Morat has some thoughts about Attack of the Clones and the prequels in general. He’s one who has been disappointed in them, but he seems to be coming around. At least, he’d better be. I am less forgiving than the Emperor. Or something like that.

A fairly common complaint about the prequels has been that it all feels preordained, because we know what happens: the Jedi all get slaughtered, the Republic becomes the Empire, and Anakin becomes Darth Vader. Now, this has never really bothered me, but I can see where it’s a legitimate stumbling block. There is a difference, though, between the story’s events being preordained within the story and them being preordained in the mundane sense that we know already what’s going to happen. (Not that Morat is making this mistake; I just wanted to draw the distinction.)

One thing that strikes me is that Anakin’s fall is a side-story, almost, to the larger story of the prequels. If Qui Gon had never found Anakin, Darth Sidious would still be scheming and maneuvering himself into power…but his fall is necessary, though, in the sense that the beginnings of his fall — his forbidden love of Padme — plants the seeds, almost literally, for his later redemption. The other thing thought that has occurred to me is that Morat is right about the prequel focus being on Obi Wan in particular, and on the general incompetence of the Jedi in general. Not only are they completely taken by surprise when the Sith return, but it turns out that Yoda’s own Padawan, Count Dooku, has been turned to the Dark Side.

So far in the prequels, there have been numerous mentions of Anakin being “the Chosen One” who will “bring balance to the Force”, but what’s telling is that the Jedi seem to have no idea what that means. They simply assume that it’s all a good thing, and they never consider the possibility that in order for Anakin to restore the Force’s balance he will have to descend into darkness and then find redemption. The Jedi seem to be making it up as they go; at one point, Yoda even says something like “We cannot allow them to know of our weakness” — in other words, “We have no idea what’s going on, but we gotta keep acting like we do.” The Jedi are, dare I say it, vain.

Morat also says that he’d like Anakin to be revealed as the child of a rape. Personally, I doubt very much if that will happen; that somehow seems too dark for Star Wars. I wouldn’t be surprised if George Lucas simply never mentions the whole “midichlorian/immaculate conception” thing again and simply leaves it as a little Easter egg to drive fans crazy. But in a sense it would add to the subtext, if Palpatine turned out to somehow behind Anakin’s birth — for it would give Yoda and Obi Wan one more chance to be wrong, in the end. In Return of the Jedi, Luke objects that he cannot kill his own father, which Obi Wan seems to think is the only thing that can fix things. But in the end, assuming Palpatine is behind Anakin’s birth, the good side of the Force triumphs and balance is restored when Anakin kills his own father. But again, that’s pure speculation, and Lucas might not have any such thing in mind.

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I watched a bit of last night’s ALCS Game Four, and I have to admit, watching Tim Wakefield throw that knuckleball sure brings back memories of the awful 1992 NLCS. That was the year Wakefield first emerged, coming up from AAA to the Pirates in the second half of the season. He went 9-2, and in that year’s NLCS against the Braves, he went 2-0 and would have been the MVP had not Francisco Cabrera somehow managed to complete the sale of his soul to the Devil just in time for the bottom of the ninth in Game Seven, thus condemning the Braves for all time to being Baseball’s Most Evil Franchise.

Anyway, Wakefield’s knuckleball still looks the same: a slow pitch that floats toward the plate and then drops like a rock just as the batter thinks, “Geez, look at that thing, I’m going to hit that into the upper deck” and then swings-and-misses.

(For those not up on baseball, a knuckleball is a special pitch that is thrown with as little spin on the ball as possible, so that its motion to the plate is wildly unpredictable. A knuckleball that looks like it’s in the strike zone usually ends up anywhere but in the strike zone, so a knuckleball pitcher who does it right can totally confound opposing hitters not through pinpoint control, but through the laws of chaos, basically. Knuckleballs also tend to result in a lot of wild pitches and passed balls, because the catcher has no more idea of where the ball’s going than anyone else. True knuckleball pitchers are rare because the pitch is so nutty.)

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My addition of an Amazon tip jar to the sidebar is purely coincidental to the Fund a New Computer for Atrios Drive. Just in case anyone’s wondering.

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One fact of life that constantly amazes is how small-minded people end up in law enforcement, security, and other professions that vest them with authority that they really don’t deserve. I’m sure we’ve all run into the cop who has nothing better to do than pull people over for a rolling stop at a rural intersection late at night when there are no other cars about, security guards who think it’s their duty to interfere with shoppers at the mall, and so on.

What scares me now is that these kinds of people, who end up in these professions out of some latent need to wield power over other people, are now ending up in Homeland Security, where they can take their frustrations in life out on “all them foreigners”.

(Link via Scott at The Gamer’s Nook.)

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I’ve finally made some extensive updates to the stuff in the sidebar: a few blogs have been added to the permanent blogroll (Other Journeys), new ones are under the rotating collection (The Common Room), new permanent links are up for other sites (Other Shores), and finally I added links to my reviews appearing on GMR and my one review at DAM (Writings Elsewhere). With all that, plus my handy “Google Search” function, I can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t just set Byzantium’s Shores as their homepage.

Or something like that.

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A short while ago I had one of those moments, fleeting but still encouraging, that make me believe that maybe I’m doing an OK job of raising the kid:

ME: Barney’s on next.

DAUGHTER: I hate Barney. I wanna watch Peter Pan.

Yee-haw!

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Apparently a number of Movable Type blogs were attacked over the weekend by some kind of bot that filled their comments sections with links to porn. This is, of course, one of those “beyond the pale” things…but I really have to admit that as someone who’s still using Blogger and BlogSpot and YACCS, all free services with the occasional hiccups in service that come with being free, I find the whole thing just a tiny bit funny. As long as it’s quashed and doesn’t start happening again.

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Stealing stuff from MeFi is always fun, so….

:: Think you know your rock album covers? Well, take the test. They give the cover art, stripped of identifying marks and words. (MeFi Link)

:: A discussion thread about Mormonism, the way other Christian denominations view it, the way Mormons view themselves, and more. There’s even a link, embedded in the discussion, to a picture of the Mormon’s sacred undergarments, if you’ve ever been curious about what they look like. (If you’ve ever seen a movie set in the American West in which a woman appears in her undergarments, you’ve pretty much got it.) The discussion thread here is contentious, as any religion discussion might be expected, but at the same time it’s not quite as contentious as I’d expected.

Mormons, in my experience, tend to be genuinely mystified by the degree to which others dislike their religion. To me, it’s a combination of three factors. First, the whole idea that there is an entire section of Jesus’s life that no one knew about until 170 years ago or so is bound to upset people. Then, of course, there’s the whole polygamy thing. Finally there is the vague air of secrecy that the Mormons seem to perpetuate, what with temples that the non-Mormon can’t enter, stuff like the sacred undergarments, and so on. (That last factor also seems to apply, in my mind, to explaining some of the historical antipathy faced by Catholics.)

:: Quotes from science-fiction writers on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political ascendancy. I think some of these folks are a bit too dismissive, really. (But then, I don’t think the California voters were dismissive enough, so it’s pretty much of a wash.)

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Via Lynn Sislo — who seems to find way more cool stuff than any one person has a right to find! — I happened upon Things That Should Be Destroyed. Some of these things have apparently already been destroyed, at least metaphorically — the “Pepsi Girl” seems to have finally disappeared — but some, like Pat Robertson, are still around (and advocating the nuclear destruction of the United States Department of State, strangely enough). And I agree totally about neckties, which are the single most stupid and useless article of clothing currently in existence.

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The Buffalo Bills, the nation’s most important sports franchise, got buried yesterday by the nation’s most dispensible sports franchise, the New York Jets. The final score was a lopsided 30-3. The Bills scored a field goal on their first drive, and they never threatened to score again. They couldn’t run the ball. They could barely throw the ball. They certainly couldn’t protect their quarterback, who fell beneath the weight of various defensive linemen or linebackers seven times.

The Bills are now the proud owners of a 3-3 record, which isn’t a disastrous mark to have but too many holes have been exposed in their team. My original prediction was for the Bills to win their division and go to the playoffs; I now believe that a record of 9-7 is more likely. That might be good enough to squeeze into the playoffs, if they are incredibly lucky, but I very much doubt it.

(Irrelevant stats: Each of the Bills’ three losses so far this year has come to a team coming off a bye week, and two of those losses were to teams looking to win their first game of the year.)

I’ve never been a football fan to demand the head of the coach every time the team loses, but I’m now wondering if Gregg Williams simply isn’t cut out to be an NFL head coach. I had thought, before the season started, that he was still on the upside of a learning curve, but so far this season I just don’t see any “learning” going on. The same mistakes keep getting made, the same questionable decisions, the same lack of discipline on the team. This is a team that miscommunicates, especially on offense. This is a team whose offensive line last year plowed the road for a 1400-yard season by the starting running back, but who this year can’t block at all for the exact same running back and, to add insult to injury, can’t protect Drew Bledsoe one bit better than they did last year. This is a team with a good defense that is expected to play every game as if it’s the 2000 Ravens defense, which they simply can’t do.

What gets me, sports fans, is that the Bills keep getting shown by their opponents what they need to be doing, and they keep refusing to learn the lesson. Three weeks ago, when the Dolphins beat the Bills, they ran Ricky Williams 41 times. That’s more than twice the number of times the Bills ran the ball yesterday. In only three of the Bills’ games have they rushed the ball more than their opponent, and in only three of those games did they even rush the ball more than twenty times. The Bills simply aren’t concentrating on running the ball, at all.

A common excuse for the Bills not running is that they’re falling behind too often, so they have to throw, but I don’t buy that. I remember watching a game the Steelers played five or six years ago, when Jerome Bettis was at the top of his form and in which the Steelers through turnovers and other goofs fell behind 21-0 in the first quarter. In that game, though, Steelers coach Bill Cowher kept his wits about him and kept pounding the ball in there. He based his offense on running the ball, his coaches drilled run-blocking into the line, and it paid off. That’s why the Steelers almost always make the playoffs. Watching the Bills, though, I get the feeling that they run the ball once, and if they don’t pick up nine yards, they abandon the run for the next eight plays.

Yesterday’s game was the only time the Bills have lost by more than ten points, and it’s the only time they’ve faced that ten point deficit before the fourth quarter, so I don’t buy the idea that they have to throw to get back into it. A good coach makes adjustments; a good coach notices that Drew Bledsoe simply isn’t comfortable with the flock of young receivers and journeymen they’ve surrounded him with this year, and game-plans accordingly. The pigheaded offensive scheming by Gregg Williams and by coordinator Kevin Gilbride has me wondering each week if I’m watching a Mike Martz-coached Rams game: “I don’t care if they have nine DBs and only two linemen on the field, we’re throwing the ball!” Ugh.

A word about Drew Bledsoe, since I suspect fans are going to start piling up on him. The Bills knew what they were getting when they got him: a guy with a terrific arm who relies on rhythm and protection, who’s a good leader but can’t single-handedly will a team back from the brink. I’ve never bought the bit that Bledsoe “can’t win the big one”, any more than I ever bought the idea that Jim Kelly couldn’t win the big one. A lot of Bills fans are baffled at the way Bledsoe is playing after losing Peerless Price, but it’s not just Price. After watching Bledsoe twice a year when he was with the Patriots, and now watching him with the Bills, I think it’s not Peerless Price whom he misses, but Larry Centers.

Larry Centers is an odd guy: he’s a running back by position, but his real value is as a receiver. He has more receptions than any running back in history, and more than just about all receivers, too, except for the really elite ones. He may be a Hall of Famer, on the basis of his receiving numbers. He’s with New England now, but he played for the Bills the previous two years. Last year he had 43 receptions, and he was the main “safety valve” in the passing game, the guy who gets open for short yardage when the deeper receivers are both covered. Bledsoe has no such safety-valve player this year. None of the tight ends the Bills have now has emerged as such a threat, and the Bills’ current fullback (Sam Gash) is more noted for his run-blocking than his receiving (which means, given the Bills’ lack of intent towards the running game, that Gash’s position and talents are doubly wasted. Why do I think this is a big deal? Because I remember how Bledsoe used to kill the Bills, every year when he was a Patriot, by constantly dumping passes off to tight end Ben Coates. Bledsoe-to-Coates was the combo that made Bledsoe a Buffalo-killer, and it really helped him last year. This year, he has no such outlet, so he has to stand in there while the pocket collapses, praying that one of his young and inexperienced receivers manages to get open or that Eric Moulds — who sat out yesterday with a groin pull — somehow saves the day by beating his inevitable double-team.

Oh, well, I could go on, but I won’t. Maybe the Bills can get it together, but I’m not optimistic right now. What bothers me is that this is really the first time the Bills’ results haven’t matched up with my expectations based on the team’s talent. I tend to be pretty realistic about the team, which is why I’m a frustrated fan now. This team is better on paper than they are on the field. Gregg Williams had better figure out how to even that deficit, or he’ll be looking for a job next season.

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