OK, so like, I actually watched New Moon and it was totally awful!!

This past weekend I was unlucky enough to watch New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight saga. Though I went into this voluntarily and with EXTREMELY low expectations, I was somehow still surprised. How a movie this bad gets made and even worse, makes large sums of money is a question that may be beyond my ability to answer.

I had seen the first Twilight movie going into this and thought it was fairly terrible. New Moon takes everything that was awful about the first movie and magnifies it about a thousand times. Simply things like acting and decent dialog escape every scene. Everyone involved with this movie appears to have no acting ability to speak of, not a single one. And if they do, you would never know it because they are saddled with some all time bad source material. Can we stop pretending that high sales equals quality. This story sucks. These books are, at best, trashy KMart romance novels, minus the romance.

My real problem with Twilight goes beyond my love of good cinema. This "saga", though meant as entertainment, cannot escape having underlying messages, many of which are shockingly disturbing on many levels. Maybe it speaks to the lowering of society's standards, or perhaps parents just don't care anym

ore but, if I had a daughter there is no way I would let her anywhere near these books and movies.

The main character Isabella Swan, usually just shortened to Bella, is a high

school girl who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a 108 year old vampire masquerading as a 17 year old school mate of Bella's. Though Edward apparently wants to keep his distance from Bella, the two inevitably fall in "love". I put love in quotes because that's the best way to describe the plot but is so far from what is being depicted on screen that it's scary. If you step back from t

he characters and look at the situation in general terms this is what you get, a young vulnerable girl moves to a new town and begins a relationship with a much older man. Though he has reservations about her and their being together, he can't resist her. He is overbearing, saying things like, "I just like watching over you" and seemingly always around, constantly knowing where she is and who she is with. This behavior is depicted as romantic but in reality is a serious issue. Edward may appear to be a 17 year old but he has done over a century of living, despite the irony that he is already dead.

In New Moon, Edward feels that he can no longer be with Bella out of fear that he is putting her in danger. This sounds like the classic, it's not you, it's me. He had his fun with the younger girl and now he is throwing her aside. He disappears and will not return calls or letters. He leaves Bella abandoned and broken. She was already a textbook case of a female with serious self worth and self esteem issues, bordering on clinical depression. After Bella met Edward, she began to equate her self worth with her relationship with Edward. He was the source of all her happiness and when he left he took all of that with him.

Maybe because I'm not a girl I'm missing the point. Are we really trying to teach our young women that they should tie their happiness to a man and have their emotions taken command of by another person? Twilight's answer seems to be yes. I would also be remiss in pointing out that Twilight takes bad parenting to a whole new level.

"Wait, my daughter is in the forest again with a killer on the loose? As long

as she is home before dinner I guess that's fine."

Bella's father seems resigned to his inability to get his daughter to do the right things, he can't even keep her in the house when there are a series of murders in the forest near her house. Maybe you shouldn't be sheriff if you can't get people to follow the rules. Just a thought.

The big addition to New Moon is Jacob and his werewolf alter ego. Though he made an appearance in the first Twilight movie, he and his abs gained a much larger role in New Moon with the addition of some very helpful steroids. It's Jacob that creates the love triangle with Bella and Edward.

I would like to end with a brief comment on something I read in Entertainment Weekly. It was a review for Eclipse, the next chapter in this big steaming pile of a franchise. It ended, what was a very positive and slightly delusional review, with the thought that the reason Twilight is so popular with teenage girls is because, at it's core, it's about a woman wanting to be desired.

Let me get this right, the whole point of the whole Twilight universe is to awaken the selfish longing to be wanted in women of any age. How is this ok? A girl should put herself at considerable risk and danger, not to mention alienate her friends all so she can feel desired. Not only that, but when the source of the desire finally is done, she so needs to be desired that she abuses the trust of one of her close friends so that she won't have to truly deal with the emotional fallout.

Many people call Twilight a romance, and perhaps it needs to be technically classified there but, in reality, it is a thinly veiled fantasy of the author to simply be wanted at all costs. We should recognize it for what it is, a narcissistic fantasy that we should steer all young girls away from.

The Summer of Lebron

I have been meaning to write a new post. There are many things of greater importance that I want to weigh in on, such as the BP oil spill. But, yet again I find myself writing about my favorite target, Lebron James. The Queen himself. As this is a day that will be remembered in sports history, I felt it important to express what I feel about Lebron defecting to Miami.

Let me begin by saying I hated Lebron before he decided to go to Miami. I found him to be, even by NBA and professional athlete standards, to be a pampered, whining, immature man-child. All he has ever heard is "yes, Lebron" from his handlers and the ownership and coaches of the Cavaliers. He has never been accountable. He has always been the portrayed as the good guy, even when things he has done on the court have warranted otherwise, the media has given him a pass. He is, like he is to so many, too valuable to them. After all, he is a self proclaimed global icon and the tv networks stand to make too much off him, as his laughable one hour tv special just demonstrated.

Lebron's move to the Heat seals his fate. He no longer can be discussed in the conversation as a top player of all time. Top players want to dominate. They do not change teams and team up with another alpha dog. Make no mistake, the Heat is Dwyane Wade's team. Lebron is his Scottie Pippen, and even that might be giving him too much credit. Scottie Pippen was a lock down defender and proved himself to be one of the top players of his generation. Lebron has played for 7 years and has nothing to show for it. Let's also be clear, if the Heat manage to win it is much different than Lebron winning. Pau Gasol may have two rings, but Kobe was the franchise player on those Lakers teams. That's not a knock on Gasol, but at the same time no one is putting him in the best player ever discussion.

Another point of the Lebron saga that hasn't been discussed enough is the moves that didn't happen when he was with Cleveland. People want to slam the Cav's for not making moves to give Lebron more talent and it's true Mo Williams and Antawan Jamison, though good players, aren't the top flight players that will get a team the elusive championship. However, the Cav's were in the difficult position of trying to get players with no guaranteed from Lebron that he would be there after free agency. That part has to be on Lebron. He could have signed an extension and begun lobbying for free agents to come to him with the assurance of his being there as well. The next best option would have been for him to go to Chicago where he would go play with a solid team, but would still be the leader of that team. As it stands, Lebron has become one of the guys in Wade's travelling circus.

Finally, the Heat, as they are currently constructed, are not winning a championship. They have no one else to speak of in terms of talent around Wade, Lebron and Bosh. The other shaky position is at coach and anyone that is watching must have the feeling that it is only a matter of time before Pat Riley orchestrates his return to the bench and shamelessly trys to add to his ring count. If he has any class, he will stay off the bench and let the coach that he hired do his job.

This post is the culmination of seven years of arguing that Lebron is an overrated media darling that does not deserve the attention he so badly wants. I feel justified now in saying that Lebron was at best the third best player in the league. Now, he isn't even the best player on his team. I will revel in this as I watch (hopefully) the Heat go down in flames.