Favorite Films of 2008

I wasn’t even going to put together a best films list because I simply don’t see many movies in theaters. But then I managed to post quite a lengthy one as a response on someone else’s blog: http://breagrant.com/blog/ So I’m reposting it here. Enjoy:

1. Iron Man: I’ve never been a huge fan of the character, but god did I love this movie. For Marvel’s first film, they really knocked it out of the park. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was the best casting of any super-hero in any comic book ever (and, yes, that’s including Christopher Reeve as Superman).

2. The Dark Knight: Just watched this again today. It’s hard to screw up Batman. Granted, we’ve all seen it done (thanks Joel Schumacher!). But Batman’s got such a great rogue’s gallery and such a great supporting cast, you have to willfully ignore the source material to screw it up. Which is why I give Iron Man the nod for best film (it was the more difficult task). That being said, I still love this movie. And I found Heath Ledger’s performance to be even more mesmerizing the second time around. It’s tragically ironic that for once the villain doesn’t die at the end of a Batman movie, and then the actor dies instead. So much potential there (for both the actor and the film series).

3. Young @ Heart: If you want a movie that will alternate between making you laugh hysterically, inspiring you, and making you weep like a little baby, this is the film for you! It’s a documentary about a choir of senior citizens who sing songs like “I Want to Be Sedated” by the Ramones and “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth. I’ve recommended this film to every single person I work with and any library patron who’s asked me for a good movie. Not one person has ever come back and told me they didn’t love it. You are not human if tears don’t stream down your face when they sing Coldplay’s “Fix You”. Easily the best moment in any film I’ve seen this year.

4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: A Judd Apatow produced film starring Kristen Bell? How could it not be great? I was so psyched for this movie very early on and it totally delivered. Just hilarious.

5. Wall-E: Pixar can almost do no wrong, but I was not a huge fan of Ratatouille, so maybe my expectations were lowered a little bit for Wall-E. There is no dialogue for such a large chunk of the film and for it to remain so engrossing over that time was quite a feat. Also, possibly the best romance in a film this year.

6. Hellboy 2: I did not like the first film at all. It had some cool ideas, but overall I found it cheesy and cringe-worthy at parts. The second film is amazing. Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro teamed up to created some of the craziest, yet beautiful, monsters ever to appear on film. So often bad CGI will pull me out of a movie, but I could not tell you what was CGI-ed in this movie and what was a practical effect. It was seamless (at least on my HDTV screen).

Honorable mention: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog: I don’t know if it should be called a TV show or a short film or what, but whatever it is, it should be on the year’s best list for that category. So I’m throwing it on here. Funny, tragic, and everything else Joss Whedon is known for.

Huckabee vs. Stewart: The Gay Marriage Debate

On December 9th, Jon Stewart interviewed Mike Huckabee on The Daily Show. The first half of the talk was focused on the size of government, the second half dealt with gay marriage. The second part of the interview is the part I found really interesting. I applaud Jon Stewart’s decision to devote a full 7-minute segment to the discussion of gay marriage. Normally, an interviewer asks a question, maybe throws out a follow-up, and the moves on. Stewart just kept going at Huckabee on the subject and it’s the first time I’ve heard all of the arguments against gay marriage thrown out there at once. I do think Stewart left some points on the table though, so I’m going to go through Huckabee’s argument point by point here and offer my rebuttal. It could get ranty. The original interview can be watched here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=213349&title=mike-huckabee-pt.-2

1. MARRIAGE IS DEFINED AS BEING BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN. DEFINITIONS MATTER.
Definitions evolve over time. As Jon Stewart pointed out polygamy used to be a valid form of marriage. There was also a time when members of different races couldn’t wed. So to suggest the current “man-woman” definition is somehow set in stone is ludicrous. Heck, if you check most online dictionaries at this point, they now list same-sex marriage as a form of marriage. You’re losing the definition battle! And frankly, I just can’t put the definition of a word ahead of a person’s civil rights.

2. MARRIAGE IS ABOUT PROCREATION, CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION.
If that’s the case, do we ban the elderly or the infertile from getting married too? There are couples who can have children but choose not to. Should a marriage license only be given to couples who intend to have children?

3. 30 STATES PASSED GAY MARRIAGE BANS
This is the “But, MOM, everyone else is doing it!” argument. So my natural response is “If all those people jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?” Just because a bunch of people vote for something doesn’t mean it’s right. I’m pretty sure the majority of people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 regretted it after Hurricane Katrina hit. And there’s been polling in California that indicates if a revote on Prop 8 was held, it would no longer pass.

4. WE NEED TO CONFIRM TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE
I’m constantly baffled by the idea that the marriage of a gay couple could threaten a “traditional marriage.” Personally, I think straight people are a much larger threat to the so-called traditional marriage. 50% of “traditional marriages” end in divorce. If we really want to confirm traditional marriages, shouldn’t we put some effort into lowering that number instead of persecuting gay people who desperately want this right that straight people seem so casual about abusing? Whether it’s someone like Anna Nicole Smith marrying for money or an Elizabeth Taylor marrying (and then divorcing) 7 different men, shouldn’t those be the people we should ban from getting married? If we’re really about protecting the institution of marriage, shouldn’t we outlaw gold-diggers and serial brides first? They seem to be a bigger threat to this hallowed institution. Two people of the same-sex who are deeply in love shouldn’t be able marry, but the 25-year old blonde with giant fake breasts can marry the 95-year old wrinkly, liver-spotted guy wearing diapers who’s pulling along his oxygen tank?! Give me a break! There is nothing hallowed about this institution anymore! Hollow, however…

5. IF WE ALLOW GAY MARRIAGE, ALL LIFESTYLES MUST BE ACCOMMODATED (INCLUDING POLYGAMY)
This is my FAVORITE of all arguments against gay marriage. “If we let two guys marry, what’s to stop my friend from saying he wants to marry his goat?” What stops that is common sense. The law would just change from saying it’s “a union between a man and a woman” to “a union between two people.” That’s it. There’s no bestiality or polygamy clause. It won’t suddenly say, “Yay incest!” And to compare homosexuality to polygamy, incest, pedophilia, etc. is despicable. I know Huckabee only mentioned polygamy, but others on his side of the issue have gone further down that disgusting road (*cough* Rick Warren *cough*).

6. BEING GAY IS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE, IT’S MUCH DIFFERENT THAN A PERSON BEING BLACK
It’s amazing to me that conservatives still trot out this old argument after so many of their own have been caught making this same “choice.” You’ve got conservative preachers having to go to de-gayification camp, and Republican senators soliciting gay sex in men’s bathrooms. Do you think they were all just sitting around one day and thought, “Hmmm… you know what I think I’m going to do? I’m going to ruin my career and engage in that ‘gay lifestyle’ my base hates so vehemently.” Do you think people would just volunteer to be persecuted? This may be a poor analogy, but I’m going to go with it anyway: I’m left-handed. Can I write with my right hand? Sure. Does it feel natural? Hell no. Are there gay people trying to live as straight people? Sure. Does it feel natural? Probably not. In the 18th and 19th century, left-handed people suffered severe prejudice and often they would be beaten in an attempt to destroy the left-handedness. My hope is that in the near future our prejudice against gays and lesbians will seem just as silly as that against left-handers back then seems now.

7. MARRIAGE IS NOT JUST ABOUT PROCREATION, BUT ALSO TRAINING OUR REPLACEMENTS
While Huckabee didn’t say it outright, the implication here was that gay people aren’t fit to raise children. My main problem with this statement, past the obvious, is Huckabee had just said not all people who were against gay marriage were homophobic. I’m sorry but there’s nothing more homophobic than saying gay parents are less fit to raise children than straight parents. Here’s a little exercise you can try if you want to know if a position of yours is homophobic: replace the word “gay” with the word “black.” If the statement then sounds really racist, guess what? Your position is homophobic! Homophobia just happens to be more acceptable than racism currently in our society.

Ultimately, I don’t have a personal stake in this. Despite my love of Project Runway and Gilmore Girls, I’m very much straight. I do have a gay cousin who I adore, but she and her girlfriend just moved to Texas, so I’m fairly certain they have no intention of getting married anytime soon. And, frankly, if Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich can have gay children/siblings and still be against gay marriage, I don’t think having a gay relative necessarily defines my opinion on this issue. I just think everyone should have the same rights, that’s it. And I hate that conservatives, who are so anti-regulation when it comes to the free market, want to regulate our personal lives based on their own beliefs. Gay marriage doesn’t devalue straight marriage. The strength of any marriage is determined by the two individuals who made that commitment. And to put you and/or your religion’s ideas of morality above the happiness and the rights of such a large section of our society seems incredibly selfish and just plain bigoted to me.

“Going Green” Part 2: At Work

I hate the term “Going Green.” It’s incredibly simple, almost condescendingly so. We have this huge challenge in front of us. We need to become energy independent. We need to solve the climate change crisis. And these immense challenges have been simplified to not just a single word, but a color: GREEN. I know were a sound bite nation and so the less time it takes to explain something the better. But I do worry about grouping these complex problems under a single word. I worry that “going green” will become a cliche, if it isn’t already, and that people will grow tired of the term and consequently go back to ignoring the problems.

As it is we already have a “Planet Green” network. And let me tell you nothing makes me want to drive a Hummer, switch all my light bulbs back to incandescents, and leave my refrigerator door open all day more than the Planet Green network. Aside from one show, the documentary “Greensburg”, the entire network could not be more condescending if it tried. In my case, they’re preaching to the converted and every show still makes me want to smack the host in the face.

So, my goal here is to avoid being condescending when discussing what I think we should all be trying to do about this crisis. In fact, this post is less about “Going Green” and more about using common sense. After months and months of trying to convince every person I know they should vote for Barack Obama, he won, and I was left asking myself, “well, what now?” That’s when I started to look around the library I worked at and saw how energy inefficient we were. I had a new cause: green up the library (it helped I was reading Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded” at the time).

These are some of the problems I found:

1. Air conditioning the children’s section in January. Is there anything that causes an electric bill to rise like air conditioning? At my house, we carefully monitor how often we use the AC because it is such an energy suck. Well, the library still had the AC on in the children’s section in November! And it was not a little cool, it was frigid. There were days in November when it was warmer outside than it was at the children’s desk.

2. Playaways using AAA batteries. Playaways are basically MP3 players that have an audio book uploaded on them. Every time one comes back we take out the AAA battery inside and put in a new one. I’m just picturing a landfill somewhere filled with all our wasted batteries. I’m suspicious that our library director may even have a Scrooge McDuck-like vault somewhere in which she swims around in all those discarded batteries. I suggested we switch to rechargables.

3. No recycling bins. This one really baffled me. I swear when I was in middle school we had a recycling bin in every classroom. I’m now 28. So that was around 15 years ago. The library has NO recycling bins out for the public to use. We have printers, copiers, and scrap paper available for use, but no recycling bins for the discarded papers. It’s ridiculous. And it’s not like they need to put out one of those clunky green bins. A normal trash bin can be marked for recyclable paper.

4. Computers left on every night. I don’t know if this is a convenience thing or if there’s a legitimate reason computers in the library are left on every night except one. But I do know we had one employee go on maternity leave and her computer was left on for those entire four months! That is an unnecessary energy suck if there ever was one. And, if there isn’t a legitimate reason for leaving the computers on every night, then that’s another huge waste of electricity.

Have I bored you yet? I’ll admit going green is actually really, really boring. But, ultimately, the point I’m trying to make here is there are little things everyone can do at their own homes and offices to make a difference. Is that alone going to be enough? Of course not. But we have to wait until at least January 20th for our new President to give us our marching orders on his green initiatives, and until then I feel we should all try to do what we can. We’ve finally elected a President who cares about energy independence, the climate change crisis, and energy efficiency. But the election was just the start of the change, now we all need to step up and do our part.

Previous Blogs

I’m new to WordPress, but I have been posting blogs to my Myspace and Facebook accounts for a while now. Here’s a selection of those blogs:

11/28/08  “Going Green” Part 1: The Auto Industry

11/15/08  Obama’s Justice League

11/15/08  Note to Republicans: SHUT UP!

11/4/08  Why I’m Voting for Barack Obama

10/24/08  Dear Senator McCain

9/25/08  John McCain is a Coward

9/9/08  Fun with the Electoral Map: McCain needs Florida

3/7/07  New York Comic Con

8/15/06  The Story of the Paper Plate Crown