The Fiscal Fix
Posted: January 23, 2013 Filed under: MNSHW, Politics | Tags: budget, government, politics 1 CommentOnce again, a brief interlude from My Not So Humble Wife.
After weeks of foreboding speculation about the impending fiscal cliff, the New Year came and went with no evidence of the sky actually falling. This might be due to the fact that our decisive and ever diligent Congress and Senate solved the fiscal crisis on New Year’s Eve by kicking the deadline out until March. A brilliant piece of legislative procrastination.
Now we’re in for more endless argument over what combination of 1) spending cuts and 2) tax increases should be enacted to reduce our roughly $16 trillion federal deficit. But there is a third option that I’ve never heard mentioned. Do you know how the government handles budgets? If not, this will astound you.
Throughout all government agencies, the military, and governmental run programs each department is generally given an annual budget amount to play with for the year. Here’s the problem: at the end of the year if the department didn’t spend all their money, they won’t be able to get a budget increase in the next fiscal year.
Let me say that again, if they don’t spend all the money they asked for last year they won’t get more money in their budget for the next year.
This means there is no incentive whatsoever for any government funded agency to save money. In fact, starting around October, government agencies that have a budget surplus rush out to ditch any remaining cash. Under our current budgeting system, they pretty much have to or they risk being underfunded in the next fiscal year. Excess spending of this nature may be relatively small potatoes for any one agency or department but all together it’s a significant amount.
What to Do With Extra Budget Money at the End of the Fiscal Year?
Photo Credit: USBacklash.org at http://usbacklash.org
I’ll admit with no hesitation that I’m not an expert on finance or government spending. However, I think that a different budget process that incentivized saving over spending might reasonably be developed. One idea would be to place more emphasis on accurate estimations. Suppose there are two possible budget proposal review processes, one for those groups whose spent close to what they were budgeted for the prior year and one for those groups whose budget wasn’t accurate for actual spending.
For example, the newly proposed budget for groups whose spending was within say, 5% of their budget from the prior year could be on a fast-tracked approval process. Those groups whose spending differed (either over or under) by more than 5% would face a review that required additional justification. To avoid having departments just spend money until they were within the 5% range, you could allow money to be designated as savings without any penalty and which would then just be applied to the next year’s budget. This would provide incentive for departments not to overspend and would remove the current undesirable incentive of spending additional funds wastefully.
This one example could make the difference between funding or not funding a critical program and there are probably other systemic issues that could be addressed as well. So I hope that as we continue to debate how to balance the national checkbook we look for savings within the systems as well as at cut and tax remedies.
I Will Choose a Path That’s Clear
Posted: January 18, 2013 Filed under: Culture, Musings, Politics | Tags: America, culture, philosophy, politics, society, tyranny Leave a commentRecently on Facebook I’ve been having a spirited (but civil!) debate with a friend of mine regarding gun control. Unsurprisingly at some point relatively early in the discussion my argument incorporated the issue of defense against tyranny, which is an argument that I stand by. He actually pivoted from there to a surprisingly apt and unusual comparison, one that I have not before seen, invoking the specter of 1984 before I could, but then he made the point that “Brave New World illustrates that humanity can be lulled into submission into serving the interest of a minority by luxuries and promoting self interest.”
It was a different tack, and one that at least took our discussion in a new direction, but it also got me thinking. One of my great loves is dystopian literature (although the sub-genre of cyberpunk is my favorite), and obviously I have given more than a little thought about what shape society takes both now and as we move into the future. So as we continue forward, which is the move likely totalitarian prospect: the iron hand or the velvet glove?
Historically I would say it’s both. Consider one of the most successful (if you can use the word without being offensive) totalitarian regimes in history, the Nazi regime. By combining a rule based on fear and oppression with strong economic growth that gave the “approved” majority of the populace not only the necessities they had been denied but the luxuries they craved, the Nazis turned Germany from a failed state into a powerhouse virtually overnight. I’d have to do a lot more research than I’m ready to right now to call this a thesis, but it does provide some (disturbing) food for thought, if anyone has a strong enough stomach for it.
The iron hand is easy to fear, and just as easy to dismiss. We always assume we’ll see it coming; after all, why would we allow someone or some government to drag people out of their homes in the middle of the night, lock them up for no reason, torture them, or execute them without good reason? We’re good people, we live in a good society, we’re better than that. But then, all it takes is one bad day; one evil act. Then the world changes.
On the other hand, the velvet glove seems far more likely. Stories of people giving in to addiction, vice, and other temptations are as old as… well, stories, and the idea of the guy who controls your hunger controlling you has a great deal of appeal. But consider the recent Occupy movement. Here is a case of rebellion against a system that tried to control the populace by controlling luxury, Big Business in cahoots with Big Government (and the system fought back). Keep in mind plenty of Occupy supporters were not the homeless, the starving, or folks who struggled their whole lives to make it day to day; they were college graduates, middle class and above, theoretically bought and paid for.
So what do they both have in common, and how is it that tyranny in any form finally does manage to take hold? If the neither the iron hand nor the velvet glove is sufficient unto itself, how do they succeed together? Is it simply that “one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away” is enough to confuse people? I wonder. Perhaps it’s more complex, or perhaps it is simpler than that.
According to the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. It’s an interesting philosophy, but what if it goes further than that? Can it be posited that nobody can truly be governed without their consent? After all, you can put a gun to my head but that won’t make my body move; you will simply be putting me under duress. If it is sufficient duress, I will take action, but it is still my action, not yours. Your action was coercing me in the fist place. Coerce enough people and you have a tyrannical government, but it is by the consent of the governed, even if that consent is given under duress.
Viewed in that way, we are always standing between Scylla and Charybdis, between totalitarian oppression and totalitarian luxury. The only thing that prevents it is our exercise of free will, a refusal to allow ourselves to be ruled by others. So long as we view certain things as right and others as wrong, and we hold to those principles in the face of opposition (even unto death), we can and will stand against tyranny. That is the cost of freedom. The cost of society, of civilization, is learning to live with each other, to find the reasonable compromises between my ideals and principles and yours, such that we can live together without my bowing to your tyranny or you bowing to mine.
As soon as I get that one figured out, I’ll let you know.
On A Road to Nowhere
Posted: January 16, 2013 Filed under: Politics | Tags: politics, traffic, Virginia Leave a commentFor as long as I can remember living in Virginia (so basically since I was 16), traffic congestion has been an ongoing issue. In particular, the debate has raged about whether and how to pay for road maintenance, road expansion, public transportation, the works. The most common answer has been raising the gas tax, but both Virginia and Washington state are discovering that this is becoming less viable as vehicles become more fuel efficient, particularly as people switch over to alternative fuel vehicles (darn those perverse incentives!).
Naturally, I wouldn’t broach the issue if I didn’t have a suggestion to offer, and naturally it’s one that would never fly in the world of real politik, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. It seems to me what we have here is an issue of putting the cost in the wrong place (as usual), and even the attempts to switch the cost are being driven by (at best) political expediency and (at worst) political ideology. I suggest we get back to the original issue, determine where the costs are being created, and find a way to apply those costs to the people creating them in the first place in the most direct way possible.
The first step is this: consider the actual cost we are facing. The issue at hand is not one of too few roads, or too many cars, or too few people taking public transit. The issue at hand is choice in transportation. That choice is influenced, at least on the margin, by cost (convenience and accessibility obviously play a factor as well, but those are ultimately a factor of cost as well). The issue is not a matter of whether people are or are not purchasing gasoline, nor the purpose to which they put it. After all, I use gasoline to run my lawn mower, but that has no impact on the quality of the roads in Virginia or anywhere else; however if my neighbor down the street owns an electric car he uses no gasoline as he adds stress and traffic to the highways and byways. The same applies for buses, rail, or any other form of transit. Let the cost fall where it should, and let the revenue generated be applied to support the source that generated it.
How would we do it? One example that easily presents itself is the new toll lanes on 495. All that is required to use these express lanes is an E-ZPass, which can also be used on any road that accepts E-ZPass in VA or thirteen other states. Right off the bat you can start charging people for the roads they use, not the gas they burn, and you can even track where the funds are being generated so that you know which roads should get the funding for either repair or expansion. Taking this idea one step further, you could even set varying levels of tolls depending on the level of anticipated traffic demand in the area, charging more for high-traffic times and less for lower traffic times (somewhat like Metro does with their Peak and Off-Peak fares).
And hey, speaking of Metro, how about we stop subsidizing public transportation and actually charge people what it costs? I’m sure once we stop subsidizing the roads people will see the real value of public transit, since the real cost of public roads is significant but most people never see them, what with it being paid for out of taxes. Shift that burden onto drivers, and suddenly folks will actually be able to make a real apples-to-apples comparison: is it really worth the cost of driving to work considering the tolls, gas, cost of a car, parking, etc., or would you rather have the inconvenience of taking Metro? Speaking as a driver myself… I have no idea. I’ve never paid the real cost, up front, of driving on a road anywhere, so I can’t make a serious informed decision. I can only make a decision based on the reality in front of me, which is that roads are free, my car is convenient, and Metro is neither.
And of course that’s why it would never fly. Any time you try to shift the actual cost of a thing or service to the people who actually benefit from it there are howls of outrage. “It’s unfair!” “It’s regressive!” “Let the rich pay their fair share!” (That last one is my favorite.) Setting aside any argument about whether the rich actually benefit more from the existence of public roads (I didn’t realize they enjoy driving more than I do), let’s tackle the other two.
As for being unfair, I’ll speak as a driver once more when I say it’s unfair for someone else to shoulder the burden of paying for the roads I drive on. Every day I drive to work, someone else is paying for every mile I drive. That’s pretty much the definition of “unfair”. As far as being “regressive”, my understanding of that argument (and I could well be wrong here) is that it hurts people more the less they make. While there could be a kernel of truth to it, I would like to point out that the less money you have, the less driving you are likely to do. Ergo, the less likely you are to be hit by a toll. This plan is no more regressive than the gas tax or any tax on vehicles, and in many ways is less so, in that it only charges you for distance spent driving on public roads; any other use of gasoline (including time spent idling in traffic) doesn’t count against you. In many ways that would seem to me to at least be less regressive.
Is this a perfect plan? Far from it. But it at least starts to shift the costs where they belong, aligning incentives so that people will have a reason to consider the choices they make, and if nothing else it will more honestly generate revenue in line with the source of the costs. That’s a far better thing than simply waving a hand and declaring a fiat fix based on political whims.
Who’s Your Daddy?
Posted: January 14, 2013 Filed under: Politics | Tags: Kansas, law, politics, sperm donor 3 CommentsIn case you haven’t heard, there’s another guy trying to dodge child support payments, and the state of Kansas is going after him with everything they’ve got. Of course, this one’s a little different. Turns out there’s three parents involved, and according to him, he’s not one of them. Unfortunately for him and the other two parents, Kansas doesn’t recognize gay marriage, so the government has decided he’s on the hook.
Here’s the story: a lesbian couple advertised for a sperm donor, a man answered the ad, and nine months later a baby was born (I’ll assume you can fill in the details). There was a contract between the three of them stipulating he had no parental rights or responsibilities. However, there was also no doctor involved. Later the couple in question split up, and the custodial parent (according to Kansas, the only parent) applied for state benefits. In accordance with state law, the state of Kansas went after the non-custodial parent for child support, including back payments. But wait, were you paying attention earlier? Kansas doesn’t recognize same-sex unions in any way, so there is no non-custodial parent, right?
Wrong.
According to Kansas law, because there was no doctor involved, the sperm donor wasn’t legally a sperm donor, he was the daddy. Never mind he had a contract stating otherwise that all three were a party to.
To add to the fun of all this, the government of Kansas is sending mixed messages. According to an interview on NPR, “[i]n 2007, we had a case involved where a guy who had been a sperm donor donated sperm for a woman to become pregnant and then decided afterwards that he wanted to be considered the father, wanted to have parental rights and responsibilities. That case went clear to the Kansas Supreme Court and they said that he doesn’t get the parental rights and responsibilities.” What’s the difference? Well, there’s one I know for sure, and one I can guess. The one I know for sure is there was a doctor involved in the 2007 case. I’m also guessing the woman wasn’t in a lesbian relationship.
So what we have is the State of Kansas making two different arguments: you don’t get to be the father of a child unless we say you are the father of the child, and the only time we will say you are the father of the child is when it benefits us to say you are. Clearly that would be when there’s money on the line, but there’s also an insidious whiff of anti-homosexual backdoor lawmaking going on here. After all, if we can scare enough people into not helping homosexuals have children, we can make sure no homosexuals have children, right?
There’s three problems I see here. The first is that this is a clear case of violation of private contract. This isn’t one party to the contract saying the contract is unfair or invalid, nor is it a case of the state having a serious vested interest in stepping in to prevent one person from being taken advantage of. Three adults entered into a mutual, legal contract, and the state simply didn’t like the contract they entered. The fact there is a third adult party willing to play the role of non-custodial parent if she were legally allowed to only strengthens that point.
The second issue is that this is clearly a case of inconsistent law enforcement. If the state does not want sperm donors to have parental rights once they have signed a contract as such, then they need to enforce that consistently. The presence of a doctor does not change anything (although if they wanted to require a lawyer, notary, or other witness that is consistent with legal proceeding that might be different). Either the case in 2007 was wrong, or this one is. While I have my preference as to which is the correct answer, at least a consistent ruling makes for sound governance. Doing otherwise is simply making up the rules as they go along, picking and choosing whatever is most convenient at the moment, and the word for that is “dictatorship”.
Finally, I have no idea who they think they’re helping. This doesn’t make either of the mothers better off; the sperm donor is certainly no better off; the child in this case is no better off; and the people of the state of Kansas are made to look like backward fools because of their politicians. At this point the best possible outcome would be an outright dismissal of the case with a strong admonishment from the bench for the foolish notion that the state can simply pick which contracts it will or will not enforce based on its own twisted ideas of what’s right or, worse, its own convenience.
Dirty, Dirty Men
Posted: January 11, 2013 Filed under: Humor, MNSHW | Tags: cleaning, men, women 5 CommentsBy special request (and to maintain tranquility in my home), I bring you this rebuttal post from My Not So Humble Wife.
After extensive observation I have finally answered a question that has plagued women world-wide for centuries. Why in God’s name do men never clean?!
Let me establish my man observing credentials. For over five years I have lived with my Not So Humble Husband and two dirty male roommates who, for the sake of anonymity, I will refer to as Monkey Boy and Grouchy Gus.
I have tried every method imaginable to get them to clean. Chore schedules, bribery, begging, threats, and the silent treatment had minimal success. Eventually I resorted to “fine then, if you won’t clean then neither will I, and you jerks can just wallow in your own disgusting filth” tactic. If I didn’t do any cleaning, eventually they would HAVE to break down and pick up a damn broom. Right? Right?!
I waited for two weeks twitching when the garbage can overfilled, furious as the carpet developed a layer of filth, and at last surrendered when my Not So Humble Husband proudly completed a three foot high tower of empty Coke cans in the basement. But my defeat was not totally in vain.
I had inadvertently discovered that the vast majority of men have a significantly higher “filth tolerance” than women do. Filth tolerance can be best defined as the messiest point at which you look around your home and decide it’s too gross for human habitation and must be cleaned.
On a filth tolerance scale from 1 to 10, a 1 is equal to “slight dishevelment”, 5 is “day after a wild party”, and 10 is “crack house”. As you can see illustrated in the graph below, I feel that I MUST clean around 3.5 when the floor is dirty, stuff strewn about, something smells, and everything is dusty. Whereas the disgusting men I live with range from 6.5 to 9.5 and will barely register old food containers growing mold, dust thick enough to plant shrubbery, and unknown substances dripping down the wall into a pool on the floor.
But, you may be wondering, WHY is the male filth tolerance SO much higher? I’m glad you asked. It’s my hypothesis that men have developed “filth filtering vision”. It’s well established than men are more single-minded than woman. When they enter a room their filth filter vision kicks in and unable to distinguish any detail that is not relevant to their current objective.
For example, a woman might go into the kitchen for a snack and see a very dirty kitchen (Fig. 1). Meanwhile men with low filth filtering will just see a kitchen (Fig. 2) and men with high filth filters may only be able to perceive those items significant to achieving their goal of finding food (Fig. 3).
Fig 1. Women Vision
Picture image credit: Cleaning Angels (http://www.cleaning-angels.co.uk/)
Fig 2. Man Vision (Low Filth Filter)
Picture Credit: Crafty Culinarian (http://craftyculinarian.wordpress.com)
Fig 3. Man Vision (High Filth Filter)
Picture Credit: How to Survive Alien Invasion Novels (http://howtosurvivealieninvasionnovels.blogspot.com/)
I can only hope that by sharing my discovery, humanity can unite to find a cure to the epidemic of male filth filtering (MFF) which takes a heavy toll on women worldwide and contributes to over seventy five percent of the annual incidents of heavy sighs, evil glares, nagging in shrill tones, and restricted bedroom privileges.
Pray for a cure.
Free Spoiler Zone
Posted: January 9, 2013 Filed under: Culture, Internet | Tags: culture, etiquette, internet, pop culture, popular culture, society, spoilers 3 CommentsI am the internet’s worst nightmare.
The other night I was listening to Marketplace on NPR (I love Kai Ryssdal, I may have mentioned this before) and I heard a fantastic commentary on the issue of spoilers. Beth Teitell made an excellent case about how we’re all setting ourselves up for spoiler disappointment while at the same time becoming more sensitive to spoilers.
I am the worst of the lot.
Just the other week I finally watched Jekyll (2007) from the BBC on Netflix. Note the year on that one. If someone had told me any of the salient plot points before I watched it, I would have been beyond infuriated, but really, it’s been around for over five years. How could they know? More importantly, why should they care?
This is typical for me. I watch movies months after they leave the theater (with rare exceptions), and I’m usually several weeks behind in my TV show watching. I’ve been known to run away from conversations I’m not even party to with my hands over my ears screaming “NO SPOILERS!” like a lunatic, and that’s just in real life. On the internet I’m far worse.
But the truth is we can’t avoid spoilers, nor can we reasonably expect to. Part of the fun of pop culture is that it’s popular (hence the “pop”), and we want to talk about it. Denying people that just so we can enjoy things on our own schedule is selfish. At the same time, expecting everyone to be able to invest their entire lives in keeping up with everything worthwhile all the time is just silly, too. It’s not like we’re still in the age of single-screen movie theaters, three TV channels, and nobody to talk to but the people in our small towns.
Therefore, I am declaring a Free Spoiler Zone.
It works like this: there is a statute of limitations on the right to declare “NO SPOILERS!” Once the statute of limitations has passed, it is incumbent on each individual to either be in the know or to guard themselves; prior to that proper decorum requires the asking of “Have you seen…” or a similar inquiry before discussing anything, as well as a reasonable warning to anyone joining the conversation. This should help alleviate the distress being caused by our over-saturated, media hyped world, and allow us all some peace.
The rules I suggest are as follows:
1. An absolute moratorium on any communications within 24 hours of an event. Don’t even talk about it; you don’t know who is in earshot. I don’t even want to hear “OMFG THAT WAS SO GOOD!” or “Meh, this week’s episode was okay.” Let me find out for myself, especially if I’m in a different time zone.
2. Barring sporting events, reality TV, or other “real time” entertainment, any electronic communication for the first week must be preceded by the phrase “SPOILER ALERT”. If it’s real time entertainment, after 24 hours you take your chances, but please, don’t be a jerk; if you know someone TiVo’d it, don’t ruin the big game.
3. For all other TV shows, every in-person conversation must include “Have you seen…” or some other socially acceptable form of spoiler alert for one month. After that, you need to either clear out your DVR or climb out from under the rock.
4. For movies you get one month of nobody says nothing. Then all bets are off.
5. Actual news events are exempt from these rules. News should be shared.
6. Feel free to share political shows, commentary, debates, et al to your heart’s content. You deserve what you get.
While I am willing to negotiate on the length of time involved in each rule, I truly believe that following these rules will improve our lives. Everyone will have a free and fair chance to enjoy their quality entertainment without fear of having it ruined, while at the same time encouraging and enhancing the sort of interpersonal relationships we’re losing for fear of not being able to share our love of the great and diverse culture we all enjoy.
However, I am declaring one category of entertainment completely off-limits to spoilers (by special request from My Not So Humble Wife): books. I actually have to agree with her on this one, for a lot of reasons. People read at different speeds, borrow books from each other, and most of all we want to encourage more literacy, not less. Besides, I haven’t finished the Illiad yet, and I can’t wait to find out how it ends.
Classical Liberal, New Media
Posted: January 7, 2013 Filed under: Culture, Internet | Tags: culture, digital media, internet, technology, twitter Leave a commentLast semester I had the good fortune to take a class on Digital Rhetoric and New Media. It was a fascinating class, and it offered me the opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of new concepts, particularly among them the idea of media specific analysis. To some degree most of us have had some exposure to this, as we don’t analyze movies quite the same way we do books, but we went into it in much greater depth and detail in the class, as well as trying our hands at doing digital art projects.
Coming out of that class, one of the concepts I was introduced to was the idea of “twitter novels” or “twitter stories”. The idea is somewhat flexible (as social media seems to be), but one version of it is taking an existing work and adapting it for Twitter. I was inspired by the idea and decided to try my hand at it. I selected as my source the essay “I, Pencil” by Leonard E. Read, working off the 50th anniversary edition published by the Foundation for Economic Education.
The experience was interesting, to say the least. First I went through the entire essay, trying to break it down into individual tweet-size pieces. This wasn’t as simple as just writing it out 140 characters at a time, because I wanted to accomplish several things with each tweet: I wanted them to seem “real”, I wanted them to be interesting in themselves, and I wanted them to be re-tweetable. Part of making them seem “real” was adjusting the voice of the essay, which is very formal, and making it less so. While I didn’t succeed everywhere, I do think I managed to make it more casual overall. One of the things I discovered in this process is that I am not very comfortable with Twitter; it was only just before I moved into the launch phase that I realized I hadn’t really made use of hash tags, and I had to go back through and find places they naturally fit. I did manage to incorporate bits and pieces of the web here and there, so I feel pretty good about that.
Actually scheduling the project was more of a challenge. Considering the work totaled over 100 tweets, I obviously wasn’t going to be sending them all manually. I had originally planned to send them in half-hour increments (give or take), and after talking with a coworker who is more versed in the use of social media than I am I decided to use Tweetdeck. Now, unless I am missing something, Tweetdeck could be a lot more user-friendly. My original schedule would have stretched out for at least a week (I only intend to have tweets go out between 10 am and 4 pm so I can monitor them for issues), and I had to adjust the schedule. Even being able to keep track of what I had already scheduled was a hassle, as Tweetdeck kept shuffling my pre-scheduled tweets out of chronological order, which does not fill me with confidence. When I tried to reschedule some, it looked like the program has just duplicated rather than rescheduling the tweets. Finally I tried to clear them all out, and upon refreshing things looked fine. Then I deleted that whole column, set it up again, and a whole set of tweets showed up again!
Once I finally got past those difficulties, I started over. I put all my tweets in a spreadsheet and set up a schedule there. I then copied them over and scheduled them rigorously according to the timetable I had established. At the time of writing this they sit queued up, waiting to launch. Over the next few days I’ll see how well the process turned out.
For those who are interested in trying a project like this, here is my advice:
1. Write your tweets in advance. This will give you time to think about what you want to say, make adjustments as needed, and have a cohesive story to present. Don’t think of Twitter (or any other social media platform) as your creative medium; it is your presentation medium. George Lucas doesn’t write the script as he’s filming, neither should you.
2. Think about the medium you are using. What makes it distinctive and unique? Why are you using this medium to tell your story instead of another? In particular familiarize yourself with the conventions of the medium. That’s not to say you can’t break convention (many artists have done so quite successfully), but do it deliberately.
3. Plan, plan, plan. It’s not just the writing, it’s all the tools you will use. If I was more familiar with the ins and outs of Tweetdeck, Bit.ly, and Twitter in general, I would have had an easier time, but just knowing Word and Excel and having a good vision for the shape of the project (I spent weeks working it out in my head) saved me when I hit roadblocks.
4. Have fun with it! In the end this is still an experimental medium, which means there are few if any rules, and this is the chance to do something truly new and innovative.
If you’d like to see my experiment in Twitter writing, it runs this week starting Jan. 7, 10 AM EST at @IPencil2013. If you have your own digital works, please share them in the comments below!
Do You Hear the People Sing?
Posted: January 4, 2013 Filed under: Culture | Tags: culture, entertainment, Les Mis, Les Miserables, movies, reviews 8 CommentsI’m going to say this up front: when I saw Les Miserables, I cried like a baby through the whole thing. I’m man enough to admit it. You’d pretty much have to have a heart of stone not to. I’ve been in love with the music of Les Mis for about twenty years, but I’ve never had a chance to see it in person (and the half staged, half not production they run perennially on PBS every time they need to shake loose a few more nickels doesn’t count either). I’m trying to convey the extremely high expectations and hopes I had going into this film before you read any further.
That having been said, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, I suggest you stop reading, buy a ticket to the next showing, and go out to see it. It’s really that good. The first word to come to mind after it was over was “epic”. If there was a chance in hell of a musical being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, this would be the one. Certainly there are more than a few deserved nominations to go around.
First, the cinematography is stunning. Rather than simply transporting the stage show to film, cinematographer Danny Cohen uses the film medium to create a complete and compelling world full of vivid and rich imagery and (here’s that word again) epic scale. The staging of every scene is perfect, vast and overwhelming in the prison yard, majestic and beautiful when looking out over the rooftops of Paris, and time and confining when having a sword-fight in a hospital.
One of the great strengths of film over stage is the ability to do close-ups, to bring intimacy with the performers that simply isn’t available even in a black box performance (and who ever heard of Les Mis being done in a black box, anyway?), and director Tom Hooper does an excellent job of utilizing the various levels of intimacy available to draw more out of the characters than would otherwise be possible. The sets are also much more flexible, and the use of space is often fun and agile without feeling “dancy” or overblown. Most of all was the unique decision to film with live singing rather than a playback, which gives even more of a sense of intimacy and believability to the moments in the film; there is none of the traditional sense of “let’s all suddenly break into song!” associated with movie musicals, but rather a natural transition in and out of music that lends itself to a perfect suspension of disbelief.
There were also some key decisions made in terms of what material to include and what to cut, but they were done with a careful eye toward shaping a coherent narrative, and unless one of your favorite songs is missing I doubt you will even notice (unless like me you absolutely despise one of the songs that got trimmed back, in which case you might even cheer a bit.)
The bulk of my praise however (and this might just be my own personal tastes coming out) is going to go to the actors.
First and foremost I can’t say enough about Anne Hathaway as Fantine. I’ve never been all that fond of Fantine as a character (again, I’ve only ever really known the music), as I found her to be at best a plot device and not especially sympathetic. Well voiced? Certainly. Someone to care about? Not really. Hathaway changed that completely. She brought a tragic dignity to the role it always lacked for me before, and my heart ached for her every moment. Her decent from factory worker to her final moments is brought to painful life by a performance that by itself deserves an Oscar. Add onto that her amazing performance of “I Dreamed a Dream”, and if she doesn’t at least get nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, there will be a riot in Hollywood. In this performance she showed that it is possible to both sing beautifully and emote, while most actors struggle to do either one.
Standing in contrast to Hathaway’s performance, but still just as moving and powerful in its own way, is Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. Whether because he is playing to a camera rather than an entire theater or simply as a matter of character choice, Jackman dials down Valjean from the more grandiose figure he is traditionally presented as. This fits the narrative of the story better, as well as allowing his co-stars to bring their own performances down to a more empathetic level. While I myself have always loved (and sympathized with) Valjean, it takes a great deal of skill to show that level of restraint with the character, especially when he brings forth his characteristic passion in occasional moments of brilliance.
The rest of the cast vary from good to great, but I want to give some special words of praise to a few who either made me care about their characters more than I expected to, or who managed to rise above my expectations of their abilities.
Sacha Baron Cohen as Thenardier and Helena Bonham Carter as Madame Thenardier – I love these characters and I most assuredly do not love these performers, so I was shocked when I saw their names in the credits. While I wasn’t thrilled with all the choices made around their roles, I loved everything they did with their roles. Don’t know that it’s worth an Oscar, but certainly worth a Golden Globe nomination.
Samantha Barks as Eponine – Until I saw this movie Eponine was at best a throw away plot device, at worst an annoying roadblock of a plot device. Ms. Barks changed all of that. She made Eponine charming, warm, relatable, and in the end another wonderfully tragic figure. Again, I don’t know that she rose to the level of Oscar nomination, but she definitely deserves a Golden Globe.
Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche – I have always vacillated back and forth between being irritated by Gavroche because I don’t know what to do with him and simply despising him for being a waste of time and space. Young Master Huttlestone has completely changed my mind, bringing courage, dignity and charm to an otherwise forgettable character. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him getting a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and even a dark horse candidate for an Oscar nomination.
Now, if you still haven’t seen the movie, what are you waiting for? Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade there’s a movie you’ve just got to see.
Clean Sweep
Posted: January 2, 2013 Filed under: Culture, Dating | Tags: advice, culture, dating, life, men, women 9 CommentsI’d like to take this opportunity to explain to the ladies why it is that “men don’t clean”.
You see, this is a lie. A calumny. A slander of the highest proportion. We clean. We just don’t clean the way you clean. There is a difference.
You’re probably thinking right about now that I am simply making things up in an attempt to defend my gender, but the truth is I’m not. In fact, I’m going to paint a situation, walk you through it, and show you how every time you have been making false assumptions about men not cleaning.
Picture this: you ask your boyfriend/husband/son to clean a room. You leave for a half-hour, come back, and it looks no different to you, or at best only slightly tidied up. You say something to the effect of “I thought I asked you to clean in here,” and he maddeningly responds with “I did.” You can either exhort him to actually clean it or just give up in frustration now and do it yourself, because you know you’re going to have to do it anyway.
Sound familiar?
Now, let me explain what has happened.
You walked in to what, to a man’s eyes, appeared to be a clean-ish room. There might be a few things out of place, but overall it’s in decent shape. When you walked in and said “Could you please clean this room up?” the panic set in. He knows you think the room is filthy, but he has no idea why. He tries his best to guess what it is you want done, but he knows he is destined to fail. The only question is how much time does he intend to waste on this doomed effort. Some younger or over-eager fools will even spend more time and effort, thinking this will somehow earn them mercy. When you return and crush his spirit with an offhanded “I thought I asked you to clean in here”, her replies with the only defense he has, feeble though it may be: the truth. “I did.” He then watches you bustle around the room in a bad mood, engaged in arcane rituals that, when you are done, have made no discernible difference whatsoever.
Now, I know that sounds crazy, and that’s because it is. Men and women do not perceive the world in the same way. This is insane, but it is something that we simply have to accept. Ladies, what you need to understand is that, when you start going on about “cleaning”, we don’t share your vision. I don’t mean that in the sense of “I just don’t share your artistic vision”, I mean that in the sense of “I’m pretty sure you’re an insane cultist worshipping dark beings from beyond this reality and trying to summon them forth to devour our world”. But we love you anyway.
Because we love you, we want to make you happy. This is why we get scared and frustrated every time you say things like “please clean this room”. It’s like you’ve been watching the Saw franchise again, and you’ve decided that a combination of test and torture is just the thing to brighten an otherwise boring day. We both know there’s no way we’re going to win this one, but you ask anyway. Unless your purpose is to look for an excuse to get frustrated with us, perhaps the following advice will be useful to you.
First, keep in mind that we have different standards of “clean”. Remember the old saying about “if you want something done right”? Well, it applies doubly here. I’m not saying we’re going out of our way to shirk, but when you ask someone else to do something, you really can’t expect them to do it the way you would do it unless you’ve spent a few decades mercilessly drilling them on perfect technique.
Second, consider spending a few decades mercilessly drilling us on perfect technique. If you don’t have that much time to spare, some straightforward directions on what you’d like to see would be better upfront than a disappointed sigh on the back end. Keep in mind that if you do this you don’t get to say “well that was just for starters!” after the fact. Make the list comprehensive or don’t bother.
Third, are you familiar with the concept of “comparative advantage”? If you want the room cleaned just so, perhaps while you’re doing that he can be mowing the lawn. If you also want the lawn mowed just so, perhaps he can pay the bills. If you want that done just so, perhaps you would be more comfortable living alone.
Which brings me to my final piece of advice. Nobody is perfect, and we all find ways to annoy the crap out of each other on a daily basis. Learning to accept these foibles and follies is a big part of what makes relationships work, maybe the only part. After all, the rest is fun, not work. Focus more on the good times getting the rooms dirty than the confusion about trying to get them clean again.
For the rebuttal from My Not So Humble Wife, be sure to read “Dirty, Dirty Men“.
. And be sure to leave a review with your not so humble opinion!
My Not So Humble Opinion 