Friday, February 23, 2018

Movie Review - Black Panther

The highly acclaimed 'Black Panther' is the latest Marvel super hero movie.

  I went to see Marvel’s newest superhero movie ‘Black Panther’ last weekend. While most of the movies I’ve gone to this past year had single digit attendances for the weekend matinees even on the opening weekend the theatre was half full. Unlike almost all the previous Marvel movies, ‘Black Panther’ was a self-contained film with no crossover appearances of other characters in the Marvel Universe except for the obligatory appearance by Stan Lee.

  The movie gives a fairly faithful rendition to Don McGregor’s ‘Panther’s Rage’ story line that appeared in Marvel’s Jungle Action comic of the mid 1970’s. McGregor excelled at showing the current king and Black Panther T’Challa not just as a super hero but as the King of the mythical African nation of Wakanda which is unique for having the planet’s only known reserves of the super-metal Vibranium which can absorb sound, vibration, and kinetic energy. This has made the country exceedingly rich and technologically advanced while remaining largely hidden from the outside world in order not to become a target for Vibranium thieving nations and villains.

  The film starts with a reference to a theft of Vibranium by a man named Klaue (Klaw) and a long ago confrontation between T’Challa’s father and his brother Prince N'Jobu in Oakland. It is revealed that N’Jobu aided Klaue in the theft of the Vibranium for use in helping Africans and their descendants around the world who have been victimized for hundreds of years revolt against their oppressors. The plot then skips ahead to the current time where T’Challa’s father has been killed in the ‘Captain America: Civil War’ movie and T’Challa is ready to take the crown. Wakanda is a land of deep tradition and T’Challa has to fight in ritual combat against any challengers to take his crown which he does. After taking his crown, T’Challa ingests the secret vibranium infused flowers that give him the Black Panther powers and enters the ‘ancestral realm’ where he meets his father.

  At this point the action leaves Wakanda while T’Challa and crew (his lover and chief spy Nakia and chief of guards Okoye aka Dabai Gurira / Michonne from Walking Dead fame) head to South Korea to attempt to capture Klaue and the long ago stolen vibranium. There is a gunfight in a casino and a wild car chase. Klaue gets away with help from Erik Killmonger who is a black ops specialist and Prince N’Jobu’s son which makes him T’Challa’s cousin and part of the royal family.

  When T’Challa gets back to Wakanda he meets with some disdain from the tribal leaders who expected him to return with Klaue but that is trifling compared to his finding out that his father killed his uncle and abandoned his cousin to the streets of Oakland. His real problem comes when Killmonger makes his appearance in Wakanda, exercises his right as a blood relative to challenge T’Challa for the crown and proceeds to beat the living tar out of him before throwing him off a cliff and take over the throne. Naturally T’Challa hasn’t died in his fall from the cliff and he manages to win a final confrontation with Killmonger and retain his throne and decides to bring Wakanda more into the open as a nation and surreptitiously help impoverished African descendants in other nations.

  ‘Black Panther’ is a box office hit and is also receiving critical acclaim. I would place it on the top shelf of the Marvel movies but a cut below 'Thor : Ragnarok' which was more of a fun movie. The plot was easy to follow and the action and fighting scenes were great with the exception of the South Korea street race which I found poorly lit and hard to follow. Killmonger was a true Marvel anti-villain – capable of evil deeds but with a backstory that makes him an understandable and sympathetic character. I especially liked the merging of technology and mysticism in the three visits to the ancestral realm where T’Challa and Killmonger meet their respective parents and discuss their decisions. The ‘morality play’ of keeping Wakanda hidden from the world or using its technological resources to take over the world was the overarching subplot of the movie and handled in a direct manner.

  The morality play is what I found most fascinating about the movie. Before Killmonger takes the throne the royal family seems to be steeped in the tradition of the Wakandan people and the five tribes that were affected by the vibranium metor. T’Challa is content to keep Wakanda’s vibranium and technological prowess hidden from the world as it has been for generations. Killmonger take the throne and decides to arm Africans and their descendants with vibranium powered weapons to take over the world. What struck me was how easily so many of the Wakandan royals discarded their traditions in an attempt to overthrow Killmonger after he attained the throne according to their own traditions. When Killmonger is ready to strike T’Challa a death blow he is stopped by the high priest who offers his life instead. T’Challa’s mother, sister, and Nakia leave Wakanda and bring the secret ‘Black Panther’ herb to a rival tribe in the hopes of overthrowing Killmonger.

  The morality I took from the movie is that people in power will do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power. Killmonger was open about using the Wakandan traditions as a means to getting power but everyone except the royal guards acted the exact same way except being less open about it. T’Challa’s father abandoned his nephew in America because bringing him back to Wakanda would have opened a debate of the use of Wakanda’s power. The royal family’s adherence to tradition comes to a screeching halt when tradition prevents them from holding their power. Only the royal guards followed their tradition of protecting the throne no matter who sat upon it. Everyone thought they were doing what was best for themselves or their country which made a nice parallel to the current day political climate where so many are so convinced they are so right that dissent is vilified rather than ignored or discussed.

Friday, February 16, 2018

The Trouble With Harry

These pictures from November, December, and February show Harry's gradual loss of feather cover on his neck...

  I’ve written previously how one of our two cockatiels was killed by Daisy in 2014 when he flew too close to him, leaving us with one cockatiel named Harry. Eventually, Kathy and I decided not to try to get Harry a new cockatiel to be friends with because the process of introducing cockatiels to each other is long and has no guarantee of success. We also found out that while cockatiels are happier when they bond they don’t have to bond with another cockatiel – they can bond with humans as well.

  Since then Harry and I have bonded – every morning during his outdoor time he sits on my finger and I rub his head and feathers for about 20 minutes until he gets bored and ambles over to his play area. It seemed he was happy with the arrangement until last November when I noticed he was getting a bald spot on his neck. I kept an eye on the situation and saw that new feathers would start to grow back and would disappear before transforming from porcupine like quills to actual feathers.

  It seemed that Harry was pulling out his feathers. I looked up cockatiel feather pulling on the Internet and the possible causes ranged from boredom to parasites to sexual frustration to stress to a change in environment to diet. Nothing has changed in Harry’s environment and he seems to relieve his frustration easily enough by rubbing on a cloth toy in his cage like he has dome for years. I saw no evidence of parasites so I went to the Petco in Ames and got some advice, vitamins for his water, some new toys to give him something new to play with and be less bored by, and a spray for his feathers in case he was pulling feathers because of itchy skin.

  I put the new toys in Harry’s cage and play area and gave him vitamins right away but didn’t feel comfortable using the spray because winter has come with a vengeance and the spray warns against letting a sprayed bird get chilly. Harry liked the new toys and didn’t balk at the vitamin infused water but he was still pulling his new feathers out and occasionally some of the existing feathers around his neck.

  Our local vet doesn’t handle birds very much but recommended the small animal hospital at Iowa State University that has veterinarians that specialize in birds. I made an appointment for Harry on January 18th. I filled out an eight page questionnaire about Harry’s habitat, habits, and health and talked with a veterinary student about Harry and the best way to prepare Harry for travel. It wasn’t very warm on the day of Harry’s appointment so I warmed up the car for 20 minutes and put Harry in a cat carrier covered with towels. I put Harry in the passenger seat, removed the towel covering the door of the carrier so he could see me, buckled him in, and off we went.

  Harry handled the trip very well with only a minimum of squawking and we arrived in Ames 45 minutes later at 9am. Harry and I checked in and went to the Avian waiting area until Lynette the vet student brought us into an examination room. Harry stayed in his cage and I waited in the exam room with him until the vet came in and said they would bring Harry to a back room to get blood and stool samples. Harry went to the back and Lynette told me that I could go get lunch because while Harry would quickly generate stool samples in no time it would take over an hour to get enough blood for a sample.

  I went to Wal-Mart and ate lunch at Jimmy Johns and got back to the veterinary office an hour after I left. After a few minutes I was ushered back to the exam room and met with Lynette the vet student and two of the doctors. The doctors said Harry had no parasites and was in generally good health except that he weighed 90 grams which was a few grams overweight (90 grams is 3¼ ounces) and that his feathers were darker and had less spring than they would like. They attributed this to his diet of cockatiel food from the Wal-Mart which they said contained almost all fatty seeds and recommended a pellet based diet and even gave me some samples and some instructions on how to wean him off his seeds and onto the pellets because just like people, cockatiels prefer fatty foods over healthy pellet based foods.

  The doctors told me that Harry’s throat swab and stool sample both had high concentrations of yeast which led them to the conclusion that Harry had a yeast infection in his throat which was causing itching and his feather pulling. I was told the samples had been sent to the lab for confirmation but to help the infection I should switch his normal tap water out for a mixture of distilled water, apple cider vinegar, and honey. I was pleased to find out Harry was in good health and happily paid my $400 bill, put Harry back in the carrier, buckled him in the car, and we were home around 1pm.

  I changed Harry’s water with the distilled water/apple cider vinegar/honey concoction and started mixing in his pellets into his food. While Harry was super about taking his trip to Ames, he was less than happy about his new food and water. Harry would still sit on my shoulder but he resisted all my efforts to rub his head feathers like he used to. You could say he was an angry bird.

  This went on for around a week and then I got a call from the Lynette the veterinarian student to tell me that Harry didn’t have a yeast infection after all. It seems that his samples in the lab were tainted by yeast which lead to the false conclusion. I was glad to hear that Harry didn’t have a yeast infection but this left us right back where we started with the exception of knowing that Harry was in generally good condition except for being a couple of grams overweight. Of course if the doctors could be wrong about the yeast infection they could be wrong about Harry’s good health but I believe the doctors are genuine in their interest about Harry’s well-being.

  I decided to get Harry back on his fatty seed and tap water diet and after a couple of days he was back sitting on my finger enjoying having his head rubbed and whistling back and forth with me. Harry is at least 12 years old and cockatiels live in the wild for 10 to 14 years so it is possible that he is just reaching the end of his lifespan and his feather-pulling is some age related thing. On the other hand cockatiels can live 20 or more years as pets so I may have Harry for a number of years. My plan for now is to enjoy Harry pulled feathers and all and start to spray his feathers with the solution from Petco when the weather gets warmer.

Neck feathers or not, Harry is my buddy and I'm going to do my best to get him back to his old self!

Friday, February 9, 2018

Cases for the G.O.A.T

  I hadn’t been watching much pro football this season. My favorite New York Giants crashed from an 11 win playoff season last year to the second-worst team in the league this year with a paltry three wins which got both the coach and general manager fired. When the Giants are playing poorly there isn’t much about football that interests me until the playoffs start.

  This year’s playoffs was unlike most years. Perennial playoff teams like the Seahawks, Cowboys, and Packers dropped off the radar and new teams like the Titans, Bills, Jaguars, and Rams made it back to the playoffs after years in the doldrums. A constant over the last decade has been the appearances of the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. The teams have only missed the playoffs eight times this century. The Pats and Steelers had the best records in the AFC. Everyone was expecting a titanic AFC championship game between the twountil the Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off a playoff upset in Pittsburgh and even gave the Patriots all they could handle in the AFC championship game before losing 24-20.

  The Patriots took on the Eagles in this year’s Big Game (I would call it the Super Round Dish or the Great Bowl but those terms are copyrighted by the NFL) where they lost to the Eagles 41-33. The game was decided by the Patriots being unable to stop the Eagles offense after getting their first lead in the game late in the fourth quarter and the Eagles managing to force a Tom Brady fumble after getting the lead back with two minutes left. This was a deserved Eagles victory as they played better than the Patriots on offense, defense, and special teams despite playing backup quarterback Nick Foles after losing starter Carson Wentz late in the regular season. I have to confess to rooting for the Patriots to win because as much as I dislike Patriots owner Robert Kraft I root for the success of their coach Bill Belichick due to his roots as the Giants defensive coordinator in their first two Super Bowl seasons. Belichick’s defense was miserable on Sunday and was almost bailed out by 40-year old quarterback Tom Brady who was nearly as unstoppable as the Eagles and nearly pulled the victory out with his 505 passing yards and four touchdowns.

  This was the Patriots third ‘Big Game’ in four years. I believe the country was suffering from ‘Patriot Fatigue’ because there was as little buzz leading up to this game as I can remember in the past 20 years. One storyline in particular that caught my attention was the debate over whether Brady would supersede Michael Jordan as the team sport G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) with a sixth NFL championship title or whether he had already superseded Jordan. You can find a couple of topical articles here and here.

  The reason the sixth championship held so much importance for Brady’s side of this debate was because Jordan was on six championship teams which is held to be the gold standard although Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also was on six championship teams and super role player Robert Horry won seven rings with three different teams. At his current pace and longevity LeBron James will retire with the all-time NBA scoring record and is on a streak of leading his teams to seven NBA finals in a row but continually finds his acceptance as the greatest basketball player of all time challenged by his only having half of Jordan’s championships because his teams have lost five of the eight finals he has been in.

  Since Brady did not get his sixth championship on Sunday the GOAT debate has been muted until the fall in favor of the supreme performance of the Eagles. I would be comfortable saying Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time and leave it at that. He has been in a record 8 NFL championship games and was a key part of his team for all of them. Both Brady and Jordan were fortunate to be on teams that were well run with championship caliber rosters for them chase their championships with. I don’t subscribe to Jordan being the greatest NBA player of all time (my vote goes to Julius Erving with Kareem and Wilt Chamberlain also ahead of Jordan) but when it comes a choice of having one player to be on your team in a must win game I couldn’t argue with Jordan. The Jordan GOAT argument is not just based on his six championships – it is based on his six championship in his only six finals appearances with six NBA Finals Most Valuable Player awards in an eight year span where Jordan missed a season and a half in his first retirement. Brady’s five championships over 15 years are amazing but only in last year’s victory over the Falcons did he conduct a game winning drive and that one ended in a running touchdown by James White – not a touchdown pass. Brady’s other four championships were decided by late field goals and defensive stands. I’m not trying to lessen Brady’s impact but he simply does not have the signature touchdown drive like Joe Montana did in 1989 against the Bengals, much less Jordan’s signature championship winning shot against the Jazz in 1998. The thing that is missing from Jordan’s pedigree is any film clips of him as the defeated party in a championship series which compares well against the clip of Brady having the ball stripped from him on Sunday while trying to lead the Patriots to a go-ahead score or being pummeled by the Giants in the other two championship games he was defeated in. The closest we can come to similar Jordan video was his 1995 playoff series against the Magic when he still had his thicker baseball body and dribbled the ball off his feet for turnovers late in the deciding game.

  The argument for Brady and James as the greatest team players of all time is based on longevity and I fell has a large part I the desire of fandom to want to believe they are witnessing the greatest of all time. Jordan’s case is rooted in the perfection of his championship pedigree – six Finals, six Championships, and six Finals MVP awards. The person who gets the short shrift in this argument is Bill Russell of the Celtics who played 13 season, made the finals 12 times, and won 11 championships. The NBA Finals MVP award is named after Russell but his 11 championships in 13 years is so beyond anything ever accomplished in team sports that it just cannot be put into any context and is largely set aside as an anomaly so we can believe that six championships is the gold standard. For this day and age Jordan is still the greatest but the true GOAT has to be Russell who only misses my list of all-time greats because I never saw him play.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Panic In Detroit

  The NBA world was rocked by the Los Angeles Clippers trade of Blake Griffin and some spare parts to the Detroit Pistons for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, and a protected #1 draft pick. Griffin was arguably the greatest Clipper ever. He was the first overall pick in the 2009 draft, the 2010 Rookie of the Year, and a five time all-star. In the offseason Griffin signed a five year $171 million dollar contract that will take up between a third and fourth of the salary cap of any team he plays for.

  The Clippers were one of the NBA’s most successful regular season franchises since the arrival of all-star point guard Chris Paul in 2011, making the playoffs six straight seasons and winning a playoff series three times. The franchise was scarred when losing to the Houston Rockets in the conference semi-finals after having a 3-1 series lead along with a 25 point lead in the second half of the fifth game. Paul forced a trade to the Rockets this season and the Clippers remade their team around Griffin and center DeAndre Jordan surrounded by the role players received in the Rockets trade and some free-agent pickups. After a 4-0 start, the team started suffering injuries and Griffin missed over a dozen games. The Clippers lost 11 out of 12 but started winning again when Griffin returned and are currently in a battle for the final playoff spots in the Western Conference. This trade signals the start of newly hired consultant and NBA legend Jerry West’s housecleaning as he attempts to rebuild the Clippers into a contender for championships instead of hoping to make the conference finals one of these years.

  Normally getting a five time all-star is considered a steal but there are serious questions about Blake Griffin. He made the all-star team his first five years in the league but was not chosen the last three years mostly due to injuries that have cost him at least 20 games a year. In a salary cap sport like the NBA teams whose top paid players can’t play tend to struggle, much like the Detroit Pistons who started the season with a 14- 6 record including wins over the Warriors and Celtics and then lost 20 of their next 28 games in no small part because point guard Reggie Jackson (the second highest paid player on the team) suffered an ankle injury.

  The Griffin deal is the either the last gasp or the crowning moment of Detroit’s Stan Van Gundy’s tenure as the Coach/GM of the Pistons. This is Van Gundy’s 4th year with the Pistons. The first three years have netted one winning season (44-38) which gave the Pistons the 8th seed and a sweep at the hands of the eventual champion Cavaliers in the opening round of the playoffs.

  Now one playoff sweep in three years may not be seen as an abject failure except that in the NBA most coaches with that sort of record don’t make a fourth year. There are four current NBA coaches that have had one playoff appearance (or less) in the past three years: Steve Clifford of the Hornets who made the playoffs twice in the past four years (losing both times in the first round) but once in the past three years; Quinn Snyder of the Jazz who made the playoffs in his third season and won a playoff series; and Brett Brown of the 76ers who was hired to oversee a team that was purposefully trying to lose as many games as possible. Van Gundy is the fourth. There was not one coach fired from an NBA team last season. This season Phoenix, Memphis, and Milwaukee made coaching changes. The shelf life of an NBA coach that doesn’t make the playoffs on a regular basis is short. Very few coaches get a fourth year with the record Van Gundy has had with the Pistons but he does have the advantage of not only being the coach but also the General Manager.

  Van Gundy's record as a General Manager has been mixed. His 2015 pickups of Tobias Harris from the Orlando Magic and Reggie Jackson from the Thunder worked out well enough. The pickup of Jackson could have been franchise-altering except that Jackson has proven to be injury-prone the past two season which leaves a $14 million player (1/7 of the cap) on the sidelines. He has not proven to be able to develop role players into above average starters and his drafts have been abysmal. His highest pick was the 8th pick in the 2015 draft Stanley Johnson. Johnson has a world of athleticism but has barely been able to crack the starting lineup after three seasons. The 18th pick in the 2016 draft was Henry Ellenson who has barely been able to stay out of the G-League. His 2017 top pick Luke Kennard (12th in the draft) has been a rotation player which may or may not be due to Jackson’s injury and the need for Coach Van Gundy to show that GM Van Gundy has hit on a draft pick.

  Van Gundy received an endorsement from the Pistons owner Tom Gores earlier this year but the team has just moved into a new arena in downtown Detroit and won’t sell tickets without the excitement a winning team will bring without even mentioning the millions in revenue the team gets for having home playoff games. Van Gundy’s 5 year $35 million dollar contract runs out next season and it would not be unreasonable to expect a consistent playoff team by the fourth season. The Pistons had lost eight straight games before the trade (they beat the Cavaliers at home the day the trade was announced). The Griffin trade is an incredibly risky move. Griffin has not proven he can stay healthy for a full season and has missed the last two playoffs with injuries as well. Committing so much of the salary cap for a player that can’t stay healthy could hamstring the franchise for the next decade but Van Gundy does not have to worry about the next decade of Pistons basketball if he cannot turn around this season and he has only 30 games left to do it.