We The People Bible: One of the most terrible products I've seen lately

This post is going to honk a lot of people off, probably.  Whether it cuts one way or another.  I know and accept that.

First of all, the older I've gotten the more I have come to understand something.  Mainly, that the republican form of government that the Founders gave us in the Constitution of the United States is ideal only for a people who believe in something higher than man.  Whether you call that something God, or Yahweh, or the Universe, or whatever, the Constitution is best suited for those who hold themselves accountable to that greater entity.  I believe that the past several decades have proven that in the hands of they who believe that man is the be-all/end-all of law and life, that weak attempt at imitating democratically-elected republican government has led to disaster on multiple fronts.

So yes: I do believe that the American government is intended for people who believe in greater authority than their own.  It is where all true law comes from.  It has been ever since Moses came down that mountain with those stone slabs.

I believe in the Constitution.  I also believe that the Declaration of Independence was the work of a magnificent assemblage of some of the greatest minds from throughout the colonies.  I think that the Bill of Rights is not taught about nearly enough in the majority of our schools.  The Pledge of Allegiance... ehhhh, I elaborated on that subject ten years ago, about why I cannot in good conscience say it (but I have absolutely no problem when others choose to recite it).

For saying these things, some are going to declare that I am a "Christian nationalist", a "Christian reconstructionist", that I have a colonial mind, that I'm a "right-wing fanatic" or... good HEAVENS... a "MAGA Republican" (whatever that is supposed to be).

Well, that's one audience that I will have worked up in a frothing frenzy.  Now it's time for the other...

A couple of weeks ago an advertisement began popping up on Facebook.  Usually this sort of thing just breezes past me.  But this particular item severely caught my attention.  Because it's the dire opposite of a lot of things that have shaped and molded my personal theology almost since the beginning of my Christian faith.

It's called the We The People Bible.  You can find it in a Google search easily enough, I'm not posting a link to it here.  As you can see it's got an embossed leather cover.  Said cover, in the words of the website, "was designed with the patriot in mind and features a vertical reversed American flag design that represents a country in distress."  Toward the back of the book there is to be found the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its amendments, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh bruddah.  How many ways can we talk about how wrong this thing is?

The We The People Bible is the very worst elements of what I've seen from most of a lifetime of exposure to Christian Reconstructionism: a body of tenets orbiting the notion that God has ordained Christians to seize power, so as to remake the United States into a theocracy based solely on the Holy Bible.

The problem with that is, that this theocracy is going to be forced upon people, whether they like it or not.  And when that is the driving influence of such a movement, the entire thing becomes antithetical to the concept that God gave us this country to govern ourselves.  America is supposed to be the land of a people who choose to seek God's guidance, as best he or she might understand that.  It's not meant to be a land controlled by those who believe their interpretation is to be imposed under penalty of punishment.  America is not like places in the Mid-East where "blasphemers" are beheaded and homosexuals are throw from the top of tall buildings.  But, I could spend all day writing about what I've seen over the years regarding this.

The heart-meat of the matter is this: I definitely have no problem with people reading the Constitution, the Bill of Right, the Declaration of Independence, or any other document pertaining to the founding and organizing of our government.  In fact, I want people to read those.  But to include even those hallowed parchments within a volume of scripture along with the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian theology, is tantamount to making them equivalent to those sacred writings.  They are not.  And I can't but think that the Founders and many others, including the scholars who compiled the King James Version (the translation that the We The People Bible uses), would be horrified that documents of this temporal realm are now on the same level as inspired writings.  This is the worst grief that I have with this product.

I said that's the worst grief.  Not necessarily the one that sticks out as being either the most tacky or visibly sacrilegious.  The upside-down flag on the cover of this abomination is ridiculous.  Those who study scripture will absolutely know that the Bible teaches us that those who give God their highest priority are not to be a people living in fear and anxiety.  Isaiah 41:10 tells us "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

So it is that the reversed flag - which is supposed to be reserved only for the most dire emergencies - comes across as a product of the politics of the era of this book's publication.

But consider: the publishers of the We The People Bible have literally wrapped scripture up in the American flag.  In doing so they claim custody of the Bible.  They want it to be known that the Bible is theirs to interpret and to decree from.  Instead of letting holy scripture work in their lives to affect and change their hearts, they seek to change scripture instead, according to the powers and politics of this frail and brittle mortal realm.

I might have just glossed right over the ads I've seen for the We The People Bible, had it not been for an intensive study I participated in college with others about modern religious thinkers.  The most influential person we studied the works of was Stanley Hauerwas.  And one of his books that we read was his 1993 tome Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America.  The cover of which depicts a Bible literally wrapped up in an American flag.  Unleashing the Scripture became one of the most influential books during those early days of my Christian life.  I still feel it resonating whenever I'm tackling the subject of Christianity and its relationship with culture, and especially with politics.  And I got to say, that the We The People Bible comes across as a dark parody of Unleashing the Scripture, or maybe a Bizarro-World incarnation of Hauerwas's work.

It comes down to this: the Bible, I have no doubt about this, was the principle guide for the Founders when they set about liberating America and then crafting her principles into codified law.  I believe that the Bible has influenced history as no other book has.  But the Bible is supposed to define men.  Men are not meant to define the Bible.  If we are to believe that the Bible is perfect and inerrant (regardless of which respectable version one chooses to draw from) then we should be prepared to accept how it will apply to our lives.  To mold us and conform us to its image.  The Bible is not to be shaped and drawn out according to the fashions of the time.

And that is what the We The People Bible is an attempt to do.  Whether its publishers intended or not, it is become a weapon against those who are in disagreement with them.  Yes, the Bible is as a mighty sword, that divides between truth and false.  It can absolutely be trusted.  But when its publication is intended to be a tangible symbol of political power, well... it has gone too far and become something that is anything but in adherence to scripture.

Let us look not to carnal weaponry for our deliverance and salvation.  There is a greater Kingdom for us to build up and preach a citizenship of.  It is those edifices we are meant for, not the pale shadows of this fallen land.  God will be the judge of our efforts: Were they for His glory, or for our own?

I pray that what we do, will be done and has been done for Him alone.

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Seems appropriate

Ten-thirty on a warm July evening...

 

 

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Haven't done a "Tammy Tuesday" in awhile

For some time I was posting new pics of my miniature dachshund Tammy every Tuesday.  It's been a fair bit since I've done that.  But it just so happened that I caught a really good snapshot of her this afternoon while I was working at the desk in my living room.  I was eating some crackers and she insisted that I pay her the "cracker tax" (there's also the "chicken tax", the "cheese tax", the "barbecue ribs tax", etc.)...

I know: Tammy is not as red as she used to be.  Well, she is over eleven years old.  There's no not facing that.  But she's still in excellent health, and if you saw how playful she is you would think she's much younger than her age.  She always accompanies me when I turn in for the night and she makes sure that she takes a toy to bed, just like a human child would bring a stuffed doll.  I've been told by the vet that if Tammy maintains good health and is kept at an ideal weight, that we'll be in each other's company for many years to come.  Which, would make me very happy.

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Had an interview tonight...

 ...and I hadn't gotten a haircut since January.  What can I say?  I've been busy on multiple fronts.  But I needed some fine coiffing before this evening.

Here's how it came out, along with what my "office space" looks like most of the time:

Among the items in the background: my Eagle Scout medal.  Poster of Vault Boy from the Fallout game series.  A MAD Magazine Hot Wheels car.  Waterjet-cut metal "Crimson Omen" from the Gears of War video games (made by a good friend).  One of my school board campaign yard signs.  Various CDs that have special meaning (including the Transformers score album signed by Steve Jablonsky).  The LEGO Doctor Who set (bought at a LEGO Store in San Diego, and I wound up giving a presentation about Doctor Who and explaining stuff, this one teenage girl said "you should be a teacher!").  A Funko Pop! doll, also from Fallout.  A Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man doll.  What you can't see: a LOT of books covering everything from Christian theology to local history to Harry Potter to plasma welding.  A few Warhammer 40,000 minis that I'm especially proud of my work on.  And a framed portrait of Dad.

For the interview I got dressed up, including the lucky Millennium Falcon neck tie that's a gift from a good friend:

I'm not usually one for "selfies".  Keep thinking that photos of me never come out looking very good.  But I was pleasantly surprised with these two.

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I've waited 32 years for this day

I should probably preface what you're about to see with something.  For the past few months, well...

There's really no other way to put it: I've lost my interest in Star Wars.

I can't finger any one particular reason why.  But what Disney has done with the franchise, what Disney has done period, is a major factor in that.  I find myself no longer able to support a company that apparently no longer desires me or my hard-earned cash.  It's much worse than that even: Disney is now trying to rewrite and redefine history so as to advance an extreme leftist agenda.

How do I in good conscience, as a citizen and as a Christian, find myself able to support that?  I can't.

Which makes what I'm about to post seem direly hypocritical.  But I think that this once, the good memories can take priority.  I mean, I have spent almost two-thirds of my life waiting to see this.

Disney's upcoming Star Wars series Ahsoka dropped a new trailer today, and for a few fleeting seconds in it we get our first look at how Grand Admiral Thrawn appears in live-action.  Thrawn first appeared in Timothy Zahn's 1991 novel Heir to the Empire.  Thrawn became such a respected character that he was one of the few elements to be adapted from the "Expanded Universe" and into the current Star Wars canon.  He has probably become even more popular as a result.

So how does Thrawn come across in our first live-action glimpse of him?

Pretty darn close to what I've always imagined he would look:

That's Lars Mikkelsen in the role.  Mikkelsen previously voiced Thrawn in the animated Rebels series.  I'd say he seems to be projecting the gravitas and dignity (for a major villain) that the Thrawn of the books has always presented.  I could accept this as being Grand Admiral Thrawn, if I ever find that I'm getting my love for the saga back.

Well, like I said, I've waited a very long time for this day to come.  And to be honest I had come to believe it would never happen.  But it has.  It's enough to pique my curiosity, at least.

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Found my first op-ed article for my college's newspaper

The other night I was trying to locate something regarding my alma mater Elon University (though it was still "Elon College" when I was there).  During the search I came upon something truly wonderful: an archive of just about every issue of Elon's weekly student newspaper The Pendulum.

I got involved in the The Pendulum early in my first semester at the school.  At first I was a reporter, writing articles about the new food court and elections in the town of Elon.  But increasingly I realized that I could be a journalist... but what I really wanted was to write opinion pieces.  I had already been writing letters to the region's largest newspaper and more often than not they got published.  Carrying that passion to my college's newspaper would be seriously putting myself out there, with immediate feedback when the issue hit the stands.  This was my true calling as a writer: to encourage people to think just a little extra.

My first essay for the paper was published in March of 1996.  And it was about the true cost of abortion.  It was a quote from Mother Teresa that had me pondering some things.  It was as good as anything to write about.  I definitely was going in guns blazing.  It certainly did precipitate a response.  By the time the next issue hit I had received five death threats.  And then there was the female student who got in my face and said "You stupid pro-life f-cking piece of sh-t."

Anyhoo, the other night I went looking for some of my pieces.  And I found the one about abortion.  I took a screenshot of it.  Which included the worst photo of me that's ever been taken.  Seriously, what happened?!?  I look terrible.  Thankfully a better photo was taken for future articles.  But this one... wow.

So here is my first op-ed essay for The Pendulum.  Click on the image to enlarge it big enough to read comfortably:

The other pieces, I'll try to post those too in the near future.  But this gives you an idea of what I was up to in college.  Which, was one of the few aspects about my life as a student that made sense.  But that's something for another time.

Yes, feel free to make snarky remarks about my photo here.  I certainly do :-)

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Happy Independence Day America

The scene from the excellent HBO miniseries John Adams where Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the delegates vote to declare American secession from Britain:

I have to believe that the mood of the room following the vote for the Declaration of Independence in real life was no less solemn.  The look on their faces must have said it all: "Dear God, we just did that.  That just happened!  What have we done?!"

May we come to again honor those men who pledged their fortunes, their integrity, and their very lives so as to give us the blessings of liberty.

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Dear Elon Musk: Make Twitter usable again

This line from the 1983 movie WarGames has come to mind in the past couple of days:

Except right now it's Elon Musk instead of Dabney Coleman.  And instead of the WOPR computer the problem is that Twitter is, at the moment, complete junk.

A few years ago I embedded the timeline of my most recent tweets on this blog, in the right-hand column toward the top of the page.  It gradually came to be a great complement to the blog proper.  Instead of making a post about anything that I found interesting enough to share, I simply tweeted it and it would also come up on the blog.  It had become a "secondary spinal cord" of my humble website.

Well, as you can see, the timeline is gone.  There is just a link to my individual Twitter page and you can see some of my tweets there. I say "some" because Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited how many tweets you can see per day.  And oh yeah, you MUST have a Twitter account and be signed into it if you want to read tweets at all.

Mr. Musk, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?!?

 

Musk claims that he's doing this to keep Google and ChatGPT and whatever other systems are out there from automatically sucking up information from Twitter.

What Musk has done instead is make Twitter absolutely FUBAR and completely useless so far as any meaningful work goes.

It's the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".  Speaking of babies, why do I now think that had he been in Solomon's place, Musk would have gone ahead and cut the little infant in two?

"Mr. Musk, after very serious consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your microblogging service sucks."

Well, there's only one thing that I can think about doing, in light of these circumstances.  That being: I'm going to stop using Twitter at all, for the foreseeable future.  If Elon Musk reverses course and rolls back all of these limits, I will gladly come back to Twitter and forgive its owner and anyone else responsible for doing this to us.  But I need my embedded Twitter feed back to normal.

Nobody of sound mind does this to his or her customers.  It's like the phone company limiting your calls to two hundred seconds per day.  That's how insane these new policies at Twitter are.

Maybe Musk will get the point if enough people complain.  Because right now it looks like he's sabotaging his own company.  If there's a financial angle to that, I've no idea what it could be.  But he needs to fix this, immediately.

 

 

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Dad would have liked it: My review of INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY

I was seven years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark first came out.  That film more than any other impacted and steered the direction of my life.  The day after seeing it I had volumes of encyclopedias opened up on the floor and the family Bible along with them.  I wanted to learn all about the Ark of the Covenant and ancient Egypt and World War II and the Nazis.  All heady stuff for a kid in second grade!  What can I say though: my childhood interests were pretty atypical.

I think Dad was pretty impressed though, that a movie could stoke a youngster's intellect like that.  And I know that Dad was impressed with the movie too.  When we see Jones board the seaplane that is going to take him west to Nepal, Dad leaned toward me and told me what kind of plane it was and that he had flown on one years earlier.

It was a magic moment that I don't think I've ever shared before, until now.  It was so weird, being with my father and discovering that he and I were enjoying this movie together.  That for all my weirdness and then his practicality, we had some things in common after all.

Every time an Indiana Jones movie came out after that, Dad and I made sure to catch it as soon as we could make it to the theater.  The next opportunity came in 1984 with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  And once again Dad and I had a shared experience.  Actually, I think everybody in that screening had the same experience: almost puking all over the floor at how gross that movie was!  But still we endured.  Dad still thought of that five years later when it was opening weekend of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "This isn't going to be as sick as the LAST one was, is it?" he asked before we left for the cinema.

And then fifteen years ago came Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Dad and I saw that on its opening day.  Dad admitted that he was confused by it.  I think a lot of people probably were.  It's a film with numerous faults.  But even so I think George Lucas and Steven Spielberg achieved their goal.  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a big-budget homage to the hokey sci-fi "B-movies" of the Nineteen Fifties.  Just as Raiders of the Lost Ark owed its spirit to the Saturday afternoon serials at the movie theaters.  Bear that in mind and the film is spot-on entertaining.

There had been discussions about a fifth Indiana Jones movie after that.  As was often the case, those were produced during those fleeting times when the stars were right and Lucas and Spielberg agreed on a new "MacGuffin" to propel the movie.  And if things had hastened, Dad and I could have seen that movie in the theater too.

Except that never got to be.  Dad passed away a few days before Thanksgiving, almost nine years ago.

So it's like this: I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to see a new Indiana Jones film, at least not when it first debuted.  It... didn't seem right.  Like I wouldn't be honoring Dad's memory, or something.  And then gradually it hit me: Dad would have wanted me to see a new Indy movie if one was ever made.  That I would actually be honoring the fun that he and I had together.

That's what I've borne in mind all these long months leading up to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  A film that I went in absolutely cold about, except for the trailers and the posters.

A short while ago I came back from a day-early showing of this latest chapter in the life of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones.  My expectations were high... but they were also prepared to be crushed.  I braced myself for whatever the next two and a half hours were going to bring.

And now that I have seen it?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn't a perfect film for the franchise: that will always and forever be the place taken by Raiders of the Lost Ark.  But it is not the disappointment that some have been ready for.  I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit.  I will say that it is by a great measure much better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, if that gives any indication for you.

The film opens in 1945: the final days of Nazi Germany.  And if it was at all possible I would absolutely love to see this period of Indy's life developed further.  We know what he was doing before World War II began and the fourth movie implied that Jones was quite active against the Axis powers during the conflict.  But until now we've never seen WHAT the heck he was up to.  Dial of Destiny gives us a good peek at that, and it involves a historical artifact that was at one time the original prize in the first few drafts of Raiders.  When I saw this my face broke out into a huge grin, because I have always wanted to see Indy go after that particular item.

That probably won't happen.  Harrison Ford is eighty and has been quite adamant that this is his final film as Indiana Jones.  But I'm still thankful for this little morsel.  And the Lucasfilm boffins did a beautiful job digitally de-aging Ford by four decades.

Well, it turns out that there is another item that the Nazis are interested in.  One that Indy and fellow historian Basil Shaw are keen on keeping out of German hands.  A thrilling sequence aboard - and atop - a high-speed train later, the two have succeeded in recovering the artifact.

Forward almost a quarter century to 1969.  Jones is still teaching archaeology, but the days when his female students flirted with him are long past.  Time has moved beyond the days of high adventure, and Indy is feeling very much like an anachronism.  The Apollo 11 astronauts have returned from the Moon and it hangs over Indy's head: what is his purpose in a world where man is now landing on other worlds?  Which is something that Indy isn't all that crazy about, given that the United States ended up recruiting many former Nazi scientists in its bid to get ahead of the Soviets in the race to space.  It's a sentiment that is having Indy graciously retired by the administration of his school.

And then Indy gets approached by Helena Shaw: Basil's daughter and Indy's godchild.  She has kinda, sort-of followed in the family tradition.  And her main interest is in that strange object that Indy and Basil heisted from the Nazis.

That's probably all I should say about the plot.  If you're reading this, I want you to go in cold too.  Don't be prepared to stack this Indiana Jones movie against the others in the franchise.  Dial of Destiny does a magnificent job in portraying an Indiana Jones whose age has caught up with him but also might have a spark of fight still in him.  This is not Indy age forty and when the calendar hits 1969 it doesn't pretend to be.  It might be pretty sobering just how much mileage Jones has accrued since we first saw him.

But Indy is not "along for the ride".  And he keeps up with the much younger Helena (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) as well as he's ever done in these movies  Let's have no more jokes about "Indiana Bones".  Nobody is phoning it in with this movie, least of whom Ford.  It is in every way a fit and proper Indiana Jones motion picture, with its scope forwarded a few more decades.  It also hit on all the right elements of the Indy movies, like the red line showing where our hero is en route to next.

Dial of Destiny is cast well.  It also seems that the digital effects were kept to a minimum. This doesn't look like an overly-CGI'ed movie anyway.  James Mangold did a terrific job in directing this film (he also co-wrote the script).  And for what may well be his swan song, John Williams has achieved a mighty accomplishment with the film's music.  You'll be certain to hear a number of familiar motifs that have had a presence in previous Indy movies.  If this really is Williams' last movie before hanging up the baton, he has done so magnificently.

I really don't know what else to say without tipping my hand too much.  Except, that Dad would have liked it.  I feel like I got to enjoy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny for him, in his memory.  It was time well spent on a summer afternoon and I think if we're going to be honest, many other people are going to leave the theater feeling much the same, too.

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"Zathras warn": The trailer for BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME

It was released earlier today.  I've watched this trailer for Babylon 5: The Road Home at least five times now... and I am stoked.  It looks beautiful.  And it seems that they've done an excellent job at casting the voice actors for the characters whose original portrayers have "gone beyond the Rim" over the years.

(I'm hoping that we get at least one look inside Garibaldi's quarters aboard Babylon 5.  Just to see if the painting of Daffy Duck is still there.)

Anyhoo... enjoy!

Babylon 5: The Road Home hits digital download, 4K, and Blu-ray on August 15th, 2023.

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My solemn word that anything you see posted here is genuine

You might have noticed a slight addition to this blog.  It's on the header, toward the right of the screen.  There now appears the following label:

 

 

I have heard all kinds of insane stories about people using ChatGPT and other "artificial intelligences" as something more than a curiosity.  Students have begun having AI write papers for classes.  Some ministers have admitted that they have used ChatGPT to compose sermons for Sunday morning.  In at least one situation a lawyer had AI create his legal paperwork for a court case: the judge was not impressed.

To be truthful, I'm not impressed by any so-called "artificial intelligence" thus far.  Their enthusiasts are claiming that AI is now able to pass the Turing Test (in which a living person can or cannot differentiate verbal responses from a human being or a computer).  It's not something I'm particularly jazzed about, not yet anyway.

But the horse is out of the barn.  And AI is going to start being used for a lot of things from here on out: some with benefit in mind, some not.

I just felt led to let the readers of this blog know, that I am absolutely committed to producing content that comes from my own mind, or from the rare occasion when The Knight Shift has welcomed a guest writer.  It is my vow to you, that there will be no posts or articles that you see here which will have been generated by a machine.  From the very start I've wanted this blog to be my own little online presence.  It's been that for nearly twenty years now.  I won't "take the easy way" and farm out the writing to a computer, no matter how stylish it is at the moment.

That doesn't mean that I may not experiment with AI some and report about what transpires.  Several weeks ago a good friend caused ChatGPT to lock up and get stuck after he convinced the AI that he too was an artificial intelligence.  It was like something you'd see on any number of episodes of the classic Star Trek.  My friend proved how ill-prepared AI currently is to handle complex concepts. I've an idea for my own experiment that I may carry out soon.  If so, I'll be posting screenshots of the AI's responses, rather than copy and paste it into the article.

Okay, well, there you go.  The Knight Shift will completely be a product of my own mind and heart and soul.  I promise.

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Good deals on Indiana Jones computer games

I'm hearing very mixed word about the upcoming motion picture Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  I seriously want this to be a good movie.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all time most favorite film and I found something good in each entry of the franchise.  I even thought that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was pretty good: all you need do is keep in mind that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make a homage to the "flying saucer B-movies" of the Fifties, that they fondly remembered from adolescence.  Do that and it's a perfectly fine movie.

But I want Dial of Destiny to be good because seeing an Indiana Jones movie in the theater together was something Dad and I did with every chapter of the series.  This will be my first time seeing a new Indy movie without him. I want to enjoy this movie in Dad's memory as much as for my own sake.  We'll find out later this month.  I hope there will be some pleasure in writing that review.

Anyhoo, while we're waiting for that next Indiana Jones movie to be released, you might consider immersing yourself in the role with some of the saga's computer games that have been released over the years.  I've played and completed each of these (including all three of Fate of Atlantis's paths) and can vouch for their entertainment value.  And I just checked: there are some very solid deals going on right now if you purchase them from an online vendor.  Over at GOG.com they're each currently selling for a little over two bucks, while Steam's store has them for $5.99.  So you might wanna jump at the opportunity to add one or all of these to your game library while the iron's hot right now.

Like I said, I can attest to how good these games are.  Especially 1992's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.  This classic "point and click" adventure set in 1938 finds Indy and former protege Sophia Hapgood traveling from the streets of New York City to Iceland to Monte Carlo and everywhere in between seeking the lost continent, trying to keep the Nazis from obtaining a mystical metal that could power everything from cars and airplanes to atomic-grade munitions.  One of the things I like about this game is that it has great replay value because of its multiple paths feature.  At a certain point in the game the player chooses from three ways forward: Team (having Hapgood along for the entire ride), Fists (where Indy resolves a lot of conflict with knuckle-baring action) or Wits (encouraging Jones to use his noggin to solve various puzzles).  The version on GOG and Steam is the 1993 "talkie" edition that was released on CD-ROM, taking advantage of multimedia technology that was just coming to market.  Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is still wildly acclaimed now more than thirty years after its release.  I would highly recommend this one if you're at all interested in the world of Indiana Jones.

Some years later - in real life as well as in the Indy universe - Doctor Jones is enjoying the relative post-war calm of 1947 as he looks for Native American artifacts in the Utah desert.  That is where he is found by Sophia Hapgood, who wants to recruit Indy on behalf of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency.  Seems that the Soviets have had scientists scouring the Mid-East looking for the remains of the Tower of Babel.  The goal: locate a mechanism of extraordinary - some would say un-earthly- power.  So begins Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine from 1999.  This game was LucasArts's answer to the popular Tomb Raider games that had been a hit for a few years already.  Admittedly the visuals when compared to the graphics of nearly a quarter-century later leave MUCH to be desired.  But if you can overlook that Infernal Machine is still a rip-roaring adventure around the globe.

And finally, we have 2003's Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.  Set in 1935, this game is something of a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which itself was a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, pretty meta aye?).  The game opens with Indy in Ceylon (what will later become known as Sri Lanka) and there is a positively enormous crocodile that once encountered you will never forget it.  Afterward our archeologist hero is approached by officials with the Chinese government, asking for his aid in recovering the Heart of the Dragon: a black pearl of reputed power that had been secreted away in the resting place of the country's first ruler.  Emperor's Tomb features far better graphics than its predecessor, and also provides a much more action-oriented experience, especially when using Indiana's signature bullwhip.  Emperor's Tomb is a rather hidden gem of the Indyverse: it was kind of overlooked upon first release. Maybe now, twenty years after it was published, it can be discovered anew and better appreciated.

Just in case you're wondering: no, nobody is paying me to hawk these games.  I'm simply doing it because I'm an Indiana Jones nut (hey, I watched every episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) and have always found the world through his eyes to be a fascinating one.  If you dig (ha-ha, "dig", get it?  Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!) a good quest rife with solid story, great action, perplexing puzzles and terrific characterization, and if you just want to experience a bit of what it's like to be cinema's most famous globe-trotting archaeologist, any of these three games will satisfy you.

Come to think of it, I may play one of these also while we're waiting for the next movie to drop.

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Thirty years later: JURASSIC PARK the motion picture

Thirty years ago today, I drove to Brassfield Cinema in Greensboro to catch the film adaptation of Jurassic Park on its opening day. A year and a half earlier during fall break of my high school senior year I bought a paperback copy of the novel by Michael Crichton at what used to be KC Books on Freeway Drive in Reidsville. Between getting the book and the release of the movie I read Jurassic Park six times. It was THAT good.

The cinema was packed. Lots of small children excited about seeing the dinosaurs. Some people said they were going back in to see it again after just getting out from watching it the first time.

 

I can still tell you which screen I sat down to watch it on. After nineteen months of build up, my patience was about to be rewarded.

 

The lights went down. The trailers began. And then the movie started...

 

 

Two hours later I left the theater... and I was possibly the ONE person who was disappointed!!

 

The book was soooo much better. Yes, the effects were magnificent. Pioneering, groundbreaking. But I had an image in my mind of what it would be like and the finished movie didn't meet the bar.

 

In years since I've come to be more forgiving. It was the first time a film had been so dependent on computer generated imagery. The crew of the movie had been faced with a seemingly impossible task. In the end, they stuck the landing and more. I can also better appreciate how such deep characters in the novel - like Ian Malcolm - did wind up translating as good enough to the screen as they were likely to get.

 

At the time I would have given Jurassic Park the movie 2 and 1/2 stars out of 5. There was just so much more from the book - like the pterodactyls - that I wanted to see. Thirty years later, I'd give the movie a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

 

An example of five star motion picture would also come from Steven Spielberg later that same year: Schindler's List. It was good that Spielberg made Jurassic Park first. Had the two movies switched places he wouldn't have been able to produce Jurassic Park at all. But that's a topic for another time.

 

It does not seem like it was thirty years ago. But it was. Wow.

 

So to end this little look back at Jurassic Park the motion picture, here's the song that "Weird Al" Yankovic released a few months later, his parody of "MacArthur Park"...

 

 

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May it never be forgot

Seventy-nine years ago today.

That's a still from the animated special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?  It was the follow-up to the film Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.  Charlie Brown Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and Snoopy are on their way back to America.  They stop and camp for the night and Linus thinks they're something familiar about the place.

Wow.  That premiered forty years ago last week.  It's well worth tracking down and watching.

Remembering all who came ashore at Normandy on this day nearly eighty years ago.

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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun: Carnage-filled fun for gamers of a certain age (and other people too!)

This coming December will mark thirty years since the original computer game Doom was released by id Software.  Gadzooks!!  Where did all that time go to?!?  Well, Doom sucked me in hard and refused to release its grip.  There had been a few first-person shooters before, notably id's own Wolfenstein 3-D.  But it was Doom that showed off the REAL potential of the genre.  And it broke the ground for other high-drama atmospheric entries in the category, like Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3-D, and Quake.  Those in turn showed the way for more advanced games in the forthcoming generations, such as Halo and Call of Duty.

But no matter how advanced home computers and gaming consoles have become, my heart belongs to 1993's Doom and its contemporaries.  Especially for how editable it was, and it seemed like everyone and their brother was creating WAD files containing new graphics (my favorite is still the one that turned the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur), or sounds and music, right on up to new maps to play in.  Yes, the music was MIDI and the graphics were REALLY pixelated when you got up close to an element like scenery or an attacking monster... but that was just part of the charm.  Part of why I and many others came to love those games.

Well, a few weeks ago I heard about Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, from Auroch Digital.  And what grabbed my attention was that it was created in the very same style of the Nineties-era first person shooters like Doom.  The game came out a few days ago and lo and behold a friend gifted it to me on Steam (where it's currently priced around twenty bucks).  So I installed Boltgun and played around with it.

Friends, that evening I felt what it was like to have played Doom for the very first time all those decades ago.  Auroch took the Warhammer 40,000 franchise and gave it a game it didn't know it needed.  If you're a "gamer of a certain age" who was among the first to play classic shooters, you will LOVE Boltgun.

The game has you playing a member of the Ultramarines chapter of the Adeptus Astartes (faux Imperial lingua franca for Space Marines).  If you ever played the Space Marine third-person game, you'll be especially delighted to learn that Boltgun takes place following that tale (and before the upcoming Space Marine II).  Your well-enhanced warrior, Malum Caedo, finds himself on the forge world of Graia.  Just like those Union Aerospace scientists did in Doom, it seems that the local techpriests got to messin' around with stuff they shouldn't have and opened a portal to Hel... I mean, the Warp.  Demons and mutant heretics and traitor marines have come through and are threatening the planet and all around it.  So as Caedo, you set out to make things right... by shootin', explodin', and chainsawin' every thing that's in your way.

Boltgun is an intense game, and the blocky pixelated blood and gore that splatters across your screen is all the more like enjoying a classic again.  Befitting a Warhammer 40,000 product, it is unfettered chaos and wreckage that will have you attacking anything and everything that moves.  I've gotten pretty good at taking aim with the selected firearm (mostly the boltgun) at relatively far targets, then rushing in to chainsword the baddie and any surrounding renegades.  It was like when I was playing Doom for the first time and came upon the chainsaw: Dad was walking past my room and had to see what I was giggling about.  I got the sense that he thought it was pretty gruesome (but also kind of funny).  Lord only knows what he would think of modern gaming.

I'm only three levels into the game, but felt it was already worth recommending to all two of this blog's readers.  I've been pretty well entertained by Boltgun so far.  What I would VERY much like to see however is for Auroch (provided that Games Workshop approves the concept) to open the game up for editing, just like we could do with many of the more popular first-person shooters of that epoch.  At the very least the studio could produce some add-on campaigns.  I would DEFINITELY pay to have Boltgun pitting the player against the Orks, or Tyranids (which reminds me of that legendary megaWAD that transformed Doom into the movie Aliens).

If you have fond memories of the gaming of thirty-some years ago, I think you'll like Boltgun.  It may also entice younger gamers to look around at the titles we had back then and give them a try also.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun can be found for purchase on Steam, again for about twenty bucks.  Not a bad deal if you're looking for something to vent a little angst and tension without having to shoot at the wall like Sherlock did.

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The Visitors came forty years ago this month

I was reminded of something earlier today, and I can't believe that this somehow slipped past the radar screen...

Last week, May 1st, was the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of the NBC television miniseries V.

That doesn't seem possible.  It's like it was only yesterday that creator Kenneth Johnson unleashed his nightmarish vision of fascism on a global scale.  The Visitors came to major cities across the planet, in fifty ships each three miles in diameter.  They looked like us.  They came from a dying planet and they needed humanity's help.  They came in peace.

And it was all a damnable lie.  Their intent was to rape the Earth, seizing every precious natural resource.  And the fate of mankind?  Something truly horrifying.  Four decades later and the scene of all those humans in cold storage still sends a shiver up my spine.

It was a grand endeavor.  What if Nazism had conquered the planet?  V was about that.  Every aspect of true-life fascism was portrayed, magnified through the lens of science-fiction.  But it was also about hope, and taking a stand and fighting back.  More than it frightened us, V inspired us.  The film was dedicated to the resistance fighters, wherever they have been found, past present and future.

This franchise deserved better!  Johnson's original plan as he presented it to NBC was that after the original miniseries, there would be three or four television movies each season, depicting the Visitors' occupation of Earth in various places.  But the executives didn't want that.  They wanted a second miniseries and using that to launch a weekly series.  They got that, but the follow-ups lost a lot of the spirit of the original.  V wasn't something like Star Wars, it was about a much deeper notion.  And then around 2009 ABC tried to reboot the franchise, but it failed for various reasons (I thought it was quite an admirable effort though).

It was an awe-some television experience.  So many moments from it that no doubt still stick out in the minds of many.

But here is my favorite moment.  Not just of the miniseries, but one of my most favorite moments in television, ever.  The final scene of Part One of V, the original miniseries.  Abraham, the elderly Holocaust survivor and his friend Ruby, find a group of teenagers who are vandalizing Visitor propaganda posters.  He stops them.

No, I won't say anything else.  Let the scene speak for itself:

 

 

And from that moment, humanity has a symbol of resistance.

It's a little dated now, but what do you expect from a television miniseries forty years old?  Don't let that stop you from watching it.  And you'll probably be like the rest of us were at the time: wondering how the HECK did any major broadcast network get away with all the stuff that they showed in this movie?

You'll see what I mean when you watch it.

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"Faith manages": Babylon 5 returning with animated movie!

I'm feeling some geeky gears in my gray matter starting to rotate like they haven't in a VERY long time.

Babylon 5 - the single greatest television series that the Nineties ever spawned - is coming back as an animated film.

The show's creator J. Michael Straczynski unloaded the news on Twitter earlier this afternoon.  More details are coming soon, including the movie's title and release date.

I cannot emphasize enough how stoked I am about this.  Babylon 5 was like an extra few years of education on top of what I got in college.  The five-season story about that miles-long space station all alone in the night, the "last best hope for peace" in a galaxy rife with plotting and intrigue, shattered the ceiling both as a broadcast series and for what the medium was capable of giving viewers.  Had it not been for Babylon 5 paving the way, there may have never been a rebooted Battlestar Galactica, or Lost.  Or The Walking Dead for that matter, along with an armful of other shows.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes.  One thing that popped into mind: wouldn't it be really sweet if we saw an animated Garibaldi watching Daffy Duck cartoons?  That would be soooo meta.

If this show has always been just off your radar screen and you want to "get a feel" for it, I wracked my brain trying to think of a clip from the show to put in this post, just a little iota of what it's about.  Someone on Facebook found one and it's perfect.  From the third season episode "Passing Through Gethsemane", Brad Dourif as Brother Edward, telling Delenn (the late Mira Furlan) and Lennier (Bill Mumy) about the last night that Christ spent before His death:

 

Yes, a science-fiction series that is respectful toward the concept of religion.  Just one of many such moments that Babylon 5 came to be renowned for.

This would be something that would compel me to get HBO Max, just to watch this.  I've always loved this show, its universe and this amazing cast of characters.  Ever since first reading about it in Starlog several months before it premiered in the winter of 1993, I've been enchanted by what this series was attempting.  And it pulled it off beautifully.

And now, more is coming.  Thing I'll celebrate by making some bagna cauda.  Hey, it's easier to find than Zima...

 

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