Sam Adams

If you haven’t heard the news about Portland’s mayor; he covered up a past affair with an 18 year old man to get elected. More here.

I’m all for holding our leaders to a uniformly high standard. The affair represents a lapse in judgement, and the cover-up a lapse in integrity. But let’s have some perspective. No laws were broken, no partners were cheated on. There is a big difference between maintaining privacy in your personal life and real corruption. And let’s face it, even here in politically correct Portland, the fallout is worse for a gay man than it would be for a heterosexual. This one cowardly act does not invalidate all the good work Adams has done or will do.

I’m with Steve Duin; hold a recall election in 6 months. Enough with the rushed decisions, let’s deal with this like an electorate.

Trailer Trashin’: Watchmen

I am not a fan of director Zack Snyder. After seeing 300, my opinion of the BOOK went south. That’s some powerful bad moviemaking. So his presence does not inspire confidence in Watchmen. The trailers show a lot of faithful recreations of imagery from the book, but you can’t just transfer the images to the screen and have a good movie. Especially when the source material is as much about being a comic book as it is about comic book characters.

Much of the comic community feels that it’s impossible to translate Watchmen to another medium without losing the whole point, and I’m inclined to agree. But even missing the point, as long as it stays true to the narrative it could easily be one of the two best superhero movies yet made (the other being The Dark Knight).

Watchmen the book gave comics a huge push into growing up. (Superhero comics that is; art comics have always been plenty grown up.) If Watchmen the movie can do the same for superhero movies, it will be a success. Here’s hoping.