A Game of Thrones: TV's greatest epic is back, here's why

I was never an epic fantasy reader per say. I did read Terry Brook's Shannara series which I always thought could translate well to film with the right director, screenplay, and actors. Pretty much the ingredients needed for any movie venture.

George R.R. Martin's 1996 Game of Thrones book title (GOT hereafter) has captured my imagination enough to vault it to the top of mandatory viewing list. I will not go into a fascinating regurgitation of characters/actors in the seven kingdom fantasy world of Westeros. The names are confusing - unless you are a fantasy reading know-it-all - but what fascinates about this show, compared to all others, is it adoption of techniques rarely combined well, making GOT the number 1 pirated-show in the world. Shakespeare would even approve of this being done.

Season 3: War Preview

1. Sex, blood, and Middle age rock and roll. The first two seasons satisfied with Rome-like sex and blood lust that had purpose. While sex and prostitution was a staple of that Rome's series - now crossing over with Mance Rayder added to the GOT cast - the whores and women nude in GOT serve more that just jump off points to a scene. The sex shows the bad guys at their very worst; the conflicted souls at their tenderest of moments. And the quips made about the cockless, secret information man, well, are priceless. Blood - have a head, might travel - gets more gruesome that at Rome's peak possibly. And what's an epic without two rock and rollers getting bit parts - Coldplay's  Will Champion and Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody.

2. No place is home. This story travels to destinations with a feel that you are never going to go home again. The characters have to interact with their environment in such ways - that you feel Westeros really does exists on the map. Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, and Morocco were the real locations - meaning some travel expenses must be really racking up in this epic. The dress and castle keeps and ice, desert, river runs, make this a breathing show via locale alone.

3. Characters that all have 3-dimensions. Rare that series has more than 1 or 2 characters with major arcs that need fleshing out over the course of the show. GOT though has 15 characters (just a number) that have huge conflicts to be dealt with: from an incest-made brutal teenage king who is the most despotic on TV; the new dwarfish Hand of that King (HOTK) that quips and calculates to TV perfection ; a revenge-through-war son-of-that-fallen King's hand who now loves a doctor that patches up his men; a once-timid "Dothraki whore"-to-a future dragon queen growing darker by the day; or the conflicted on The Wall bastard son of dead HOTK Ned Stark, whose life choices will be made against white walkers, or tied to family concerns. A young girl-made boy-girl cup bearer that has rewritten the child role forever as a killer who has to now hide amongst her fiercest enemies of her family. A crippled son of that HOTK, whose dire wolf and castle keep are all he's got - both at danger at every turn.

4. Lights, camera, ACTION! You get no break of action amongst this substantial cast. No one comes on the set without a purpose - whether to kill a lead character, to deliver the bad news, complicate the intriguing and messy plot, devise a new self-serving plan, deliver an evil spirit baby, or protect a tyrant's bride-to-be who has to hold her tongue, or die. GOT does not use long drawn out stares, or wishy-washy sub-characters to get from point A to point B, or C.

GOT uses action to move people - where there is quiet moments, it is to show characters revealing deep thoughts to others - doubts that make their actions before and after better cinema, if conflicted to their words, all the better.

5. This Realm Needs A King, A Leader True. You feel like this in everyday life. Who is our world's best leader? What will they do to improve on our hopes for the betterment of man? So each of these characters set out to be that leader, or maker of the leader they wish for. Fighting for their places at the table of power, or setting up the weakest among them. Sounds like a United Nations free-for-all, after aliens pop in - with the possibility of a fairy creature dropping in to make stuff really interesting. (Aliens=Dragons)

Peter Dinklage as HOTK Tyrion Lannister: Leader True?

I will be glued to GOT Season 3 opening. GOT will make the winter wait worthwhile if at least one head rolls, a whore gets some get back, a child undermines a powerful man, or a "halfman" takes a non-bastard king and tosses him to a dire wolf.  All will come true! It's Game of Thrones!

Obama in writing: The man can write on the spot too!

This is courtesy of Passport a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy.
It is a very well written and brief message to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial.

Just another piece in the Obama story/history.

Local Politics: Budget causes Public Services to be Cut

In today's NWI Times, I got to see an example of politically expeditious action about eliminating 27 part-time public defenders. Story here.

My response to the NWI Times:
Public Defender Misses The Point of Public Service

The Times recent praise of public defender/councilman Tom O’Donnell is overblown. While he can be commended for his “sacrifice” of $20,300 in assured state pay plus benefits to reduce budgetary shortfalls, the undermining of the fragile scales of justice received little scrutiny.

That, with the reduction from 27 part-time to 5 full-time public defenders sounds optimal, the shifting of this workload would seemingly defy sound operation. If each of those part-timers assisted 15 hours/week, the 5 full-time representatives would work 81 hours to maintain the same caseloads. If a Times article from the recent past is to be believed, one PD, Dolores Aylesworth, carried 272 cases. This leaves aside competency.

Maybe more telling is O’Donnell’s desires:

“My goal to do better public service overrides my desire to be a public
defender.”

Serving an indigent alleged criminal may not seem like much of a public service, sir, but what other public service has the possibility to set free an innocent person, and serve a more profound, greater good? The cards are stacked heavily against true criminals going free with policemen, probation, forensics, prosecutors, criminal psychologists and judges fighting on behalf of victims. Public defender services are easy to dismiss; but rarely, without a human price to be paid.

Overall, it is necessary to cut the budget. I feel it is unlikely that those with no voice afforded them will get fairness in this round of assessment. So I lent mine.

(Not to be included in response to the Times)
P.S. I would seriously like The Times to do more thorough research into the budget. For example: I noticed zero reductions in prosecutor staff was mentioned? If the goal is to cut excess, I can'timagine every prosecutor is at their wit's end.

Police force, fire, administrative help, vehicles sold for recoup, assets underutilized or ignored but could be swap/sold to other municipalities, are just for starters.

$15 million should be across the board - no dept. left alone.

A finance committee is politically motivated. Take care of buddies...barter over protection of each other's area of control. Don't rock the boat.

It was too easy to just say, "cut the PD staff." They are lawyers that want to spend less time on poor people who made poorer choices.

A councilman isn't losing his job, but gaining a stronger foothold in the political psychology of the locals. "He gave up his $20,000" for us. Bullshit. He gained $20,000 in his next political campaign - via donations and free media...from you.

Cynical I am, but right I also am.

The Mistake by the Lake County: Just going to show you we got our corruption in 2008

Last night, the world got to see Lake County, Indiana in action. As Anderson Cooper, Wolf "Donner" Blitzer & MSNBC reinterated for 2 hours solid that Lake County vote was unreported, or later, slowed by 11,000 absentee ballots still in need of counting. After CNN talked to Clinton-obsessed, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., and Obama-enthralled Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, one could only hope the local constituencies would be thoroughly disgusted at our showing on national television.

I wasn't. I was tickled pink. (At least in sharing my apathy towards these blind mice running our county.)

As the esteemed political reporters on CNN weigh on the fact Lake County has a history of less-than-above-board politics, their guests ignored, or rather, pushed aside the allegations that any rigging could be the reason for the late reporting. A few stories of recent memory: The Sidewalk Six was scheme to garner votes for city improvements to private property dating back to 1999 in East Chicago. Ex-mayor Robert Pastrick, head of this 40-year political machine in East Chicago, is being label the head of organized crime syndicate that also was the city's government by Lowell native, current attorney general, Steven Carter. Not to be outdone, Robert Cantrell, a 40-year political operative that has many relatives working in high places (including his daughter as a judge) is facing 11 felony counts for the usual fraud and tax envasion.

Meanwhile, property taxes are going up, government cannot afford services, infrastructure is woefully inadequate, and people are praying the remaining steel industry does not falter. The politicians you heard from (on TV) are at the root of the problem in large degree. The property taxes are being shifted around from the once mighty steel businesses that paid a good deal more to the local folk up north - as a result, they sued. Only the entire tax assessment scheme is archaic and politically-motivated. So many hands are in the money pie that no one can be seen as free of sin. And this problem dates back nearly a decade - and shortfalls in taxes mean huge deficits and so far, the polys are just prolonging the agony we Lake County idiots might face.

Lake County is a 3-layer cake of woe. The bottom layer is the conservative, farmer-led south county. Small towns, small ideas. Change here is a Walmart (yet to go up.) Older folks with little use or need for anything north of them, unless it makes them more money or gets them from point A to point B. This earthy part of the county has its underlying racially-intolerant side. (Just won't let you know it, until you drink some beer with dem folks.)

The middle gooey center is the corrupt government heartbeat, the white suburbia of Ward & Beaver Cleaver mixed with Crystal Meth, the strip mall/movie complex that soccer moms drive toward with their Ipod kids who just don't respect mama. Moneyed folk. Republicans at heart, but vote Democrat in the general election. Would be a suburb of Chicago except for that damn State line. They love spending our money now. The political machine north of them has broken - so now they get their crack at being the devil guised in a white dress of hope.

The top layer is the chocolate icing of this cake: ethnic, bitter for good reason and stuck in oh so many ways. (Note: though noting the coloration, I don't feel the people are in any less capable or lacking in ability to do great things. Just, it fits the picture I am trying hard to paint.) For years, the people of the North were taken apart by the politically connected few, left to fight the murderers alone, and asked only to "go to work" in the steel plants of America: U.S. Steel and LTV. Their taxes were very low, but then again, they had little reason to stay otherwise. The amount of problems were only dwarfed by the amount of corruption the East Chicago/Hammond/Gary segment of Lake County could amass in the hands of a few souls. Once the power seemed to falter, businesses skated and the new leaders came in, their flight south was inevitable. (Not that some didn't leave before. Gary's population has decreased significantly since the 1970's.)

Living here off and on again for 25 years, has made me less than happy. I never fit in. I never have truly tried to. Oh, I mingle and converse with folks. But really get to know them, not really.

When I leave, I've felt a pressure release. The valve of dispair gets turned wide open, I ooze out all the crap I feel, and wherever I am going to, feels better in the short term. Coming back has always been a torture. I don't miss the county, and it, does not miss me.

So though you got a brief smattering on the place I haunted for dozen years out of twenty-five, you can't ever feel the woe I do in knowing I wake up in one of the worst places to reside in America.

Hopefully, I'll move before 2012. I hear that might be a unique time.

Political Reform: My Brief Take on What is Wrong

I never espoused to the whole idea of political office being a good civic duty to harness for an entire lifetime. Yet many, once they reach the minimally required age limits, do make the procession to the arena of politics to make a long career of campaigning on behalf of the public interest solely for a title and an office. Their ideas are rarely unique. Their preaching is mostly on the same platforms established by other once-successful politicians in long-established political parties. Their best ideas even come from influential persons that are long dead, yet brought to life in the choosing of once-catchy phrases from ancient speeches which these new career politicians make into trite speeches while examining their electorate’s demographics in order to win elections. After this, the amount of actual change for the better sought is dependent on a variety of factors which can be all be traced back to one motivation: money to the candidate or the party’s political machine.

I am not hear to berate the political mechanisms and the good-buddy system developed to advance the careers of the select few who make it – namely those from a good family name in a local area or just a wealthy descendent whose money and prestige won him (or her) many friends (some specious at best) in their life- but to point to an alternative. I realize a few of those leaders do make good on promises made, however, once again the book turns to many that bowed down to influential organizations (with big money), big business (with even bigger money), or radical groups (with more marginal votes). I wish that was also different because the current lobbying process undermines the idea of all men being created equal, except for those with more money, pedigree, or affluence backing them to their selfish ends.

The conscience of men should not be bought and sold like in the days of slaves. And so, a national referendum should be made to limit all service in all political areas to 12 years total (not including last term.) That would include service in all municipalities, local, state, and federal governments. An example could look like this:
1) State senator – 2 years
2) Mayor – 4 years
3) U.S Representative – 4 years
4) President – 4 years

The overall length of service could be longer than 12 years, but last term of office must begin before the 12th year started. No additional time could be given to this person if they do receive a reelection nod. In this way, so many individuals now situated in key positions will not become these abstract monoliths of power on this Nation’s Capitol Hill or a local stronghold of subversive power. I would also propose that after 10 years out of office a person could renew this process and the time duration of service would be an additional 12 years. This is the only compromise I would be willing to add. (We limit the President to two 4-year terms.)

The reason for this is to make way for new leaders whose vision is not so clouded in the purpose of just getting reelected, forming election coalitions, or making contacts with more powerful individuals. I realize we need good leaders with experience; ones with high moral character; ones with background on issues; ones with strong attitudes towards their electorate; but at what time did we believe that 25 to 50 years of servicing persons solely through election, committee and title helps?

I believe that everyone needs to diversify and realize that their powers of good can be spread in more avenues and with greater focus if they approach life without a solitary and singular devotion in the political realm. And not all these elected officials serve our best interests - whether they can ever say so or not. New leaders promote new ideas and foster change where needed, even if their experiences with certain persons is lacking or that the primary problem needing a solution takes years to solve. (Maybe they should only focus on that primary problem instead of skating on to a better position.)

It may also be said it takes ten years to accomplish many tasks. Well, I am giving you twelve. If that does not help, then after a ten-year hiatus, twelve more are available. In the meantime, prior professions, charitable foundations, representing diplomatic (non-elected) or humanitarian needs are just a few ways to bide time if politics is the sole calling of that individual.

The reasons to serve should not be born out of the obsession to build title for self, family, friends, or to trumpet for only the wealthiest people, largest radical voter block, or biggest campaign contributor. They should be born out of the necessity to provide answers to local dilemmas, state catastrophes, federal crisis, and humanity causes in all arenas of this purpose called life. And all this can be done in more ways than in politics.