy dramatic weight in the movie that Holmes could never have pulled off. It's kind of a shame that those scenes and Gyllenhaal's greater talents are used in service of what amounts to little more than the same kind of girlfriend-in-jeopardy role that can be seen in any Fall Guy rerun. Aaron Eckhart takes on the role of Harvey Dent and -- well, it's hard to see why. Dent may be supposed to be some kind of mirror to Batman, or something, but we've turned around in so many circles with him that by the time he reaches the place where all good Batman fans know Harvey Dent is headed, he's a tacked-on afterthought with another character's monologue shoe-horned into his scenes to try to give him some structure.

As long as 1997's Batman and Robin exists, it will be impossible for anyone else to make a "worst Batman movie." And The Dark Knight is nowhere near the mess Tim Burton made in 1992's Batman Returns, his second Batman film. But it doesn't really deliver on the promise of Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins, and it leaves hopes for a quality third movie (if one is made) relying more on crossed fingers, knocked wood and rubbed rabbit's feet than one might wish.

All Hail Whedon...

On the one hand, I love this!

On the other, it reminds me to call down plagues of boils on the television mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers who canceled Firefly.

I have to be a dean at a camp next week and I think my warning phrase prior to getting medieval on some miscreant will be, "Don't make me bust out the death whinny."

ETA (7/19): But I will also agree with those who say the ending stinks...