Skyfall: Good, Not Perfect

First things first, let’s get this out of the way: go see Skyfall. It’s good, I recommend watching it. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can look at it a little bit more critically. There were things that I liked and things that I didn’t like about it. Spoiler alert: there may be spoilers in this. It depends what you define as a spoiler, so I’m just going to tell you that I’m going to talk about the movie and some of what happens in it. If you haven’t seen it, come back to this after you have.

In Defense of Writing: An Attack on Writing

“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” –Mark Twain

I admit, I’ve used this as a mantra throughout my school days (which are soon coming to an end) as an excuse to blow off classes as impractical and useless. I’ve asked my share of teachers “When will I ever need this?” in response to their lessons. In short, I was a typical student: mistrustful of the skills I was being taught in the classroom and confident that all I needed to know would be learned outside the oppressive walls of the school.

"The Master": Lots of Things Are Good, But Not All

After watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, I didn’t know what to say. The subject matter was very interesting, analyzing the different personalities involved in a cult of personality. The acting performances by Joaquin Phoenix (playing Freddie Quell) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (as Lancaster Dodd) will undoubtedly, and deservedly, garner plenty of attention when award season comes. The cinematography is stunning. Strong recurring visuals, such as the churning blue water behind a boat or Freddie lying beside his sand maiden, are sprinkled throughout.

And yet, I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what the movie is about, and I don’t think I would be able to if I watched it again. While clearly based on/inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, it’s not a dramatic documentation of the leader or his movement. It reads more as a case study of the types of people in a movement of this nature: the master and the servant. Again, there is an abundance of substance in that approach and Andersen touches on some of it. But we never get a clear idea of where within that relationship he really wants explore. Because of that, the characters cycle through doubt, falling outs, and reconciliation without progressing much further.

Tebow, the Option, and the NFL

Why won't the option work in the NFL? The question has been asked many times, and the same answers are used every time. One of the arguments is that NFL quarterbacks can't take the beating that option quarterbacks are required to take. This same argument has been transferred to Tim Tebow now that the Broncos have used the option (fairly successfully) against the Chiefs. Why?

Penn State "Protests"

 If you look at pretty much any significant social movement in the 20th century, chances are that a good portion of those within the movement were college students (or college-aged kids) and that many of their demonstrations and protests happened on their college campuses. Civil rights, Vietnam, apartheid. All of these had their roots within the youth, and it's no coincidence. College should be a "coming of age" time. It's a time when kids make the transition from living in their parents' world to seeing what their world is going to be. During this time, their eyes are opened to many different ideas and events going on around them that they may not have had full awareness of, or realized the implications on their own future. They must take this new influx of knowledge and try to make sense of it all. Sometimes when these students look at the world from this new perspective that what is out there is theirs to inherit, they don't like what they see. They see injustice, abuse in the world. It's at this time that in the past these young people decided to take ownership of their futures, to take it upon themselves to change the world that they were about to step into.

USMNT Roster - Costa Rica/Belgium Edition

USMNT takes on Costa Rica on September 2 at 10 p.m. CT at the Home Depot Center in California and will travel to Europe for a September 6 match against Belgium at 1:30 p.m. CT. The following is the 24 man roster along with my analysis, complete with calls for Houston Dynamo players to be called up.

The Jürgen is Here

Do you know how to type an umlaut on your keyboard? (It's alt+U, at least for me) It's time to learn, because after years of pining for him, Jürgen Klinsmann is now the head man of the USMNT. Or has it has recently been stylized, ÜSMNT. Clever, right?