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Review: The Goldbergs: Season One
Creator Adam F. Goldberg's show struggles to turn dysfunction into something more engaging than a series of broadly staged situations.2.0
The Goldbergs is being advertised as a '80s-style portrayal of a wacky suburban family. But while the sitcom makes all the obvious references to cultural touchstones of the decade (MTV, hair crimpers, VHS video cameras), and it's a testament to the producers that the family dysfunction it depicts doesn't get mired in the period styling, the show struggles to turn that dysfunction into something more engaging than a series of puerile, broadly staged situations.
The series premiere, "The Circle of Driving," introduces us to the titular clan's chaotic household, in which family members grate on each other almost as much as they do on the viewer. On his 16th birthday, Barry (Troy Gentile) gets angry when overprotective mom Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and hypercritical dad Murray (Jeff Garlin) don't give him the car he eagerly anticipated. He's just not mature enough, they tell him. It's a fairly relatable moment, but what could have been a more sensitive depiction of teenage resentment becomes a temper tantrum extended tediously beyond Barry's initial outburst, and Gentile's hammy acting seems much more suited to one of Glee's histrionic music numbers. Such caricature extends to other family members as well: Older sister Erica (Hayley Orrantia) is a mostly forgettable sketch of a teenage girl, and Garlin is wasted in his role as a grouch who does little more than berate his children while lounging around in a dingy-looking bathrobe.
Loosely based on creator Adam F. Goldberg's real family and experiences growing up as a child of the '80s, The Goldbergs's ostensibly endearing premise is sadly also its biggest flaw. Goldberg's on-screen representation as prepubescent Adam (Sean Giambrone) fails to complement the voiceover narration and meaningful asides of adult Adam (Patton Oswalt) in any substantial way. There's a particularly cringe-worthy subplot in which young Adam's budding sexuality gets some encouragement from his grandfather, "Pops" Solomon (George Segal), a self-styled casanova who seems intent on becoming his grandson's wingman. Their shticky interactions feel like missed opportunities to set up a generational dynamic based on something more than asinine tit jokes. It might be tempting to draw some comparisons to The Wonder Years, but whereas the portrayal of young Kevin Arnold and Daniel Stern's narration were mutually constitutive strengths in that series, the one-dimensional depiction of Adam as little more than a boobs-obsessed kid fails to connect with the spirited and reflective tenor of Oswalt's performance.
One admirable standout is McLendon-Covey as the Goldbergs' overbearing matriarch. In spite of being the most visually stylized character (her big hair and flamboyant wardrobe might lead one to believe that she's an '80s-era suburban-mom superhero), it's the actress's ability to focus Beverly's intense energy with deft physical comedy and measured delivery of jokes that makes the character the funniest and most compelling member of the family. It's a shame that the rest of The Goldbergs fails to find the same pitch of well-crafted humor.
Cast: Wendi McLendon-Covey, Patton Oswalt, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, Hayley Orrantia, Jeff Garlin, George Segal Airtime: ABC, Tuesdays @ 9 p.m. Buy: Amazon
Game of Thrones Recap: Season 8, Episode 2, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"
The episode is, above all else, a resolute detailing of the final calm before a spectacular storm and what it means to be human.
"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," the second episode of Game of Thrones's eighth season, begins with Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) recounting to her captive, Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a "bedtime story," about what her brother once told her of the Kingslayer, the man who killed her father. And toward the end of the episode, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) offers Daenerys a history lesson: that he's actually Aegon Targaryen. Between those two points, the episode stitches an interwoven tapestry of life—stories of redemption and benediction, of tactical choices and overestimations, of reunion and potential farewell. By and large, it doesn't incline itself toward easy morals, or engage in a complicated interpreting of bloodlines. The episode is, above all else, a resolute detailing of the final calm before a spectacular storm and what it means to be human, flaws and all.
In Winterfell's war room, Jon Snow and his allies discuss a final strategy against the army of the dead, knowing that they can't win a straight fight, and that they'll have to bait out the Night King. Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) insists that he must be the one to do so, claiming that the Night King will come, at all costs, for the Three-Eyed Raven, the holder of humanity's memories. As Samwell Tarly (John Bradley-West) puts it, summing up the Night King's plot, "If we forget where we've been and what we've done, we're not men anymore." In this context, Game of Thrones recontextualizes the stakes for the entire series, making them not just about the physical winning of a "throne," but about protecting the very stories behind it, the things that make us human. This, in turn, justifies the meticulous pace of what turns out to be a grimdark "Twas the Night Before Christmas"-like episode.
The episode opens with an impromptu trial of Jaime, as Daenerys tries to figure out what to do with him. There's a powerful weight to the relationships in this room, and director David Nutter deftly focuses more on those who are listening than those who are talking. At one point, the camera lingers on Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) when Jaime is asked why he's finally abandoned his house and family: "Because this goes beyond loyalty," he responds. "This is about survival." There are no easy answers or clever quips in this interrogation, and when Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) asks Brienne if she would fight alongside Jaime, the camera shows her mulling the thought, almost digesting it. The answer she finally gives is expected—"I would"—but the pause before implies a consideration that makes the whole conversation feel more earned than if it had simply rushed to Jaime's inevitable pardon.
Only occasionally does the episode resort to over-explanation. Bran makes it very clear to Jaime that he remembers what he said to him right before being pushed out of a very high Winterfell window: "The things we do for love." That Bran chooses not to tell anyone else is a sort of acceptance, though one born out of the understanding that Jaime, visibly remorseful, will be needed in the fight against the undead. But rather than leave this implicit, Bran clarifies that, had Jaime not pushed him out the window, neither of the two would be who they are—who they need to be—today. Likewise, Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) and The Hound (Rory McCann) rehash the brief conversation they had in last week's "Winterfell," as if their motivations for fighting weren't already as clear as they're ever going to get.
The rest of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" lives firmly, and vividly, in the present. There's a miniature two-act romance between Gendry (Joe Dempsie) and Arya, in which the former tries to protect the latter, only for her to unflinchingly prove herself to be more than his equal. Childish memories dispensed of, she returns to him later that night, wanting to share a moment of tenderness before they both have to look death in the eye. There are hints of a similar but longer-term love kindling between Sansa and Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), who has made a choice to put himself directly in danger for the woman he's sworn himself to. The same goes for Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson), who makes clear in no uncertain terms that he will continue to protect the pacificistic Missandrei (Nathalie Emmanuel) long after the war ends.
These moments are celebrations of life, about seizing opportunities while you can. It's in Tormund (Kristofer Hivju) wrapping Jon up in a surprise bear hug, before then checking in on Brienne: "The big woman still here?" It's in Jon and Sam and Lord Commander Edd (Ben Crompton), the last survivors of their Night's Watch unit, once more standing at the ramparts, fatalistically ribbing one another. And from beginning to end, these moments are less about the dread and doom of war and more about all the open-ended possibilities of life itself, as seen in the efforts of a soup-dispensing Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) and refugee-sheltering Gilly (Hannah Murray), to ensure that a young girl remains safely in the crypts instead of recklessly throwing herself into battle like her dead brothers.
At the heart of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"—or rather, at Winterfell's hearth—is the scene from which the episode takes its name. Davos, Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman), Brienne, Tormund, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) have come in before the fire for some warmth and some company. As Tyrion puts it with his inestimable gallows humor, it's "someplace warm to contemplate your imminent death." But in that, too, it's also a place to celebrate one's life. And it's something Game of Thrones conveys through both the comic story of how Tormund came to be known as "Giantsbane" and the long-last realized knighting of Brienne. The original song that Podrick begins singing here and which carries more melodiously over the credits oft-repeats the lyrics "Never wanted to leave," and it's to the show's credit that despite the excitement promised by an all-out battle against the undead, we'd all be more than happy to stay for just a moment longer with all of these characters.
For more Game of Thrones recaps, click here.
Review: Chambers Liberally Borrows from Horror Tropes to Uneven Results
Netflix's latest horror offering only rarely assumes a form greater than its individual elements and references.2
Among the centerpieces of Netflix's Chambers is the terrain of the American Southwest. Featuring wide shots of desert topography, blue-pink sunrise horizons, and cracks of lightning in the gray distance, the series is set in Arizona but was actually shot in neighboring New Mexico. It's thus built on a doppelgänger of a landscape, a fitting geography given its premise: After high-schooler Sasha Yazzie (Sivan Alyra Rose) undergoes a heart transplant, she gradually absorbs the memories, traumas, and impulses of her organ donor, Becky Lefevre (Lilliya Scarlett Reid), until the line separating the two teens vanishes.
As Becky exerts increasing control over Sasha's body, thoughts, and dreams, Sasha ropes her best friend, Yvonne (Kyanna Simone Simpson), into an investigation of Becky's supposedly accidental death. Their sleuthing initially targets Nancy and Ben Lefevre (Uma Thurman and Tony Goldwyn), Becky's wealthy and creepy parents. Meanwhile, Big Frank (Marcus LaVoi), Sasha's uncle and sole guardian, doubts that anything otherworldly is afoot. Skeptical of the supernatural but worried about Sasha's apparent hallucinations, he seeks aid from doctors instead of the spiritual healers in the Navajo community from which he has distanced himself and his niece. But medicine doesn't help Sasha, and she's too far removed from her tribe to consider turning to it for guidance, so she keeps digging into the Lefevre family's secrets.
Beyond suspicious deaths and ghostly doubles, Chambers is waist-deep in the tropes and fixations of so many horror films and TV shows: stalkers; demonic possession; the linking of sex with hellish fates; a wise old man; an arguably wiser, inarguably more disturbing old woman; and so on. Photos of Becky regularly worm their way into scenes, and you can feel the series straining to conjure its own Laura Palmer. This speaks to the predominant problem with Chambers: It only rarely assumes a form greater than its individual elements and references. There are moments late in the season that demonstrate the kind of gravitational pull that good horror can generate, but for the most part, the series claws at its inspirations, making confused and superficial gestures toward the works it imitates.
The show's messiness is on full display in its wildly inconsistent characterizations of Nancy, Ben, and their son, Elliott (Nicholas Galitzine), all of whom are suspects in Becky's death. Chambers aims to create mystery and suspense, of course, but it feels gratuitously manipulative to give selective glimpses of characters that paint them a certain way prior to a big reveal, only to offer vastly more fleshed-out depictions later. It's not a sin of which Chambers is uniquely guilty, nor is it especially damning. But combined with the fact that emotional climaxes and important character developments are frequently rushed or too easily achieved, it diminishes the payoff. Instead of amplifying momentum and adding thoughtful layers to the narrative, the season's various revelations undercut what came before them.
Chambers is often more graceful in its depiction of interpersonal drama. As Nancy, Thurman exquisitely vacillates between unsettling and heartbreaking. Rose, too, impresses with her measured depiction of Sasha. Almost everything involving Yvonne, a computer prodigy who cares for her dementia-struck mother, is poignant, funny, or both. "I'm glad you have my back," Sasha tells Yvonne at one point, to which Yvonne replies, "Front, back, both sides, and the middle, girl." And when Sasha's boyfriend, TJ (Griffin Powell-Arcand), consults a medicine man about her plight, the scene lends real depth to the two characters' releationship.
It's worth noting, particularly in the context of novelty, the show's focus on the experiences of indigenous and black people. It's remarkably satisfying to watch a series in which every single white character must actively earn the audience's trust—as opposed to its non-white characters, who receive the benefit of the doubt that whiteness usually affords. Unfortunately, Chambers's fresh perspective and more organic moments serve to amplify the contrasting artificiality of much of the dialogue, as well as how rote the horror is.
By the end of the season, many questions remain unanswered—and the writers deserve credit for refusing to tie too neat a bow on everything. But the conclusion ends up over-explaining some things and under-explaining others, leaving the show's unsettled dust to read as less intentional than haphazard. The medicine man, when speaking about Sasha, tells TJ that there's "somethin' bad there. Really out of balance, but…it's not from here. I don't think our medicine can take care of all of it." He may as well be diagnosing Chambers itself: admitting to its unevenness, surrendering to the not-from-here ghost trapped between the show's bones.
Cast: Sivan Alyra Rose, Lilliaya Scarlett Reid, Uma Thurman, Marcus LaVoi, Tony Goldwyn, Nicholas Galitzine, Griffin Powell-Arcand Airtime: Netflix
Game of Thrones Recap: Season 8, Episode 1, "Winterfell"
The episode has the good sense to respect our familiarity with these characters, and as such it doesn't beat around the bush.
Given the sheer number of still-living characters that remain caught in the tangled web of plot lines that Game of Thrones has delighted in spinning across its first seven seasons, the show's final six episodes have a lot of wrapping up to do. And the eighth season's premiere episode, "Winterfell," suggests that will occur at a reliably steady clip.
Take Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), who doesn't waste words when he sees his ex-wife, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner): "Last time we spoke was at Joffrey's wedding. Miserable affair." Her response is even more to the point: "It had its moments," conveying her satisfaction at the poisoning of Tyrion's nephew, Joffrey. The episode has the good sense to respect our familiarity with these characters, and as such it doesn't beat around the bush.
This approach, though, isn't always successful, as in the clipped depiction of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) effortlessly infiltrating his uncle Euron's ship in order to free Yara (Gemma Whelan) from captivity. The scene is conspicuous as much for its compressed nature as it is for closing a plot thread and allowing Theon to finally return to the North, where almost every other character on has converged, and where most of the episode's action takes place.
Speaking of which, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) badly needs an excuse to head North; her scenes, so isolated from the rest of the show's stakes, feel as if they've been beamed in from an entirely different show. Headey is given little to do at the start beyond smirking and telegraphing her character's evil, but in Cersei's interactions with Euron (Pilou Asbæk) we're reminded of the complexity of this woman's nature. It's in the way she scoffs at, then indulges Euron's sexual demands, and never without ever relinquishing her power.
Fan service also occasionally gets the better of "Winterfell." Little is accomplished by having Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) exchange grim pleasantries with The Hound (Rory McCann), her one-time captor. The scene serves only to emphasize the obvious: "You're a cold little bitch, aren't you? Guess that's why you're still alive." Far richer is just about every other reunion, especially Arya's with Jon Snow (Kit Harington). The Hound's words exist to underline who Arya has become, while Jon, who hasn't seen Arya since the first season, offers her the rare opportunity to be the mischievous little girl she once was. Arya's brutally honest with everyone she meets, but when Jon asks if she's had to use the sword Needle he gifted her, she lies, so as to stay that little girl just a little while longer in his eyes: "Once or twice."
Both the opening and closing scenes of the episode depict two very different returns to Winterfell, and they intentionally echo those of the very first episode of Game of Thrones. This time, however, it's not a king arriving in the North at the start of the episode, but rather a new and suspicious queen, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). Her darkly attired retinue doesn't approach Winterfell neither in festive nor raucous fashion, marching instead in fixed and rigid columns. It's important for a sense of scale (and spectacle) that we see just how many troops are present, but in mirroring this earlier episode, director David Nutter achieves more than just a dutiful tally: He evokes the funereal mood of how things have changed now that winter has finally arrived in Westeros. And right at the end of the episode, we see Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) staring down Jaimie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) as the latter attempts to sneak back into Winterfell. It's a kind of flip on the moment from the show's pilot where Jaimie pushed Bran out a window for catching him and Cersei having sex.
Game of Thrones excels when it puts weight behind its words and artifacts, because without such history—George R. R. Martin's imprimatur—the show would be a tawdrier fantasy: pomp, sans circumstances. Yes, there's a bit of gratuitous nudity in the scene where the mercenary Bronn (Jerome Flynn) at last receives a three-prostitute reward for his loyalty to Cersei. But the scene is swiftly, mercifully interrupted, so as to focus on the significance of the crossbow that Qyburn (Anton Lesser) gives to Bronn. Though it's only implied by Qyburn's mention of "poetic justice," eagle-eyed fans will certainly recognize that this is the weapon Tyrion used to slay his father. Now it's the one that Bronn is being hired to use in the event that either of Cersei's "traitorous" brothers somehow survive the war in the North.
Consider, too, the weight carried by the crypt in which Jon at last learns the truth of his parentage, as well as the blood-brother connection he shares with Samwell Tarly (John Bradley), his best friend and the bearer of this news. Jon isn't just a man learning that he's been lied to his entire life—that he's actually Aegon Targaryen, the rightful heir to the throne—or that the woman he's fallen in love with is actually his aunt. In that tomb, he's once again a boy—a bastard—trying to live up to the legacy of the dead statues that surround him. This isn't some M. Night Shyamalan-like twist-for-twist's-sake, but a genuine revelation that's been years in the making. That viewers have known this since last season, or predicted it for even longer, takes nothing away from the moment at which Jon at last knows something.
If it seems at all odd that the series lingers on Jon and Daenerys's courtship—they kiss in exhilaration after taking her dragons for a ride—it's to better set up not only the confirmation of Jon's dragon-riding heritage, but the likelihood of this love being doomed by the whole incest thing. (That may be a Targaryen thing, but Jon's got a pretty sturdy moral compass.) Likewise, it's no mistake that moments before Sam tells Jon what he and Bran have discovered, Sam is turned against Daenerys as he learns—from her own mouth—that she murdered his father and loyal-to-a-fault brother. Earlier conversations with Sansa and the young spitfire Lyanna Mormont (Bella Ramsey), who at first just seemed resentful or distrustful of Jon's abdication of his title of "King of the North," now take on an entirely new light.
What's most remarkable about all this squabbling over lineage is just how much it actually matters, given that an army of the dead is only days away, seemingly determined to kill everyone in its path. And as if we need another reminder of this existential threat, Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) and Tormund (Kristofer Hivju), trapped behind enemy lines, encounter a gruesome sigil hewn of human flesh in the recently ruined Castle Umber, a taunting (and still partially alive) message from the Night's King. It remains to be seen just how far Game of Thrones will bend the knee to full-on body horror and fantasy in its remaining five episodes. But something that's as true now after this premiere episode as it was throughout any that have come before it is that the show is at its most frightening when it grapples with the political realities that connect its characters' lives.
For more Game of Thrones recaps, click here.
Review: Native Son's Anguished Howl Lacks the Rage of Richard Wright's Novel
Once an accidental act of violence sends the main character's life into a spiral, the film unfortunately spirals with him.2.5
This modernized adaptation of Richard Wright's iconic 1940 novel Native Son is full of people who believe they understand the story's African-American protagonist, Bigger Thomas (Ashton Sanders). They assume that he marches for some unnamed cause because he's outraged, and that he's outraged because he's black. They believe he's desperate for a "respectable" job opportunity, and that he's into hip-hop.
As adapted by Pulitzer-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, Native Son makes a number of changes to its source material, many of which dilute the story's power. The most successful tweak is how Bigger, who goes by "Big" and pointedly not "Biggie," is conceived as a listless punk-rock type. At a record store, he asks for a Bad Brains album. He cuts a wiry, towering figure topped with dyed green hair. He wears a jacket stuck through with pins and sprayed with words that might be lyrics or slogans that, though they mean something to him, don't mean the world understands him any better.
He's less angry than he is lost, pulled in every direction. A friend wants him to help rob a convenience store, but Big opts for another job: as the driver for the wealthy Dalton family, whose daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley), is an activist—the kind of white liberal who would certainly have voted for Obama a third time if she could have. The awkward exchanges between Big and Mary quickly become the discomforting heart of the film, a suffocating performative wokeness on her part worsened by fumbling attempts at solidarity. "You're outraged, aren't you? He's outraged," she says at one point. She doesn't mean any harm, of course. She'd probably consider him a friend. Her boyfriend (Nick Robinson) certainly does.
Nobody in the film truly "sees" Big for anything other than a concept, the dehumanized stereotype of a young black man, and Native Son builds that point from a subtle hum to an anguished howl through Big's striking appearance. Sanders plays Big with the easygoing confidence of someone who knows that confidence is a performance to some degree, a mask for inner turmoil. You see the confidence drain from Big's body when he's dragged into uncomfortable situations; his body language goes rigid, like someone who's gritting his or her teeth and praying for the end. As if in response to James Baldwin's noted critique of the character as a stereotype, this version of Bigger Thomas is tormented as much by casual racism as by how it drowns out his constant assertions of individuality.
Eventually, an accidental act of violence sends Big's life into a spiral, and Johnson's Native Son unfortunately spirals with him. The film's initial confidence at examining the weight of stereotypes falls away, as if such self-assurance were a mask of its own. Ominous whirs and drones on the soundtrack stand in for the fact that we never truly get inside Big's head. So much of his character is only defined by situations he's thrown into, and Matthew Libatique's camera shoots all of them at a sort of neutral, objective remove. That pivotal act of violence cries out for some subjectivity to seem plausible, but despite being true to the source material, it feels outrageous and contrived because it's filmed with the same clinical distance.
When Big subsequently acts out, his actions feel incongruous because this version of Native Son hasn't shown us the thought process that fuels them. The Bigger Thomas of Johnson's film lacks the rage of his literary counterpart, but because the novel climaxes in explosive violence and terror, the film seems obligated to replicate it (albeit to a much less extreme degree), despite so many other changes. As a result, what understanding we have of the character seems to slip through our fingers, as if the filmmakers and viewers alike are the next in a long line of people who don't truly understand Bigger Thomas.
Cast: Ashton Sanders, Margaret Qualley, KiKi Layne, Bill Camp, Nick Robinson, Lamar Johnson, Sanaa Lathan, David Alan Grier Airtime: HBO
Review: Fosse/Verdon Struggles to Capture the Sensual Fanaticism of Its Subjects' Art
The miniseries at least gives ample space for Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams to richly inhabit their characters.2.5
The FX miniseries Fosse/Verdon comes with more than a bit of baggage. First, it has to compete with the electrifying work of its legendary protagonists: choreographer, theater director, and filmmaker Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) and dancer and choreographer Gwen Verdon (Michelle Williams), who collaborated on stage in Damn Yankees, Sweet Charity, and Chicago, among others, while living out a volatile love affair and marriage that would inspire each artist's career. But Fosse/Verdon is particularly haunted by the legacy of Fosse's monumental and similarly plotted 1979 film All That Jazz, in which he fictionally recreated his efforts to stage his iconic Chicago production while editing his third film, Lenny.
All That Jazz mixes mythmaking with an intoxicatingly, and disturbingly, sensual study of addiction, as Fosse fashioned an editing syntax that remains influential, especially to films about drug use. All That Jazz's quick, repetitive, exhilarating montages suggest the rigid schedule of uppers that are ingested by Fosse's stand-in, played by Roy Scheider, so that he may work for days at a time while seeking late-night solace in women and alcohol. This editing comes to suggest a cinematic equivalent to the jagged movements that Fosse favors as a choreographer to express the exertion of power for the sake of satiating erotic hunger. Fosse's characters, like the man himself, always wanted more. Like Fosse's Cabaret, All That Jazz informs the musical genre with a modern, free-associative cynicism and luridness.
Fosse/Verdon emulates All That Jazz's freneticism, as the series is constantly hopping around in time so that we may experience only the highs and lows of these lives. It opens in the late 1960s, when Gwen is helping Bob fine-tune the film version of Sweet Charity, which would become a financial and critical disaster. A lovely scene makes a point that theater and film buffs will already know: that Gwen wasn't allowed to reprise her role for the film, which went to Shirley MacLaine, who bears a striking resemblance to the dancer. Bob reads the New York Times review, which asks "Where's Gwen?" and Gwen is put in the weird position of having to comfort her husband for his complicity in not hiring her. Meanwhile, Gwen is trying to get Chicago off the ground while also reinventing herself as a dramatic actress for straight plays.
All That Jazz played Chicago and Lenny off of one another, suggesting how Fosse derived his creative energy from working in multiple mediums at once while deliberately spreading himself thin, courting physical and mental collapse as an implicit declaration of his integrity, as well as a way of servicing his addiction to the various substances necessary to sustain such a lifestyle. Similarly, Fosse/Verdon is driven by various comparisons of productions that are being simultaneously considered or created. One such pairing is Children! Children!, a doomed play Gwen takes out of desperation to prove her acting chops, and the film version of Cabaret, which appears to be the nail in the coffin of Bob's languishing film career. Cabaret's producer, Cy Feuer (Paul Reiser), thinks that Bob is all style and no substance, fighting the filmmaker's taste for darkness and decay. Later, Bob looks at a four-hour rough cut that he describes as "unwatchable," leaving him to save the film in the editing room—a process in which he discovers how to use cutting to adjust his aesthetic for cinema. Learning to cut both with and against the movements of the dancers, depending on the mood he wishes to evoke, Bob outgrows the stagey sluggishness of the Sweet Charity film.
Fosse/Verdon could've spent more time in the Cabaret editing room, as Bob nearly loses his mind on booze, pills, and women while trying to save the film that would eventually win him a best director Oscar. It's also a pity that a series about dancers doesn't have more dancing. (There's a sexy sequence in which Bob and Gwen meet over a discussion of Damn Yankees, their rehearsal of "Whatever Lola Wants" coming to represent their own attraction.) And a touching point is conventionally over-emphasized: Gwen is "always there" for Bob, apparently inventing the sexy black outfit that Liza Minelli wears in Cabaret on the fly, while Bob fails to give her notes on Children! Children!, coddling her with banalities that are meant to disguise his distraction and self-absorption. Such threads risk reducing Gwen, a colossal figure in her own right, to "Bob Fosse's wife, lover, and champion."
Fosse/Verdon is boxed in by a "have-it-both-ways" quandary. Cinephiles will probably want something more dynamic and less sentimental, with more formalist fireworks and nuts-and-bolts texture about Bob and Gwen's modes of creation, while others may prefer a simpler and talkier melodrama about a couple torn between their ambitions, vices, and respect and love for one another. Despite its showy flashback structure, the series leans more toward the latter mode, with romantic pop psychology and jokey cameos by Bob and Gwen's friends and fellow legends-in-the making such as Neil Simon (Nate Corddry) and Paddy Chayefsky (Norbert Leo Butz). (In fairness, there's also plenty of pop psychology in All That Jazz, as the narrative is another of those Great Self-Destructive Genius numbers that Hollywood pumps out on a regular basis, but Fosse's formal audacity transcends such gimmickry.)
If Fosse/Verdon lacks the obsessiveness and sensual fanaticism of Fosse and Verdon's art, though, it nevertheless gives ample space for Rockwell and Williams to inhabit their characters. Rockwell conjures Fosse's almost paradoxical sexiness, emulating the man's stooped posture, which somehow conveyed power, and speaking in a voice that's fey and raspy working-class masculine at the same time—a combination that suggests confidence and years spent hustling. Rockwell also reprises one of Fosse's signature moves, in which he would crouch near the bottom of the dance floor and look up at the dancers, seemingly drinking them in on a molecular level, which is an act of submission as domination. Most importantly, Rockwell captures Fosse's general bonhomie—the sense the man gave of taking pleasure in everything—which fuses with Rockwell's own infectious energy as a performer.
Williams is subtle and heartbreaking in a role that's often more thankless than Rockwell's, as Verdon's artistry is given short shrift here compared to Fosse's. That very sense of being overlooked is built into Williams's performance, however, as her voice contains multitudes of insinuation that communicate Gwen's desires to men on nearly subliminal levels, so they can hear her without them knowing it, especially as Gwen fights to keep Chicago alive. Throughout the miniseries, Williams merges Verdon's voice with her own, grounding an impression in behavioral curlicues, switching from humor to rage with musical fluidity.
Williams is given the finest scene of Fosse/Verdon's first five episodes. Rehearsing Children! Children!, trying to give a stodgy monologue juice, Gwen accesses one of the most painful moments of her life, turning exposition into confessional poetry. Gwen fillets herself for the rehearsal, and Williams allows you to see the toll this takes, as well as the transcendence of being able and willing to pay that toll. Williams doesn't foreground the pain, but the surprise of rediscovering an emotional wound that has never healed, the sort of wound the drives artists—and people of other trades as well—to keep working, consuming, screwing, all in the hope of feeling as if they've satisfied their inner demon, the harshest and least satiable critic.
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Michelle Williams, Paul Reiser, Aya Cash, Nate Corddry, Norbert Leo Butz, Blake Baumgartner, Juliet Brett, Susan Misner, Margaret Qualley, Evan Handler Airtime: FX, Tuesdays, 10 p.m.
Review: The Sprawling Unspeakable Simmers with Rage But Lacks Resolve
The miniseries fails to tackle the unseen forces which enable and encourage the institutional rot that wrecks people's lives.2
With a title like Unspeakable, one might imagine that Sundance's miniseries about Canada's contaminated blood scandal, in which thousands of hemophiliacs were infected with HIV and hepatitis after receiving tainted blood, is concerned primarily with the stigma surrounding those diseases. Yet the series, which attempts to narrativize two separate books about the scandal, as well as creator Robert C. Cooper's own experience contracting hepatitis from hemophilia treatments, resists homing in on any one aspect of its sprawling story. The result is an untidy and cursory overview of a 40-year saga.
Unspeakable certainly simmers with rage, and Cooper's disgust is palpable. Throughout, the series solemnly depicts each negligent decision made by parliamentary politicians and Canadian Red Cross bureaucrats, who ignored warnings from United States health officials and distributed potentially infected blood in order to save money. But while this staggering malfeasance provides an opportunity to interrogate a complex example of institutional failure, Unspeakable's point of view is more incredulous than curious: The series is packed with characters who are consistently shocked and angry, yet it fails to tackle the unseen forces which enable and encourage the institutional rot that wrecks people's lives.
Unspeakable attempts to underscore the tragedy of the scandal by offering its broad historical account through an intimate lens, following five separate Canadian families effected by the tainted blood supply. Yet because of the sheer breadth of the saga and the multitude of perspectives, the series often feels like nothing more than a dry historical outline. As the breakneck narrative breezes over entire years, we aren't afforded the opportunity to connect with any one character. A pattern emerges, with short successions of scenes that dutifully lead to a consequential event, before action shifts to a new year, and the cycle is repeated. The effect is distancing, and made even more so by unceasing title cards that clumsily herald new locations with information that should ostensibly be provided by the scenes themselves. (One such mouthful reads "Heat-Treated Factor Concentrates Consensus Conference, Ottawa.")
Because Unspeakable moves so rapidly through its timeline, much of the dialogue is composed of stilted exposition. Lines like "The way the two of you still don't speak is fucked up!" and countless instances of characters announcing the parameters of their professions are jarring reminders of the constantly shifting landscape. In other instances, the series glosses over seemingly important developments, leaving the viewer without context. Ex-reporter Ben Landry (Shawn Doyle), the father of an HIV-positive, hemophiliac son, at one point resolves to take action, declaring, "There's only one thing I'm good at." Years pass by in the narrative before it becomes clear that he wrote a book about the scandal, which, ironically, seems based on one of the books which provided the inspiration for Unspeakable.
Unspeakable's subject matter is self-evidently grave, but the series is filmed in a procedural style that lacks distinctiveness. The lighting is creamy and omnidirectional, and episodes are edited with a utilitarian devotion to plot. The quick pace does result in a sense of urgency, if only because the series never fully resolves one narrative tangle before it introduces another. Ben, still working as a reporter, attempts to expose the scandal in its early stages, while Will Sanders (Michael Shanks), the father of another hemophiliac, tries to convince the Red Cross of the impending crisis. Their efforts are portrayed as the kind of earnest journalistic persistence seen in films like Spotlight, but while Unspeakable's emphasizes the failure of public institutions, it ultimately stops short of interrogating exactly why they failed.
Cast: Sarah Wayne Callies, Michael Shanks, Ricardo Ortiz, Spencer Drever, Shawn Doyle, Camille Sullivan, Levi Meaden, Aaron Douglas, David Lewis, Caroline Cave Airtime: SundanceTV
Review: In Season Two, Killing Eve Still Thrills Even When Spinning Its Wheels
The show's greatest strength is still the way it upends our expectations via tonal shifts and amusing personal details.3
The second season of Killing Eve commences immediately after last season's conclusion, during which MI6 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) unceremoniously shanked the object of her (mutual) obsession, the flamboyant assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). It's a disorienting and totally engaging starting point for the new season, a confirmation that the two women are still very much entangled in the web of desperation and lies that led them to one another in the first place. But for how much the season focuses on the show's obvious strengths, it also gets off to something of an uncharacteristically slow start.
Much of the two episodes provided to critics is devoted to the fallout of Eve and Villanelle's actions: the firings, the confessions, the stabbings, the shootings. Thankfully, the acts of violence that capped last season's finale do nothing to flatten and clarify the complexity of their relationship. Instead, they only deepen their infatuation, each one still enraptured with the other's intellect and style and incongruity within their respective personal spheres. "Sometimes when you love someone, you will do crazy things," Villanelle says at one point. Though the first date (of sorts) may have gone bad, it hardly closes the door on a second.
The knife wound, however, is quite serious and, hand clutched to her side, Villanelle stumbles to a hospital. It's a continuation of the shift in the pair's power dynamic, with Villanelle as elusive and inscrutable as ever yet now quite literally vulnerable. The first two episodes of the season are keen on reinforcing her newfound weakness while Eve deals with feelings of her own, a wide spectrum of emotion that manifests in manic cooking, vacant moisturizing, and stress-eating. Eve's emotions have practically exploded in every direction, and the debris is strewn all over Oh's terrific expressions, an equal spread of thrill, regret, and confusion.
Killing Eve's greatest strength continues to be its dark comedy, and the way it upends our expectations via tonal shifts and amusing personal details. "How do you always look so good?" an exasperated Eve asks her unflappable MI6 boss, Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw). The series never undercuts its drama, instead using such specificity to humanize characters thrown into worlds they scarcely understand at the behest of truly thankless jobs.
Comer again embodies the bulk of Killing Eve's wicked sense of humor, conveying Villanelle's cheerful but irritable psychopathy through a combination of simmering rage, an eat-your-peas level of childlike disgust, and a still-shocking capacity for violence. And the new season gives Villanelle a host of oblivious characters to play off of who are nevertheless not so easily taken in: One woman at a grocery store shoos the cut-and-bruised hitwoman away, protesting that she doesn't have the change that Villanelle didn't even ask for.
The thrilling cat-and-mouse suspense of the show's best moments, however, is largely absent from these initial episodes. Rather than build on many of the developments from the end of last season, Killing Eve cobbles back together some approximation of its status quo, and quite slowly at that. It's perhaps an expected, if disappointing, development, and there are some tweaks to the formula—chief among them the ongoing suspicion of Carolyn's true colors. But the start of the second season eventually begins to spin its wheels, lingering a little too long on Villanelle's weakness while providing various sounding boards for emotions that Oh is perfectly capable of conveying with no more than a furrowed brow.
Cast: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Owen McDonnell, Sean Delaney, Nina Sosanya, Edward Bluemel Airtime: BBC America, Sundays, 8 p.m.
Review: The New Twilight Zone Is Stuck Chasing Rod Serling's Shadow
There's an unsteadiness to this return to that certain dimension of sight, sound, and, of course, mind that dulls whatever impact it intends.2.5
Despite occasional successes, no incarnation of The Twilight Zone has quite stood up to Rod Serling's iconic original. Two revivals on television and one feature film are more footnotes than notable successors. But Jordan Peele seemingly has the artistic credibility to ensure that this third TV revival is more than just a brand-exploiting ploy.
Peele certainly slides right into the besuited presenter's persona once occupied by Serling, delivering verbose narration at the beginning and end of each episode in an impassive drone that suggests inevitability yet ends in a slight, mischievous half-smirk. But like previous versions of The Twilight Zone, there's an unsteadiness to this return to that certain dimension of sight, sound, and, of course, mind that dulls whatever impact it intends.
The four episodes screened for press have a variety of supernatural focal points: a comedian's stand-up routine that makes people disappear; a future-predicting true-crime podcast that anchors a reimagining of the classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"; a man (Steven Yeun) who mysteriously appears in an Alaskan holding cell; and a camcorder that turns back time. The best of these episodes is the last one, "Replay," which finds a black woman (Sanaa Lathan) using the camcorder's unique powers in a desperate attempt to evade a racist police officer (Glenn Fleshler) while she drives her son (Damson Idris) to college.
It's the most overtly political episode of the bunch, though every moment of the series is placed in a cultural context. "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" plays on anxieties about terrorism, while the stand-up conceit of "The Comedian," which parallels an episode in the original series, alludes to the performative, confessional nature of social media and influencer culture.
The elements that make "Replay" such a standout, however, reveal a distressing void in other episodes—that is, a firm grasp of the intended social commentary, as well as an ability to build that commentary into the episode's hook without compromising drama. Each rewind of the camcorder creates a distinct, suspenseful scenario in its own right. "The Comedian," on the other hand, fails to use its multiple stand-up performances to forge new insight into its protagonist (a credibly unraveled Kumail Nanjiani). Though it features an outstanding turn from a sinister Tracy Morgan, the episode merely belabors an obvious, simplistic point that hardly justifies the outrageous 50-plus-minute runtime.
Other episodes lose sight of their themes altogether: "A Traveler" and even the relatively brisk 35-minute "Nightmare" trail off on tangents with multiple characters. As if to acknowledge that they muddy their intended messages, each episode concludes in excruciatingly didactic fashion. Characters say things straight into the camera even before they've ceded the stage to Peele's final narration, which somehow seems subtler than much of the actual dialogue.
The rebooted Twilight Zone suggests a larger problem than mere inconsistency. This version lacks the original's storytelling economy and, in the process, loses the direct impact of whatever themes it means to convey. It often looks good, with fantastic performances by Lathan, Yeun, and others framed in oblique close-ups to augment the paranoid, aberrant atmosphere, but the muddled, on-the-nose writing is stuck chasing Rod Serling's shadow.
Cast: Jordan Peele, Adam Scott, Chris Diamantopoulos, Kumail Nanjiani, Amara Karan, Tracy Morgan, Sanaa Lathan, Damson Idris, Glenn Fleshler, Steven Yeun, Marika Sila, Greg Kinnear Airtime: CBS All Access
Watch: Hold on to Your Obsessions with the Final Trailer for Season Two of Killing Eve
The new season may just give you nightmares, though none that Sean Delaney's accent can't soothe.
We've already seen the first two episodes of the new season of Killing Eve, and since the embargo on reviews has now lifted, we can tell you that the series embraces a formal adventurousness in its second season that blows the first season out of the water. Season two picks up at the exact moment that the first left off, with Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) escaping in tense and almost balletic fashion from the bloody clutches of Villanelle (Jodie Comer)—or is it vice versa?—before the two are once again caught in a prolonged game of cat and mouse that plays out throughout much of Britain and, presumably, beyond.
Today, BBC America has released the final trailer for the new season. Titled "Obsession," the clip begins with Villanelle, healing from her injuries sustained from being stabbed by Eve last season, sneaking out from a hospital. I won't tell you where she ends up, only that it may just give you nightmares, though none that Sean Delaney's accent can't soothe.
See the trailer below:
Season two of Killing Eve premieres on April 7.
Review: In Season Two, Barry Draws Dark, Heartfelt Comedy from a Man's Trauma
The season's storylines cohere around the myriad factors which comprise the masks people present to the world.4
Right out the gate, the stakes are high in the second season of HBO's Barry, which begins with Barry (Bill Hader) desperate to maintain normalcy after having murdered Paula Newsome's Detective Moss in last season's finale. As soon as police begin to suspect Barry's involvement in the crime, the new season settles into a propulsive narrative that, similar to the first season, unfolds as a comedy of errors. And while the new episodes maintain the show's satiric view of self-interested Hollywood types, a poignant theme emerges which represents an evolution for the series. As an introspective Barry takes inventory of his past misdeeds, the show's storylines cohere around the reflexive lies people tell themselves, and the myriad factors which comprise the masks they present to the world.
Barry's world is in flux as he attempts to avoid the police, dodge the Chechen mob, and abstain from violence. He even offers to train soldiers for the Chechen mob's new leader, Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan), rather than carry out another hit himself. The conceit leads to a scene that derives much humor from the Chechen trainees' ineptitude at shooting, and while similar comedy abounds in Barry's attempts to extricate himself from the crime world, the series is ultimately more interested in why Barry is so desperate for change. Though in the first season the character strove to mimic the people whom he viewed as good, this season finds him grappling with, and motivated by, the idea that he's inherently evil.
In one of the new season's central storylines, Barry must craft a one-man performance based on his first kill in Afghanistan as a member of the Marine Corps. While he resolves to portray the event as a moral reckoning, flashbacks reveal that it was actually one of the happiest moments of his life—a fact which places an upsettingly irreconcilable paradox at the heart of Barry. In an inspired bit of absurdism, the series underlines the extent of the man's denial when his acting coach, Gene (Henry Winkler), appears in one of Barry's war flashbacks, offering notes on his student's recollection. Hilariously, the other soldiers in the flashback chime in as well—a chorus chiding Barry for his attempt to whitewash reality.
Such surreal flourishes lace the show's new season, conveying in exacting but moving fashion how Barry's trauma has caused him to live in a fugue state. But the show's dark comedy is still largely derived from stark juxtapositions of violence and humor. When Barry finds himself in a shootout with a Burmese gang disguised as monks, the incongruity of the gang's costumes adds a dash of farce to the proceedings. And when Barry declines a job offer from the bald and tattooed Hank, the spurned mobster asks in his characteristically fragmented English, "What do you want me to do, walk into John Wick assassin hotel with 'Help Wanted' sign?"
While the series portrays its underworld as the province of bumbling and affable lords, its directors frame violence with a matter-of-fact sensibility, emphasizing the yawning gap between whimsy and outright danger in Barry's world. When Barry flees a shootout in the season's second episode, director Hiro Murai embeds his camera in the car alongside Barry, eschewing adrenalized, eye-catching flourishes in favor of stark naturalism. Relatively peaceful moments pass before the first bullets come, and then, without fanfare, they arrive in a hail. The effect is startling and gripping. The discord in Barry's life similarly informs the way Barry captures Los Angeles, with wide shots that juxtapose the city's beckoning blue sky and towering palm trees with the generic, nondescript buildings that ensconce Barry. In such moments, the gap between his reality and his ambitions is rendered literal.
As Barry reaches for and clings to a sense of normalcy, Hader portrays the character with a mixture of fear and shame. During one monologue, in which Barry's girlfriend, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), triumphantly declares that she'll never date another violent man, the camera lingers poignantly on Barry's quietly downcast reaction. The crux of this season isn't whether Barry can find happiness from acting, or whether he'll outsmart the cops, but whether he's inherently broken and capable of repair. As he strives to bridge the gap between the person he is and the one he wants to be, the show's central source of pathos is his (and our) dawning understanding that it may not be possible, and that he may not even deserve it.
Cast: Bill Hader, Henry Winkler, Sarah Goldberg, Stephen Root, Anthony Carrigan, D'Arcy Carden, Darrell Britt-Gibson Airtime: HBO
Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked
Review: Avengers: Endgame Is, Above All Else, a Triumph of Corporate Synergy
Review: Days Gone Demands Your Submission to the Content Treadmill
Review: Chambers Liberally Borrows from Horror Tropes to Uneven Results
Game of Thrones Recap: Season 8, Episode 2, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"
Blu-ray Review: Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise on the Criterion Collection
Review: Taylor Swift's "ME!" Is an Ebullient, Eye-Popping Fantasia
Review: Come to Daddy Invests a Familiar Scenario with a Crazed Energy
Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked
Review: Body at Brighton Rock Is a Horror Film in Desperate Need of Thrills
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Sea Fishing Marks - Photos And Information
A place to post pictures of UK fishing marks. Please only post pictures and information. General discussion and questions should be posted in the main sea fishing board, any such posts cluttering this area will be removed.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL) was launched this week, offering what the company calls a "new standard" for server operating systems in commercial open source operating environments. With more flexible architectural provisioning for physical, virtualized, and cloud deployments, Red Hat has delivered hundreds of technical feature enhancements in its new product.
Key new features include an application platform optimized for centrally managed enterprise deployments; enhanced hardware efficiency controls; flexibility and security for both host and guest environments; and support for features designed to minimize the ecological impact and carbon footprint of IT systems.
In basic terms, Red Hat claims that after a decade of RHEL development, it has now produced a platform suitable for long-term stable deployment that is able to incorporate new virtualization and cloud-computing-based technologies.
Red Hat also states that its product's latest enhancements range from kernel improvements for resource management to RAS augmentations, scalability improvements, and a greatly extended standards-compliant development environment.
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 complements broader use of Linux and open source software across a range of verticals and particularly for large service provider and enterprise datacenter users," said Jay Lyman, enterprise software analyst at The 451 Group. "This release also addresses Linux deployment at greater scale thanks to kernel and KVM performance and feature enhancements in areas such as security, scheduling, power savings, control groups, resource and system management, and multi-tenancy."


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Trek 2010: freeride, jumping, Gary Fisher, cyclo-cross, women's
Trek World fills remaining bike lineup holes for 2010
We've already shown you much of Trek's 2010 mountain bike lineup – including the revised Top Fuel, the lighter Fuel EX and new carbon fibre Remedy – but the company still reserved a few additional models for its annual Trek World show near its Waterloo, Wisconsin headquarters.
New Scratch platform for freeriders
Last year's Trek Session FR will be replaced by a dedicated freeride range for 2010 called Scratch. The Scratch range aims to provide as much hucking performance as its competition along with pedal-friendly manners for those that don't always have a lift or shuttle vehicle handy. The new 170mm-travel aluminium frames will share much of the Session's proven suspension technology – including the ABP (Active Braking Pivot) rear dropouts, Evo link and Full Floater dynamic upper and lower shock links – but with a few key tweaks to better suit the intended application.
First and foremost, the ABP-equipped rear end will use the new 142x12mm rear hub spacing standard that allows for a stronger rear wheel and a straighter chainline than 135mm thru-axle setups along with proper slotted dropouts to guide the hub ends into their correct location for easier wheel installation – something most rear thru-axle configurations currently don't offer. Wheel selections will include models from both Bontrager and DT Swiss and the dropouts are also adaptable for standard 135mm hubs if needed.
Up top, the forged upper link features a pair of reversible 'Mino Links' that will allow users to select between a 66.5° head tube angle and 14.4″ bottom bracket height or a slightly slacker and more stable 66° head tube angle and 14.1″ height. Trek's now-familiar E2 tapered steerer and head tube is found up front for stiffer and more durable single-crown fork setups while burly hydroformed aluminium frame tubes throughout promise good long-term durability.
The Scratch range will include four models for '10 including both coil- and air-sprung suspension
Built-in housing stops for remote-operated telescoping seatposts and Truvativ's HammerSchmidt drivetrain plus ISCG03 mounts also hint at Scratch's versatility.
Four Scratch models will be available, all using the same frame: two with coil-sprung rear shocks and forks and two-ring drivetrains along with two air-sprung versions equipped with triple cranksets for weight-conscious riders that intend to do a bit more climbing. Top-end versions of each will weigh in at a surprisingly svelte 15.6kg (34.5lb) and 14.3kg (31.5lb), respectively (without pedals), and will carry retail prices of US$5699.99 and US$4599.99.
Take to the jumps with Ticket
Trek will also introduce a new Ticket hardtail for dirt jumping, urban riding and pump track sessions. The stout aluminium frame's sliding rear dropouts (with 20mm of adjustment range) can be used with geared or singlespeed setups, a tapered 1 1/8″-to-1 1/2″ E2 front end makes for extra strength and stiffness during landings and ISCG05 tabs readily accept the latest chain guide systems. Rear spacing is designed for standard 135x10mm thru-axle hubs.
More strength enhancements can be found at the bridgeless forged bottom bracket yoke – that also allows for a more tightly spaced rear end if desired – the gusseted head tube and seat stay cluster, and the relatively thick tube walls throughout for impact resistance.
Ticket will be offered as a frame only in short or long geometries.
Ticket is Trek's new dirt jump frame for '10
Gary Fisher 29er range goes faster and bigger
Gary Fisher's premium 29″-wheeled cross-country Superfly range will actually consist of three carbon models for 2010: the Superfly 100 with 100mm of travel at both ends, the Superfly hardtail, and even a singlespeed variant that will be offered only as a frameset for now.
Subaru-Gary Fisher team rider Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski recently used a Superfly 100 to win the US national marathon championship in Breckenridge, Colorado, complete with its composite front triangle and net-moulded chain stays and seat stays that don't even use aluminium for the pivot bearing seats or ABP dropouts. Aluminium inserts aren't required for the net-moulded bottom bracket shell, either, and the carbon upper link reportedly weighs just 44g. Claimed frame weight is an ultralight 2.2kg (4.85lb) including the rear shock and associated hardware.
Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski and Heather Irmiger's Superfly 100s, complete with brand new custom paintjobs
The Superfly 100 geometry has also been tweaked to minimize any handling disadvantage owing to the bigger wheels. An offset seat tube and direct-mount front derailleur bring the chain stay length down to a reasonable 452mm (17.8″) and the tapered E2 head tube houses a Gary Fisher-exclusive Genesis 2.0 custom-offset fork for a more 26″-like trail figure.
The Superfly hardtail, on the other hand, is intended as full-blown race rocket with an approximate 1.3kg (2.87lb) frame weight. Chain stays measure an even-tighter 440mm (17.3″) while the Genesis 2.0-specific 80mm-travel Fox F29 fork is housed within a standard non-tapered head tube to save a few grams.
New for '10 will be the singlespeed version with pivoting rear vertical dropouts that reportedly have enough range to accommodate a four-tooth cog spread without altering the chain length. Gary Fisher will offer the Superfly SS in a frameset only (complete with a Fox F29 fork) and team rider Jesse Lalonde supposedly has built his down to just 7.3kg (16lb) or so. Yowza.
New for '10 is the Gary Fisher Superfly SS singlespeed, though it'll only be offered as a frame and fork
At the opposite end of the spectrum lies the all-new Rumblefish, again using 29″ wheels but in a more capable 120mm-travel aluminium package. Rumblefish is essentially the 29″-wheeled version of Gary Fisher's successful Roscoe all-mountain bike, complete with the unique Fox Racing Shox DRCV-equipped (Dual Race Control Valve) rear shock for a more linear and coil-like stroke, ABP dropouts for improved braking performance in rough conditions, custom Genesis 2.0 frame geometry, a tapered E2 front end and a 15mm thru-axle dropouts.
New for '10 is the Gary Fisher Rumblefish, a 120mm-travel trail bike with 29″ wheels and an appetite for rocks.
Revised XO range just in time for 'cross season
Trek's X0 family of aluminium 'cross bikes will receive mostly minor revisions for '10. Press-fit bottom bracket shells save some weight relative to last year but they're also wider, allowing for more separation between the chain stays and more mud and tire clearance.
Threaded brake housing stops will make for easier adjustments than before, too, while the top tubes have gained a newly flattened profile for more comfortable shouldering.
Trek has made subtle tweaks to its cyclo-cross range for the coming season
Expanded WSD trail and road offerings for '10
Trek's WSD (Women's Specific Design) bike line continues to grow with new entry-level mountain bikes and updated premium road models for '10.
The recently debuted 6 Series Madone will feature new WSD editions for '10, though not with the shorter top tube dimensions of the rest of Trek's women's-specific road range. Instead, Trek has opted to exclusively use the standard Performance geometry for its women's flagship as 80 percent of the company's high-end female road customers prefer to stretch out a bit more, according to product manager Heather Henderson.
Contact points such as bars and saddles will continue to be female-oriented items, however, and new paint jobs will also reflect a slightly softer side. Of particular interest is an upcoming Project One scheme developed by new employee Stacy Carnell (formerly of Burton) called 'Quick Like a Bunny'. The eye-catching design is surprisingly ornate (and impressively clever in its details), and like all Project One signature options will be offered in a wide range of colours.
The less expensive Madone 4.7 will add an extra-small 43cm size with 650c wheels, too, and Henderson says the company's eight-race Trek Women Triathlon Series has also been wildly successful with up to 2000 participants per event so Trek is also expanding its Equinox WSD range with a carbon frame for '10.
Trek recently hired designer Stacey Carnell away from Burton, who brings her considerable design talents to the company's WSD range of products.
On the off-road side of things, a new Skye hardtail range is aimed at newer riders with its Alpha Black aluminium frame and modest build kits that are easy for novices to understand and use. Three models will be offered in total, all with a choice of two colour schemes: one with a more 'nature-inspired' theme and the other with more sedate and serious hues.
Skye models will all come in two color options: one that more 'nature inspired' and the other a more serious and linear scheme.
Up next: Trek's vastly expanded range of urban and commuter bikes


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Mark Buderus built the Florence Huskies football program into a respected powerhouse throughout the state. He's made all the right calls during his 28-year career.
No one knows this program better than he does, so let him make the final one.
"Jeremy Nix needs to (be my replacement)," Buderus said after Saturday's season-ending loss in the semifinals -- the final game of his career. "I think he's the guy to keep it all going the same direction, and I think everyone will stay with him. We've got a really good staff, well seasoned and everybody knows their place. That would be the easiest transition."
If the people selecting his predecessor don't want to choose Nix solely because Buderus wants him, fine. Choose Nix because he's easily the most logical choice.
Athletic director John Ward has to follow protocol and post the job for anyone to apply, but Nix is the only current coach that plans to put his name in. Several coaches have hinted they might not return if someone other than Nix gets the job.
Florence isn't a powerhouse because it has the best players in the state -- they don't. The Huskies have really good players, but they've got a great program. The program is made of coaches, their work ethics and the system, which are major reasons the Huskies always play in November. If those coaches flee, the success will too (not next year, they have gobs of talent coming back).
Nix has the respect of his players and his fellow coaches. It'd be hard to believe if he didn't have the respect of the parents, as well. He also knows what it takes to keep Florence at the level it has been at for 28 years.
He's a 1998 graduate of Florence, and he played under Buderus -- virtually the entire coaching staff played under Buderus during their playing careers.
"It's going to be different without him next year, but we're prepared to keep on winning, keep the tradition up," Nix said. "He's taught all of us pretty dang well."
Buderus always has kept the door open that if their current house doesn't sell, he and his wife, Penny Buderus, won't move. He also has waited to turn in his formal resignation until he knew for sure that they were moving. On Saturday, he said he's confident the house will sell, but even if it doesn't, he won't return as the head coach or even an assistant.
"It's time for me to do something different," Buderus said. "(Nix is) ready to do it, and I'm ready to do something different. ... Hopefully, he'll get it, and he'll do a great job. He's a Florence guy and is going to be around forever.
"The hard part's just walking away from it."
Actually coach, the hardest part has to be for the Florence fans that have to watch you leave.
Nix taking over what you've built will make that transition a little easier for Husky Nation, though.
Sports Editor Brandon Hopper can be reached at 276-7644 or Facebook.com/CCDRsports.


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RIDE DETAILS: This ride is every Thursday night until notified. It consist of rolling hills for 20 miles and is an out and back setup. The ride is sponsored by Lifetime Fitness in Parker, CO, however everyone is welcome.
RIDE ROUTE: The route is called the Bloody Nose
DIRECTIONS: From the LTF club, go south on Parker Rd. (approx. 10 mi.) to Hwy 86. Turn left on 86 and go approx. 3 mi. to Flintwood. Turn left on Flintwood and park in the fire station parking lot.
Camaraderie - Fitness - Community - Charitable - Goodwill - FUN
Contact CRC


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Reviewed by Jesika D. (age 11)
I think that the book's purpose is to entertain. I also think that this book is like a girl's diary because it tells you details of the day. I loved the book because it teaches you to not judge people that you have never met before. My favorite part was at the very end because Kendra realizes how close they have become. The message from the book is that you shouldn?t think that you won?t like people until you have met them. Kendra changed her ways of thinking about them. I think that this book is really cool because you get to learn and still get entertained. The author did a great job of describing the events of the day.
I highly recommends this book because it really makes you think about how you are so much like Kendra in so many ways. I think that a girl should read this book because it is like reading a diary. The book gives you every little detail in what happened during the day. I think that what attracts a lot of readers are all of the excellent details . Now you should read to succeed.


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Darts legend Eric Bristow has become the latest contestant to be doused in creepy crawlies as he underwent the trial on tonight's I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
Bristow had to lie on his back on a trolley and pull himself through a tunnel using a rope, gathering as many of the six hidden stars as he could in 10 minutes.
During the trial he was covered in maggots, cockroaches, spiders and jungle gunk but managed to secure five of the six stars on offer.
Commenting on his performance he said: "Bugs don't frighten me. I will take that. If they are not pleased with that in camp then they can come and do it."
He added: "It wasn't very pleasant, let me put it this way. I can still feel things crawling on me now.
"I am looking forward to getting back to camp now and telling them five out of six and boy do I need a shower. I don't smell too good."
Bristow has ruffled some feathers in the camp with his straight-talking attitude, which has seen him accused of rudeness and bullying by other contestants.
When he returned to camp he admitted he was scared during the trial, saying "it was a bit frightening to be honest", and received praise from some of the other contestants.
The former darts World Champion also revealed that he would be in the money if he avoided eviction again thanks to a bet.
He said: "There is a lot of money on today. I told all the boys to whack the bookies that I will get half way, so if I go out today, I will lose the lot. It is worth £70,000 today. £20,000 to win £50,000."
Bristow 'needs shower' after trial
Darts legend Eric Bristow has become the latest contestant to be doused in creepy crawlies as he underwent the trial on tonight's I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!


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text: The world's smallest semiconductor laser, which may have applications for the Air Force in communications, computing and biohazard detection, has been demonstrated by Dr. Xiang Zhang at the University of California, Berkeley. The research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation. The semiconductor, called a plasmon, can focus light the size of a single protein in a space that is smaller than half its wavelength while maintaining laser-like qualities that allow it not to dissipate over time. "Proposed almost seven years ago, researchers had been unable to demonstrate a working plasmonic laser until our experiment," said Zhang. "It is an important discovery because it has the potential to eliminate optical loss and make plasmonic-based technologies viable for a broad spectrum of applications." Funded by Air Force and the National Science Foundation, professor Xiang Zhang has demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley, the world's smallest semiconductor laser, which may have applications for the Air Force in communications, computing and biohazard detection. (Image: Xiang Zhang's XLab, UC Berkeley) "Perhaps the biggest gap in our knowledge – and the reason it took so long to demonstrate this technology – was our challenge of devising a realistic plasmonic laser design," he said. "We developed a strategy to get around this problem by combining semiconductor nanowires 1000 times thinner than a human hair with a metal surface separated by an insulating gap of only five nanometers, the size of a single protein molecule." Because of the ultrasmall size of the plasmonic lasers, Zhang admits that an even more challenging aspect of his research has been in demonstrating how they bridge electronics, optics and photonics on the nanometer scale. "We were ultimately able to exhibit these properties successfully by creating a confined space that was able to hold and sustain light while the experiments were conducted," he noted. The next generation of plasmonic lasers, called nanolasers, are even expected to be able to probe and manipulate molecules. They will be of interest to the Air Force because they will advance ultrasensitive biodetection, nanoscale optics and enhanced communication systems. They will also benefit health care, optics-based telecommunications and optical computing. Zhang looks forward to the next phase of research, when he and his colleagues will create an electrically operated version of the plasmonic laser, which can be fully integrated with semiconductors without design modification. For more information, visit: www.afosr.af.mil


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Local fishermen risked their lives, playing a modest role in a mammoth conflict
In October 1942, two of the Navy's smallest vessels embarked on a big mission.
"You're going to Guadalcanal," one of the skippers was ordered. "This cargo has got to go through."
The two vessels, the 110-foot Paramount and the 128-foot Picaroto, sailed northeast from the New Hebrides and into The Slot, one of the South Pacific's most dangerous passages. Evading Japanese patrols, the two vessels reached Guadalcanal's Red Beach in November. They were greeted by a band of Marines who, though exhausted by combat and malaria, unloaded both boats in record time.
"We won't take a chance on you boys getting sunk," one Marine assured the Paramount's captain, Ed Madruga. "This cargo is really important."
The cargo? Turkeys, potatoes, cranberries, oranges: Thanksgiving dinner.
The Paramount and the Picaroto were among the 53 original Yard Patrol boats, tuna clippers — most from San Diego — converted into military vessels during World War II. Known as YPs or Yippies, these vessels have been almost forgotten. That's not surprising. They played a modest role in a mammoth conflict, hunting submarines and ferrying men, food, fuel and other supplies to American outposts.
These unglamorous yet vital missions — just ask the men on Red Beach — were fulfilled at great risk. Twenty-one of the vessels and dozens of fishermen would never come home. When the survivors did sail back into San Diego Bay, though, their wartime experience would transform the tuna fleet and usher in this industry's golden era. Using new technology and an intimate knowledge of previously unknown waters, they would chase tuna around the globe, hauling in record-setting catches.
"The war gave us a greater appreciation of what had to be done," said August Felando, 83, former general manager of the American Tunaboat Association and an author who has written about the Yippies. "It wasn't a local fishery any more. People came home from the war with this vision, and that expanded their horizons."
Looking warlike
The San Diego History Center's ongoing exhibit, Tuna!, includes a section on the Yippies. But the museum and other researchers have been unable to find any of these boats or crew members. "I don't think there's any of the tuna clippers that have survived," said David Bruhn, a naval historian and Yippie authority from Northern California. "And I haven't located any crew members who have survived."
In the San Diego tuna fleet's epic tale, though, this remains a central chapter.
While canned tuna was found in France since the 1870s, it was virtually unknown in the United States until the early 20th century. The California Fish Co., a San Pedro sardine cannery, began packing albacore around 1907. Four years later, the nation's first cannery designed specifically for tuna — the aptly-named Pacific Tuna Canning Company — opened in San Diego.
Immigrants from Japan, Portugal and Italy flocked here, taking jobs on the boats and in the canneries. Local clippers concentrated first on albacore and bluefin, as these tuna migrated past California, then chased skipjack and yellowfin off Mexico. The vessels grew larger, the voyages longer, the canneries busier.
"Now we have some really nice boats being built," Felando said, "just in time for the war."
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese — once central players in the tuna industry — were interned. Then the military, short of supply vessels, jealously eyed the dozens of clippers anchored in San Diego Bay. The Army took a few as tugs. The Navy's need was greater, though, and chartered most of San Diego's larger fishing boats.
But who would sail these clippers? "They're complicated vessels," Felando said, citing the intricate engines and refrigeration systems.
W.J. Morcott, a retired Navy commander who served as San Diego Port Director, asked for volunteers. Roughly 600 fishermen stepped forward and were immediately give Navy ranks and ratings.
After patrolling the waters off the Panama Canal, by spring 1942 most of the Yippies were in the war's Pacific Theater. Painted battleship gray, armed with machine guns and depth charges, bearing their new Navy designations — Madruga's Paramount, for instance, was re-christened YP-289 — the Yippies looked warlike. But only to civilians.
To Japanese warships, they looked like pushovers. To American crew members like Judd Zolezzi, who knew these boats were too weak to fight and too slow to flee, they looked doomed.
Zolezzi, who survived the war, died years ago. But a nephew still remembers his uncle's sardonic assessment of his Yippie: "We were something for the Japanese to shoot at."
Lost race, lost boat
Because the Yippies were helpless in combat, some believed they were useless in war. Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison, a historian of the U.S. Navy in World War II, reported that Atlantic-based YPs were less than gallant when cornered by U-boats. Crew members, Morison maintained, agreed not to radio the German submarines' coordinates in exchange for being allowed to safely abandon ship.
"He sort of gave the YPs a bad rap," Bruhn said.
But Yippies in the Pacific, far from being accused of cowardice, won more than a dozen battle stars and several Presidential Unit Citations. In September 1942, the Prospect, YP-346, transported a band of Marine Raiders from Tulagi to Guadalcanal. Skipper Joaquin Theodore accomplished this mission safely, then headed back to Tulagi.
Theodore was warned that a Japanese cruiser and two destroyers were cruising The Slot, the narrow channel he had to cross.
"This was not our first race against enemy ships in the channel," Vincent Battaglia, a San Diego tuna fisherman who served aboard the Prospect, noted in a postwar manuscript cited by Felando and other students of the Yippies. "It's the first race we lost."
As Prospect neared Tulagi harbor, the Japanese cruiser lit the midnight sky with a flare — and then ripped into Prospect. Shells battered the wooden hull, fragmented the pilot house and punctured pipes. Shrapnel hit Theodore in the chest; an electrician was blown off the vessel. Fifty yards from shore, men began leaping into the water, but Ernie Lopez remained aboard and beached the craft.
"Here," Battaglia recounted, "the Marines were able to remove the wounded."
A month later, three Japanese destroyers cruising off Guadalcanal caught the Endeavor, YP-284, and the fleet tug Seminole. Both American vessels were sunk.
Nature, too, took a toll. Yippies were claimed by storms, accidents and never-to-be-explained incidents. The Yankee, YP-345, sent its final radio message on Halloween 1942: "We are sinking fast 80 miles West Laysan Island." No trace was ever seen of vessel or crew.
In small ways, though, these little craft helped win the war. They delivered aviation fuel to the Marine fliers on Midway atoll before that pivotal June 1942 battle; plucked downed aviators from the Pacific; kept troops supplied throughout the Solomon Islands campaign. While their mission peaked in 1943, Bruhn reports Yippies served at Iwo Jima in February 1945.
"The Navy turned them into survey vessels," the historian said. "They would show up after the Marines took a hostile beach and mark the safe channels."
One small box
World War II transformed San Diego's tuna fleet in profound ways.
In 1941, when the war began, San Diego was home port to 90 commercial fishing vessels — and only 63 of those were 90 feet or longer.
In 1951, there were 700 fishing vessels, including 210 tuna clippers.
National demand for tuna was rising, and would be met in part by Yippie veterans who were now familiar with fisheries halfway around the world. Not only did they venture into the far corners of the Pacific, San Diego-based clippers would eventually explore the waters of Africa. For tuna fishermen in the postwar era, there were no longer any geographical limits.
And the fleet was also armed with new tools, technology that fisherman had been introduced to by the Navy: radar, advanced depth-finding sounders, improved refrigeration systems.
As a teen, Felando heard the occasional tale about the Yippies. But he didn't give this episode much thought until he was grown, fishing in the central western Pacific. There, the war and the tuna clippers' naval exploits still resonated.
On a later trip to the East Coast, Felando visited the museum at the Washington Navy Yard.
"I'd like to see what you have on the YPs," he told an employee.
After a search, an archivist retrieved a single small box of clippings.
"They have hardly anything," Felando said.
Soon, though, the YPs may finally receive their due. Bruhn's manuscript, "Yachts and Yippies," is now in his editor's hands.


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Student Career Development Program Being Developedby Jeremy Sexton • January 25, 2006 Share:
A new program is being developed at Wabash College as part of the New Strategic Plan. "The Student to Alumni Program hopes to facilitate ways current Wabash students become great Alumni of the College," Mike Warren, Associate Director of Alumni Affairs, said.
The plan encompasses three years and begins with the first semester of the sophomore year. The program is planned to provide opportunities that introduce students to the privileges and responsibilities while also providing learning opportunities at a time that is most beneficial to student development.
The plan is on track to be implemented starting next fall. The committee plans on hosting one event each semester over the next three years. The events span a wide variety of interest such as welcome-back dinners with guest alumni speakers, dinner with the Board of Trustees and National Association of Wabash Men (NAWM), and a "Real World 101" seminar for Seniors which covers aspects of life development such as health care, 401k and other retirement plans.
"We are doing it in a way that is not just people standing up and preaching the expectations of Alumni, but rather we are giving students a learning opportunity in a fun way," said Scott Crawford, Director of Schroeder Career Center.
The program offers ways in which students and alumni can come together to develop networking connections, finding professional opportunities for graduates, and strengthen the greater Wabash Community.
"The Student to Alumni Program is intended to help graduates adjust and prepare themselves to life after Wabash," Warren said.
To kick off the program, the Student to Alumni committee is bringing Tim Koegel for a presentation and workshop to be held at 7 p.m., Thursday, in Salter Hall. Koegel specializes in strengthening the presentation, media relations, and communication skills of CEOs, world leaders, and business executives, managers and sales professionals.
Koegel is a University of Notre Dame graduate who has worked with members of the U.S. House and Senate, White House staff, Department of Labor, Office of Civil Rights, The EPA, and other governmental agencies.
The Student to Alumni Program has been created on behalf of the Dean of Students Office (Mike Raters), Alumni and Parent Relations (Tom Runge and Mike Warren), Annual Fund and Sons of Wabash (Joe Klen and Roger Busch), and Schroeder Career Center (Scott Crawford and Stephanie Hopkins).
Sexton is a Wabash College junior and English major.


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One of the newer engine/game projects I have been following closely is Octaforge. It is basically a fork of Tesseract, which in turn is an graphic improvement project by the makers of the well known Cube2 engine.
The main difference with Octaforge is that aims to become a game SDK and platform for easy creation of mods; And one of its prime new features for this is full scriptability with Lua.
Read about their progress on the latest beta here, which also includes this nice video showcasing the new player model and an test map:


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Oct. 30, 2007 (Los Angeles) -- People with a type of brain cancer that was invariably fatal only five years ago now have a shot at living three, four, or even five years after diagnosis, European researchers report.
In a new study, four times as many people with a brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme who were given radiation and the drug Temodar survived for at least four years, compared with those treated with radiation alone.
The survival rate was even higher among people who didn't have symptoms or who had a favorable genetic makeup, says researcher Rene-Olivier Mirimanoff, MD, a radiation oncologist at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The findings were reported at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology (ASTRO).
A Deadly Brain Cancer
Glioblastoma multiforme is one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat types of brain cancer; it's is the tumor that killed the character Dr. Mark Green on the popular TV show ER. For years, surgery followed by radiation was the best treatment available, but it really didn't work very well, Mirimanoff says. Most patients lived only nine to 12 months from diagnosis and a few survived for two years.
The anticancer drug Temodar was approved in 2005 after research showed that twice as many people given the drug plus radiation survived for at least two years compared with those given radiation alone.
"There had been almost no progress for 30 years until this study," Mirimanoff says. Temodar quickly became the standard of care, he says, but doctors still didn't know if patients would survive over the long term.
Until now.
Temodar Ups Survival Rate
Long-term results from the study of 573 people show that 12% of people given Temodar plus radiation were alive four years later compared with 3% given radiation alone.
"Frankly we did not expect such good results," Mirimanoff tells WebMD. "We thought it would just give people a few extra months."
The subgroup of people who were in relatively good health with almost no symptoms did even better: 28% given Temodar were alive at four years vs. 7% of those given radiation. This group accounted for about 15% of the study participants.
Also, 22% of people whose MGMT gene was turned off lived for four years if they had the combination therapy, compared with 5% for radiation alone. The MGMT gene causes resistance to radiation and chemotherapy; if it's turned off, the tumor responds much better, Mirimanoff explains.
About 45% of patients, both in the study and the general cancer population, have a silenced MGMT gene, he says.
A Turning Point
"This is the good-news story of the meeting," says Anthony Zeitman, MD, of Harvard Medical School, a spokesman for ASTRO.
"For this previously invariably and rapidly fatal tumor, we may be turning the corner. It's possible for some patients to see some light at the end of the tunnel," he tells WebMD.
The study was funded by the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer, the National Cancer Institute of Canada, and Schering-Plough, which makes Temodar.


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As the Falcons were in the process of blowing a 20-point lead against the Seahawks on Sunday, I wondered aloud on Twitter whether anyone, everyone, or no one would be fired if the Falcons lost.
In the end, the Falcons survived (in case you hadn't heard). But it remains tempting to wonder what the aftermath in Atlanta would have been if quarterback Matt Ryan hadn't guided the team into field goal range with the same 31 seconds that were on the clock when the Broncos decided a day earlier to take a knee and go to overtime.
The Falcons, of course, had no choice; they were trailing. And owner Arthur Blank may have felt like he had no choice but to make changes in the wake of five straight winning seasons but four playoff defeats punctuated by the worst fourth-quarter postseason collapse in NFL history.
Dan Patrick has mentioned during his daily radio/TV show that the buzz at the BCS national championship game among folks from Atlanta with the financial wherewithal to attend the game was that, if the Falcons were to lose, Blank would fire coach Mike Smith.
That would have been a bad move. Despite the postseason struggles, the Falcons routinely are knocking on the door. Sooner or later, they'll kick it in. Or come close to doing so.
The reality is that there's only one team every year that wins the Super Bowl. It's much easier to become that team if a team is consistently in contention. The Falcons are, and Smith is a big reason for that.
So apart from the fact that Ryan's last-minute heroics saved the team's season, the quarterback may have saved the owner from making what would have been a huge mistake.


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and Robert John Scheelen
Modern civilization, in all its aspects, work, transportation, agriculture, housing etc., is built upon the findings of modern science. Humanity can no longer survive and flourish, with a world population of over seven billion, without the products of science.
Fossil fuels have for the last 200 years been a significant boon to humanity. They have helped make possible great advances in living standards, health, and longevity. They are built into the very fabric of our civilization. We take their use for granted.
We are now realizing the unintended consequence of our escalating use of fossil fuels: climate change, which threatens all our gains and the future of our whole civilization.
Today the very science that underlies our standard of living predicts a clear biophysical threat to our modern society, caused by human-caused climate destabilization. Many people, particularly in U.S. society, however, remain unaware, or are in denial about the threat, and a few make absurd claims of hoaxes to avoid dealing with the reality.
In fact, the effects have clearly begun and will only get worse: widespread droughts; increasing land and ocean temperatures; ocean acidification; earlier springs; more severe storms and mega-storms worldwide (e.g. superstorm Sandy); extensive melting of Artic sea ice, the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps and most mountain glaciers; and more severe and extensive forest fires in arctic boreal forests, in Russia, and in the western U.S. (just look outside!). While individual storms or fires cannot be definitively traced to climate change, the pattern of extreme weather events is clearly in line with the expected consequences of climate change.
The physical manifestations are only one aspect of the problems. Major social dislocations and instability worldwide have begun and will grow; climate refugees will increase; island nations will need to be evacuated and will disappear; fragile nation states will fail and fall into chaos.
We in the Rogue Valley are not immune to the consequences of climate change. Projections for local effects include significantly increasing average summer temperatures, major declines in snowpack and therefore water resources, increased frequency and severity of forest fires and more frequent severe weather events. Indeed, these are already happening.
Given the knowledge science has given us, humanity must rapidly shift away from fossil fuels to use of renewable energy to support the world economy. We must admit the greatest market failure of all: not pricing all the costs of fossil fuel use.
World, national and local efforts to address climate change have so far been insufficient. Greenhouse gases already released (given their residence times in the atmosphere) guarantee us decades of climate change to come. We are currently passing 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere (from well below 300 ppm pre-industrially) and increasing at 3 ppm per year with no signs of slowing.
A variety of strategies are being pursued to accelerate the transition to an economy based on renewable energy. Two major efforts are: divestment from fossil fuel companies and imposition of carbon taxes. The divestment movement recognizes the questionable moral legitimacy of the current actions by fossil fuel companies and pressures them to switch to renewable energy. A carbon tax will provide additional economic impetus for change.
Local groups, as well as better-known national ones, are pursuing these and other strategies to address the fundamental issues involved in reconstructing our society.
We are both members of SOCAN (Southern Oregon Climate Action Now — socan.info), which is working on a broad spectrum of actions both politically and at individual and group levels. We are making a significant effort to promote divestment in local and state organizations. On July 1st the biennial national synod of the United Church of Christ, strongly supported by the congregation of the local Medford Congregational United Church of Christ, passed a resolution to divest from fossil fuel companies, the first denomination nationally to do so.
The local chapter of CCL, (Citizen's Climate Lobby — citizensclimatelobby.org, local contact Susan Bizeau 541-973-6091), which we also support, is educating and advocating for a national carbon tax, probably the most critical strategy of all. Thirty-three nations and 18 sub-national entities, as of 2013, are already taxing carbon and reducing dependence on fossil fuels (including an effective carbon tax across the border in British Columbia).
The great moral challenge of our time is to face climate change and build a renewable energy economy.
We strongly urge all people to support the move to a renewable economy in ways both personal and political. Join us in the local groups working for this.