Larger View

Many believe humans evolved owing to opposable thumbs. I believe humans evolved owing to an opposable brain.

- Mister Rengerz on science and faith

Lebron James stirred an enormous amount of chatter earlier this summer when he decided to move via free agency to the Miami Heat, trampling the souls of millions of Clevelanders.

Subsequently, this has sparked a lot of debate about Lebron’s future status versus the legend, Michael Jordan, to whom he is most often compared.

Parenthetically, isn’t it always about the future with Lebron, from like the first moment he stepped foot onto an NBA court? “Whoa! The future sure is bright with this young player!” And now, seven years into his professional career, LBJ has teamed up with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade to form the South Beach Super Friends and we’re still talking about his future. “Whoa! How many titles will this team win together?!?!”

Interestingly, Michael commented a few weeks back about how it would never have even entered into his imagination to team up with his bitter contemporary rivals Larry Bird, or Magic Johnson in order to attain championship glory. For those unaware, Michael Jordan won six titles, and Lebron James has, at present, won zero.

So. Now. My stab at psychoanalyzing LBJ Versus MJ.

Michael Jordan also had something Lebron never had. A father. In fact, the lore of Michael Jordan very much bloomed with the public’s perception of his tightly-bonded relationship with his tragically slain father. It is the very stories that Michael recounts about his own childhood, listening to his father praise his older brother, and indeed, being beaten on the backyard basketball hoop by that same older brother, that fueled Michael with desire … desire and confidence.

The largest determiner of a young man’s confidence is owing to the presence, or lack thereof, of a father (and of course I mean a positive one). Love and presence of a father builds confidence, if not moreover, a primeval desire to best the old man.

Seeing as you already know where I’m going with this argument, save me the parries about surrogate fathers being found in other males such as coaches. Mentors can never replace a father, they can only build off his teachings, and they’re not the same.

I was that kid growing up, raised by a single mother. Lebron James was, too. I knew many extremely nice guys that took time out to teach me many things. But those men also had families of their own, and the fact that my father wasn’t in the mood to do the job, well, it fills you with doubt. That’s the best way I can describe it to those who aren’t sure what I’m speaking about (fortunately for the sake of my argument, about half the guys in America know exactly what I’m talking about).

Fatherlessness begins as a doubt that starts as a youngster and blossoms into a cavernous yawn in the heart by the time you’re an adult. There’s no cure, either.

Now I’d like to say here, for the record, that I give Lebron James a lot of credit for doing as well as he has mustering up the courage to be “the man” when there wasn’t another around. But it’s an impossible task to ask of anyone, because the chasm of dis-confidence continues to grow each day.

As teenagers, single parent boys feel an early pressure to imitate the unknown enigma of manhood that will sufficiently match their maturing bodies for the outside world. This is a rational move, but wholly fear-based, because there’s no one strong enough around to protect them. Meanwhile, boys intact with their father to guide them daily through the pubertal gauntlet are reassured that they’re not going to be men for a while no matter how hairy their chin gets, and that’s all right because dad’s got the fort covered until they do figure it out.

That’s right. A teenage boy won’t be a man for quite a while (maybe even as much as ten years more of a while), and fathers help boys recognize this fact. “Wow. I’m starting to look a lot like dad now, but there’s still something missing. He’s still got something I don’t. What could that be?”

What could that be, indeed. This crucial time period is where the bedrock of male confidence will eventually sprout. Boys minus this maturation stage, know it, and can’t for the life of them figure out what’s missing. The single-parent teen frets, “Why do other boys fall and seem to take disappointment as a fleeting glance, while I take each setback as a portent to the end of the world?” (note, here escape seems like a viable option for this teen).

A lot of subsequent confusion ensues, and the doubt begins to really get some teeth when the twenties roll around, and that same once single-parented “man” is still struggling with what’s missing, while his counterpart is starting to get the sense that he’s made it, or almost figured it out.

“Wait?!” you protest, “Lebron seems to have done just fine for himself as a man with some supposed child’s confidence.”

Financially, I would argue. But, oh, if manhood were only that easy. Make a few bucks and, BOOM. Significance. Meaning. Hardly.

Lebron skipped college and went straight to the NBA to start “earning.” A very responsible adult thing to do. Michael went to Chapel Hill, NC, during his all important developmental years, and continued his maturation under Dean Smith.

The one factor that separates Lebron from most normal single parent kids (and the rest of humanity as well) is that he has a highly rare athletic gift for his size (even more athletic than Michael Jordan). Ironically, this only works to pressurize Lebron’s deficiency of confidence onto a global stage for all the world to see.

Once more, the deciding factor here is self-confidence.

When challenge and difficulty arise, as it arose for Michael versus an ugly foe in the Detroit Pistons, Michael seethed at the impudence of any that would suggest Joe, Isiah, Rick, and Bill were just too tough for his “Airness.” Michael’s answer is history’s answer to the rest.

This year’s semi-final playoffs, Lebron is hopelessly outgunned versus the Boston Celtics. Lebron’s answer is history’s answer to the rest.

Mankind took an irrevocable step outside of nature the moment humans became smart enough to start observing it.

- Mister Rengerz on nature

The atheistic insinuation that minus the world with religion, all fanaticism, human sacrifice, infanticide, genitalia mutilation, oppression of women, etc. would be somehow rid from the human condition, is to engage in the same type of simplistic blame passing so prevalent throughout religious history.

It’s as wholly asinine as believing that all bribery, doublespeak, grandstanding, partisanship, hollow promises, fear mongering, etc. would be somehow rid from the human condition minus the world with politics.

“Keep an open mind,” may be the most peaceful doctrine ever put forth by humankind. (Ironically it is the shared deficiency in both religious and atheist alike).

- Mister Rengerz on classics revisited

Parenthetically, when I write at the end of a blog post, “what do you think?” I am asking for a response of your opinion. A dialogue, right?

Thus, it feels to me that all forms of social networking, social media, are overtures to commune. “This is what I think, so what do you think?”

Many believe this new age of instantly exchanging ideas at the speed of light will result in an evolution of knowledge. I think, though, it is humans as we all have always been. Lonely. We’re a lonely species in a vast cosmos, and even though we have each other (lots of each other, to the tune of like nearly 7 billion of us) both men and women alike are lonely and wanting to commune.

But why are we so lonely when there are so many of us, and we are all so good at communicating?

A lonely species gazing heavenwards to the stars and pondering, “why aren’t there any others like us here?”

Man has woman, and woman has man. And man has man, and woman has woman. We have each other. But it seems our brain has made us more isolated from the universe than akin with it. I mean, who hasn’t seen the fraternity of wild animals in nature and felt a bit of longing deep inside.

My one great hope for the earth (and indeed my strongest argument for preserving our natural habitats and wildlife) is that we humans are but the first harbingers of evolutionary change, and not merely an anomalous outcast. Maybe other species we now share the earth with will one day awaken as primates once did. Imagine a future where children hold long conversations with tigers, or become pen pals with whales, or hear eagles explain firsthand what machine-less flight feels like.

Before you laugh, consider how inane the idea of talking primates was no more than a million years ago on the earth. That you can even consider a laugh is exactly what separates you now from then. Is it really too much of a leap in logic to consider other species might one day follow in the footsteps of humans? Or are we just too self-centered to imagine any other species, save for primates, could ever accomplish the feat?

So what do you think?

If you’re poor then you were told to work for somebody rich. If you’re rich then you learned to work for yourself.

- Mister Rengerz on uncommon sense

Yes, Hollywood has given us many highly memorable villains, but none two better than our two favorites: Hans Gruber and Hans Landa.

Seriously, couldn’t you see a younger, thinner Alan Rickman doing Hans Landa in 2009? “That is excellent milk, Mister Cowboy.” Or the snide half-smirk of Christoph Waltz asking John McClane in 1989, “where are my detonators?”

Anyway, this post is really about some new info I’ve recently gleaned regarding a much asked about question:

“Why didn’t Inglourious Basterds win anything in 2009?”

Oscars we’re talking about. I mean, like Tarantino or not, most people consider I.B. an instant classic. A moving canvas of masterpiece art. The moment Shosanna Dreyfus’ Nazi funeral pyre passed through our retinas, anybody that’s ever taken a half semester of film knew that Tarantino’s coup de grâce would one day be taught in all future film schools right alongside D.W. Griffith and Fritz Lang (if it’s not already). Heck, Tarantino knows it, and voices that exact sentiment during the closing sequence of the movie when Aldo says, “I believe this is my masterpiece,” after branding Hans Landa’s forehead. Brad Pitt is merely intoning Tarantino’s own sense of accomplishment.

I liken seeing Inglourious Basterds to watching 2001 for the first time, and getting that same sensation that what I was witnessing was truly the fullest possible expression of what film can be as it is presently constituted; making the absolute most of the elements of sound, image, light, darkness, character, and story.

So why didn’t it win?

True, Hollywood has a shameful history of bypassing legendary auteurs at the height of their directorial zeniths (that the Oscar committee knows damn well are legendary directors at the time). I’m not going to mention anyone because I would undoubtedly omit somebody deserving from this unfortunate list (Martin Scorsese and Goodfellas).

Well, ironically, the scoop with I.B. is that the very twist that makes this film so monumentally legendary is what also may have earned it a snub ticket. Namely, Shosanna Dreyfus’ Nazi funeral pyre.

Apparently many on the 2009 Oscar voting committee viewed Tarantino as too cavalier with his alternate universe, re-writing of history. By having the Nazi Party burned alive amidst a hail of bullets and flames, thereby satisfying our primal thirst for human justice while simultaneously thwarting our known expectations of WWII films and history (see 2008′s Valkyrie for the opposite effect), Tarantino managed to blow away the audience and offend certain Oscar voters in one fell swoop.

The reason? In short, some Oscar voters believed Tarantino wasn’t being sensitive to the memory of true history, and by extension, that of holocaust survivors and victims. A fair point if you want to believe that Quentin Tarentino has too much of a comic-booky streak in him to be delving into such weighty waters as the holocaust. Moreover, some must have feared that awarding excellence upon I.B. would trivialize the murders of over six million innocent human beings, a precedent the Oscar committee no doubt wanted to avoid going forward into the future of film as an art form.

So what do you think?

Audio Book

Audio Book