Kingsman: The Secret Service - review

I got a chance to see Kingsman: The Secret Service today with my wife, as we both had the day off. I've actually read the comic book series by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, and I re-read them fairly recently, so the series is pretty fresh in my brain. Since I enjoyed the series, and the director, Matthew Vaughan, has done some pretty good movies, I figured that I'd like this one.

The basic premise is that there's a, well, um, "secret service" that handles various major crises in the world, and it has several James Bond-esque agents working for it. When one of them dies while on duty, it's time to recruit a new member to take his place. Harry "Galahad" Hart (as played by Colin Firth) decides to give his "nephew" Gary "Eggsy" Unwin a shot, as Eggsy has shown a lot of potential while still making some pretty poor lifestyle decisions like getting involved in drugs and crime.

The movie then goes back and forth between Eggsy's initiation and the villain's master plan. The villain is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who utilizes a slightly distracting lisp in order to make himself seem awkward and nerdy. By the third act, it all comes together, as it's up to Eggsy to foil the villain's plan to make a serious dent in the world's population in order to "save the planet".

Overall, it was pretty damned entertaining. There was one action scene involving sky diving where I had to remind myself to breathe. Also, the characters were all pretty likable, and while Taron Egerton, who plays Eggsy, I think that he has a pretty good future ahead of him as a leading man. While it didn't stick 100% true to the comic, it was definitely close enough. The basic plot was the same, as were the character personalities and overall theme behind the story. Only minor details were changed, which kept things interesting enough to keep me on my toes. Oh, and for anybody who enjoyed the bit with Mark Hammill in the comics, you'll be surprised but probably not disappointed with how they change that bit.

I have to say that it kinda lost me in the last act. I don't want to give away too much, but let's just say that CGI is good for some things, but it's absolutely lame for blood and guts. I kept thinking to myself that I was looking at computer effects, and that completely took me out of the movie. Also, there's a really cheesy bit of dialogue toward the end that's both unbelievable and obviously intended as nothing more than a cheap laugh.

I was worried that those complaints would ruin it for me, but when I think back on it, I definitely liked more than I didn't. I'd probably enjoy watching it again, and while I might not buy it right away when it comes out, I might pick it up if I see it cheap (unless it streams on Netflix).

Macbeth in Comics

I've written about the comics adaptations of The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet by Gareth Hinds on this blog, so I was looking forward to picking up his rendition of Macbeth when it came out this week. In a fun bit of coincidence, I picked it up on the very same day that I finished reading the play with my seniors. Or maybe it was fate. It's hard to know for sure what you have control of in your life after reading this play.

I was expecting to like this one, and I wasn't disappointed. While glancing through it at first, I was a bit disappointed that it lacked the vibrant colors of his Romeo and Juliet, but when I sat down to read it, it occurred to me that darker colors and grays are a bit more appropriate for this sort of a thing, and Hinds puts that to good use.

One bit that stands out is how he handled my favorite scene in the play, which is where Banquo's ghost makes an appearance. I remember that really capturing my imagination when I was in high school and talking about it with my dad, which was my first realization that when it comes to Shakespeare, there's a whole lot of stuff to talk about. Anyway, Hinds has the ghost look like what you'd imagine a generic ghost to look like (no, not the kind with a sheet - just all white) and as Macbeth proceeds to freak out, Banquo looks gorier and gorier, reducing down to a bloody skeleton.

Another great touch was when Macbeth speaks the line "I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were was tedious as go o'er." He's sitting there in his dining hall with his wife, and at their feet is a pool of blood. That's one of those nice things about comics; the artist can literally draw the metaphor and it doesn't lose its impact.

I also appreciate how Hinds lets the reader in on his creative process in the end notes. I found myself learning some new things that I'll have to incorporate in my lesson plans. I already knew that the play was historically inaccurate (although I only recently learned that Banquo probably didn't even exist!) I didn't know that they didn't even have proper castles back in 11th Century. And to think that people get all up in arms about the inaccurate history in Braveheart! It's got nothing on this one, I think. But who cares? A good story is a good story, and if it's really good, it can inspire you to learn the truth.

I should probably note that for the most part, Hinds retains the original language. He doesn't format it into iambic pentameter, which actually makes it a bit easier to read, as it causes the reader to pay more attention to punctuation. Of course, like all adaptations, some scenes are cut, but nothing that I think anybody would consider a favorite scene.

I hope that we'll see more comics adaptations of Shakespeare, as it seems like a real no brainer. When it comes to comics, the artist is doing a job that's similar to the director, only he's completely in control of all the actors. Just as it would be worth it to see more than one stage production or more than one movie version of the same play, it would be great to see even more artists take a turn at this material.

I can't explain The Who

Back in 1996, I got to see The Who when they brought their Quadrophenia tour to San Jose. I remember sitting next to a guy who said that he was a teenager when the album came out, and I replied that it came out the year that I was born (just a month before, actually).

Why were they touring for an album that was over twenty years old? It turned out that they were unable to perform that rock opera the way Pete Townshend envisioned it originally, and when the opportunity came along to do it the right way, with a large band with a horn section and large screens to tell the story, it was time to do it.

How was the show? It was great. Of course, original drummer Keith Moon wasn't there, since he had died back in 1978, but they were ably assisted by Zak Starkey, a protege of Moon's (and son of Ring Starr).

The whole show was a real treat for me, because Quadrophenia is easily my favorite album of theirs. I was just listening to it the other day, and I have to say that it's one of my favorite albums EVER. There's a lot of stuff that I loved in my 20s, and while I still love it to this day, it doesn't have the same kind of emotional punch for me as it did back then. This particular one though had me singing and feeling like it was still new to me. (Notable track: "The Punk and the Godfather". Maybe it's because I'm even older and more disillusioned now.)

I've written a few tributes to some of my favorite bands now, but for some reason I'm just getting around to writing about The Who. I've started and stopped writing posts about them before, never quite finding the right angle to take on how I feel about them. The thought came back to me recently as I've been listening to the audio of Pete Townshend's autobiography, Who I Am.

It's fitting (and simultaneously ironic and coincidental) that they have a song title that perfectly explains my inability to express how much their music means to me. I definitely feel something strong, but it's hard for me to put it into words.

Obviously, I wasn't around for when they first came on to the scene. For the longest time, they were just one more band on a long list of "oldies", and it wasn't until I started exploring classic rock that I started listening to them. One of the first CDs I bought was Who's Next, the reason being that I saw a video of Pearl Jam performing the song Baba O'Rily.

So, I don't have any memories of seeing them at Woodstock or having been a mod who used to fight the rockers in Brighton. I just had those CDs which I blasted in my car while on my way to college classes and/or my job at a grocery store. I remember that I even incorporated them into some of my creative writing short stories when I went to San Francisco State University, and I even snuck Pete Townshend into the background of a comic book I drew.

One thing that I can say for the band is that they're one of the few where each member is crucial to their sound. Yeah, they had albums after Moon died, but I don't recommend them all that much. He had one of the most distinctive drum styles. He was kinda the anti-Ringo Starr, who operates on the principle of "less is more". With Moon, it's "more is more", but it still goes with the music, never overtaking what the others are trying to do. Still, you can just sit there and listen to him and be entertained.

I especially don't recommend Endless Wire. Not only is Moon not present, but they're lacking one of the best bass players ever, John Entwistle. That man wasn't just part of the rhythm section. His playing was a crucial part of the melody of many of The Who's songs. There's a reason why he's one of the first to do a bass solo (on "My Generation").

Of course, Roger Daltrey also had (it's gone now folks, sorry) one of the greatest rock and roll voices ever, with him able to do a melodic love song and a lion's growl with equal effectiveness. Of course, without Pete, you don't have most of the ideas and songs from the band. Honestly though, I can't think of many bands where changing even one member has such a drastic effect. The Who is definitely one of those though.

Like I said, I wasn't there for when they first made it big, but I have a feeling that I would have liked them just as much had I been.

Gary Fouse continues to not understand climate change

I've written about Gary Fouse a couple of times now. The short version? He's a "conservative" blogger who doesn't believe in global warming/climate change. The reason why basically boils down to the fact that he doesn't like Al Gore. Since I accept climate change, I must love Al Gore, because the two ideas are inseparable, just like GMOs and Monsanto. (And if you believe the second statement, I would suggest that you need to read up on GMOs a little bit more.)

Pretty much every year, he waits for some kind of cold weather event, and he posts about it to further his point that Al Gore is dumb and that climate change isn't real. It's been pointed out to him again and Again and OH MY GOD AGAIN that nobody has ever said that we would no longer see cold weather - especially in WINTER. In fact, what has been predicted is more extreme weather.

But he will never learn, because Al Gore is bad; therefore, it's cold, and global warming is bogus. Here's his latest little bit of genius.

Rethinking the blog

When I created this blog back in 2008 (so long?) I titled it Comics, Beer, and Shakespeare because I figured that's primarily what I would be writing about. While I certainly wrote about those things, and the order of the topics reflects the number of times I wrote about those topics, I wound up writing about all sorts of things. There are probably more posts about religion and skepticism than anything else.

About five years ago, I wrote a post entitled "Atheism is getting boring" as I was starting to feel like there really wasn't much more to say about the topic. Turns out I found more things to write about - quite a bit more, and I don't think that I revisited the same territory. I found myself having some thing to say about the arguments of apologists, for instance. I also found myself writing a few blog posts going over various logical fallacies - many of which are used by apologists. Some of the ones which I am most proud of didn't involve me debunking religious claims or making a case for atheism so much as attempting to communicate exactly what atheism is and how Christians and atheists can better understand one another.

Once again, I find myself losing interest in writing about religion. Right now, I'm starting to wrap up Richard Carrier's book, On the Historicity of Jesus - Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt. Carrier is a mythicist when it comes to Jesus, which means that he doesn't think that there's enough reason to declare Jesus to be a historical figure, much less a divine one. I was pretty skeptical about this, as I've read books by John Dominic Crossan, and I even wrote a review on my blog about Reza Aslan's Zealot. Crossan's works were pretty influential on me when I first started admitting to myself that I was an atheist. I was able to find some meaning in the Jesus story without having to accept any of the supernatural elements of it. After all, there was this historical person behind the whole thing, and if you scraped away the dogma, you had something pretty cool.

As of now, I'm not so sure. And just as Carrier never definitively says that there was no historical Jesus, I don't say that either. However, I'm jumping ship and I'm willing to say that we definitely have reason to doubt. Not only is it likely that there was never a historical Jesus, but even if there was, what he has become in the New Testament (and other traditions) is so far removed from anything that ever existed in reality.

And with this book, I kinda feel like I'm done. I'm usually reading something or other, and I've got a long queue of audiobooks from Audible that I want to get. However, I'm just not interested in any more books about atheism (haven't read one of those in a while, actually) nor any books about searching for who Jesus really was. I genuinely feel done, and I'm currently listening to Pete Townshend's autobiography, and I just finished Jim Gaffigan's latest book. I'm more interested in supplementing my comic book reading with stories from musicians and comedians. I think that I'd only want to pick up another book about Jesus if there was some radical new information about him; otherwise, I feel done.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do now. I might just write about what I want to write about and keep it on this blog. Part of me wants to start a new one and just focus on comic books. I'm still interested in skepticism, so maybe I'll have a blog just about that. Yeah, I still like beer, but I don't have much to say about it. Shakespeare? I think that I've covered much of what I have to say for a while.

I guess what I want to do is to have a blog that has a narrower focus. Why not do more than one narrow-focused blog? Maybe one day, but I don't have the time nor energy to write several blogs right now. I think that comics might just be the way to go - that, or skepticism.

We'll see. If you read my blog, expect some changes. Or not. I don't know.

Spreading atheism is pointless

The last President of the United States, George W. Bush, stated that God told him to invade Iraq (among some other requests). It's stuff like this that atheists point to when they want to see religion and religious thinking to go away. God told him? You mean that being for which there is no evidence of its existence? This is what you're basing policy on? Policy that costs the lives of thousands of people?

Many of my fellow nonbelievers find a little bit of hope in the fact that religion is on the decline in this country and around the world. It certainly would remove a lot of reasons for behaviors that are difficult to justify when you don't have a supreme being commanding you to do it. It certainly seems like we're entering a new age of enlightenment, but I'm not so sure that there's any reason to get too optimistic.

Let's take the example about Bush invading Iraq because Jesus told him to do so. Would it be any better if he said that he did it because that's what his astrologer told him to do? How about the ghost of George Washington said it would be a good idea? Maybe some aliens landed and told him that he should do so, and since they come from an advanced civilization, he figured that he'd follow their advice. Would any of these scenarios be any better? Of course not because they're all irrational and not based on any kind of evidence.

I sometimes will post all kinds of skeptic-related memes and thoughts on Facebook, and it's amazing to me how I'll get some people who'll "like" pretty much everything I post, but then they draw the line when I make fun of something that's equally irrational. For instance, I know people who will laugh at religious absurdities, but then they'll defend homeopathy. Also, I have one online friend who posts all kinds of amusing anti-religious memes, but then she posted something about her astrological sign. I didn't want to give her a hard time about it, but I expressed my confusion as to how she could be such a firm atheist and yet give any credence to astrology. I ended by explaining that the reason why I don't believe that me being a Sagittarius has any significance is the exact same reason why I don't believe in a god.

Obviously, a person can be an atheist and not be a skeptic. I think that's a little hard for people like myself, who started out as skeptics and found themselves becoming atheists as a result, to understand sometimes. I'm not quite sure what motivates people to become atheists otherwise. Perhaps it's that they simply don't like what religion has to offer, and they don't feel enough pressure from their friends and family to get involved with one. Maybe they had bad experiences. I don't know, but it seems like an interesting bit of compartmentalization to reject the idea of a God yet still believe in ghosts, for instance.

Let's also not forget the fact that there are a lot of atheists out there who might be skeptics when it comes to the supernatural, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're on the right side of science. Take, for instance, Bill Maher. I have such conflicted feelings about this guy. When he discusses religion and politics, I find myself in agreement with him, and I think that he has a great way of cutting right to the heart of the matter in a humorous way. Sometimes he goes a bit over the line, but I'm fine with that. When I have a real problem with Maher though is when he goes anti-science, in particular his statements about vaccines and GMOs. I ask you now, my fellow atheist, would you feel comfortable living in a world with a bunch of Methodists who vaccinate and don't work toward preventing potentially life-saving GMOs from going to poor people? Or would you rather be around a bunch of atheists with whooping cough?

So, yeah, it might be great to imagine a world with no religion, as John Lennon explained, but getting rid of religion doesn't mean that we'll suddenly be in a more rational world. If it's not coupled with skepticism, then we might be exchanging one kind of absurdity for another. This is why trying to spread atheism is ultimately pointless if you're also a skeptic. So, consider me unimpressed that there are more nonbelievers out there. I'll be more hopeful when I see other irrational beliefs go on the decline.

This is why we should concern ourselves with encouraging people to think skeptically. It's the sort of thing that ultimately works against religion, and all sorts of other tribalistic ills like nationalism, Atheism will come with a more skeptical outlook, and if there is good reason to believe in a god, then skepticism will bear that out as well.

It doesn't convince you either!

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a Christian apologist who was working on a series of videos that would provide evidence for the existence of God. During the conversation, I asked him if he would no longer believe if he would change his mind if I could conclusively show that each of his bits of "evidence" were, in fact, not evidence. (I've done this rodeo before. They don't have "evidence" so much as "arguments", and there isn't one that I know of that doesn't rely on some sort of a logical fallacy.) He told me that even if I was able to convince him that his arguments were bad, he wouldn't become an apostate.

I found this to be pretty curious. If those are supposedly the reasons why one should believe in God, then why would you keep believing if all of those reasons were shown to be false? Obviously, the bits of "evidence" that he was going to give weren't the reasons why he believes at all then. That's fine, but why even bring it up if it's not what convinces you?

I try and make the case for all sorts of things that some people don't believe: evolution, climate change, the safety of GMOs, etc. However, all of the reasons that I give are the reasons why I accept these things to be true. If somebody showed me that all of my reasons for believing in climate change, for instance, were actually false, then I would have no choice but to change my mind.

Likewise, if I found that all of my objections for not believing in a God were shown to be faulty, then I would have to become a pure agnostic at the very least if not a full-on believer. I don't just say things like that there is no evidence for God's existence just because it sounds convincing. I genuinely believe that to be true! And when I say that the arguments for God's existence rely on logical fallacies, I'm not just giving a sweeping dismissal of the other side's arguments. I genuinely think that this is the case, and I think that I can effectively point out where the fallacy is in each instance. If somebody can show me just one instance where I'm wrong on that score, then I'll have to take at least a step closer toward belief.

I don't think that this phenomenon is so unique to religion either. People like to pick a side and stick to their side in various debates and disputes. If they think that they have a talking point that will "win" the argument, then they'll use it, even if the truth of that point is in serious question. For instance, I don't think that anybody who says that "The United States is the greatest country on the face of the Earth" is genuinely interested in finding out what might disprove that. Even if they give reasons why (like all of that freedom, ya know) they're not going to change their minds if you show those reasons to be fallacious.

If you genuinely care whether your beliefs are true or not, it's important to understand and question why you believe what you believe. Are the reasons you're giving the actual reasons? Or do you just think that they will sound convincing to others?