Saturday New & Notes: Beat Colgate!

Hey folks.  The Saturday Celebration posts weren't doing a lot over at AFF, so we tried something new and moved that particular discussion to Thursday.  I'm not sure it did any better on Thursday, but the end result freed up the Saturday spot here, and here we are.

Some of the stories I'm following this weekend are after the jump.

5 Shows We've Been Watching

What a crappy week.  

As I  mentioned yesterday, I almost ran this list for yesterday’s “5 Things on a Friday”, but then I saw the article about New Zealand’s flag and the new Voltron promo art, and that was enough to build an article using the usual format, albeit in a limited way.  Regardless, this list is a smattering of what I’ve been watching on television.  If I’ve missed your favorite show, please leave a note and/or recommendation in the comments.

Thanks!

5 Things on a Friday: Rise of the "Know Nothings"

It’s been a tough week.  It’s been both busy and confusing, with near-constant frustration and substantial positive reinforcement coming in a constant stream from unexpected angles.  I don’t want to get into the details, but the level of cognitive dissonance in my life is at times deafening.  I hardly know what to think.  It’s hard at times just to parse all the mixed messages.

As we were headed to the gym on Tuesday night, Hannah asked me what was going on.  She’s a perceptive twelve-year-old and a straight-A student.  I told her that I was frustrated, that it seems like people--even people whom I respect a great deal--have shown themselves to be fundamentally self-interested, and that their willingness to tie themselves into knots intellectually in order to believe what’s in their own basic self-interest has been both overwhelming and disheartening.  I tried to explain to her that we have a higher calling, that the fact that she IS a straight-A student and has every advantage gives her a responsibility going forward.  She was not put on this Earth just to be a mother and a veterinarian, if that’s the path that she chooses.  Self-interest and the interests of her family will always be important, yes, but those things will never be as important as her responsibility to society, to her community as a whole.  There is such a thing as service, and though it’s up to each of us to define our own service for ourselves, service just to oneself and one’s family doesn’t actually get us anywhere.  Service to one’s self and family is a truly minimal kind of social responsibility.

Hannah gets it, I think, but I don’t know who else does.  I don’t know who else is teaching this lesson to their kids.

As a society, we’ve made greed a virtue.  College kids look at a film like The Wolf of Wall Street and they see a role model, not a cautionary tale.  We’re all going to be stuck with the consequences of this in time.  These consequences might take a while manifest, but their manifestation will be a real thing.  We will all notice.  We will all live with the consequences.

How much any of this influences my own cognitive dissonance is an open question.  It feels like I’m a hero when people need a hero, and I’m a goat when they need someone to blame or have another hero picked out already.  Meanwhile, I’m always me; I’m the same guy.  I do what I do, and it’s flattering when people notice, and it’s frustrating when they cut me off before giving me so much as a chance to show my strengths.  This is true for everyone, I’m sure, but it’s been really, repeatedly unmistakable these past weeks for me.  As my father used to say, “What you see depends on where you sit.”  It’s weird, though, to be the object of that saying, to have people project whatever they need onto me.

At the end of the day, I have a beautiful wife, two great kids, and a house that I can afford.  I don’t exactly need other people’s approval.  Still, the mixed messages are hard to hear in rapid succession, and at times that makes my personal reality a bit unpredictable.

5 Things on a Friday: On Knowing Evil When You See It

It’s been a disturbing week in American political life.  Normally, I really enjoy politics--and especially this year’s presidential primary race--but this week it became clear that Donald Trump is not only going to win the Republican nomination, he’s going to do it using a Fascist, neo-White Supremacist platform, and there’s not a damned thing that anyone can do about it.

It’s disturbing.  I’m not a Trump supporter, but I am a Republican, and I don’t know what the Hell has happened to the party that I grew up in.  

The party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt--heck, of Dwight Eisenhower and more recently, of arch-pragmatist George H.W. Bush--has abandoned compromise and the essential forms of democratic government so completely that its own core supporters no longer understand the difference between reasoned discourse and hate-speech.  Republicans have vilified the President, who is a good man regardless of his being on the wrong side of a number of important policy issues, to the point where we can’t now look at an actual villain and see him for what he is.

This is not the way our government is supposed to work.  Honestly, I keep wondering if this is what conservative, patriotic Germans thought in the 1930s as they watched a demagogue rise up, take over their country, and turn it into a dictatorship.

Hitler did not represent the natural course of German historic evolution, but he sure as shit convinced people that he did, and look what that got us.  Or, to put it another way, what the fuck is wrong with people?

5 Things on a Friday: Heading to South Carolina

There’s a lot going on this week.  South Carolina chooses its Republican candidate tomorrow while Democrats choose theirs in Nevada.  Besides that, there’s more Daredevil coming and a bunch more movies for geeks.  

Check it out!

Marvel Netflix Trivia & Speculation

I know, I know.  I should totally be working on something productive today.  However, for the second day in a row, I just can't seem to get started.  They say that writer's block is bullshit.  If that's the case, then so be it.  Maybe I'm just lazy.

Regardless, let's talk about TV...

Iron Fist, Jessica Jones (Jewel or Power Woman), Daredevil, & Luke Cage (Power Man).
This team would typically get the name "Heroes for Hire".

Marvel Netflix Trivia & Speculation
Let’s start with the obvious.  As of this writing, Marvel Television has released a season of Daredevil and a season of Jessica Jones, both on Netflix, both closely tied to the work of iconic comics writer Brian Michael Bendis.  A second of Daredevil is supposed to be headed to Netflix around April next year, and seasons of Luke Cage and then Iron Fist are in the works, Cage for maybe a year from now and Iron Fist as yet to be determined.  All of this is to be followed by a six-episode mini-season of The Defenders.

10 Things for Marvel’s Daredevil, Season 2

We’ve all seen Daredevil by now, right?  And we all enjoyed it?  Well, Season 2 is coming next year, and that being the case, I have some requests.

Here’s what I’d like to see in Season 2:

1. Bullseye.  This one’s pretty easy.  Daredevil starts with a blind guy slowly working his way up the ladder of organized crime.  He goes from fighting Russians engaged in human trafficking to dirty cops who act as street enforcers to Japanese yakuza trying to develop land illegally to Chinese triads moving drugs as a means of generating capital for future criminal enterprise to, finally, Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of crime.  Along the way, he develops as a crime fighter.  By the end of the first season, Matt Murdock has taken down hundreds of low-level thugs, dozens of dirty cops, a ninja, and the Kingpin himself.  Of those, only the ninja is a legitimate match for Murdock one-on-one, and it’s at least partially because he too is wearing a costume.  For this reason, the Kingpin needs a costumed enforcer of his own, someone who can meet Daredevil on his own super-powered turf and have a legitimate chance of winning a fight.  That someone in Bullseye.