Don't Mess With Moderates

It's time for people to face up to the facts. Too many people have bullied us for way too long, called us names, said things about us that aren't true, attempted to silence us whenever possible. We have had enough, and we are not going to take it anymore. We are going to do some things you're not going to like, some stuff that will hurt, big time. We've had all we can stand, we can stand no more and now we're going to make you all pay.

OK, before you think I'm about to go grab an AK-47 and go Columbine on some local high school, that's not what I'm referring to. I mean us MODERATES. We are sick of being told that we are nothing but the other side in disguise, that we are out to wreck whichever party we affiliate ourselves with, or worse yet, that we can't make up our minds on what we believe. So, we're jumping ship. In increasing numbers, and we're going to prove we don't need any of you anymore. All you conservatives, all you liberals can go...

Well, first I should probably explain what created this situation in the first place. I, as mentioned in previous columns, am a moderate. Say it with me, Mr. Limbaugh, MOD-ER-ATE. We do exist, we do have strongly-held beliefs, they just don't completely match those of the right or the left. We prefer to stay in the middle, it takes less effort, you don't get completely riled up about everything that comes down the pike, and people find us much easier to agree with a lot of the time. We have our heroes, most notably that outstanding Republican (stop laughing, Rush) John McCain, senator from Arizona. Today, our new hero is Jim Jeffords, Republican senator from Vermont, oops, wait, Independent senator from Vermont. For those of you who don't follow the news, Senator Jeffords, like a lot of us here in the middle, has HAD IT with the constant criticism he has gotten. Not from Democrats, mind you, but his OWN party. There are, no, wait, were 50 Republican senators, but not 50 conservative Republican senators. I can name 5 moderates right off the bat: Jeffords, Olympia Snowe from Maine, Lincoln Chaffee from Rhode Island, Arlen Spector from PA, and the afore-mentioned Senator McCain. Some even say the former majority (now minority) leader Trent Lott of Mississippi is a little closer to the center than most GOP senators, so that could theoretically make 6.

And yet, in such a situation so tenuous that to lose one senator to the Democrats means you lose whatever battle you were waging over (insert issue here), the conservative right has chosen to attack these moderates, and all of us who call ourselves moderates, whenever possible. The most notable voice, of course, is Rush. He either chooses to call us "liberals in disguise" or he just defines a moderate as "someone who cannot make up his mind on how to think and goes with whatever is popular". He has frequently attacked McCain for his campaign finance reform bill, which I wholeheartedly support, as an attack on the 1st Amendment. To that of course, I respond thusly: You're a strict interpreter of the Constitution, Rush; tell me, where does it say "money = speech" in the Constitution? Answer: it doesn't. He rips McCain for co-sponsoring bills with key Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Joe Lieberman. Well, geez, Mr. Limbaugh, if you have a bill that starts right out of the gate with bipartisan support, don't you think it has a much better chance of actually PASSING? He has called Senators Jeffords, Chaffee, Snowe, and Spector "liberals" who "may as well be Democrats", and regularly makes them his whipping boys and girls when they fail to march in lockstep with the rest of the party.

I have felt for the longest time that it makes no sense to me why a party that went out of its way to be "inclusive" and preach "bipartisanship" and "civility" would make people like me feel unwanted, or worse, a pariah. As such, Jeffords has done what he feels is best, he has bolted. Gone. Outta here. Every time I heard stories on the news last night about other Senate moderates meeting with Jeffords and begging him to stay, I could only wish that Jeffords would tell them that they should leave too. Now I am a registered Republican. I registered that way for two reasons: 1) so I could vote for McCain in the primary (damned Bill Powers), and 2) because I could never be a Democrat. Not a chance will I ever be in the same party as those who think everyone should become, in essence, wards of the state and have Big Government take care of their every need and want from cradle to grave. However, my other beliefs do not correspond directly with those of most Republicans. I am proud to be a MODERATE, dammit, and although I shall not give up on the GOP yet (at least not until McCain bolts too), I approve of Senator Jeffords' move. He singlehandedly killed the Republican majority in the Senate (so much for people doubting the power of "one senator out of 100"). They need him now to get anything done, not that they didn't before, they just didn't care.

And so, I offer this wish to Senators Snowe, Chaffee, and Spector: Please, I beg of you, please LEAVE the Republican party and declare yourselves as Independents. After all, there are almost as many registered Independents today as there are registered Republicans and Democrats, the Senate should at least start to move in a direction to reflect that change. Truth be told, I fully agree with columnist Anna Quindlen, who last Sunday wrote that many moderates believe that up to 50% of the country are moderates. That, I believe, is why Rush says what he does, he FEARS us, because he knows we outnumber him and if we ever got organized and became a true political force in this country, it would be O-V-E-R for him and his right-wing ilk. He thinks he can bully us into siding with the rest of the Republican party, well it ain't gonna happen, buddy. This is a new day, the start of a new America, a moderate America, one that believes in common middle ground and doesn't resort to bickering and name-calling over issues. If the three senators I listed above became Independents, the GOP would really be in trouble. It would be 50-46-4, and once the ball starts rolling, you never know who may bolt next, maybe even some Democrats. Senator Jeffords, you are a true patriot, because true patriots put what is best for their country above their party. We moderates can only hope that others now join you.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!!

Are We Watching the Same Movie? Part 2: No, It's Just the Sequel

I have griped in this column before that Hollywood is having a very hard time trying to come up with original film ideas. When I saw the list of films coming out this summer, I am now convinced that for the most part, they have given up. Either that, or with the recent threat of a writer's strike, they just decided to quickly crank out a ton of sequel scripts that didn't require much original thought. And so I present to you the environmentally-friendly summer movie season, so named because it appears most of the movies are recycled.

Don't get me wrong, there are some big time original ones out there this year, most notably "Pearl Harbor" with a cast of thousands and a budget of billions. But still, this is another in the series of "Saving Private Ryan", "The Thin Red Line", and so on to the point that it seems like we can't have a summer movie season without another WW2 epic rolling off the assembly lines. That and the fact that all the computerized effects have made movies like "Pearl Harbor" so, well, fake that I don't find them to be worth watching. I'm sorry, but I saw that trailer and just envisioned so many of those battle scenes as they were ACTUALLY filmed, that being a bunch of guys running away from a "green screen" where all of the computerized destruction would be edited in later. Give me a break, whatever happened to the good ol' John Wayne/Audie Murphy flicks of old where you had war movies with REAL violence, not the type that comes with an "Intel Inside" label on it.

And then, there's "Tomb Raider". Now given, this will probably do a lot better than most of the video game-inspired films we've seen in the past (remember the "Super Mario Bros." movie? *shudder*), but that's because none of the others had a real-life sex symbol (Angelina Jolie) playing a computerized sex symbol (Lara Croft). Expect a high cybergeek count at this one, while I just sit back and continue to wonder what the hell Ms. Jolie ever saw in Billy Bob Thornton. Later in the summer comes the "Final Fantasy" movie; the only positive I can see with this one is that the film will clock in at a lot quicker than the amount of time it took me to ever beat any of the "FF" games.

So what will I see? I like the trailer for "Evolution". I haven't gone into Orlando Jones overkill mode just yet, cuz I didn't see any of the other "7UP" pitchman's flicks, but I will see this one. Just the lines alone about David Duchovny saying he "knows those guys" at the FBI and Jones' line, "I've seen this movie before, the black guy always gets killed first" guarantees that they're going to try to break every rule of the traditional sci-fi flick. It's worked before with "Men In Black", and that movie (not to mention the song) is far enough in the rearview mirror that it's safe to try again.

Okay, so much for the ones that actually required a little effort, now for the glut of sequels. Thank goodness we already survived "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles" before the summer season started, but that's not the lowest it will go this year. Can you say "Friday the 13th, Part 10?" I kid you not. Sure, the horror-flick genre has been reinvigorated in recent years with the "Scream" movies and the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" ilk that has recently turned into the movie version of the WB network. However, this does not mean that you can bring back the old retreads; remember a few years back when Wes Craven decided to resurrect "Nightmare on Elm Street" because he figured he was on a roll with the "Scream" flicks? People like horror flicks that make fun of those old slash-a-minute films, not more of the actual films themselves.

Then again, there's "Scary Movie 2", the sequel to the movie that made fun of the movie that made fun of the horror genre. This is just one of a long line of "it was funny the first time, but..." movies that will try to win people over by keeping the running gag running for another year. However, in this "here today, gone yesterday" Short Attention Span Theatre that is pop culture circa 2001, it's hard to build a movie franchise, even if the second film comes out quickly after the first one. Ditto "Dr. Doolittle 2", and "American Pie 2", especially the latter. Two years ago was the Summer of American Pie, but the 15 minutes of fame that almost everyone in that film gained are already over, and you can't go home again.

And you can't go home a third time, either, as in "Jurassic Park 3". Now don't get me wrong, "The Lost World" was just as big, if not bigger than the original "Jurassic Park", but let me see if I can guess the plot line: new bunch of archaeologists track down dinosaurs run amok, half of them get eaten, and naturally they don't get rid of ALL of them, because if this thing makes any money, then there's definitely going to be a "JP4". I won't even go into the remake of "Rollerball" (why redo a film nobody saw the first time?) or worse yet, the "Planet of the Apes" update; all I can say to the people who thought that was a good idea is, "DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!"

There is one sequel, though, that I will be first in line to see: "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back". For anyone who hasn't already figured it out, Kevin Smith is a friggin' genius, and as long as he keeps making these movies, I'll keep going to see them. I don't think anyone has ever been as quick-witted or done more with less than Smith. Some may take my view on the other sequels with this one, saying that this series has exhausted its originality or that the "slacker movie" went out with flannels. I, however, maintain that these movies were never intended for mainstream consumption and just like grunge rock, it's gone back to the underground. And as long as I continue to get movies that appeal to my demographic, I certainly won't find myself pining away for that long-awaited film version of "Hogan's Heroes". Then again, nothing would make me THAT desperate.

A Bunch of Drunks In the Woods

I used to go camping with my dad and my sister every summer when I was a kid. Those were among the best times of my childhood. However, I have not been out in the "great outdoors" like that in years, at least not before this past weekend. And so, ill prepared for the very purpose, I hopped in my car following work last Friday night and drove out to the middle of nowhere, and by that I am not referring to Susquehanna University. I mean a place where in order to get there, the roads you have to travel on get progressively worse, from interstate to main drag to open road to back road to dirt road to grass approach.

Not long after arriving, I was quickly reminded of Rule #1 of Camping: no matter how hot it may have been that day, it WILL get much colder. The hardy souls who had arrived before me had taken the True Outdoorsman step of building a campfire, but not even True Outdoorsman can stop a wind that makes Mt. Washington feel like a summer breeze. Meanwhile, our "cook" for the evening is busy with the Coleman stove cooking up some steaks and the rest of us are doing what you must do when you are a bunch of guys out in the middle of the woods enjoying nature: drinking a lot of beer. Unfortunately, this only leads to the true experience of man getting back to nature, that of course being having to drift out into the woods and "do your business" behind a tree. Given the amount of alky-hol being imbibed, this was a ritual repeated quite often throughout the weekend.

A couple others show up with their dog and two ferrets (welcome to "Wild Kingdom"), thus setting the stage for the most repeated line of the weekend to be, "DON'T STEP ON THE FERRETS!!!" Our animal guests, however, promptly fall in line with the rest of us, as the dog has its head in the tub of ice keeping our keg cold (if not the keg itself), and one of the ferrets crawls over one of the guy's shoulders and sticks his head in the guy's beer mug.

Now True Outdoorsman has taken the step of putting up tents, which is just fine with me, because even when I was a kid, I was about as coordinated with a tent as Dick Van Dyke was with an ottoman, which is to say not really. That's beside the point, however, as I am without sleeping bag or pillow and the tents are strategically placed (or not) in a different area code from the campfire. Therefore, I did what many of my fellow guys did and piled into the back of my car for the night. Just goes to show you the Boy Scouts are right about something when they say "be prepared". Now, as for their stance on homosexuals, well, that's another column...

I was awoken not very much later by the very familiar tapping noise on the roof of the car that can only be evidence of Rule #2 of Camping: it WILL rain. And naturally, I left my stuff out near the camp fire, in the opposite area code from the fire as the tents. Now, cold and wet, I am truly ready for an uncomfortable night's sleep in the great outdoors (more or less).

The morning comes, way too early I might add, and we all fall in (literally, I tumbled out of my car head over heels) and head back to the campfire for what turns out to be the slowest breakfast ever made. Apparently, the Coleman stove had fallen victim to Rule #3 of Camping: all that pricey LL Bean-type outdoor equipment WILL NOT work like it should. 90 minutes later, we have bacon.

Now being out in the great outdoors gives many a chance to pursue those activities that they would not get to do in Suburbia. We couldn't fish, so some went out in a canoe, and wound up in the pond (let that be an important safety lesson, never paddle drunk). Some laid back and played cards or sat around the campfire (as it was still a windchill of -10) and others enjoyed outdoor activities. Like target shooting. Now, I'm no gun control nutjob, but when I see True Outdoorsman looking to pick off a couple of targets/rodents/insects/whatever, I know enough to stay on the opposite side of the campsite, thank you. Of course, we then truly saw the difference between True Outdoorsman and your typical suburbanite "guy". True Outdoorsman only uses his weapon for its intended purposes. A "guy" takes a BB gun and shoots another guy's hot dog full of BBs while it's grilling on the campfire. True Outdoorsman decides that when the fire is getting low, he is going to get his trusty chainsaw and lay waste to a couple of squirrels' houses. A "guy" tries to bring down trees with EXPLOSIVES (think Jimbo from "South Park"). Actually, it probably wasn't too hard to get firewood, as by this point, we had drank so much and relieved ourselves so often that we had probably killed half the forest.

Meanwhile, us cityfied folk prefer to indulge in our own version of relaxing in the great outdoors, which means cranking up the car stereo and listening to the Sabres game. That, and getting sunburned beyond belief, because even when it's freezing cold, if you're out in the sun all day, it will happen.

All too soon, it's time for me to depart (duty calls back in radioland, unfortunately). However, I consider myself more acclimated to the outdoors now, not to mention burned beyond all recognition. Now I can prepare myself with a list of necessary items for the next time I go to the great outdoors (sooner than 10 years from now). That list would include:

* sunscreen
* sleeping bag
* tent
* stove
* food, and most importantly...
* explosives

The Pros and Cons of the One-Day Roadie

So the housemate is now the ex-housemate; he moved away two weeks ago, and last Sunday was the BIG haul, the process of loading stuff into a rented U-Haul and starting a caravan to New Jersey. The caravan consisted of myself and the housemate in his car, followed by a friend of ours in his minivan (my ride back here), and the U-Haul driven by the housemate's dad with other family members inside. And so the drill was to stay in tight formation from Syracuse to Jersey City. However, we were dealing with a situation where we had a car and a minivan whose drivers liked to, hmm, shall we say, stretch the speed limit laws a little and pass liberally, going in front of a U-Haul that, well, isn't built for that purpose. That and the fact that, as the housemate explained to me, his dad has issues with staying in the passing lane for too long. Since I was at the front of the line, I didn't see what everyone else saw, but I figured it looked like the equivalent of a very confused set of Shriners cars criss-crossing the interstate.

And then we hit Jersey. My Jersey exposure is very limited, consisting solely of a hotel stay near the Meadowlands during a high school trip to New York my senior year. I have also kidded my best friend, a Jersey native, that the state is nothing more than one giant suburb. We came in through the Poconos, however; and so my first impressions of the state was, "Well geez, this looks exactly like Pennsylvania." I was warned that when we hit suburbia, I would know it, and I did, it was like wham, here we are. Which is where it got fun. I have long maintained that Northeast/Central PA Driver is the worst in the world, but Jersey Driver's not off by much. Some believe that Jersey Driver is worse, but many of them never had to drive around NE/Central PA Driver, so they don't have the frame of reference. That, and the fact that the jokes about Jersey girls not getting the memo that the 80s ended is actually TRUE (sorry, Courtney; you are the exception, happy to say).

So we wind up in Jersey City, no small feat. After the moving in process, now comes the fun; we're going to THE City, the Apple, Noo Yawk. 90% of what I saw in NYC was from a tour bus on the aforementioned high school trip and I never felt like I had the ability to just go wherever, mostly cuz I didn't. This time, I did. After dropping the U-Haul crew off at Penn Station, it was on to Times Square. Some observations from this part of the trip: I am never, EVER driving through NYC, not if I can help it. I have enough trouble with one-way streets turning into two-ways and back again going through downtown Syracuse (just ask that guy I almost slammed into the other day because I accidentally turned onto the wrong side of West Onondaga) and the university area. That and the fact that Walk/Don't Walk actually MEANS something in NYC. If that light hits green and you haven't made it across the street, you WILL get honked at. My other observation is traffic-related as well. We get to Times Square, and now that the place is Disneyfied, there's more glitz and less, well, brothel to it, although if you look hard enough, you will see XXX (if you're looking for that sort of thing). Anyhoo, one of the big deals now is to put up huge TV monitors to show everyone what's on ABC or MTV or whatever at that time, they even have what appears to be a projected image on the side of one of the buildings. Now, if ever there was something to distract drivers, this is it. Forget cell phones, how would you like to come up to an intersection and be blitzed with giant video screens everywhere? It's official, never driving in NYC. NEVER.

A bit of luck was on our side, as we just happened to run into a friend of the housemate's (in a city of 8 million, go fig), and he pointed us toward Little Italy. It should be noted, I said pointed us toward, as in we still got lost. After riding the subway to Chinatown, we walked back and forth down the same stretch of street looking for something and not seeing it. So, the housemate ventures out into the middle of the street and asks a traffic cop for directions (gutsy move), and we made it, and let me tell ya, I had some of the best manicotti that god has ever seen fit to be made.

The lone remaining highlight came when housemate's friend and I tried to steer our way out of Jersey City. Turns out housemate's directions were correct, take 1 & 9 to 280 and so on, but there were so many damn 1 & 9s that we inevitably got lost. Although, on one of the side trips, we wound up on the big skyway that goes through that section of Jersey, and I got to reenact the opening sequence from "The Sopranos" in my head.

So, travelogue now completed, you can obviously see why a trip like this is worth taking. However, it is not advised to do it all in one day. Getting up at 6am and coming back at 10pm isn't so bad in the grand scheme of things, except of course for the fact that I crave sleep, sleep, and more sleep on the weekends; therefore, on this occasion we had managed to make it all the way to Jersey, unload, and hop on the PATH to NYC before I would've even woken up on a normal Sunday. Now, ex-housemate has made the trip numerous times, and doesn't seem to have a problem with it. He, however, must have gobs more cash than I do. First of all, you're looking at dropping $40 in gas money, for a full tank to go there and a full tank to get back (hence, me not driving). You have to eat, that's another $10 per meal, probably, if you want to eat good. Then again, I have often joked that even the Burger King extra value meals in NYC cost 8 bucks, so good is in the eye of the beholder. Trains run you another $1.50 for each trip, and that adds up quickly, especially with all the train-hopping we did on this particular trip. Another thing about trains is the fact that I had never taken one, and I had to stand for most of them. For a rail-thin person like myself, this is something you have to get used to. Even with the poles and such to hold on to, I almost got thrown two cars back every time we started or stopped.

Come to think of it, everything is more expensive in NYC, it's a known fact. This also extends out to Jersey. So far in ex-housemate's New Miserable Experience (a little Gin Blossoms reference there), he's had to shell out $750 a month for a place that I would judge only a slight upgrade from the craphole I had in Solvay, and I'm paying LESS now for the palacial townhouse (a.k.a. The Riot House) in which I currently live. He eschewed cable because they were going to charge him $100 to HOOK THE DAMN THING UP! And when you leave the state, at least in the way we chose to depart this time out, you go through the Delaware Water Gap, where you have to stop at a toll booth only if you're going to the PA side. Now I know that Pennsylvania technically runs the toll booth, but it's all the same, you have to pay to leave New Jersey. Makes sense, get you one last time on the way out.

One-day road trips are not for the faint of heart, not meant for those who don't get out much. It seems to all be way too much to cram into one day, but on the other hand, I've been mulling a one-day roadie up to Canada for the longest time, so two things are obvious: 1) I don't have much of a problem with the one-day roadie, and 2) I need more money.