St. Valentine's Day: Greeting Cards v. Dead Goats

I've never been a fan of people that sit around and trash holidays. There's always some guy sitting in the corner of a Christmas party that says, "Christmas is materialistic crap." These types are looking to have an impact, which they do. They make everyone looking for the rum punch tell their friends to avoid the loser in the corner.

Valentine's Day is no different. People that don't have a hope in hell of getting laid hate Valentine's Day. But hatred isn't enough. You need a reason to hate something. It's simply less humiliating to say that you hate Valentine's Day because it's too commercial, as opposed to saying that you dislike it because you can't score at the office bender.

People that hate holidays don't get it. When they see a Christmas party, a Valentine's card, or an Easter bunny, they immediately jump on the no-fun bandwagon and think that all of these things used to mean something ultra-serious. They take the high road and declare that we're too commercial, too modern, that somehow we corrupted something sacred. What bores.

For the losers: a) holidays are simply an excuse to party. b) why aren't you out helping the poor on Christmas Eve, rather than drinking our free booze and bitching about life until you're the last to leave the house? c) why are Christian holidays the only ones to take it on the chin from people that never step inside a church? I don't hear anyone saying how we've corrupted New Year's Eve or Halloween. Hanukkah, Canada Day, and the Fourth of July go by with nary a bitter word, but show someone an Easter bunny and suddenly they were outside the cave when Christ moved the rock.

I've got no problem with the idea that Jesus was born, then rose from the dead, and all the rest of it. If that's what you believe, go for it. And sure, I guess it's handy to know that some guy named Valentinus died in the 3rd century AD. But this isn't what I'm thinking about when I fill out the cards and put my friends' names on them (well, let's be honest; I send e-cards like everyone else). I may think about Christ and Val in private from time to time, but when it comes to being friendly with friends, I'm all about the "Merry Christmas. Pass the bottle." And there is nothing wrong with that.

Incidentally, there were three - or two, depending on where you get your info - of these Valentinus characters, and no one knows exactly what it is they did, or why one of them (or all of them) is a saint. Call it canonization by committee. One was a priest, one was a bishop, and one was a guy in Africa, back when Africa was the name of a Roman province. All of them lived and died in the 3rd century AD. Apparently they became martyrs, but again, no one knows why. To get past this little hurdle, Pope Gelasius I said that their works were "known only to God."

Gelasius I sounds like a party boy. He decreed the feast of St. Valentine in 496, and like any good party animal, he used an excuse that couldn't be impeached:

"Gel, why did you name this feast after Valentinus?"
"God knows."

Today's version:

"Sean, why did you tell people that it was okay to party in my living room and wreck the place?"
"Ask Gelasius I."

The roots of St. Valentine's Day will never be known, but we have some clues. Some argue it was used to supersede the pagan festival of Lupercalia, which was still being celebrated in 5th century Rome. Lupercalia was also known as Februatio, from the root word "februare," which means "to purify." The festival was celebrated on February 15th, and its beginnings may be older than the founding of Rome itself.

Luperci - a collection of pagan priests - would dress themselves in goatskin, then sacrifice two goats and a dog. They would then smear the sacrificial blood on two young Luperci, who were expected to laugh and smile at the gift. Then these two Luperci would take whips made from the dead animals and run around the city, using them to whip girls and women, who would line up for the honor. This, it was believed, would aid in fertility and ward off sterility.

Who knows how much of any of this is true. If you ask ten friends what happened at a party last weekend, you'll get an idea of how skeptical you should be of history, ancient or otherwise.

Anyway, by the 5th century, the pagan festival was outlawed and it was up to Gelasius I to kill the name outright. He did a good job. Today, everyone knows St. Valentine's Day, but nobody says too much about their local Luperci smearing them with goat blood. Still, we can thank the Romans and their bloody festivals for the name of the month in which St. Valentine's Day is celebrated.

February was the last month of the Roman calender (March, named after Mars, was the first), but no matter. February is our second month, and we use its 14th day as an excuse to finally get up the nerve to ask out the chick that comes into the coffee shop every morning. Should you decide to whip her with goat skin, I won't post your bail.

As for all of the people out there that are going to be ticked off about another Valentine's Day, in a word: relax. Seeing someone receive a card from Hallmark cannot be nearly as stressful as watching your mom get hit with a dead goat. And if you'd get off your butts and into the swing, you might just get some action this year. Buy a card, pick a flower, and tell the chick in aisle 9 that her dress looks nice.

Try it. No matter if your mood or your sensitivity training tells you differently, you might (just might) like it. And probably she will, too. Women must be getting tired of expecting something from men on Valentine's Day. According to the Greeting Card Association, a whopping 85% of all Valentine's cards are bought by women. If that's the case, competition facing an average guy for a woman's hand is so low as to be laughable.

So start laughing and enjoy the party. For once.

Zero Dark Thirty - Review

Starring: Jessica Chastain / Jason Clarke
Writer: Mark Boal
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Runtime: 157 minutes

• Uncle Sam gets payback
• Keeps it moving
• Holds the politics
• Good cast of non-stars

Zero Dark Thirty is that rarest of post 9/11 films: a story where al-Qaeda is the enemy and Americans are the good guys.

You can count on one hand the number of films made since September 11, 2001, that define radical Islam as an enemy of human liberty, and don't serve up Americans as greedy, oil sucking, two-faced creeps.

It's hard to even find a movie that mentions the words September 11th, as if that date was wiped clean from the consciences of anything but the most hardcore NRA bigot screenwriter. (As you can tell, it's been one of my hobby horses to watch Hollywood's cowards twist themselves into yoga-inspired knots while avoiding the words Islam and terror).

Generally speaking, if Hollywood produces a movie about terrorists, the terrorist will be anything but a radical Islamic fundamentalist. Hollywood's pathological avoidance of the subject is made most clear by action movies like Live Free or Die Hard, Skyfall, or any of the Bourne movies, where the terrorist bad guys turn out to be - shocker of shockers - guys from our own side. The latest flick I saw that did the faux-terrorist-switcheroo was Jack Reacher: a sniper knocks off a bunch of people in a crowded park and guess what? A former US soldier is framed for it. But not to worry, it's actually a corporate entity that set it up.

Are we this transparent, or what?

I sometimes ponder how this happened. During the Cold War, writers had a bad guy at their fingertips: the Russians. So the writers used the Russians, even though the Russians were more of an existential threat to the average movie-goer than an actual physical presence. That is, we were afraid the Russians might nuke us someday, or that a spy might by lurking in Washington DC, but other than that, we just knew they were the Bad Guy Over There.

The Nazis and the Japanese were regarded as the Bad Guys, too, and writers still use them to this day. Indeed, Nazi Germany gets more bad press in films 60 years after WWII (Inglorious Basterds, Defiance, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Valkyrie, among other Nazi movies from the past decade) than radical Islamists ever will.

Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany. Bad guys, with a mountain of movies to show for it. Heck, even the Vietnam war gets thrown in there once in a while, even if it's mostly used to say that American soldiers liked to smoke dope and cry a lot.

When it came to those peoples and cultures, Hollywood had no problem pointing the finger and claiming some sort of moral or cultural superiority. But when it comes to radical Islam, those fingers are  pointed back at themselves, when they are even pointed at all.

It is strange, isn't it? Islamic terrorists are a palpable enemy and they are an existential as well as a physical threat. They knock down buildings, incinerate busses, and cut off people's heads for an internet audience. Heck, just this week they took over an entire gas refinery and killed a bunch of hostages from a variety of countries. To put it mildly, Islamic fundamentalists are around, and they're busy. They do all kinds of nasty stuff that translates well to today's bloodfest movies: blow stuff up, take hostages, and kill innocent people who need to be rescued by special forces.

So where's the movies?

There's probably all kinds of reasons these movies aren't made, but top of the list are politics and cowardice. The politics come from the hangover of Vietnam (war is bad) mixed with the cocktail of post-Reagan liberalism (we are bad). Put them together and you get films like Redacted, though once in a while a film like The Kingdom slips in. Even then, however, filmmakers get nervous. When Kingdom director Peter Berg heard an audience applaud at the climax of his film, he wondered, "Is this American blood lust?" Buddy, relax. They're just glad the good guy got the bad guy. They're not going to leave the theatre and invade Kuwait.

The cowardice part is easy: if you insult radical Islamists in books or films, they say that they're going to kill you, and then they sometimes do. That simple. So I can't really blame producers for being a little on the chicken side, but please spare me the "George Clooney is brave" talk when he makes a movie about McCarthyism in the '50s. Big deal.

Which brings us - finally, you're saying - to Zero Dark Thirty. If it is true that people who make movies critical of radical Islam can face threats on their lives, then the makers of this movie are brave indeed, especially director Kathryn Bigelow. Still, the film is more of a by-the-numbers look at the search for Osama bin Laden than anything else and there isn't anything overtly political. Bigelow's good like that. She did the same in The Hurt Locker.

In this movie, we follow a CIA operative named Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose personal and professional quest is to find Osama bin Laden and see him die. This quest lasts ten years. She has done nothing else since the CIA, as she says, "Recruited me out of high school." I found it poetic that it was a woman who hunted bin Laden down, just as it took a woman (Bigelow) to tell the story and do it justice.

Some people might not like the scenes of torture, er, enhanced interrogation techniques in the film. Watching these scenes, I was reminded of all the pussyfooting around that was going on a decade ago. Is torture legal? Is it not? Is waterboarding torture? Is sleep deprivation torture?

Politicians of all stripes hemmed and hawed about it. Republican Bush denied it, and Democrat Feinstein still does. For my money, I wouldn't want to be tortured, but I don't get bent out of shape that others may have been. You knock down a couple of buildings and kill 3000 people, you might get slapped around a little.

What I did find myself thinking is, "What's it all for?" The terrorism, I mean. I'm not a complete fool: I know that the point of terrorism is terror, and in radical Islam's case it's about religion, and I do subscribe to the belief that we're rich and they hate us, but all the same it's such a stupid waste. In the movie, the CIA agents are in Pakistan or Afghanistan, observing people who hide out in slums and plot to murder bus riders half a world away. Do these thugs honestly have nothing better to do with their time?

There's considerable debate about how much of the movie is true. That's fine. I always caution that when a movie says Based on actual events, you need to beware of the word based, and the "s" in events. The lead character, Maya, is no doubt a hybrid of several people, which is a pretty common storytelling technique. Apparently Bigelow did have access to some confidential information, which lends the movie good credibility. For me, I took heart from seeing the screw ups during the hit on bin Laden, as well as Maya's extreme frustration that it takes the government months to act on her information. Big screw ups? Unbearable waiting times? That's got real government written all over it.

Zero Dark Thirty is an engrossing movie. It's long, but it doesn't feel long. If you want to see Uncle Sam get some payback, see the movie.

Photos: Rotten Tomatoes

Flight - Review

Starring: Denzel Washington / Don Cheadle
Writer: John Gatins
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Runtime: 138 minutes

• Washington and cast excellent
• Hair raising crash sequence
• Insult to airline professionals

I'm not quite sure which would be worse: watching Flight before getting on an airplane, or before you go for drinks with a couple of friends.

Flight is a movie about drug and alcohol abuse, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. It's a story about how alcohol can alienate you from your friends and family, and how it can destroy your professional life.

Or can it?

It's a tough movie to pin down thematically. It does a great job of walking the tightrope between drama and melodrama, but I'm not sure about the moral it teaches. It is a modern day Lost Weekend for the jet set, which may intrigue you, or may make you yawn, i.e., how many times do we have to be shown that drinking alcohol all day is bad for you?

The film opens with Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) lying in a hotel bed with a naked, extraordinarily beautiful woman. He smacks the usual "the movie is starting" alarm clock. As the woman gets herself ready, Whip ends up on the phone with an angry ex-wife, then proceeds to get ready for work by downing some booze and doing a line or two of cocaine.

Using alcohol and narcotics before going to work is generally not a good thing, especially if, like Whip, you are an airline pilot who has a flight in two hours. His bed mate is an airline flight attendant, but she has no problem with Whip using drugs before heading to the airport with him.

Though Whip is high on coke and booze, his aviator shades help cover the pupils, and his long-time-addict brain helps cover the substance abuse. He boards the aircraft and treats it like just another day, though today he has a new co-pilot flying with him. Also on board the aircraft is another flight attendant named Margaret. They have evidently known each other for a long time and they seem very friendly.

After a rough take off, the flight is going along smoothly. Then bang.

The plane goes into a vertical dive, and the co-pilot has no control. There is yelling from a lot of people, but not from Whip. He is the picture of calmness.

In these scenes, Washington reminded me of The Right Stuff. In that book, Chuck Yeager was described as the guy who started the pilot's habit of sounding like Mr. Smooth. Even while hurtling towards the Earth in a deadly spin as a test pilot, Yeager would speak as if giving directions to the hardware store: Tail spin....Trying A....A didn't work....Trying B...B didn't work...Still spinning...Trying C...

Nothing rattled Yeager, and apparently his cool, slow drawl is the inspiration for every pilot's voice we hear today.

In Flight, while the plane is going down, Whip is Yeager incarnate. Smooth, talented and fearless. Even with all of the crap pumping through his veins, he can do no wrong.

I don't think I'm spoiling the movie by saying that Whip saves the day on that plane. He makes a miraculous landing and saves a lot of lives. The story is really about what comes after the crash landing. Whip is hailed as a hero, and every network news anchor wants to interview him, but there's a problem: after an airline accident, all crew must receive a blood test. Guess what Whip's test shows?

The remainder of the movie is a cat and mouse game between Whip and the NTSB, Whip and his friends, and Whip and himself. Every addict is a liar, and Whip is no different. Frustration will build in you as the lies grow deeper, and as Whip continues to destroy himself and others with these lies. Still, the lying feels - oddly enough - honest. It's the way that addicts behave. They will lie until they reach rock bottom.

As I said above, it's not like you haven't seen this material before. While watching the film, I rattled off a number of movies in my head that cover the drunk-person-in-crisis theme. They tend to be depressing and didactic movies that I wouldn't want to revisit. Flight is a little different in that is has a great cast, and Denzel Washington can carry any movie across the finish line.

One thing about this movie that bothers me, however, is how readily people accept his addiction, and try to cover for him when their own reputations or lives are at stake. The hot flight attendant who watches him do a line of coke, the older flight attendant who apparently knows he partied all night, the co-pilot who thinks he smells gin on Whip's breath, the lawyer and union rep who let him do some coke to calm him down before a hearing.

There's a cynical and comedic streak to the movie that is frightening. If I was in the airline profession, I would not be a fan of this film and in fact would feel the need to speak out against what it implies: that pilots can still make great landings when drunk, and that their colleagues will cover for them. Unless that's all true, which is almost too disturbing to consider.

Those thoughts aside, the movie is well done and worth seeing.

Photos: Rotten Tomatoes

Thoughts on Gun Control in The US

The Political Tidal Wave Recedes

I didn't have much to say after the mass murder of children and teachers in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. I knew that it would only take about an hour before the horror faded into memory, to be replaced by political axe grinding for gun control in the US. I didn't feel like getting involved in that. It seemed distasteful, especially at Christmas. But I knew the political tidal wave would arrive within hours after the massacre.

On this, social media didn't disappoint: within minutes, my Facebook and Twitter feeds were alive with cries for more gun control in the US.

I wasn't too bothered by this. This is the way political tidal waves work. I knew the cries would become grumbles, then whispers, and finally they would recede as if nothing had happened. Carnage in the households of those directly affected, but beyond that, nothing. At least, until the next massacre in the United States.

Those last two words are key: United States. When something happens in the US, it makes headlines around the world, and everyone comments on how US citizens should live their lives. When a massacre happens in Norway, there aren't too many calls to question laws in that country, even when the guy knocks off 77 people and draws 21 years (yes, yes, they can keep him longer if they deem him a threat to society - but should that possibility even exist?). Similarly, when a man walks into the cafeteria at one of the biggest malls in Canada and opens fire, the proponents of Canada's laws are silent on the fact that Canada's gun laws obviously failed.

When it happens anywhere else in the world, it's about the victims and flowers on the sidewalk. When it happens in the United States, it's about the politics. Either way, the pain for the families of the victims goes on forever, but for the rest of us, whatever "pain" we feel fades after a matter of days.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's not cynicism, it's human nature. I've written before that caring is about proximity, both in time and place. Terrorist in Iraq? No worry. Terrorist in my city? Worry a little. Terrorist in my living room? Worry a lot.

So it is with time. The further back, the less and less we care about it, until it might as well not have happened at all. So long as it didn't happen directly to us, we lose our ability to care about things pretty quickly, no matter how big or important they seemed at the time. It has to be this way, otherwise we'd be basketcases.

When I'm in a smartass mood, I sometimes ask people how things are going in Myanmar lately. Or Fukushima. Or Haiti. I usually get some quizzical looks, but these places were a really big deal not too long ago. I couldn't escape them on Facebook. People were asking me for money, or posting how they were going to fly somewhere and help. With regards to Myanmar, there were people saying an invasion might be advisable, while some women's libbers were going to send their bras and underwear there to embarrass the regime.

That was 4 years ago. It was a major news story, and a lot of people really cared about it. I wonder how many people remember that it started as a response to a hurricane? In any case, all the hurricane did was uncover what a godawful mess Myanmar is all the time. Myanmar is still a mess, but we've since moved on to the BP oil spill, nuclear reactors in Japan, the Occupy movement, presidential candidates talking about Sesame Street, gun control in the USA. That Myanmar hurricane might as well have happened in 1920.

Which is when the worst massacre in a US school took place. May 18, 1920. It happened in Bath Township, Michigan. A man named Andrew Kehoe set off bombs at his house and farm, and then at a local school. After rescuers arrived at the school to tend to the wounded, Kehoe arrived and set off a truck bomb at the site, killing himself and a few more people. 38 children and 6 adults lost their lives. It was discovered that before the destruction, Kehoe had also killed his wife.

It must have seemed like hell on Earth in that little Michigan town. If it happened today, the wall-to-wall press coverage about the demise of American society and culture would be suffocating, and it would be hard to disagree. Yet it was almost 100 years ago. In our mind's eye, we tend to see those olden days in sepia tint, and can easily imagine a man doffing his cap as a lady walks past. Men used to do that. They also used to gas people at Treblinka.

The killings in Bath Township show us that evil is old, but the killings in Connecticut remind us that evil never dies.

100 years ago, of course, there were no video games, and not too many violent movies. The motive for Kehoe's crime appears to be foreclosure on his house, as well as a loss in a town election. Maybe he was under pressure, felt slighted, and snapped. Maybe he was just evil or nuts. Whatever it was, he formed a hideous plan in his head and he brought it to fruition, without any help from computers, video games, or the latest bogeyman, the National Rifle Association.

Point is, there's really no way to defend against any of these people, and nothing is going to stop killings like this from happening again, though it may make people feel better to talk about it.

Gun laws or not, a nut will find a way to do what he wants to do. I'm of the reasoning that the US has a large population, and sooner or later one of those people is going to go off the rails. Would it be better if the person didn't have easy access to a gun? Sure. But people don't have easy access to guns in Canada or Norway, and people still get shot. A few days ago, two people were shot at a nightclub about a mile from my front door. How'd the shooter get the gun in a place you "can't get guns?" Beats me. But he got it, and he used it.

Looking in One Direction

Again, the hew and cry isn't about the guns. It's about the United States. If it was about the guns and - more generally - criminal violence, then people would be audibly outraged by what is going on in Brazil and Mexico. They are the bad boys of rock 'n roll when it comes to murder. Especially Brazil.

Though the US has more guns per person than anywhere else, the US murder rate hovers around 5 per 100,000, or a little less than the worldwide average of 6.9. Mexico and Brazil sit around 22 and 21 respectively. Average-wise, though, they are as nothing when it comes to Honduras. Though the body count in Honduras is much lower than in Mexico and Brazil, the average is a whopping 91 people murdered per 100,000 population.

Last year, the US saw over 12,000 people die in intentional homicides of all kinds. Chump change. According to the UN, between 1979 and 2003, half a million Brazilians were killed by firearms alone, or roughly 20,000 people per year. This average doesn't do the butcher's bill justice, as 2004 saw 36,000 Brazilians shot and killed. It hasn't gotten better since.

Simply put, Brazil and Mexico are very violent places. You have a much better chance of being killed by intentional homicide in Brazil and Mexico than you do in the US. But when it comes to protesting violence, no one ever mentions those countries in my social media feeds. Ever.

Cop in Brasilandia. Photo: CNN.

No surprise. People are busy. Why dig, when things are served up for you? People see America on their TVs, computers, and tablets every day whether they want to or not. Ask anyone on Earth what they think of the US and they will have an answer of some kind. Ask those same people what they think of Brazil and they may mention soccer or beaches. Leastways, they might know that Brazil has the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics on the horizon. They probably don't know that someone is shot in Brazil every few minutes, that the country has a growing crack epidemic, and that drug gangs execute police officers on a regular basis.

America has a great megaphone but a lousy publicist.

Why "Gun Control" in the US Won't Happen

I hazard to guess that when people say "gun control," they don't mean they want gun regulations tightened. They want guns to cease to exist. I don't think I know anyone who says "gun control" and actually means something like, "Yes, US citizens should own guns, but no assault rifles, no semi-automatic pistols, a limit of ten shotgun shells per person, and a 2 month waiting period before taking a weapon home."

No, when I hear people say, "The US needs gun control," I know what they mean is, "US citizens shouldn't have guns."

This is why I'm not one way or the other on "gun control." It's not an argument worth having, because nothing is going to substantively change gun ownership policy in the United States. You might as well tell me that you think the sky should be purple. I will agree with you to save time, but I know it's a load, so I don't bother getting into it.

The gun issue has been argued before the Supreme Court for decades, and the gun side keeps winning. Some people may detest the 2nd Amendment, but there it sits. To ban guns outright and take them away from US citizens can't be done without amending the constitution, and that simply is not going to happen. Besides, even if you could ban them, it's a practical impossibility that you'll ever round them all up. There are millions of guns in American households. No chance.

I yield to no one in the volume of my giggles when President Obama calls himself a constitutional scholar, or when he swears to be a defender of that document, but even he knows this argument's already over. If I had to guess, I'd say he'll let this issue drift off to nowhere over the next month or two. But if he actually did try to get something through Congress, it will probably be some kind of high capacity magazine limit, or a stricter background check on gun buyers. A bone to throw to the anti-gun crowd to say he tried.

Contrary to what I'm reading and hearing everywhere, NRA members are not the only people who own guns or want the right to own them. Every story needs a villain, but right now NRA membership is around 4.5 million people. That's not a small number, but it's not exactly a quarter of the country, either. The city of Philadelphia has more people than that. So there are a lot of people out there who aren't carrying NRA membership cards, but they are carrying guns - and they vote Democrat.

Obama knows it. This Gallup poll taken after the Connecticut shootings shows that a little more than half of Americans would like to see some stricter rules on the sale of firearms, but when it comes to an outright ban on assault weapons and especially handguns, you can forget it. Even after 24/7 coverage of Newtown children being killed by firearms, 75% of the country rejects the notion a handgun ban and, as the Gallup pollster states, Americans' views on the sale of assault rifles are unchanged. The slight majority, 51%, remain opposed to making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles.

Piers Morgan may make fun of NRA spokespeople and tell them that they're "incredibly stupid," but Morgan is 1) a Brit, and 2) working in a professional bubble surrounded by people who think like he does. In short, when it comes to America, he just doesn't get it (co-hosting America's Got Talent probably didn't help, either). If he thinks the NRA is the problem, he's way off. The problem - if you believe it is one - is that a lot of Americans view the right to bear arms as an important part of their daily lives.

I remember the first time I saw a gun up close and personal while I was staying in LA. I'd held and fired weapons before, but never seen one in a civilian setting. I opened the trunk of a friend's car, pulled out a bag, and saw a pistol on the floor. I told her later, "Hey, I saw a gun sitting in your car." She replied, "Yeah, my dad got me that." Her tone would have been no different if I had told her I had seen a pair of scissors.

Many Americans, of all political stripes, are used to guns. They've seen them, handled them, fired them. They don't like massacres, but they don't like the idea of someone taking their gun rights away, either.

As for the president, after some tough talk early on, he has slowly begun distancing himself from "gun control." Here is what he had to say two days after the massacre, in a moving and poignant speech:

We can't tolerate this anymore...These tragedies must end, and to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and it is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can't be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

Fourteen days later (and perhaps not coincidentally 3 days after that Gallup poll came out), in an interview with David Gregory, the president was asked what his single biggest priority would be for his second term. The president was generous, and stated four big priorities. In order, they were: 1) Immigration. 2) Stabilize the economy. 3) Energy policy. 4) Make sure taxes don't go up on middle class families.

David Gregory noticed something was missing and quickly cued the president with this: "Those are four huge things and you didn't mention after Newtown, although I know you're thinking about it, new gun regulations."

Heh.

David Gregory and several other people working in network news might be thinking about new gun regulations, but apparently it slipped the president's mind. So the president gave David a few minutes of boilerplate - task forces, we'll see what public opinion looks like, I don't want to see mass murder happen again - and then they moved on to foreign policy.

Here's the rub, and it's a rough one for people who don't like the idea of American civilians owning guns: the majority of US citizens want the right to own a firearm. That simple. The Colorado and Connecticut massacres of 2012 didn't change that. It may have seemed like they did on your social media feeds and in conversations over dinner, but that was a brief snapshot in time with people who mainly agree with you, anyway. Fact is, a person can lament what happened in Connecticut and still want to own a firearm. That may seem like a paradox to an outsider, but to many Americans, it's not something they lose sleep over.

A friend of mine remarked to me about the 2nd Amendment and how it should be scrapped. I said, "It's the rules. They're allowed to own guns."

He said, "But the rules are 200 years old."

"I know," I said. "But it's the rules there."

They won't change anytime soon.

Killing Them Softly - Review

Starring: Brad Pitt
Writer/Director: Andrew Dominik
Runtime: 97 minutes

• Good performances
• Too much talk
• Good premise wasted
• Tin eared economic theme

Killing Them Softly is a gangster movie which squanders a plausible premise and becomes boring pretty quickly. It asks you to emotionally invest in several characters who aren't very interesting, and it has a strange political subplot starring George W. Bush and Barack Obama in footage from the 2008 presidential election.

Bear with.

The story starts out with three men plotting to knock over a card game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Some time in the past, Trattman admittedly staged a robbery of his own card game. He lived to laugh about it. The thinking now goes that if his card game is hit again, Trattman will be blamed for it and take the fall, likely with a bullet in his head.

This logic proves mistaken, as the mysterious syndicate who oversees these card games sends Jackie (Brad Pitt) in to investigate the latest robbery. Jackie draws the conclusion that it doesn't matter if Trattman did it or not. Everybody who might be involved should be rubbed out.

Sounds like a nice set up, doesn't it? Fairly straightforward, with lots of room for double crosses, shoot outs, and all of that good stuff that makes a gangster movie entertaining. Except this movie forgets about entertainment value, and instead spends too long teaching us why we should care about these characters, and letting them talk. And talk. And talk.

The yakkety-yak scenes in this movie goes on forever, and they aren't nearly interesting enough to make it worthwhile. I found myself asking, "Who gives a damn?" more than a couple of times. James Gandolfini makes an appearance in this flick as a hitman with a conscience and he refuses to shut up about the problems he's having with his wife. He goes on in great, obscenity-laced detail about how horrible his life is. Even Brad Pitt looks like he's had enough. One scene begets another of Gandolfini bitching about his wife, his possible jail term, his drinking, his lousy hookers. After a while, you wish he'd put a hit on himself and end it already.

The political angle of the film could have been interesting, if it had anything to do with anything or if the characters did anything with it. In the background of a lot of scenes, we see news footage of George W. Bush or Barack Obama on TV, giving speeches about the economy of 2008. At first, I thought the director was simply saying, "Here's your clue that this takes place during the 2008 election." But after a few scenes, I realized the director wanted us to know that it meant something.

I'm sure the majority of film critics working today pleasured themselves greatly during these scenes of Yes We Can nostalgia, but really: how many of these thugs are going to listen to this stuff on their car radio or behind the bar of their local watering hole? They don't comment on it until the last scene of the movie, and in fact appear to be oblivious to it in every other scene. So why is it on their radios and television sets everywhere they end up? Rings false.

All of the actors in this movie do a fine job. Indeed, even Gandolfini's self-indulgent scenes are fine when you take them on their own, as you would for a scene study in some college course. But when you line them up one after the other for 90 minutes, it's a yawn (quite literally: the guy in front of me fell asleep halfway through the movie and didn't wake up until the credits).

Be careful if you're going into this looking for a Scorsese or Tarantino gangster picture. I would also caution you against seeing it if you think it's film noir. I've seen that written in a couple of places, that this movie is somehow a good example of film noir. It isn't.

Photos: Yahoo Movies.