Jacob Bender's Blog, page 12
February 21, 2015
Hunt For Red October Revisited
Praise be to Netflix streaming, I suppose; for I just spent what spare moments I had last week rewatching Hunt for Red October for the first time since a wee knee-high.I dare say this was the first "serious," "grown-up" flick I saw as a child--and even then, it was just peaking from behind my Dad while he and some friends watched it on VHS one Thanksgiving weekend (presumably while waiting for some game to start). So young was I and so undeveloped my capacity for abstract thought, that...
February 13, 2015
Unpopular Opinions
We all have Popular Opinions (e.g. ice cream is delicious, Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars, Phantom Menace the worst, The Simpsons should have been cancelled by now, etc). We also all have Unpopular Opinions. In the spirit of confession, here are some of mine:
Man of Steel is a pretty good movie, and most of the criticisms lobbed against it are unfounded.
Andrew Garfield was a much better Spiderman than Toby Maguire.
Star Trek Into Darkness is a pretty good film, and certai...
Man of Steel is a pretty good movie, and most of the criticisms lobbed against it are unfounded.
Andrew Garfield was a much better Spiderman than Toby Maguire.
Star Trek Into Darkness is a pretty good film, and certai...
February 7, 2015
On Decennials
The thing about decennials is that once 10 years have passed, you can no longer think of something as being "just a few years ago." Shoot, you arguably can't tell yourself "it was just a few years ago" after only, say, 5 years, or more than 1 presidential administration--and certainly not after 7 or 8 years. But something about 10 years--the looming menace of that big round number--really forces you to face the facts: the things you once experienced are now officially too long ago. ...
January 31, 2015
Adventures in YSA Dance Planning
Back around the turn of the millennium in the backwoods of Washington state, my teenage self was selected to some "Stake Youth Leadership Committee" or whatever it was called; ostensibly its purpose was to call one representative teen from each ward, in order to involve the Youth of Zion directly in the decision-making processes of the Stake by...doing leadership things, I guess? Actually, I never was quite clear what our point was.Mainly we went to meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. ...
January 23, 2015
Re: "Ball-Ghazi"
So apparently the whole contrived controversy about the Patriots using slightly under-inflated footballs in their blow-out win over Indianapolis has already been termed "Ball-ghazi."This pleases me. For we typically apply the suffix "-gate" to reference some potentially earth-shattering scandal that threatens to bring down the highest echelons of power, as Watergate did to Nixon. By contrast, we use "Bengazi" to reference some totally manufactured scandal and non-existent conspira...
January 19, 2015
This Week In Racial Double-Standards: Football vs. Hockey
Hockey is a sport, I am told, wherein it is considered standard to ram your opponent into a wall, talk trash in the rink to get in your opponent's heads, and tear off your gloves and throw off your face mask and get into a fist-fight right there on the ice. There is even always a penalty-box for just this contingency. Some Hockey fans even joke that they only go to games for the fist-fights.And I'm not even condemning that: it's all part of the game, the trash-talk, the fist-fight...
January 17, 2015
On the Post-Holidays Slump, Death, and Sports
In the U.S., few things are more melancholy than December 26th. Shoot, few things are more depressing than Christmas day by noon. The months long build-up of the Holiday season stretching clear back to October comes to a climactic crescendo Christmas morn and then...that's it. It's over. Stick a fork in it. Sweep up the wrapping paper, play with your new toys, and see if your material possessions can distract you from the crashing come-down in the pit of your stomach. ...
January 9, 2015
My Kind of Town, Seattle Is
This last New Years Eve, as I walked towards Pike Place Market in Seattle, I had an experience I haven't had in years: I bumped into someone and we both said "Excuse me!" at the same time!The past decade I've lived primarily in the Rocky Mountains and the Midwest, and I had gotten so used to hearing only dull silences respond to my automated "Excuse me's" in public, such that it took me a sec to register my happy shock. I was already in a good mood you see, thanks to the clean air so ri...
January 2, 2015
William Gaddis predicts 2008 in his 1971 novel JR
"Stressing the vital necessity of expanded capital formation unimpeded by governmental restraints, Senator Broos' impassioned plea for a restoration on the part of the common man in the free enterprise system as the cornerstone of those s.o.b.s who still think winning's what it's all about give them a string of high p e ratios and a rising market it's all free enterprise all they howl about's government restraints interference double taxation, all free enterprise till they wreck the whole thi...
January 1, 2015
2015: Happy Back To The Future Part 2
Strap on your self-tying shoes, grab your hoverboard, feed your Mr. Fusion, guard your Sports Almanac, and hop in a flying Delorean: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now 2015! In 292 days, Doc Brown, Marty McFly, and Jennifer Parker arrive back to the future--that is, October 21, 2015. The future is officially now.
