An R Movie For the Whole Family - The King's Speech

In 1980 I asked my father to take me to see the movie “Alien” for reasons that now escape me.  Apparently I hadn’t been sufficiently scarred from viewing The Exorcist (on TV no less, but no less horrifying).  Asking my father was a cunning ploy, for he’d moved out the year prior and I thought he might be up for overruling my mother’s wishes.  Seeing “Alien” could be a little secret among us men; mom would never have to know.  Turns out I was wrong.  After initially giving a “sure, we do that,” I reintroduced the topic a few weeks later only to be told that because it was rated R, “Alien” was off the table.  A year later, my mother took me to see my first R-rated film, “Ordinary People,” which was no ordinary movie, but was certainly appropriate for a 12 year old despite the rating. 

I recently followed my mother’s example by taking my entire family to see “The King’s Speech,” including my almost-nine-year old son and two thirteen year-old daughters.  I’d already read the opinions of several movie critics who blasted the Motion Picture Association of America for rating “The King’s Speech” the same as “Hostel” and “Saw 3D” due to a string of profanities used not in a spiteful or sexual way, but as a tool to help overcome a stutter that had plagued England’s King George VI since childhood. 

The criticisms aimed at the MPAA are entirely justified, and the organization should be dismantled not so much for its most recent blunder, but for its decades-long condoning of violence and torture while demonizing the unclothed human body and the occasional F-bomb.  Talk about having one’s priorities completely backward.

Luckily, I have the final say in choosing what’s appropriate for my children and what isn’t, and the Internet is an especially helpful tool in this regard.  After reading a parent review on-line, I knew that “The King’s Speech” was going to be fine.  All my children have heard the F-word, but never in a more innocuous manner than that of Colin Firth’s King George VI.   They’ve been exposed to much worse on their daily bus rides to school.

The movie definitely tested my children’s patience, particular my son’s.   “The King’s Speech” is a slow-moving, methodical portrayal of the royal family’s precarious pre-war years, and there’s as much silence in the movie as dialogue.  Regardless, I’m all for testing children’s patience, especially for such a well-done fictionalized version of real events.   The day after viewing the film, my children and I went on youtube to listen to the real speech made by King George VI on September 3, 1939.  Anytime a film inspires inquiries of history, it’s hard to deem it anything other than an unqualified success.

I suspect that just as I recall seeing my first R movie, my children will remember theirs.  And just as “Ordinary People” upset the critical favorite “Raging Bull” for best picture of 1980, “The King’s Speech” could do the same to my favorite film of 2010, “The Social Network.”  It wouldn’t be undeserving.

A Pain Unparalleled - A History of Packer Heartbreaks

You remember.

Oh, you remember alright. 

You remember the Miracle at the Meadowlands on November 19, 1978, which ultimately led to an Eagle record of 9-7, inching out the Packers’ 8-7-1 record and keeping them out of their first playoff since 1972.

You remember the games against the Bears in the 80s.  Take your pick, except from 1989.  William Perry.  Sweetness.  Only we never called him that.  Not back then.

You remember our playoff hopes dying in 1995 as the Vikings whooped the Pack 27-7 on December 27.

You remember Jim McMahon completing a 45-yard pass to Eric Guliford with 6 seconds to play on September 26, 1993, leading to yet another Viking victory over the Packers.

You remember the no-call fumble against the 49ers, followed immediately by the game-ending touchdown pass to Terrell Owens on January 4, 1999.

You remember the loss to Atlanta on January 4, 2003 followed by the loss to the Vikings on January 9, 2005.

And of course you remember the interceptions:

The fourth quarter interception against the Cowboys on January 14, 1996.

Six against the Rams on January 20, 2002.

The overtime interception against the Giants on January 20, 2008, Favre’s last pass as a Packer.

And let’s not even bother to dwell on the fourth and 26 against the Eagles on January 11, 2004.

But as we prepare for the Game of the Century, the matchup we all wanted, let us not forget that a loss to the Bears this weekend will lead not to a wound that merely surpasses those prior heartbreaks, their scars still shiny, a gnawing reminder of what might have been.  No, a loss this weekend will likely lead to an open bloody gash, inoperable, life-threatening, an injury so painful, you’ll be begging for death or for a scalpel to amputate that part of your brain that makes you feel.

On the other hand, the upside is so damn appealing...

I can't wait.  Packers 24.  Bears 13.

What's Changed in Twenty Years? The PC

When my grandparents were still alive, I felt a strong connection to the reflections they shared of years gone by.  One theme that struck me again and again was the incredible number changes they witnessed during their seventy-plus years.  No other generation, it seemed to me, had undergone a more significant transition than they had.  Automobile to airplanes.   Handguns to nuclear weapons.  Terror of deadly and debilitating diseases to reliable vaccines.  Radio to TV.  Recorded sound, starting with LPs and evolving to CDs, to recorded video, first in a theater, then on TV and then on home video.  The discovery of DNA.  Electronic appliances.  Satellites.  Space travel.  Moon landings.  It’s mindboggling to me how so many of this generation managed to ride the wave of technology with grace.

As a college student in 1990, I once lamented to a friend that my generation (I believe we’re still called Generation X) had witnessed technological advances that paled in comparison to my grandparents’ generation, that there was not much left to discover.  Sure, you could make a car safer or more efficient, or you might allow for personalized space travel, but these achievements would merely be variations on a theme.  What was on the horizon that would truly change our world?

My friend thought about this for a minute, and then answered, “The personal computer!”

Nicely done, Mark.

At that time it was hard to me to recognize how personal computers would change the world, mostly because I didn’t have one.  None of us did.  We’d hoof it over to the computer lab on cold and snowy evenings and attempt to get Pascal to sort our data sets properly, and then we’d wrestle with the dot-matrix printer, rip off the perforated margins of our assignments and trudge back home.

In other words, personal computers weren’t so personal.  My friend Eric had had one as far back as 1985, and in high school he’d allowed me to compose my term paper on Alfred Hitchcock on his Mac.  That was definitely helpful and cool.  But life changing?  And where was MY computer?  Here we were five years later, and nothing much had changed.

My lack of vision when it comes to computers and their eventual counterparts – cell phones, navigation systems, ebooks, and the like – is probably why I’m not an entrepreneur or an innovator.  But did ANYone really see the next twenty years coming?  The first time I heard of the Internet was in 1993.  Could anyone at that time have predicted that in fifteen years there would be Youtube?  Amazon?  Facebook?  Wikipedia?  Googlemaps? 

Obviously, some did.  They’re billionaires now. 

I think it’s fair to say that what we’ve encountered during the past twenty years is as monumental as anything prior generations witnessed in the same span of time.  Maybe even more so.  The rate of change had been staggering, not just in terms of inventions, but it terms of real life changes.  Our ability to access information and communicate with other people is beyond anything most could have ever envisioned (excluding Ray Bradbury, who predicted it all by 1951).

In ten years time, will my children lament to a friend that there’s nothing more to discover?  If they do, I’ve no doubt that they’ll be blown away by the decades to come.  The capacity for human ingenuity is boundless.