Something I found a long time ago that I never shared

While researching "Final Destination and the importance of insight," I ran across a comment on the IMDB board for Black Christmas that read, "Some may argue that the characters in the film are not very developed, but that does not matter because most of them die anyway." Oh my goodness, that's just so perfect on so many levels.

NDAC to score the Super Bowl spots

The New Denver Ad Club and football? What could go wrong? Get your tickets. I'm not sure who did the flyer for the party. Is that Jim Glynn dressed as the referee?

Swimming with shadows

One of my heroes is Dave Martin, the 66-year-old triathlete who was killed by a great white shark off the coast of San Diego last year. It's not so much the circumstances of his death. It's that he raised children so fearless they went surfing in the same waters the very next day.

I have had to think a lot about bravery recently. About whether it is braver to accept death or to fight it. About growing up deeply different. About ambiguous ends rendered in sharp focus. I haven't arrived anywhere especially profound. I just imagine Kevin Martin paddling out into the Pacific, unable to ignore the swimming shadows below, but completely able to accept them.

Was George W. Bush the Batman?

I'm not a fan of our outgoing President. My own politics range from quite left to solidly centrist. But my problems with Bush aren't just political. They're moral.

On the other hand, I am a fan of Batman. I'm not a fanboy, exactly. But I've read and enjoyed most of the canon - Miller, Loeb, Moore. So I want to sound off on this interpretation of The Dark Knight:

The theory goes that the film's message ("Some men just want to watch the world burn") is not touchy-feely Hollywood-friendly... Batman himself has been compared to President George W. Bush -- the unpopular enforcer protecting an angry public from a monstrous foe.

A Bush apologist at the Wall Street Journal goes further:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

So is Bush Batman? Kind of. But that's not necessarily a compliment. Batman is an ambiguous character whose exploits give us the chance to wrestle with our own morality.

When Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham, it was run by the mob and crooked cops. It was Batman's destruction of those forces that gave the freaks the opening they needed. Even the movie gets this right:

Bruce Wayne: I knew the mob wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.

Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir.

As time went on, Batman and the freaks developed mutualism. The Killing Joke, for instance, ends with Batman and the Joker hugging in the rain, laughing at a joke that only they can understand.

Batman never truly succeeded in his quest. But he still felt justified in coming out of retirement to find a death worthy of his self-image. In The Dark Knight Returns, the Joker is comatose in Arkham. It is the news of a Batman sighting that wakes him up for a last killing spree.

Before people try to spin Bush into a real-world Batman, they ought to consider what they're saying. They're saying he's a psychopathic, selfish, violent vigilante who enabled and inspired his own enemies. It makes great fiction. But it's not what we should've looked for in a President.

Me in ALL CAPS

Thanks to whoever handled the Denver 50 write-up for A&M Review. Especially since they put my name in all capital letters. (Which moved Gregg to quip, "I just thought that was core to the brand MATT INGWALSON.")

But seriously, any write-up on the Denver 50 that doesn't thank Lindsey Larson, Lauren Davis, Lindsey McCune, Thomas Dahl, Steve Miller and Jeff Mason is grievously incomplete. The market, the show, and the New Denver Ad Club owe them all a big "thank you."