FACING THE GIANTS: Finally a Christian movie that gets it

About a month ago my friend Chad did a review of a movie called Facing the Giants. It just came out on DVD this past week and a couple days ago it arrived at our place via Netflix. Well, I'm still busy putting my own movie together, but Monday night Lisa and I watched a good part of it and we finished up last night. So what did I think about Facing the Giants?

One word: "Wow!"

Yes! At last! To say that I am astounded would be undercutting it. And not just because this movie is the production of a Baptist church in Georgia but absolutely looks as if it had a multi-million dollar budget poured into it (I think they only spent about $100,000 on this)...

...No, what really impresses me about Facing the Giants is that this movie "gets it" so far as Christian filmmaking goes. Yes, it is very much a Christian movie. But it does something that is very rarely - actually I don't know if it's ever been done this successfully before - done with Christian cinema: Facing the Giants is entertaining in addition to its message, instead of trying to be entertaining because of its message.

That's probably going to rub some folks as being blasphemy: like I'm saying that Facing the Giants is putting worldly approval before righteousness before God. But there are two things that I would like to point out about Christian filmmaking in general. First, full-length features are supposed to be entertaining. Or if not "entertaining", at least still make you feel as if the time watching it was well spent. Too many Christians in the film industry try to make "the message" the whole reason why people should want to see their movies... when it doesn't work that way at all. And so we wind up getting turkeys like Left Behind (hilariously discussed in Rod Dreher's classic article for National Review called "Do Fake Boobs Go to Heaven?"). This is one medium where noble intent alone does not a good movie make. As it is, we get situations where the producers of a Christian movie have to practically beg people to come see their movies...

...Ummmm, guys: if you just make the story engaging and fun, people will want to come see it on their own anyway. Facing the Giants made more than $10 million when it came out in theaters (to limited distribution and with little promotion, I might add). That's a hundred-fold return on Sherwood Baptist's investment.

Second, as Christians we should feel compelled to give everything that we do our best effort. Or rather as Grant Taylor (played by Alex Kendrick) in Facing the Giants comes to realize: do your best so that you can give glory to God, not to yourself. And sometimes you have to push yourself and even go through some pain in order to do that. Striving for the goal that God has set for us is never supposed to be easy: God puts these things in our lives to build us up, not to win some prize. Winning is a secondary thing... but we are still supposed to run the race to win all the same, as the apostle Paul taught us to do.

What does that mean when it comes to Christian filmmaking? It means doing your darndest to make a good movie, and that means having something more than less-than-stellar production values. Yes, I know that most Christian filmmakers are faced with limited funds compared to the resources of a big studio, but if there's any way at all to squeeze in just a little more quality into a project, then the filmmaker should do so. But a lot of these Christian movies look as if they are products of the Ed Wood School of Filmmaking: fast and cheap and without care. Again, with these movies people are supposed to want to see it because of "the message", according to their producers. It's almost like those TV commercials for personal computers back in the early 80s: almost always the spokesperson would talk about all the productive things that a computer could do and then maybe, just maybe, they might be used for a little fun. Most Christian films are all business and no pleasure, and the producers will spend 90% of the budget on the serious and hardly anything on making the thing look good. Quite honestly, I think that's lazy filmmaking. Worse: it reflects horribly on Christians who are trying to do things for God's glory. If we can't give it our best for Him, what is the rest of the world - that we are trying to witness to - going to take away from that?

A third point I could also make, even though it has nothing to do with Christian filmmaking per se, is this: Facing the Giants was shot on location in Georgia, with an almost entirely local crew and cast of actors. And it proves something I've been thinking for awhile now: that if you want to produce a top-quality movie, you don't have to go to Hollywood to get it made. The acting in Facing the Giants is as good as any coming out of Tinseltown... and the fact that these are ordinary people makes Facing the Giants all the more honest and convincing. You wanna make a film? Do your community a favor: put your friends and neighbors in it. Acting is easy, and the behind the scenes stuff isn't too hard either: give everyone a shot at being in the movies.

Well, I gotta get back to working on my own movie. But I just had to take a break long enough to recommend Facing the Giants and call attention to how this is one movie that is hitting on all the right cylinders. Many other Christian filmmakers would do well to learn from its example.

And, it's just a heckuva good movie. I'll probably be buying it for my own DVD collection soon.

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Something beautiful

Brian Hodges - AKA Darth Larry - is not only a bigger Star Wars geek than me (is that possible?) but he's also an accomplished cello player. Here's a video of him rehearsing - along with his wife Betsi on piano - something called "Rachmaninoff Sonata" for a recital he gave a couple months ago...Recital Warm-Up

Add to My Profile | More VideosI like posting stuff like this, not only because it demonstrates the talents of good friends but also because it makes me look good when others see that I got the hookup with high-class cultured folks :-)

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The KWerky family grows as it tries to get ON THE LOT! Report and pics from filming

For almost two weeks I've had to refrain from posting at my routine frequency. Some real-life things have been happening that demanded a lot of personal attention. It'll be at least another week or so before I'm probably going to be back at full posting strength, but for the first time I'm ready to "tip my hand" a bit on something that I've been working on.

It all started almost three weeks ago, during the season premiere of American Idol. During the first commercial break we saw a promo for the upcoming Fox show On The Lot. It's something like American Idol for filmmakers: everyone is invited to make a 5-minute short film and submit it. From all those thousands of entries, sixteen will be selected to compete on television. Those chosen will have to make one new film a week, with the viewing audience voting on who to keep returning in the ensuing weeks. The person who wins receives a $1 million filmmaking contract. The executive producers of this lil' venture are reality TV legend Mark Burnett and some guy named Spielberg...

We saw the promo and the first words out of Lisa's mouth were "Chris, you should try out for this."

Then the next day at least a half-dozen other people told me that I should take a stab at On The Lot, including the girl who worked on Lisa's teeth at the dentist office and my mother-in-law.

I'd actually heard of On The Lot last summer and had thought of trying to put something together for an entry, but then the school board race happened and everything that I would have liked to occupy myself with went straight out the window for more than three months. The deadline to submit a film is February 16th: just a month to conceive a story, write a script, do casting, find locations, shoot the thing, and then everything involved in post-production. Definitely a tall order even in the best of circumstances. But with all these people encouraging me to go for it, I've taken it as a sign that I should at least make the attempt, even if it doesn't get any further than the "auditioning" stage.

I spent the day after first seeing the promo trying to think of story ideas. Two of them kept coming to mind. The one that I thought was the more challenging to attempt is what I opted to use. By 4:30 the next morning the first draft of the script was finished. A few days after that I posted a casting call on Tarheelfilms.com (a terrific resource for North Carolina-based filmmaking and casting). I said in the ad that this was for an On The Lot entry. Before the next four days were out about 350 people had responded!

Well, I went through all of them, and it wasn't easy. Casting went on almost right up 'til principle photography. In the meantime I worked on a lot of other things involving production. Friday before last I did the first bit of filming at Cafe 99 in Reidsville. I then spent the next week lining everything up for principle photography the following Saturday.

That happened this past weekend. There are two very quick scenes that still need to be filmed but otherwise, we got all our shots in.

I can't begin to say how much fun we had! One of the most exciting aspects about filmmaking for me is meeting wonderful new people and getting to know them as we work together. Well, Saturday our little production family welcomed three new members: Selassie Amana, Chris Otto, and Dawn Swartz. My longtime friend and collaborator "Weird" Ed Woody, his wife Olivia (both members of the cast in this project) and their son Tristan arrived at our place Saturday morning. Then Doug Smith - a guy I used to work with - arrived. It wasn't long afterward that Selassie, Chris and Dawn got here (Chris also brought his girlfriend/secretary Abby, and my own lovely lil' "spousal overunit" Lisa was there too 'course :-) That was ten people in our living room total... and four of them (Chris, Abby, Dawn, and Lisa) were all graduates of University of Georgia! So the Uga wallpaper on our computer's desktop was naturally a big hit with the crowd.

We had a round of introductions and then "got down to business". I got up and told everyone a little about what KWerky Productions (the lil' outfit founded by Ed and me) is, what we've done before, what makes us unique, how we love to have fun, and how we work with only the best people that we can find. The newcomers were told how they were now joining a family... like the Mafia. And just as the Mafia, if they really wanted to be part of us then they should understand what it was that they were possibly getting into. At that point I told them that there was a video that they needed to see and that if they wanted to leave after that point, they could: "Nothing will be said," I told them. Without further ado I hit "play" on the DVD player and everyone watched the following...

Amazingly enough, nobody abandoned us after that. So I handed out the legal contracts to everyone that had been drawn up for this production (I might share the text of that at some point 'cuz more than one person described it as being "different"). I showed the thus-far completed footage, and then we had a few readings of the script. And after that, from about 11:20 a.m. until last night a little past 7, we spent the rest of the day filming.

Well, I could say more, but I'll let the pictures speak a little about what happened throughout the day on Saturday...

Dawn Swartz and Chris Otto on the set at Cafe 99 in Reidsville, North Carolina

Part of the set during filming at the Reidsville Family YMCA

Looking down the hallway on the set at Reidsville Family YMCA

The "class photo"
Front row: Tristan Stamper
Second row: Dawn Swartz, Selassie Amana, Chris Knight
Third row: Chris Otto, Tyler Richardson, Doug Smith, Olivia Woody, Ed Woody

After the film has been finished, I'm going to put together a reel containing the bloopers and some of the other things that happened during production. In the meantime, the submission deadline is next Friday (the 16th) and there's still two tiny scenes to shoot, plus everything that comes with post-production. But as much as wound up getting done in the past three weeks, I'm pretty confident that it will all be wrapped up in the next few days. Until then, expect me to still not be able to chime in on this blog as much as I usually do... but now y'all know more about what's up.

That's all for now. Oh yeah: way to go Colts! :-)

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Two days later...

There'll be a more full report on this page in the next day or so, but I just wanted to go ahead and say that since yesterday morning this has been an awesome experience. Everything went well yesterday and a lot of new friendships were made. Especially thanks to Selassie, Chris, and Dawn, who I got to meet in person for the first time yesterday, and I pray it's sooner rather than later that we get to work together again.

There's gonna be more to come, including pictures and a video, coming real soon. In the meantime I'm sort of spending tonight both relaxing a bit and working some with what we got in yesterday (I'm rooting for the Colts in the Super Bowl but since there's gonna be only two movie commercials during the game - which is what I always like to watch for - I'm not really interested in watching much).

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Twenty-four hours

If I can get through the next twenty-four hours alive and sane, I will be a happy man.

I'd thought about posting a picture of one of the many rolls of duct tape that were purchased today, but that might have been too cryptic.

More coming soon.

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THE DEATHLY HALLOWS hits July 21st

The seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be published on July 21st.

Mash down here for more.

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Star Wars: Special Edition arrived 10 years ago today

It was ten years ago today, on January 31st 1997, that the cinematic re-issue of Episode IV: A New Hope kicked off the arrival of Star Wars: Special Edition in theaters.

To say that this was a big thing when it came would be a severe understatement. I don't think even we die-hard Star Wars fans were expecting what happened starting that day in the winter of 1997. It was truly a wonderful time whether you were an old-timer fan or a newcomer to the series (and there were more than you might have thought). The Special Editions were such a huge event that I felt it was worth commemorating here.

George Lucas first said in 1994 that he was considering re-releasing the first Star Wars movie with "upgraded special effects". It wasn't long afterward that word came that before he started working in earnest on the prequels, that he was going to give this "enhanced" treatment to all three of the original movies for a theatrical re-release in time for the Star Wars 20th anniversary.

The hype for what would become known as the Special Editions started to crank up in the spring of 1996. This in itself would be important to note because I can't help but think that how word on the Special Editions came out really did become the model for how info about movies gets dispersed across the Internet. First came a series of pilfered photos from the upgraded version of A New Hope showing the newly CGI-enhanced dewbacks (those lizard things that the Stormtroopers rode on) and it wasn't long afterward that the public got a look at the computer-animated Jabba the Hutt, for a scene that was cut from the original release of the first movie. Then a list of some of the forthcoming changes got leaked. I think the one that really whetted the appetites of a lot of die-hard fans was the news that the final scenes from the re-issue of Return of the Jedi would show celebrations all over the place, including on the galactic capital planet Coruscant: a place that had been written about but never shown in a Star Wars movie. Every time something new came out it was all good.

It went on like this throughout the summer and then fall of 1997...

...and then it got out that among the changes that Lucas was implementing was making Greedo shoot first.

Then all Hell broke loose.

There's no way I could describe the furor this caused and do it any justice. And it absolutely has to be mentioned in the context of talking about the coming of the Special Editions. A lot of fans said Lucas had no right to change his own story like this. Some started leveling the charge that Lucas was "raping our childhood". My take on it? If Lucas was doing all of these other things to enhance and make better his legend, I didn't have any problem with it. Having Greedo shoot first actually made a lot of sense to me: it didn't make Han out to be such a cold-blooded killer. Although how Greedo could have shot and missed from that close-by is still something I struggle with cognitive dissonance about.

January 1997 arrived and the public hype machine went full-tilt wacko. Pepsi led the way with its gonzo promotional product tie-ins: something that everyone got to see in a big way with this commercial that ran during Super Bowl XXXI...

Finally, five days later, the Special Edition of A New Hope came out. I was spending a few days with my parents after the end of winter term at Elon so that Friday morning I drove back to campus, picked up my friends "Weird" Ed and Gary, and we went to the Carmike 18 in Greensboro. There was a pretty long line waiting to go in when we got there (but nobody in costume: that's something that in these parts wasn't "cool" to do for a Star Wars premiere... at least not yet). Finally they opened the doors and we got our tickets and found our seats and showtime came...

...and we had to sit through at least fifteen minutes of trailers for upcoming movies! It might have been closer to twenty. There were so many trailers that by the time a new one started up most of the people in the audience were groaning "NOOOOO!!" (as one guy screamed out "We've waited twenty years for this!").

Well, at last, there was that 20th Century Fox intro. Then the "new" Lucasfilm logo: the fancy one that turns into gold or bronze or whatever (instead of the plain static blue "old" logo that was regular text). Then the "A long time ago..."

When that honkin' big yellow Star Wars logo filled the screen I went pure nuts. Ed and Gary had to hold me down. Lord help me, I was in tears...

We watched the movie, and were "oohing" and "ahhing" every "new" little thing that we could spot. One funny thing that happened was the scene where Luke is playing with the model of his T-16 Skyhopper: as soon as he did that someone's arm stood up out of the audience... holding the real-life toy of the T-16 and started playing with it along with Luke!

We had a great time watching A New Hope Special Edition. I saw that one four more times in the theaters while it was out. Three weeks after A New Hope's re-release came the Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back, and then three weeks after that (it was originally going to be two) it was Return of the Jedi's turn. So for a month or so after that, all three of the original Star Wars movies were playing in theaters simultaneously, with some theaters running all three. Counting all three movies, I saw the Special Editions fifteen times during their theatrical run, most of those times with people I knew.

Well, there's not much else I know to add to what's already been said except that I naturally went a little nuts for the merchandising, like the soundtracks for all three Special Editions and more action figures 'course. My favorite piece of Star Wars memorabilia that I bought during that time is still the Darth Vader cap that I bought at the Air and Space Museum in Washington while we were there for a winter term class a few weeks before the Special Editions debuted.

It was an amazing time to be a Star Wars fan: one that I don't know if the release of the prequels even approximated. Maybe in another ten years or so, for the 40th anniversary, and after there's been plenty enough time since a Star Wars movie was shown in a theater, there could be something like this happening again but with all six movies. I don't know if it's possible to capture lightning in a bottle again, but it would sure be fun if it did happen.

So let's hoist aloft our glasses of blue milk and raise a toast to Star Wars: Special Edition on the occasion of its 10th birthday as we remember how it brought a legend fully back into public consciousness... and this time, to stay.

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The zampolits have come to America

This isn't becoming very much of a break from blogging, is it? This is the third post I've made since I declared last week that I would be refraining from my usual blogging routine. But as with the previous two, if it wasn't severely important then I wouldn't be making it at all.

I've said once or twice on this blog that the way things are going in America, that we owe an apology to the leaders of the old Soviet Union. At least they were honest enough about having one-party rule instead of trying to fool the people into thinking otherwise. In the past few years I've watched this country adopt so many marks of that regime: warrant-less searches, seizure without hearing, suppression of reasonable dissent, refusal to respect the right to privacy...

...now comes something that I never, ever expected to see: the coming of zampolits to America.

A zampolit, in the days of the Soviet Union, was a "political officer" assigned to units of the Soviet military, to ensure loyalty to the party and to make sure that party decisions and policies were carried out. The zampolit was a member of the party and not the military... but he had the authority to over-ride the command of military officers and remove them if he so wished. The zampolits were one of the big mechanisms in place that kept the armed forces from overthrowing the Communists. They were part of the system that kept the dictators in power for so long.

"Political officers" aren't a good thing, for obvious reasons.

So please forgive me if I'm being irrationally alarmed by this article from The New York Times:

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: January 30, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

Maybe there is a substantial difference between these "political appointees" and the zampolits... but they certainly do seem downright similar in function. Namely, that being to increase the power of a central figure.

How is that possibly a good thing?

Just something I felt led to take note of, for future reference.

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In loving memory of Edna Manning

Yeah, still on sabbatical from regular blogging. If you see me posting here during times like this it's only because whatever I'm writing about is really important. It also probably means that it's something that I really didn't want to write about... and unfortunately this is going to be one of those times.

Last Wednesday night Lisa's grandmother, Edna Manning, passed away at the age of 80 (that's Lisa and "Granny" together at our wedding in 2002).

I'll never forget the first time that I met her, not long after Lisa and I had started dating. This was in late 2000, and I was still reeling from the loss of my own grandmother the previous March. Immediately I was struck at how much alike Lisa's "Granny" and my "Granny" were: Both loved to cook. Both loved music and to sing. Both were feisty as heck. And both fine women were loved by many, many people.

I came to love Granny a lot. Maybe a lot more than most people will ever know. A month ago Lisa and I were in Georgia to spend Christmas with her family and I really wanted to see Granny. But then I fell sick with an infection of mycoplasm - one of the nastiest things I've ever been hit with - and spent practically the entire trip in bed, only able to get up an hour for Christmas Day. I missed seeing Granny during that trip because I was so sick and because I didn't want her to catch what I'd gotten. I really wanted to see her then, and I promised myself that I would see her the next time we came and that I wanted that to be soon... but I never got the chance.

Well, she knew that I loved her and as much as she used to joke with me, I know that she loved me too. If there's just that much going on between people, that is plenty enough already. Makes you wish there was more of it in this world. Well, Edna Manning AKA "Granny" had it in spades.

Lisa has written a much better tribute to Granny than anything I could do here. Until I read hers, I had no idea that Granny was such a deep and talented person. So I felt led to "break my fast" again not just to write my own thing about Granny, but to point other people to Lisa's. I for one would definitely appreciate it if you took a few moments to read about her grandmother on her blog.

I'd said when I broke off from blogging last week that some real-life things had come up that demanded attention. This was one of them. There are quite a few still on the plate right now. I'll be back blogging in full again once those are out of the way. Until then, take care and God bless.

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Ron Price: "I've learned who my opponents are..."

Normally I wouldn't break my "blogging fast" for anything, especially this soon into it. But since this is a story I've been covering for the past two months here, I might as well post about its conclusion.

As was reported here two months ago, Ron Price, one of the sixteen candidates - including myself - who ran for Board of Education here in Rockingham County this past November, was caught stealing campaign signs belonging to U.S. House incumbent Brad Miller on the night before the November 7th election. The story only got out about noon on Election Day and it wasn't very well known until that evening, well after most people had gone to the polls. Price admitted to Reidsville Police that he had stolen the signs. He even went on live television that night and admitted that he did it. And then he wound up coming in fifth place in the election: enough to get a seat on the school board.

You can read up on the case if you go through the posts from November and December 2006. A lot of people, and I was one of them, called for Price to give up his seat: Price is too morally tainted to sit on the board and set an example for the children. He was sworn in along with the other new members on December 11th (click to read how I addressed the issue that night in my own unique way).

Well, today the legal case against Ron Price apparently reached its conclusion: the charges were dismissed. Ron Price, admitted thief, walked away free and clear.

Here's the story that's being reported at The Reidsville Review.

So unless the petition to the state school board that's currently circulating around the county has some effect (which at this point is highly doubtful), Price is going to continue serving on the school board.

Somebody told me over a month ago that if and when he got off the hook - and I think most people expected that to happen - that Price was going to consider himself "a double winner" because he not only won a seat in the election, but he "beat the rap". And then he would really pour on the cockiness.

Doesn't look like it took very long for that to happen. From the above-linked story at the Review website:

Price said he has learned from the sign incident.

"I've learned who my opponents are and who will work with me," he said.

"I've learned who my opponents are and who will work with me"...?

I have never heard an elected official in this county say anything with the condescension and egotism that Price has done here.

Jesus taught us to "love your enemies". Ron Price, self-professed "Christian", has now boasted that he's keeping an enemies list. I'm assuming that my name is toward the top of the roll. Especially after all the creative ways I came up with to poke fun at the absurdity of the situation, like "The Rockingham County Star Chamber" and "But Mommy it's okay to steal...".

Price is right though: I wouldn't work with him. Because Ron Price is part of the rot at work in the timbers of this country. I count myself as one of those working to keep things in this land from completely falling apart, however daunting that task seems. To work with someone like Price, now that I've seen him for the kind of person he really is, would disgrace and destroy the efforts I've made in my dedication toward those ideals.

I think it's now pretty safe to openly state that Ron Price and Christopher Knight are at diametric opposites so far as what it means to serve other people.

I do not hate Ron Price. I would wish no harm to come to him. But I now take it as a badge of honor that he considers me to be his enemy.

That's all I really know to say about this. For now I'm going back to my sabbatical from blogging, so that I can focus on several other things going on in my life right now. It was only because I'd written so much about this case already that I felt obligated to return here and post about what looks to be the conclusion of the matter.

In spite of all this, I still intend to be a regular attendant of the school board meetings.

Who knows, I may even have more to say during the public comments portion of the meetings...

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Taking a break

Every now and then - even though it's been almost a year since the last one - I take a break from blogging. Sometimes for a few days and others, over a month. For Lent last year (even though I'm not Catholic) I gave up blogging, and I think it was a good thing in retrospect.

Since then I've gone through a lot of things, including the school board campaign. Well, the past day or so some things have happened that have made me decide that I need some time away. Factor in something else that's going to be demanding my attention this next week, and opting to take a respite is looking even more attractive. Besides, everyone needs to step away and get refreshed from the routine craziness of life every so often.

So this is going to be my last post for awhile. Probably not for more than a few weeks though. As always, expect a somewhat different Chris Knight (but hopefully not too different) to return to this page.

'Til then, take care and God bless :-)

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Birth of the OSS REBEL RUNNER

Fellow former school board candidate and all-around great guy Eric Smith is making good on a vow he made during the campaign: that when all of this had ended, that he was going to start building a boat. I can't wait to see the finished product: for the life of me, I can't remember seeing up-close a boat that I knew was hand-built.

But there's another reason why I'm eager to see the O.S.S. Rebel Runner come to life...

A promise I made to myself was to build a boat after the campaign. Well now the dust has settled and I started today. I am going to name the boat "Rebel Runner" after co-candidate Chris Knight who is probably the biggest Star Wars fan I have ever met. He ran a good campaign and certainly gave a different perspective in the race.

A boat in my honor? Wow... I really don't know what to say about that. That's quite a thing.

I'm going to reciprocate this by saying now that I've been working on a part for Eric to have in my upcoming full-length feature Keys. Look for him to make his big-screen debut sometime in 2008 :-)

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"I have a penis."

It took 25 years but real-life soap operas have finally caught up with Tootsie...

Egads, what else has been going on with All My Children all these years that we didn't know about?!

(Thanks, I think, to Shane Thacker at The Phantom City for this... thing.)

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Wow, Jim Webb's response to Bush's State of the Union speech tonight...

...was one of the best speeches by an elected official I've heard in a real long time.

Colorful, articulate, spoke on the level of everyday people... as opposed to Bush's speech which tonight - as it does all too often - was in a dreary monotone that sounded too much like an illiterate speaking.

I don't necessarily agree with Webb on everything (he' supports No Child Left Behind apparently) but listening to him was quite refreshing.

Plus, I just found out that he's a filmmaker too. And he used to live where a lot of my family on my mother's side comes from.

Anyhoo, after too many years of Bushes (and now threatening to have more Clintons, God help us), Webb is someone I feel like I could probably cast a vote for and not feel ashamed about it afterward. And that's a good thing.

12:37 AM 1-24-2007: Looks like I may have spoken too soon: apparently Webb is one of those favoring amnesty for illegals.

That's a major strike in my book.

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Atlanta suburbs mulls seccession: Maybe America should consider it too

Part of Fulton County, a suburb of Atlanta, is threatening to split off and form its own county. Charges of racial motivations are flying because the possibly-future Milton County would be white-majority and more economically affluent than what would be left of Fulton County.

Reading this and doing a little more research into the situation, I can't really see where race is a factor here. It seems more like one part of the population is tired of waste and mis-management and is wanting more accountability over how its tax money is being used. I could see a very strong argument being made on those terms for the return (it originally merged with Fulton in the 1930s) of Milton County.

Maybe this should be a model of what we could be doing nationwide.

No, I'm not talking about succession from the United States. But I am suggesting that the more government is localized, the more efficient it is and the more answerable to the citizenry it becomes.

America is too centralized a country. The more power and money that has flown into Washington, the weaker this nation has become as a result. It has made us corrupted, and it has made us vulnerable. A smart terrorist would detonate a small-yield nuke in the vicinity of the Capitol building tonight while President Bush is delivering the State of the Union speech, with the Speaker of the House and Vice-President right behind him (aren't these people supposed to be kept away from each other during things like this, all because taking those three out in one fell swoop would wreck havoc with the Presidential chain of succession?). With those killed along with a full joint session of the House and Senate, not to mention the Supreme Court justices... well, to say that this country would be running around like a chicken with its head cut off would be putting it mildly.

I hope something like that doesn't happen. But if it does, this country would be in trouble, all because we have invested too much of our strength and leadership in the federal core. And it's taken our nation's vitality with it.

What's the answer? Maybe confederacy.

Give each state its own unique identity back. Quit sending so much money from the states and into Washington. Rescind the 17th Amendment so that once again it will be state legislatures that elect the Senators. Abolish federal departments like Education.

Centralized directing of a country's path inevitably leads that country into rot and stagnation. Consider what happened to the Soviet Union, and Rome before that. The only cure for corruption from power is to be willing to give up that power.

The state and local governments should be what hold most of the power in this country, not the federal government. Federal government is only really useful for national defense and not too many other things.

I'm not saying we give up our identity as Americans. That can not happen. Being an "American" is not dependent upon what form our government exists in.

But the quality of being an American certainly does.

The major political parties will not like this idea. They want the power to be centralized in Washington. That's what makes it so easy to seize power and then take more power. Neither will members of the mainstream press: they like the current power structure, because they love the role they have in maintaining it. Most Americans currently will not want this, because they have grown too comfortable with being wards of an all-encompassing State.

One day, it will all topple. It may even be starting now...

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

(Ten bonus points to whoever can say where that quote is from without Googling it.)

We can either let it fall, probably sooner rather than later... or we start spreading all that excess weight around before the whole thing collapses in on itself.

The people of the once-and-future Milton County in Georgia may be doing a very wise thing, indeed. Perhaps the rest of us should be paying some keen attention to them.

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So does this mean Tom is going to be Cruise-ified for the sins of the world?

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If Chris Knight came to South Park...

...I would probably look like this:

Turn yourself into a South Park character! Thanks to Shane Thacker for the find.

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