All this health-care talk is giving me a headache. A big one. Intelligent people whose opinions I respect are contradicting each other, sometimes angrily, over the ups and downs of reforming the health-care system (or not reforming it). And that’s not to mention the screaming and screeching going on at health-care town halls. I have a deep and justified fear that insane rumors and irrational emotion are creating the direction for actual legislation affecting 300 million people.

To make things worse, my whole life I’ve been a hopeless moderate, and a very poor debater. I’m often stopped in my tracks when someone makes what appears to be a good point, only to come up with a great counterexample days later. It’s annoying. Thus, my ability to contribute meaningfully to the whole discussion is kinda rusty.

Well, I’m not the most politically active person in the world, but I’m taking a stand here. I’ve been collecting a LOT of articles from various points of view. I’ve literally requested a day off work for this. I’m going to learn everything I possibly can about the health-care debate in the attempt to form a proper opinion.

Currently, I’m in favor of universal health care in a general sense. But I’m ready and willing to change my mind and be convinced otherwise.

Here’s my rules while researching:
— I’m not liberal or conservative; I’m factual. If something isn’t backed up by sound facts, it’s of very limited use to me.
— The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.” Just because your family member was saved by universal health care, or your friend flew from Canada to the States for treatment, doesn’t mean that’s true for everyone.
— I will be active in seeking out opinions that go against mine. I’ve already visited that wingnut Sean Hannity’s website to see what he thinks about improving our health-care system. I’ll be visiting again.
— And I will check and double-check EVERYTHING.

If nobody reads this, that’s fine – until a few minutes ago I planned on this being a personal, private project. But if anyone has points of view to contribute, that’s excellent. Especially those who disagree with me. I wanna hear the most lucid, intelligent arguments I possibly can, and then find out if they’re right.

Health-care day is this coming Wednesday, September 9th. I look forward to learning a lot. I’ll document as much as I can in this space.

Sorry, I should add a joke here to improve readability. How do you keep an Aggie in suspense?

I’ve said before that I’m a fan of trespassing. Well, “fan” doesn’t do the feeling justice. I can’t not see where doors lead, if they’ll let me. I trespass as an instinct.

And as much as I love trespassing, I love nostalgia twice that.

Which leads to my Saturday night, when I made a random detour to the UT campus—a place I know like the back of my hand—and despite that, began prowling around, seeing how it had changed, looking for missing memories behind bushes and around corners.

Around midnight I was walking back to the car, but of course I walked by the Carothers dorm, where my college years—and all the incredible things that would go with them—began.

At the bottom of the loading dock, the door was standing wide open.

I walked down the ramp, glancing around, certain that the place would be crawling with workers.

It wasn’t.

Shocked at my own fortune, I walked straight into the old shuttered empty cafeteria, alibi at the ready (“I’m looking for John… wait, is this Littlefield?”). It lay abandoned, construction equipment everywhere. The cafeteria, to my amusement, is being converted to underground dorm rooms.

I examined the new rooms being built, found some blueprints, and compared its unrecognizable current form to what I remembered (“Ah, so the ice cream station was over HERE”). Saw a bucket with the URHA logo on it, which I recognized from a fundraiser I’d helped organize in 1998.

Steering clear of windows, I found an open door to the Carothers basement, then a stair to the first floor. The whole building was quiet and empty. I walked down the hall, heart pounding, to room 100 at the end. 

The door to my old room was unlocked.

Smiling at the familiar creak of the hinges, noting that the doorknob had changed, I walked into the same room I walked into in August 1996, just under 13 years ago. I double-checked that the blinds were shut, flipped on the bathroom sink light, and was hit hard in the face by the space I knew so freaking well. The smell was the same. The furniture hadn’t changed. The wooden floor was worn, in part by my own 18- and 19-year-old feet. With a feeling somewhere near euphoria, I dropped my backpack on my roommate’s old bed—just as I used to do—and flopped onto mine, laughing at the feel of the cheap mattress. I’m a nostalgia addict, and this moment was a hit of some very, very good drugs.

I stood up and paced the room. (It took 10 seconds; the room is small.) Then sat at the old desk and opened my laptop, mentally comparing it to the goliath Dell desktop that used to sit here.

And… I can think of nothing to actually do. Nothing but sit and stare at every corner, where these two most important years of my life happened, feel the crushing exhilarating weight of memories I’d forgotten I had, memories that I know I’ll soon be forgetting again (and forever, this time). For a few moments I sit here and I despair at all the happiness that’s past, at all the mistakes that linger here. It’s a selfish feeling, for no one else in the whole world cares what went on thirteen years ago in Carothers room 100. But it’s a powerful feeling too.

I’ve never felt as creative as I did at this desk. Never felt the future shining in front of me so clearly, so emptily. Never felt as in love, or as heartbroken. Nor as desperate. Never laughed as hard as I did that first year, when everything was new. For good and for bad, every fucking thing was brand spanking new in this room.

Just before moving out, I clumsily carved my initials into the drywall, just above the door inside the closet. They’re still there. Always will be, I’m sure. Whether I’d visited or not, this room would still be here, ready for a new freshman to form their own memories. And my memories would be here too, decaying, just like everything decays.

But oh, God, thank you anyway for giving me these minutes. For reminding me what that mattress felt like. Letting me hear the air conditioner rattle. This was so worth the risk of getting caught that I’m almost willing to call UTPD on myself just to prove the point.

On May 21, 1998, I would have sworn to you that it was my last night in this room. I was wrong then, but tonight I’ll swear it again. Certainly not alone, not with the walls blank and the building silent, like they are now. And that’s a good thing too. Let the new residents come in a few short weeks. Let them fall in love with learning, with women, with the UT tower, with football, with everything. I’ve had my selfish night of remembering things past. Now I’m gonna let it go. Again.

I’ve been thinking lately about what an impossible, impressive task it is to successfully adapt a book, any book, to an effective screenplay. Scenes that are taut and gripping on paper can come out flat onscreen. Lengthy expository monologues have to be condensed to two lines and one musical crescendo. You have to obliterate one character and completely rewrite another. And, if you’re doing Harry Potter, you have 500 million fans waiting outside your apartment with bats and bricks.

As a second introductory note, I’d become convinced by midway through The Prisoner of Azkaban (that’s the third movie, you Muggle) that there was no way the Harry Potter films could ever match the Harry Potter books, even on their own merits. Put another way, I figured a Harry Potter movie could reach a certain level of quality, but would never keep you from muttering “This was told so much better in the book.”

Which is why I found myself so surprised that I fricking loved Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Steve Kloves, who’s been the adapter for each of the HP scripts, has grown past his slavish scene-by-scene reconstructions that hampered the first few movies. He feels freer now to take the essential elements of the story, and just work out the best way to string them together in movie form. It’s best to see this movie without the book fresh in one’s mind; then again, it made me all the more impressed to recognize how he tinkered and swapped and fiddled to get a cohesive story together. Small additions, like the opening scene where Harry flirts with a Muggle barista, make the whole thing seem more grounded and realistic.

The three principals have gelled together quite nicely over time. Rupert Grint is now the comedy specialist; Daniel Radcliffe inhabits the Harry Potter character much more fully than when the whole enterprise started. Emma Watson is great as well, though in this movie Hermione’s lovesickness is condensed to the point that she’s sometimes a disappointing blubbering mess. (Side note: I like a girl with some curves on her, but I am putting Emma Watson right next to Keira Knightley on my Hot Waif List™.)

David Yates, meanwhile, is proving the best of the Harry Potter directors – no wonder they’re sticking with him through the final four movies. He strings together interesting shots, edits together a fantastic montage showing Harry’s first encounter with the Half-Blood Prince, and to quote another reviewer, is the first director to “really GET Quidditch.”

The rest of the film’s strength lies in the supporting cast, which has been true of every Potter film, from Kenneth Branagh’s Gilderoy Lockhart to Imelda Staunton’s Dolores Umbridge. (This episode’s big-name guest slot goes to Jim Broadbent, who knocks it out of the park as visiting professor Horace Slughorn.) Some of the fellow students do surprisingly well, too; young Evanna Lynch continues to make me giggle as Luna Lovegood, who sports an expanded role from the book. (Don’t we all know a loopy girl just like her?) After being the obnoxiously EEEEVIL student for five films, it’s a relief that Draco Malfoy gets to display some complexity, too.

It’s a shame that other supporting players, including Hagrid, Lupin, and Tonks, get brief screen time. But it’s a testament to this rich fictional world that it feels so natural for them to come and go in the background, just as people do in real life. (Another clever shorthand: Kloves abbreviates the entire Lupin-and-Tonks love story to a single instance of one calling the other “sweetheart.”)

Okay, there’s a few gripes and flaws in the adaptation; this isn’t the best picture of the year or anything (though it’s probably the best big-budget movie of the summer). I’ll repeat that direct comparison with the book is unwise, but there’s at least one major demolition (to be intentionally vague) that serves no obvious purpose. And Harry’s behavior in the climactic scene makes much less sense than it did in the book when he’d been Stupefied.

Still, I grinned almost the whole way through. Having recently finished the 7th book, I was instantly impatient to see the next installment – and though it’s a transparent move by Warner Brothers to grab as much money as possible, it’s still quite a relief to see that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is being split into two movies. Every movie in this series has been superior to the one previous, and they’ve finally won me over.

This is a post. A post is this.

Kings is an awesome show.

This is pretty much my little secret, since my wife and myself seem to be the only two people on the planet who actually watch the thing. It had crap ratings starting with its premiere episode, and NBC quickly axed it; after a multi-month delay, it’s finally burning off the rest of the 12 episodes at 7:00 on Saturday nights, where none but those with the most prepared of DVRs will see it. (Fingers crossed that it doesn’t end with some epic cliffhanger that will never ever be resolved.)

Kings takes place in an alternate universe where supreme-commander, divine-right royalty is still the way of the world. The story is set in Gilboa, an analogue to the good old USA, with the incomparable Ian McShane as King Silas. McShane’s Al Swearengen on "Deadwood" was maybe the best single character in television history, and he stays in fine form migrating the same bad-ass king-of-the-castle vibe to a much more literal setting.

Kings takes place in kind of a modern Old Testament time, where God is an active participant in the goings-on (the king literally makes a deal with the devil in one especially creepy episode). Loosely following the story of King David – the pilot episode even features a Goliath – the show introduces a young soldier (David Shepherd! Get it?) who’s stuck in the trenches of a long-running warwith the evil neighbor-country, Gath. (Nice name, Gaaaath.)

David manages a morale-boosting bit of heroics on the front lines, and earns himself 15 minutes of fame and a trip to visit the capitol and meet the king. He finds himself thrust into the spotlight (where, big surprise, he falls for the beautiful princess). Various coincidences – some seemingly orchestrated by God himself – cause David to assume a role as Silas’s spokesman, despite the wishes of Silas himself, who sees David as a future usurper. A halo of butterflies is involved. Bear with me.

An ensemble cast populates the palace. Eamonn Walker takes on the Mr. Eko role as the spiritual advisor who, not three episodes in, tells Silas that he has fallen out of God’s grace. (That’ll spoil your lunch.) Character actor Dylan Baker, whose wormy screen presence always annoyed the crap outta me, finally clicks as Silas’s scheming brother-in-law, whose Buy-N-Large corporation has undue influence over the crown. Macaulay Culkin, of all people, guest-stars as Barker’s oddball son. Wes Studi makes for an awesome right-hand military man.

As though the producers knew their time was short, events move at a lightning pace through each of the twelve episodes, some plots proving too trite for one’s liking. The princess rivals Kim Bauer for her ability to get into trouble. Not unlike any given episode of Star Trek, it always seems to be the leads (David, and sometimes Silas’s jealous heir, Jack) who go out on the dangerous missions.

Look, Kings goes over the top into sillytown at LEAST once per episode, so I wouldn’t blame anyone for hating it. The old-timey dialogue doesn’t work as well as it did on Deadwood (though Ian McShane could read Laffy Taffy jokes and deserve an Emmy). The show is frequently pretentious times ten, and tosses out 24-style coincidences to tie everything together. In a word, it’s imperfect.

But you have to admire its ballsiness. It’s a high-concept show with a higher concept than any other I can remember. The simple premise of an all-powerful ruler in what by all other signs should be a liberal capitalist democracy is tantalizing. And I have a Mike Rowe-level mancrush on Ian McShane.