Steven Spielberg is right: Movies need two months in the theater!

I've been arguing for over five years now, since we started going back to the cinema in the wake of COVID, that movies must spend some time in the theaters before going onto streaming video or some other digital delivery service.  A film represents more than just casual entertainment.  It is the result of the efforts of a lot of people who collaborated together to produce something that, ideally, has not been seen before.  Those people deserve appreciation, and acknowledgement.  Their labors merit watching in as big a venue as is feasible.

When movies come out in the theaters, they can take on a life of their own.  A good movie without much fanfare can become a "sleeper hit" that finds success by word of mouth (two examples of good sleepers are The Artist and My Big Fat Greek Wedding).  Movies get talked about, and vigorously discussed.  It's something that they make an entire art of in places like Europe, where movie goers will often repair to a sidewalk cafe and converse about the movie with friends and family.  That's how we did it when I went to Brussels a long time ago, anyway.

Movies in the old-fashioned way are communal experiences.  Watch a film in your living room, and what can be said about how much you were moved by it.  But seeing a movie in a theater, with other people sharing the same room, and something almost magical happens.  When Avengers: Infinity War came out, on opening night I saw it in a packed theater.  The stunned look on everyone's faces after that movie ended is something I'll never forget.  It was a look that said it all: "Oh crap, NOW what?!  How can there possibly be a good closure to this?!"  You can maybe simulate that at home, but it's just not the same.

A typical movie, not a solid stinker of the sort that Ed Wood used to make, deserves at least two weeks, maybe three, in the theater.  That's enough time to weigh whether it really resonates with audiences.  But then there are some movies that come to demand much more time getting projected onto the big screen.  Those deserve at least a month listed on the marquee... if not more.

I'm not the only one either believing this and in fact I'm in good company.  Steven Spielberg has been at CinemaCon this past week and he had something to say about the time movies spend in the theaters.  Mainly, that there needs to be a sixty-day window for new movies to be available only in theaters.  Bringing up his forthcoming film Disclosure Day, Spielberg said that "This is a movie that needs to be experienced, and what you need to get from the beginning to the end is a seatbelt."

I love having good movies on my iPad.  The night that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker came out on iTunes, I gleefully loaded it on my tablet so that at last I had the complete Skywalker saga on one device.  Not long ago I finally watched Dune: Part Two and that's on my iPad also.  It's a great convenience to be able to do that.  But it's something that I can wait a little for, if that means more people get to see the movie as its director and producers and cast want and need us to see it as.

I know that I'm not the only one who believes this, who feels this way.  Surely there are other cinemaphiles out there who love the movie-going experience and want others to know what that's like, too.  Maybe they will chime in like Spielberg has, and persuade the studio execs to hold out on the instant gratification of home-audience profits in favor of something deeper and more meaningful, if only for a few months.

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My latest project: Mobilizing Zork

I'll be the first to admit: I have no idea if this is going to actually go anywhere.  But for the past few years I've had an idea and it's always seemed like a fun one.  And it would definitely be a challenge to pull off.  But things have changed since my forays into programming (with the C language, in 1995) and I'm thinking that this might really be possible so, we're going to find out.

A while back a crazy notion hit me: to play Zork on my iPhone and iPad.  Yes that Zork: the 1977 text-only role-playing game.  A game that kept countless insomniacs awake long into the night as they explored the Great Underground Empire in all its riches, its horror, and occasional hilarity.  There were no graphics at all involved with Zork: like most any good story it played out primarily in one's imagination, with only the on-screen descriptions awaiting your command for the parser to further the tale.

Envision that on the screen of an i-device or something running Android.

It's too wild an idea not to do.  The absurdity of it: a modern mobile appliance, with all its portable power and potential - thousands upon thousands of times the combined computing capability that put the space shuttle into orbit on all those missions - running a text adventure.  The text adventure, mind you.  The game that in one way or another has boasted the core technology of every role-playing game on every device in the past half-century.  It would be at once a step forward and a loooong leap backward, to do that.

Well, like I said, it's too perverse not to try to pull off.

A few months ago Microsoft published the original source code for the first three Zork games.  Yes, it's open source now.  Meaning that it can be played and finagled with to one's heart's content.  It's noteworthy that these are the first three of the original Zork games.  When the game was first created circa 1977 it was  much too big for the personal computers then just starting to hit the market.  So Zork was split into three games.  This source code is for the full experience.

For the past few weeks I have been in the process of taking the source code and running it through ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and some other artificial intelligence systems.  Pouring in the raw code and producing something that should, theoretically, be compilable into an app for iPad and iPhone.  It hasn't been easy, not for the least of which reasons being that I don't have a Mac or other desktop computer powerful enough to test the finished product on.  And so far as I can tell I've only been recreating the game's engine.  The associated geography, items, monsters etc. are still waiting to be implemented.

But what has been produced so far, well... it looks an awful lot better than the discombobulated code that I was generating for that Computer Science 101 class at Elon three decades ago.  I've some confidence in it.  A lot of people who know better about such things than I swear that AI has become pretty competent about creating source code.  Which, I still consider "cheating" in vast part.  But maybe AI in this case is a pretty sensible tool toward creating a piece of software.  I don't know.  What I do know though is that so far I've a few pages worth of code ported to the language and syntax of i-devices.  And maybe that will sooner than later be something letting players discover a place first explored by their parents and grandparents.

So, that's my project.  We'll see if it comes to any fruition.  That is if a grue doesn't devour me first...

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My "new" favorite show on television: The Golden Girls

I was eleven when The Golden Girls premiered on NBC in 1985.  I was watching that very first episode and it cracked me up hard!  Most Saturday nights at 9 I would tune in to watch the latest misadventures of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia.  It wasn't just me either: my dear sweet grandmother was a huge fan of the show too.  Sometimes we would watch it together if I happened to be at her house that night.  Her favorite of the ensemble was easily Estelle Ghetty's character Sophia.  Heck, Granny even looked a lot like Sophia... and she could wisecrack like her too.  My favorite character was Rose (Betty White): so many ditzy things that she often said.

So for the past few weeks I've been tuning into MeTV on weeknights at 10 and then on Sunday nights at 6 and 8 to watch The Golden Girls.  It's just like watching it with my grandmother all over again.  Although now that I'm a bit older (okay, forty years older) the jokes that had gone way over my head at the time - especially the ones involving eternally man-hungry Blanche, played by Rue McClanahan - are something I can now readily understand.  It's made it like I'm watching the show brand new again, for the first time.  I think now though I am tending to favor Dorothy.  Maybe because I've become a bit more jaded by life, more world-weary and quick to offer up wry commentary.  And also because I'm a bit of a Bea Arthur fan (can you believe that she was in the second Star Wars production ever produced, okay it was the holiday special but it still counts!).

Anyhoo, it's a very funny sitcom, if you've never had the pleasure of watching it.  And well worth your time to catch it if you're finding yourselves needing something to give you a good laugh guaranteed to make you smile. 

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Artemis II: They're back!

 

A short while ago the four astronauts of Artemis II successfully splashed down in the ocean off the coast of San Diego.  They made it!!

(I had been afraid of this mission.  They were in my prayers a LOT.)

For over a week I have been tuned in whenever I could to NASA's official YouTube feed, usually streaming it to the high-def television set in my living room.  I couldn't help but reflect on how our parents and grandparents (and now even some GREAT-grandparents) huddled around the tiny screen of the family TV to watch blurry black and white images from the Moon during the Apollo program over fifty years ago.  And now we get to watch it in full-size resolution in beautiful color straight from the Moon and across the Internet to our devices.

I've been hanging on everything that the crew of Artemis II did, and when they sent back those amazing pictures from their swing-around the Moon, it was the most beautiful spectacle that's I've seen in a very long time...

It's like we're back to a place where America was much more hopeful, far less cynical.  That era from before I was even born, when we could do amazing things.

Let's pray that feeling lasts awhile.

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Artemis II has launched and is on its way to the Moon!

 

Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

"Go Baby, GO!!!"

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn't want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn't tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said "Okay, it's up.  NOW can we go?!"

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I've harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale... and the feelings of the world in general... if those four astronauts return safely.

History happened tonight.  May this be only the beginning of the next adventure of man's journey into the cosmos.

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New trailer for Masters of the Universe is here!

Masters of the Universe is officially the movie I most want to see this summer.  It looks like it's going to be all kinds of bonkers good time!  It comes across as every Masters toy I had as a kid put into a big box and shaken around and then poured out on the carpet.  The design, the color palette, the voices...

This is going to be a supremely big dumb fun movie.  The perfect two-hour getaway from the craziness of the real world.

Here's the new trailer that dropped yesterday.  Lots of stuff in this one, including our first look at Jared Leto's Skeletor as he delivers some dialogue.

I think that there should be a collector's popcorn bucket and that it look like Man-At-Arms's helmet.  Practical and fashionable.

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Dear NASA: Don't launch Artemis II tomorrow

Dear NASA administrators:

I have a member of my family who was part of the team at Kennedy Space Center in 1986.  On January 27th he begged the higher-ups not to launch Challenger.  The space shuttle was clearly not rated for launch in such below-freezing temperatures.

My relative's pleas were ignored.  We know what happened.

I confess that my own mind is not of the caliber of those who are engaged in America's space effort.  My formal training is in history, not aeronautics and engineering.  But I'm still begging you: do not launch the Artemis II mission tomorrow.  In fact, don't launch it at all.

The vehicle has too many issues that are being ignored, just as Challenger's were ignored for sake of the chance to have a successful mission.  The materials - especially the heat shield - are definitely not as sound as the ones that the Apollo craft were composed of.  The life support system is untested.  The rocket has leaked like a sieve so much during fueling that there is no telling what has been overlooked.

Look, few things would make me happier than to see Artemis II return to Earth with its crew of four having gone around the Moon, carrying people there for the first time in over fifty-three years.

I hate to tell you this though, but the NASA of today is not the NASA of the Sixties.  The Apollo program was an unprecedented focused effort to fulfill President Kennedy's goal of landing man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.  Almost the entirety of American industry played a role in making that happen.  There has been no such similar effort in the more than twenty years since Artemis was conceived.

I believe that humans can be returned to the Moon.  And that they can have a long-term presence there.  But such a thing cannot be rushed.  And that is what Artemis has always come across as being: a rush job.  No offense meant to its designers and builders.  And yes, I know that tomorrow is being seen as a day two decades in the making.  But it's still too soon.

So I'm begging y'all, refrain from launching Artemis II tomorrow.  Yes, daring to leap beyond the grasp of Earth is a magnificent endeavor.  But it also must be thoughtful and considerate.  And that isn't what I and others with better minds than mine are seeing is happening with this vessel.

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Funniest line I've heard all evening

 "Finally, payback for what Christian Laettner did to us."

(Referring to the legendary 1990 east regional final during the NCAA men's basketball tournament, and Laettner's buzzer-beater that sent Duke past University of Connecticut by one point in overtime.)

Congrats UConn.  This was a legendary game too, and you played amazing.  I was rooting for Duke but I wanted to see a good game more than anything, no matter who was competing.  You deserve this win.

Best of wishes going on into the Final Four.

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We can finally talk about COVID "vaccines"... so let me tell you about Kenneth Rogers

Before I share the ultimate point of this post, I want you to take a good hard look at this photograph.

This is Kenneth Rogers, MD.

From 2020 until late 2022 Kenneth Rogers was the director of the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.  He was my ultimate "boss" during much of the time when I was a peer support specialist with this area's mental health office.  Rogers was ostensibly charged with guiding the agency with wisdom and integrity.

That is the furthest thing from what Kenneth Rogers really was.  In truth he turned out to be a far-left activist who had no compunctions about enforcing his own agenda upon the thousands of hard-working and dedicated mental health workers working for the state.

Rogers saw South Carolina Department of Mental Health as his personal play toy.  He turned his position into a bully pulpit for his ideological beliefs.  He certainly had a captive audience.  Whenever I opened up a web browser on my office PC there was Kenneth Rogers's face - as you see in the photo above - with some decree he had made from on high.  And sometimes they had absolutely nothing to do with mental health.

Case in point: what Rogers posted following the George Floyd incident.  Rogers jumped on the bandwagon immediately, without any proper evidence, and blamed institutional racism for Floyd's death, never mind that the Floyd was a dead man walking with all the fentanyl in his system.  Floyd was going to die regardless of anything else that happened.

Rogers finished up with accusing practically all white people of harboring racism.

It was a dip into the political realm that was utterly disturbing.  No responsible leader of a state agency, no responsible person at all, would have stooped so low in using departmental resources toward furthering personal ideology.  I was disgusted by it and for several fleeting moments I considered writing to Rogers about it.  But I had my job to consider: I was just a peer support specialist, someone without a masters degree.  So I kept quiet.

(Obviously, six years later I am letting it all come out without fear.)

I decided then that Kenneth Rogers was a poor choice to be the head honcho of an agency whose purpose was to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable of the people of South Carolina.

I watched Rogers do his thing, on and off.  I could not but shake my head in disbelief whenever he made his decrees.  And I continued to wonder what could I do that would arouse the attention of the people who had appointed Rogers to the job in the first place.

And then came COVID.  And Kenneth Rogers really let his inner leftist demagogue loose.

Rogers commanded that everyone in the department get the COVID vaccine.  Never mind that it was so very new and untested.  We each had to get it, or else lose our job.

Which would have been personally devastation to a lot of people and it certainly would have been to me.  Not only for the loss of income, but it would mean that I could no longer see my clients: people who I had come to care for tremendously.  Being in peer support meant relating to the people I served in ways that the more "qualified" counselors and doctors and nurses could not.  Not without themselves having a mental health condition.  Being a peer support person meant letting my bipolar disorder become something useful toward helping vulnerable people live richer and more fulfilling lives.  I came to love those "clients" (I could not call them "patients" because I didn't have a masters degree), every one of them.  Three and a half years after leaving the department and I still think of them.  I still pray for them.

Not getting the alleged "vaccine" would mean that I could no longer work with them or see them at all.

There was an out for people who were conscientious objectors.  I wrote a short essay explaining why I wanted to decline getting the shot.  All I know is that it was turned down.  Maybe it didn't help my case that I wasn't a member of any organized religious body, not even a small country church.  There was nobody to help me plead my case.

So it really was get the shot or lose my employment, and with that would come no longer getting to help my patients (well, that's who they were).

Kenneth Rogers continued in his demands that everyone get the shot.  As he put it in one screed, we were all "going to follow the law".

There was no "law" requiring involuntary inoculation.  The "law" Rogers cited was an order by President Joe Biden and Rogers automatically declared that this was to be as adhered to as any properly and rigorously argued and passed piece of legislation.

Long story short: Kenneth Rogers used his position to enforce a political position of liberals like those in the Democratic Party and especially of the Biden administration.

Well, I was stupid.  And I got the shot.  I got both of the initial course of inoculation.  After getting the second jab a blood vessel burst in my right eye.  And ever since then I've wondered if my breathing is as well as it used to be.

Kenneth Rogers posted a photo of himself getting the "COVID vaccine".  He was masked up and everything.  For all we know that wasn't the real vaccine at all.  It could have been saline water or something else innocuous.

I got the shot and I've felt dirty ever since.  It did something to me.  I feel now like it cost me my integrity, of too much of my soul even.  I should have done the hard thing and quit my job outright.  Except there were my patients and who would have been there for them like I had the unique position of being?

It's five years after getting the "vaccine".  If I knew then what I know now, I would have told Kenneth Rogers that he could take his precious shot and jab them [REDACTED].  He's an absolutely loathsome, disgusting and criminally negligent individual who does not deserve to be in any position of medical care and administration.

There are a lot of people who deserve scorn and ridicule stemming from the COVID vaccine propaganda.  Half of Democrats polled at the time wanted those who refused the "jab" to lose their employment, be fined, and even be incarcerated.  People were silenced on social media by giants like Facebook and Twitter, for the "crime" of questioning the efficacy of the "vaccines".  There were the businesses ruined and the churches vacated.

Nobody who was advocating the pro-vaccine agenda deserves to have any place at the American table.  They violated the people's trust.  They forced a medical experiment upon us and told us "tough" if we resisted.

I'm a peaceful man.  I try to follow my Lord's instruction to "love one another".  COVID however brought about a seething and quite righteous hatred toward certain people.  I only wish the worst upon them.

David Strom has written an ASTOUNDING article for Hot Air about how it has come to be that we can at last openly discuss the persecution that we suffered because of vaccine propaganda.  If you have been angry before, Strom's piece will reignite your fury.  If you have had blinders on until now, this well-researched essay laden with citations will hopefully open your eyes.

COVID became tyranny by leftists.  Maybe we will be much more the wiser the next time that they think they have an opportunity to control our lives.

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Somebody put a Peanuts comic strip through AI and the result is horrifying

As someone who works often in artificial intelligence, I will be the first to state that there are some things that the technology will never ever improve upon.

Charlie Brown and the gang is one of those.

For whatever reason - maybe the idea for this was hatched late one night by a first-year community college kid wishing he was old enough to get drunk - somebody fed a classic 1978 Peanuts comic strip into an AI.  Maybe they were trying to make it even funnier than what it already is.  Who knows?  The result however is downright lopsided and more than a little disturbing.

Here is the original strip.  Click to enlarge:

And here is the, ahem, "AI enhanced" edition:

That final word balloon is cracking me up!  What was the AI trying to render?!  Also, when Marcie first speaks it comes out like the Swedish Chef.

I'm actually looking forward to the AI craze dying down.  I think it will in due time.  Of course, it won't be before the landscape gets littered with those ugly data centers that destroy pristine wilderness, suck up electricity and use millions of gallons of water for cooling.  I for one could use less of that.

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I can't stop thinking about this ad from ChatGPT

My best friend since third grade Chad has encouraged me many times over the years to start running.  Chad knows something about that, being an active runner and also the veteran of numerous full marathons and countless shorter races.  Running is how he and his wife first met, during a running ministry at their church.  So maybe it's something I should have looked into a long time ago already.

Now, I can run very fast over short distances.  Maybe even faster than a lot of seasoned pros.  It's just the way I'm built and it came in handy a few times when I was at the state department of mental health.  But perhaps running a mile or so a day, if that much?  Nah, that just hasn't seemed feasible.  I have harbored doubts all this time and it didn't seem that anything could dispel them.

But then I saw this commercial for ChatGPT that aired a few times over the weekend during the NCAA basketball tournament...

Now I can't stop thinking about getting a start at running.  It seems pretty easy enough.  Maybe I needed something to synopsize the experience, in bite-size morsels of text, accompanied by epic strains of Minnie Riperton's "Les Fleurs" (a song that is stuck in my head now).

This is the very first commercial for an AI that I've seen.  I'm sure there have probably been at least a few others already but I'm not much of a television watcher, apart from my set being almost constantly tuned to nostalgia channel MeTV.

I might at last start running for exercise and fun.  There is a nice straight road that goes past my house, and every so often I see others walking and running on it.  Might as well take advantage of it too.  I turn 52 next week (though the kids I work with keep telling me that I look 35), I don't think that's too old to start anything new.

(Speaking of which, I'm considering visiting a new game store nearby tonight.  Tuesdays are when they have people teaching newcomers how to play Magic: The Gathering.  I know nothing about that game other than it uses lots of collectible cards but I'm feeling a curiosity to educate myself on what it's about.)

 

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Fifty years ago today, Star Wars began filming

It was about 6:30 a.m. local time in the desert of Tunisia, on March 22, 1976, that the first scenes for George Lucas's film Star Wars were filmed.  Shot that day: the Jawas "droid auction" and the scene between Luke and Threepio as they are standing outside the homestead looking for Artoo.

Here is Mark Hamill in costume, in the first behind-the-scenes pic from the production of a Star Wars movie:

One has to wonder, what were the cast and crew thinking as that first torturous day unfolded (the Artoo-Detoo's front leg refused to deploy, and Anthony Daniels's Threepio costume didn't fit).  Did they have any notion at all just how special their project would become to not only millions but arguably billions of people over the course of the next half-century?  How it would be endlessly discussed and debated, and so beloved even five full decades later?

It all started that spring morning in Tunisia: nine movies, numerous television series (not including the holiday special), dozens of books, countless toys and games, music that has become a cornerstone of modern pop culture...

It all began fifty years ago today.

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Dear college basketball players: STOP IT with the tattoos!

Okay, I'm going to get something off my chest and I believe it merits consideration.  Because we are in "the high holy days" as I call this time of March and it's as good a time as any to bring this up.

I'm watching the NCAA basketball tournament.  Maybe it's just me but it's DISGUSTING watching so many young men, at the height of their sports careers, who are festooned with TOO MANY tattoos.  I've seen some of these guys who have both arms completely inked.  Some have tats on their necks.

WHY?!??  What is the purpose of all those tattoos??

These are healthy young specimens, in the prime of their lives, and they are completely destroying the symmetrical beauty of their bodies by marking them up.  It absolutely takes away from appreciation of their presence on the court.

Why would anyone do this to themselves?  Have they considered that there is something to life other than basketball?  I mean, they ARE in college to study matters that will presumably give them fuller and richer lives after graduation, yes?  What are those tattoos going to bring about when these young men are having job interviews?  Some employers would fast think that these aren't the people they are looking for.

It just looks nasty.  It makes the team look cheap.  I can't imagine Dean Smith approving of his team sporting tattoos.  He would probably have instigated a policy barring anyone tatted from playing for UNC.  As bad as things have gotten I think Mike Krzyewski would have eventually done the same at Duke.  The reasoning would be sound: "If you don't care for how you look you probably won't care for how you make the team look."

Come on lads, stop doing this.  Bring some dignity to the game but more important than that, bring some dignity to yourselves.  Covering almost every spare square inch of your bodies with health-destroying ink is not glamorous or cool or really impressive at all.  The young people of America are looking at you, more than you know.  And they want to be the kind of people that you pose to be.

Don't give those kids reason to "follow the crowd" into self destruction.

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New text for Keeping the Tryst's cover

It's been almost six months since the release of Keeping the Tryst.  It's reached a nice sized audience already yet I'm still tinkering with it behind the scenes.  Finding small places that can be improved, etcetera.  Nothing drastically major: it's still the same story that was published in early October, just cleaned up in spots.

There is one detail that has irked me though: the text of the back cover.  It's easily the one thing I wrestled most over.  The back cover text should be something that readily sells the book, without saying too little or worse, too much.  Keeping the Tryst is such a wild book though, it was always going to be tough to synopsize it into a digestible packet.  So it is that the back cover description hasn't really been something I've been satisfied with.

So with some hours to spare last night and into this early morning, I dedicated myself toward improving it.  And I'm much happier with what has come of it (click to enlarge):

I've already uploaded the new cover and it should appear live for new purchases within the next 72 hours.

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Chuck Norris is gone

 

Part of me is tempted to declare that this is as fine a time as any for a Chuck Norris fact.  The man himself loved those jokes, even if he was really quite humble about it.  Norris chuckled at how powerful people claimed he was.  But in truth he knew that the real power in his life was his faith in God.

Death didn't get Chuck Norris.  Heaven just needed Chuck Norris to teach the angels how to roundhouse kick.

(That's the very best I can come up with.)

The world without Chuck Norris... just doesn't seem possible.  He was a force of nature on two legs (one was named "Law" and the other was named "Order", that's one of my favorite "facts" about him).  An action legend, a loving family man, and also some will remember that he was an excellent op-ed writer (he had a column for awhile at World Net Daily).  Chuck Norris could do seemingly anything.

Almost anything.

Goodbye brother Chuck.  Until we meet someday.

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North Carolina State Senate District 26: The Republican primary that won't end

Phil Berger (left), Sam Page (right)
Image courtesy WRAL.com

Look, I really don't have much of a dog in this hunt.  I don't even live in North Carolina anymore, much less live back in the state senate's 26th district.  But I did spend most of my life in Rockingham County and I maintain strong connections there.  I visit back there every so often.  And I've met Phil Berger and Sam Page at various times over the past two decades.  All of that, and the political commentator that's been inside me for well over thirty years now is just aching to weigh in on this mess.  So that being said, here it goes...

For those who haven't known, the 2026 race for North Carolina State Senate District 26 has been thrown into beyond the singularity: a place where future events cannot be estimated.  What happened is that Phil Berger, who has represented Rockingham County and a good slice of northern Guilford County for a quarter century now, has been running for re-election.  It's worth noting that in the time since first coming to Raleigh, Berger has risen to be Senate Leader.  He's arguably the most powerful politician so far as North Carolina state government goes.  He gets to decide what bills rise to the top and have a chance of becoming law.  His influence is considered greater than that of the governor.

Berger, a Republican, filed to run for another term.  And he likely would have gone on to win again in the general election.

But then Sam Page filed to run, too.

Page, the sheriff of Rockingham County, has alleged that Berger has become too attached to his power and  is no longer adequately representing the people of his district.  Page has listed a number of issues that have arisen because of Berger's pursuits and policies, including an attempt to build a casino in western Rockingham County (presumably to compete with the Harrah's casino in nearby Danville, Virginia).  Generally though, it's been trying to make a case that Berger has become out of touch with his constituents.

So it's been incumbent Phil Berger versus Sam Page the county sheriff for the Republican nomination for state senate... and it has by a very significant margin become among the filthiest races in North Carolina history.  If for no other reason than because the balance of power in the state capitol is in dire jeopardy.

Just trust me.  I've seen things shared on Facebook that make me feel embarrassed to be a son of Rockingham County.  I really thought better of the place that I came from.  I'm not naming anyone in particular, I'm only expressing my disgust at the entire spectacle that has unfolded during the past year.  It hasn't gone unnoticed by others.  Even here in upstate South Carolina, Berger versus Page has become a topic of discussion.

It's also renewed my disgust with the stranglehold that the two party system has on this country.  For far too many involved in politics it's all about the power.  And not at all about serving the people.  The Democrats and Republicans have each lost sight of what's most important.  If anyone were to ask me which is the worse I would immediately say the Democrats: they have become so fixated on the accumulation of power that they have become completely unmoored from reality (how hard is it to define what a woman is?).  But the Republicans aren't far behind and the higher up in government the GOP is found the less effective they seem.  Especially in the United States Senate.  But that's a rant for another time.

Anyway...

Millions of dollars have been poured into the race between Berger and Page.  Mostly to Berger's campaign, from outside the district.  The Republican bigwigs desperately want Berger to be re-elected.  Page's support has been far more localized.  His campaign has been nothing like the effort by that of Berger's.

After all the deviousness and dirty tricks, it all came down to the Republican primary in North Carolina earlier this month.  And when all the precincts had reported in on election night, the apparent winner was Sam Page over Phil Berger... by two votes.

(Has this race been dramatic, or what?)

That was just over two weeks ago.  Since then there has been counting the absentee and other outstanding ballots that were submitted before the election.  With those taken into account and after canvassing, it now stands that Page has a 23-vote lead.

True to North Carolina tradition, this has triggered further motions being made in the way of recounts, etc.

WRAL has a pretty good story about where things stand right now in the Berger/Page race.  Including how Guilford County election officials might wind up stretching this affair to at least April 6th.

All that said, here is my honest take: it doesn't look like anything is going to change that would benefit Phil Berger.  With each attempt to pull a win out of this, it's increasingly obvious that it isn't going to happen.

It really is becoming apparent that the Republicans of District 26 have chosen to nominate Sam Page to represent their part on the ballot in the general election come November.  And that Phil Berger's time in Raleigh is drawing to a close.

I am of the mind that Phil Berger has indeed lost touch with the people of his district.  But I also can't but believe that he didn't start out like that.  He gave the district some good service.  That has to be acknowledged.  He fell prey to something that has affected those in political circles since time immemorial, and always will so long as Man is granted dominion over his earthly destinies.  He came to put his position over his service though, and that can't go unaddressed.  It's now time for new representation.  Now is the time for Phil Berger to be a good man again, and acknowledge that the people of his party have spoken.  And with that in mind, he should honor that choice.

There is no dishonor in conceding an election.  Hey, I had to do it almost twenty years ago, when I didn't win a seat on the school board.  But it was an amazing experience all the same.  There has never been any regret for being unsuccessful in that race.  And there doesn't have to be regret for Berger coming up short in the primary.  He can leave office knowing that he served his people, and be content with that.

That's just my two cents about the matter.  Or maybe five dollars and seventy-five cents.  Enough to buy a little over a gallon of gas at current prices.

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