Whip it good: Kyle Williams lashes out against American immaturity

I love Kyle Williams, for a whole heckuva lotta reasons. And I really love pointing others toward his work as a columnist. In this week's piece over at World Net Daily "the young master Kyle" as I like to call him sends up a brilliant piece to Americans twice his age and more and for all intents and purposes asks aloud "why are you being such idiots?!" Kyle, yer hitting on all the right cylinders here so I won't steal your thunder by discussing it any in this space... but here's a preview:

Entertainment and politics in the modern society of America has created a deadly mix and a blow to the integrity of our national debate. In this election cycle, think of the severe case of P. Diddy and his entourage crashing a Young Republicans meeting in New York City, shouting his shallow views through a megaphone and broadcasting it over MTV. Of course, all this MTV and Choose or Lose business is built on the history of the relationship between media and politics over the past 50 years. Nightly news from the Big Three can be credited with beginning this disastrous mix that some call "Infotainment."

Punch here for the rest.

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And twenty-hours later still...

...it looks like Dan Rather had his ducks all lined up in a row. Tonight's edition of the CBS Evening News has apparently buried beyond any reasonable doubt the claims that the memos from their "60 Minutes" piece the other night on President Bush and his time in the Texas Air National Guard were forgeries.

Now folks, this is responsible journalism: when you have backed up and documented everything to the best of your ability. Say what you might of this story and its repercussions, but you gotta respect Rather for making sure every "i" was dotted and every "t" was crossed (and every "th" superscripted for that matter).

Meanwhile, millions of armchair font specialists across the fruited plain are wondering why the heck did they just spend the past 48 hours studying forty-year old IBM Selectric typewriters with the "golf ball" print heads. To paraphrase the wise sage William Shatner, "get away from your stupid blogs AND GET A LIFE!!"

(But at least more people have now come to realize that Microsoft Corporation did not invent the Times New Roman font).

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Wanna see a whole bunch of handmade deadly sharp implements?!

I'll be spending part of this coming weekend at the SouthEastern Custom Knife Show, sponsored by the North Carolina Custom Knifemakers Guild. This is the tenth annual event that the guild has organized and it just keeps getting better and better with each passing year (it's already become considered one of the premiere crafting events of its kind in the country). I first attended back in '98 and have been quite a few times since then. This isn't the kind of cutlery that you buy in a store, mind ya: these are handmade - either by stock-removing from "blanks" of steel or forging 'em out the old fashioned way on an anvil - by people who've dedicated a lot of time and love into a craft that can only be called a high artform. I've no idea if he'll be there this time but the past few years have seen Bill Moran as one of the guests (Moran is the dude who about thirty years ago re-discovered, after it being lost for hundreds of years, the secret for making Damascus, or multi-layered, steel) and having met him a number of times I can tell you that it's a real treat to meet a real American legend as he is. I did hear that Ed Halligan, creator of the innovative K.I.S.S. knife, would probably be there. The symposium this year will include Knife World editor Mark Zalesky and Dr. James Batson discussing the history of the Bowie knife (I've sat through one and believe me, it's a pretty colorful thing to listen to) and Buddy Thomason talking about Scagel knives (of which he is a collector and authority of). The show runs this coming Saturday and Sunday, September 11th-12th at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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The lull between Frances and Ivan

Early this evening I called to check up on one of my friends in Asheville, to see if she was good after what was left of Hurricane Frances came through the state yesterday. By the time it reached this far inland much of its strength had been sapped away without anymore warm moisture from the ocean to feed upon... but there was plenty enough punch left in the system to thrash things from the mountains on east. There are some places here that saw streets completely covered and some falling debris, but that was nothing compared to what it did further west: Black Mountain had 17 inches of rain and one person said that Old Fort "looks entirely washed out." My friend in Asheville said that the French Broad River (which I had my apartment overlooking from the west side) was 17 feet above normal and had water reaching the bottom of the windows on most of the warehouses on the other bank. The Biltmore Village area is completely flooded, the same for Swannoa and she said that as of this evening much of Asheville was without power or running water. I've heard that the side of town east of Tunnel Road has been completely dark ever since yesterday. It gets worse further west: the towns of Canton and Clyde are under curfew and severe mudslides have been reported in the area.

Meanwhile, I've got family in Florida, between Palm Bay and West Palm Beach and however we've been seeing it on television, the situation sounds much worse. They didn't even know 'til the other night when we told them that there was another hurricane on the charts headed this way: Ivan is now a Category 5, and maybe the third strongest since records have been kept. It now looks poised to tear into the western side of Florida sometime later this weekend and however much Frances kicked the slats out of the place, it very well might prove to have been a prelude to a far worse catastrophe.

And yet... I must admit that there is something horribly fascinating about a hurricane. As much devastation and death as they cause, their structure and strength really does make them a miracle of nature worthy of not just our healthy respect and fear, but our awe. And they do play a much-needed role in God's design for our planet: hurricanes are the "release valve" for our oceans' accumulated heat. Were it not for the thermal energies that hurricanes absorb and then redistribute, the ocean temperatures would be considerably warmer than we know them to be. For all the curse that hurricanes have become of late, we might do well to be thankful that in the larger scheme of things, they stand in the way of our having to face a much more severe climate.

But in the meantime, I'm going to keep saying a prayer for the people of Jamaica, and Cuba, and Florida, and anywhere else that Ivan may be threatening over the next few days.

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Twenty-four hours of loathing the way things are

I didn't watch last night's "60 Minutes" with Dan Rather's story about the former Texas official who supposedly pulled strings to get young George W. Bush out of serving in Vietnam. But I've followed the aftermath on and off throughout the day: enough to know that old IBM Selectric typewriters are about to become as synonymous with this presidency as paper shredders were to Reagan's, what broccoli was to Bush the First and what cigars have been to Clinton.

As everyone who's a nut for this sort of thing knows by now, the interview with Ben Barnes was a red herring for the REAL supposed bombshell: documents from the files of the late Jerry Killian, who as a colonel in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s was squadron commander of Bush's unit. The memos that CBS News is said to have obtained show Killian praising Bush, then ordering him to submit to a physical examination, then suspending him for failing to follow a direct order. And then complaining that he did not like showing favoritism toward the young Bush at the behest of others. It is this final memo that has come under fire for its dubious origins.

If the documents are real, Bush should face up to it, come clean before the American people and admit that he got away with doing some things that a young man at the time from less fortunate circumstances would probably have never gotten away with, and let the people make a judgement on him. If the documents are forgeries, CBS News should own up to it and somewhere, the appropriate heads should roll. If Dan Rather himself knew about them being forgeries all along, he should admit to it on live television before an audience of millions and then - both for himself and his chosen professoin - do the honorable thing and resign from CBS News. He would at least be thankful that CBS was not owned by Japanese management that would have recommended he perform on-air seppuku.

I've let my feelings for Bush be known already: I can't vote for the guy because I don't trust him, on the basis of a lot of things. But I damned well don't want to see him - or anyone else for that matter - suffer injury in the arena of ideas when the ideas being leveraged against him have nothing but a fraudulent foundation beneath them.

I'm probably going to write more about this later, but in all honesty I would feel disgusted either way - if Bush had rigged the system so that he wouldn't have to serve in Vietnam as others were being made to, or if this whole thing was a con by a major television network - were it not for the fact that at this point I couldn't care less. I'm too exhausted by everything that's happened leading up to this election to really give a damn anymore about which one between Bush and Kerry may or may not win. I know that realistically one of them is going to win this year, but that doesn't obligate me to believe that one of them deserves it more than the other... because despite what the mobs around me demand that I buy into, neither one of them deserves to be President of the United States.

Will pour out my frustration on this subject later. I'm going to watch my DVD of "Hellboy" in the meantime.

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Despite Frances, Labor Day weekend was "Dynamite"

The lovely lil' spousal overunit and I intended to drive down to her parents' place in Georgia three days ago (Friday) for Labor Day weekend. That was before we conferred that afternoon about whether we should go ahead with it after all the projections for the path of Frances showed the storm plowing through Georgia after it entered the Gulf from Florida. Lisa has never experienced a hurricane before. I've gone through plenty... enough to know that fun as they can be to ride out if you're fairly far enough inland, you do not want to drive headlong into one. Especially considering that there'd probably be a few million evacuees on the road between here and there.

So, we didn't go, and spent the weekend here, even though it looks like Frances is now going to be a day or so longer in getting to that part of Georgia. Better to have been safe than sorry though, although I do regret a few things. For one, we were going to make a stop at Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q in Marietta - which just might be the best barbecue joint on the planet - to stock up on more of their barbecue sauce. We started this summer with six bottles of the stuff and doled out the final drop last weekend on some ribs we did on the grill, so we desperately need to replenish our supply. Not this weekend though, but Lord willing we'll get down there sometime soon and get reloaded. When we do I'll offer up a full review of the joint.

This weekend was also when the annual Dragon*Con science-fiction convention was being held in downtown Atlanta. I've been to two of them (in 2001 and 2002) and wanted to hook up with some friends at it this year, had the low-pressure system from Hell known as Frances not played havoc (have heard from lots of folks that they chose not to go 'cuz of it so we're in good company). Would have been fun to have posted some pics from Dragon*Con here, 'cuz the thing really is an amazing assault on the senses, but maybe next year.

In the meantime, we did occupy ourselves with a few things, including spending Saturday afternoon finally catching a flick that I'd heard nothing but very good things about for the past month or so...




Napoleon Dynamite is the movie that I wish had been made back when I was in high school 15 years or so ago. Yes, I admit it: I was Napoleon Dynamite, and I'm not ashamed to say it. Lots of guys were Napoleon Dynamite. Lots of girls were also Deb. And wherever or whoever they might be there was a Pedro in our life. There's plenty of things that people like me can identify with this movie about. What we didn't have then is an icon, a banner, a symbol behind to which rally behind and assert ourselves for all the world to know that yes, we ARE different from you... and that is why we succeed!

That's the best moral that I can attempt to gain from Napoleon Dynamite: to simply be yourself, no matter how quirky or offbeat or defeated the world around you considers you to be. If you were to ask me to be explicit about plot, I couldn't tell you because there really is no plot at work here. There's Napoleon and his weird family and his small circle of friends... and that's it.

Napoleon Dynamite (played by Jon Heder) lives in small-town Idaho with his grandmother and Kip (Aaron Ruell), his 32-year old brother who doesn't work and spends all day on the Internet in romance chat rooms. Oh yeah, and Tina: Granny's pet llama. Napoleon contentedly spends his life as a high school student drawing fantasy animals and making action figures do death-defying stunts from moving schoolbuses. So it is as an outsider that he finds a best friend in new student Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez) who has just moved from Mexico. About the same time Granny Dynamite busts her tailbone after flying off of an ATV so while she's rejuvenating, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in and immediately takes over the joint with his hair-brained schemes involving herbal supplements and mail-order time machines.

The rest of the movie involves... well, truth be known I can't really remember what it's about, except that Napoleon and Pedro's friend Deb (Tina Marjarino) is trying to get her "glamour shots" business going from her parents' basement and Pedro winds up running for student body president. And something about Future Farmers of America, and a shotgun, and tetherball, and a big dance, and... whatever.

But for some reason, Napoleon Dynamite has been resonating with me a lot in the two days since we saw it. And, it's still making me laugh! For a movie with no real plot or point, it's by far one of the funniest that I've seen in quite awhile. I can't wait to get a copy of it on DVD and show it to friends when they come over if they haven't seen it yet. After a summer of sequels, schlock and silliness, Napoleon Dynamite wound up being a very fine and satisfying way to end this season on.

Oh yeah, if you wind up going to see it (something that I'd heartily recommend) DO NOT LEAVE when the credits begin rolling. Stick around, and wait for EVERYTHING to finish because there is an entire scene that's been added to the original cut that picks up two months after the rest of the movie. You definitely don't want to miss it.

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It would be ironic if it weren't so sad...

...that just minutes after posting the last entry the news came over the wire that former President Bill Clinton is at this hour having quadruple bypass after suffering a heart attack.

Wherever you were with the guy, please say a prayer for him and his family this afternoon. Bypass surgery is nowhere as hazardous a thing to go through as it used to be but still... it's an awful serious thing to go through regardless. Here's to praying that the 42nd President of the United States has a swift and thorough recovery and that God's hand will rest upon him and his family today.

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