Well, I did it again. Despite having little interest in basketball, I entered the office pool for the NCAA basketball tournament. Every year, where ever I work, someone in my group sets up one of these fill-out-the-brackets things online and invites lots of people to join and play. Every year I think, "Why should enter this thing? It's just a good way for me to give money to someone else." Then I enter anyway. And then I give my money to someone. Based on the first two rounds, I'm well on my way to giving my money to someone else yet again.
Why is it that otherwise rational people come unhinged when presented with people who hold political opinions different than theirs? I've seen this happen from all sides of the political spectrum, so it's not something you only find on one side. Over the weekend, we had a bunch of friends in for a role playing game. During a brief break, the vote on the health care vote came up. One of the players simply stated his opinion of the bill. One of the other players was so upset at the stated opinion that he nearly walked out. These are people who have been gaming together for years and it's the first time politics has ever come up. Why is it that people only recognize political propaganda when it comes from the other side of the argument? Why is it people cannot accept that it's possible for people to hold different political opinions and still be good people?
A few months ago I wrote a column noting that my fascination with rockets started young; kindergarten in the column. Over Christmas, I found out it started even earlier. When I was three, my mother took me along when she went to pay the rent for the apartment we lived in. The office had a TV and it was turned to the launch of the first American in space. According to my mother, while she paid the rent and chatted with the people in the office, I was glued to the TV, fascinated by the rocket. Apparently, I was only unwilling to leave the TV until the rocket launched. It's too bad there is nothing so exciting for the Boy to watch as he grows up.
Along those same lines, I recently read an excellent graphic novel, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow by Brian Fies. Cleanly illustrated, the graphic novel follows a father and son from the 1939 World's Fair in New York and into the future, the graphic novel takes us from the dreams of a gleaming, bigger than life future through to the future we have today, slowly changing from the hopeful optimism of the late 1930s to our more cynical current times before leaving us with a future that returns to the earlier hopeful theme. While the son grows very slowly, going from a wide-eyes youngster in 1939 to a cynical teenager twenty-something years later in the 1960s, the exploration of the times are accurate, engaging and evocative. I highly recommend this one.
My wife and the foster son watched Avatar recently. The foster son thought it was awesome. At the point when Jake Sully is first taken to the Home Tree, my wife, who had not read anything about the movie, turned to me and said, "This is Pocahontas, isn't it?"
Mentioning movies, I read recently the Warner studio is hoping to duplicate the success of the Harry Potter movies with a not-so-new franchise -- Frank L. Baum's Oz books. Certainly, there are a lot of books in the series; at least twice as many as there are in the Harry Potter series, but it seems like a risky proposition if you ask me. With Narnia, Disney has already discovered that beloved children's books do not always turn into big money at the box office. The movies did well enough at the box office but the production costs were so high that very little money was made. Will Warner have more success with Oz? Only if people can get past the classic 1939 version of the movie.
We're just over a month from May, the biggest movie month of the year. Every weekend in May has something big on the schedule. I find myself most interested in Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia. I hope the same sense of fun and adventure that carried Iron Man will also carry the sequel. As for Prince of Persia, it just looks like a fun, sword and sandals adventure. There's also a new version of Robin Hood coming out, reuniting Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. I happen to be a big fan of the legends of Robin Hood, but I just haven't seen enough about this one to figure out how interested I should be. But, hey, it's Robin Hood, so I'll go see it.
That's all for now. I'll be back next week with an actual topic.
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