Steven M. Finkelstein

A few days ago, Tiger Woods issued a public apology for his “repeated transgressions,” namely the many, many times that he cheated on his wife, Elin. Woods read a prepared statement, took no questions, and allowed only those he personally selected to be there. Some people say that was arrogant of him, and perhaps it was. But I think the people who classify it as such are deliberately ignoring what is obviously a fundamental aspect of Woods’ personality, and part of what has made him the greatest golf phenom the world has ever seen. Woods has been described as a control freak, and I think, having watched him, both on the course and in his private life (what I’ve been able to see of it) in the past decade, I completely agree with that assessment. Woods is a person who thrives on control. He is completely in control of himself on the golf course, only rarely showing the slightest of emotions…perhaps a barely perceptible grimace and shake of his head when he misses a putt. Even his trademark fist pump when he sinks a long birdie seems contrived. That’s what allows him to be so dominant:  he appears to have such an ironclad grip on what he is and what he’s doing at all times. He is the consummate athlete, always the professional, appearing almost robotic at times. I think at some point Woods felt like “hey, it goes over so well on the golf course, why not have it translate  to all other aspects of my life?” And it worked, up until the fateful car wreck that has thrust his private life into the public eye, really for the first time since this once-in-a-lifetime athlete burst onto the scene.

Now, Woods has no choice but to reveal more of himself than he ever has before, if he wants to salvage not only endorsement deals, but his professional career. Oh, and his marriage. Let’s not forget that. And if he seemed like a cold and emotionless robot while delivering his written statement, what we must remember is how difficult this is for him. He has never talked about anything remotely like this before, and it is unfortunate that the speech that allows the most insight into his life is also concerning what is most probably his biggest failing. He talked about letting people down: his fans, his wife, the sponsors, and it’s true, he did all of those things. But I just don’t feel that I can judge him as harshly as some reporters have. Yes, his actions were reprehensible, but I think the reasons that he gave for doing what he did were very valid. He did indeed think that he was above what is normally thought of as right and wrong, that the rules didn’t apply to him. And how did he start thinking that way, that he was a god among men? Well, it was because of us. It was because of the fans, it was because of the sponsors, it was because he had been so successful at creating this mythos around himself, this idea of Tiger as being just a bit more than human. We were the ones who propped him up; we were the ones who put him on that pedestal. Yes, the failings were his, and I don’t condone them, but I understand them. 

And then there’s a couple of other key issues. Everyone is saying that Elin is this poor damsel now, mistreated by her husband, the serial philanderer…yes, she is. But she’s also a gold digger who married Woods for his money every bit as much as for himself, and if you doubt that, consider the rumors that she’s only going to be willing to stay with him if he forks over a few hundred million dollars. They’ll stick together; the two of them will sit down and sign a contract just like Woods putting his “x” on the dotted line for Nike or Gillette. She’s not “staying with him for the kids.” That’s bullshit, and everybody knows it. Then there’s the issue of the reporters, who are bitching and moaning because Woods didn’t take their questions. The only things that they were going to be asking (other than when he’d be returning to golf), is the exact and the most sordid details of the extramarital affairs! Reporters are, at their core, gossip mongers, no matter how much they try to paint themselves with the brush of integrity. Think of all the details that came out during the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. For the love of God, I didn’t need to hear about that shit, and guess what? I don’t need to hear what happened between Woods and some waitress at the IHOP either! I can pretty well guess, not that I want to.

All in all, this has been a sordid business, and neither Woods nor Elin have come out looking like remotely decent people. But the bottom line for me is this. I don’t really care what Woods is doing in the bedroom, I care what he’s doing on the gold course. Golf is such a boring sport anyway, if Woods isn’t playing I’m not going to be watching, like another third of the potential audience. And if he was arrogant with his apology, I don’t think we should be surprised, and I don’t think he should be crucified for it. The fact is, he’s arrogant and aloof because he tried on that persona at a very young age, found that it fit, and, looking around, he saw that no one had a problem with it! Far from it; he was revered, admired, celebrated! Woods is just being Woods. He’s being true to his nature. The only thing he needs to do to balance the books is go back to doing what he does best: winning tournaments, promoting shaving cream, and being a smug, smarmy, self-assured asshole. And, apparently, banging cocktail waitresses.

Well, when I’ve got it in my head to see a movie, I rarely let the reviews dissuade me. After all, I don’t see eye to eye with all reviewers all the time…actually, I probably disagree with them more times than not. This particular time, though, the reviews were bad…and they were right. Wolfman isn’t unwatchable, but it’s not great. It’s predictable, for one thing. You know what you’re getting: a Victorian era piece with everyone trying to speak in English accents, some of them more successfully than others. Basically, what you’re in for with Wolfman is a bit of every monster movie cliche of the past twenty years. Think Wolf, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which also featured Anthony Hopkins), Sleepy Hollow, and even a bit of King Kong, and you’re on the right track. Benicio Del Toro returns to Blackwood, England around the turn of the nineteenth century, when his brother turns up eviscerated. The townspeople blame the gypsies, the gypsies blame a demonic, possibly mythical monster. Hopkins, as Del Toro’s father, seems to know more than he’s letting on. We get some flashbacks to Del Toro’s childhood, much like with Johnny Depp’s character in Sleepy Hollow, and before long he is bitten by the werewolf, at which point the rest of the plot progresses much like the Jack Nicholson movie, Wolf, with about the same quality of special effects. It’s all woods, mores, and mist; if these sorts of movies are to be believed, England is always just swimming in mist, all night, every night. Hugo Weaving (Elrond in the Lord of the Rings, Mr. Smith in the Matrix trilogy), shows up as Inspector Abeline, from Scotland yard, strange, since he died at the end of the Hughes brothers’ film From Hell, but whatever, throw him in the mix too, why not. We know what’s coming, the revelation of an “evil” werewolf vs Del Toro’s conflicted version, the showdown between the two mangy mutts, and the all too familiar question of whether he can be saved, particularly with the help of his dead brother’s fiance. Spoiler alert: he can’t be, and it’s just as well, because even a gifted actor like Del Toro can’t save this one-dimensional character, or this one-dimensional movie, for that matter. His death scene is simply laughable, where they were looking for dramatic.

This movie is another example of talented actors (Hopkins and Del Toro are both former Oscars winners), signing onto a movie more for the paycheck than the script. They do their best, with Del Toro snarling and frothing and Hopkins hamming it up as he can be relied on to do, but we’ve seen too many elements of this film before; like the last film I reviewed, Avatar, this seems cobbled together from plot points featured in other movies of the genre, and there isn’t anything original or unexpected to raise the overall quality. At least with Avatar I was able to enjoy the color and movement of the lush alien world, Pandora. Here we just get soggy, boggy England and ash gray skies, with some mangy dogs running around that vaguely resemble respectable actors. My rating: 4/10.

Pop quiz: what do you get when you cross Pocahontas, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, The Matrix, and Dances with Wolves? The answer is Avatar, the James Cameron runaway smash hit that’s made 650 million dollars gross, domestically, and counting. It’s even knocked off the record set by Cameron himself twelve years ago with Titanic. I wasn’t planning on seeing Avatar originally, but when movies set records like that, and become, more or less, cultural phenomenons, I feel the need to see what all the fuss is about. I’m obsessed with media, if no one has been able to tell from my blog yet. But I was feeling a little sceptical going into the experience, just because there were some people…a lot of people…who were talking about this movie like it was the best thing they’d ever seen, that it had redefined their lives, that it had changed the way they thought of movies, and their perception of the world. Roger Ebert said he felt about it the same way that he did the first time he saw Star Wars. That’s high praise.

And undeserved. Here’s the thing about Avatar. It’s gorgeous, visually, I’ll admit that. Stunning, really, at certain points, particularly in 3D. You’re really there, on Pandora, the lush, beatific planet where humans have traveled, 140 years in the future, mainly to rape this wonderland of its natural resources, particularly rocks that act as a good fuel source, or something. The lanky blue-skinned aliens of Pandora live at one with the plants and animals, and that makes them savages that must be eliminated for the good and the greed of humanity. And that’s where the plot becomes so jaw clenchingly predictable that I wanted to give James Cameron a lobotomy through the ocular nerve with a dull pencil. The movie is two hours and forty minutes long, and from about the thirty minute mark, I was able to predict each and every thing that was going to happen for the next two hours plus, while all the while I was hoping against hope that something other than what I knew was going to happen was going to happen. It didn’t. James Cameron absolutely refused to show any creative integrity, and I guess he just hoped no one would notice, or if they did, that they wouldn’t care because of the pretty colors. Sadly, he was right. The box office numbers prove it.

To make things as short and to the point as possible, the military is trying to infiltrate the creatures’ society, so they create avatars that look like the aliens but are under the control of humans that stay behind at the military compound in a sort of fugue state…kind of like the Matrix. Sam Worthington, an up-and-comer who was in Terminator: Salvation and will appear next in Clash of the Titans, is a crippled marine who is hand picked by the stock military-guy villain to get in good with the aliens and learn their ways. He agrees, then he and the princess fall in love, even while I was begging the whole time for it not to happen. Worthington goes native…kind of like Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. Or John Smith in Pocahontas, take your pick. Then the inevitable happens, as the military comes in to destroy the forests to get at the precious resources, and they must be taught a lesson about how naughty it is to mess with an ecosystem for their own selfish gain…kind of like Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. And the humans are defeated, of course, and Worthington, who has found a way to transfer himself from his crippled human body to his avatar one permanently, lives happily ever after with his blue alien chick.

All the while this was happening, as I said, I was looking for some kind of unexpected plot twist, something, anything. I really, really wanted the military to just obliterate the aliens, not because the humans were any more sympathetic, but because at least then something would have happened that I genuinely wasn’t expecting, and Cameron would have won my respect. But I knew it wasn’t going to happen. As far as Cameron goes, whatever credibility he ever had with me is gone, and I don’t care how well the movie does, or how much money it makes. There was not a shred of originality here. Each and every element of the plot was borrowed from elsewhere; there was just a fresh coat of paint slapped on it so it could be repackaged. I’m still giving this travesty a decent rating, because, like everybody else, I was watching the landscape, the animals, and the colors fly by with my jaw on the floor. But make no mistake, a movie can’t rise above mediocrity with sub-par dialogue and a story that was constructed from some of the other most successful movies of the past twenty years, no matter how pretty it is. James Cameron must think movie goers have shorter memories than goldfish, or maybe that we just won’t care about the plot when we’re gorging on eye candy. But when a movie would have been a whole lot better with the sound off, something is seriously wrong. This movie has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture of the Year, and I just pray that the Academy has more balls than Cameron, and doesn’t bow down to the Gods of special effects. I guess it’s still worth seeing, but, the same as a vacuous runway model, this one is only attractive till it opens its mouth.  My rating: 6/10.

I had mixed feeling about writing this particular blog, but I felt obligated to, so here goes. As some of you may be aware, my girlfriend Megan and I are now officially engaged, and we plan on being married shortly. This may come as a surprise, seeing as I’ve been vocal here on the site before about how opposed I am to the institution of marriage. Before I’m written off as a hypocrite, then, I hope everyone will at least take the time to read this post. First of all, not to sound like I’m backtracking, but I’d like the distinction to be made that I’m not and have never been opposed to all marriages, all the time. That’s not the case. I have said in the past, and I still maintain, that there are about a million bad reasons for getting married, and about half a dozen good or valid ones. Among the invalid or foolish reasons I would include the following: because society dictates that’s what’s supposed to happen, because the woman has become pregnant and one or both parents doesn’t want the child born out of wedlock, because either the bride or the groom think it’s going to solve problems with the relationship, because of pressure from friends or relatives, or because either the bride, the groom, or both just don’t have anything better to do with themselves some weekend. I could go on and on…and on. But it won’t take me long to list what I would consider to be the right reasons. They are: first and foremost, if the two people are committed to each other and love each other, AND they both feel that marriage is the ultimate form of trust, commitment, and expression of that love. I might not necessarily agree with the sentiment, as it is my belief that if all the feelings are there, the marriage itself is then rendered unnecessary, but be that as it may, the point I’m trying to make is that if the two people are marrying for each other, which is to say, not because society, friends, or family are pressuring them to, I’m a lot more willing to accept it. After all, a marriage is supposed to be between the two people who are being wed, and not about some nagging mother, or grandmother, or whoever else it might be, forcing some poor son, or daughter, or whoever, into it. Marriage should be the decision of the two people who are marrying. Period. End of story.

One of the other biggest reasons is for healthcare, and guess what? That’s why we’re doing it. I recently got a slightly better job, as I mentioned here on the blog, and in addition to another couple of bucks an hour, there’s healthcare and dental offered. That’s nice; it’s been a while since I had either, and I could sure use a checkup and a tooth cleaning. But it’s been even longer since Megan has had those things, and she deserves them. Obama’s sweeping reforms won’t be happening any time soon, I’m fairly certain, and, like so many others in the country, Megan was finding it hard to come up with the money to get healthcare on her own. Private companies are absurdly expensive, even for the most basic of plans; that’s just the unfortunate reality of the situation. But my job offered a plan that would cover myself and a dependent, and that could include Meg…but only if she were my spouse, and not my domestic partner. So we were faced with a choice. If Meg was to be able to get healthcare through my job, as I was, we would have to be married. I can’t pretend to be happy that’s the way this country, and this society, operates. I just finished saying how marriage should be free of outside pressures and influences from anyone, and that goes double for the federal government. But we live in a society where marriage is encouraged, where it’s regarded as the ideal, and things like this are a prime example of how that’s reinforced. Is it not enough that Meg and I were living together, monogamous, loving each other, and committed to each other? It was for us, but not for this insurance company. A spouse gets healthcare, but not a boyfriend or girlfriend.  

So we’re going through with it. I was reluctant at first, but to be honest, I’m a bit excited now. Do I feel like I compromised my principles? Yeah, maybe, a little bit. But I’m not naive enough (or maybe motivated enough) to try to change the system. That takes generations, and many people and voices working together, if society was to try and get marriage abolished…and not many people feel anywhere near as strongly opposed to it as I do. I guess maybe I’m just a lazy person, or maybe there’s just certain convictions I’m willing to stand up for more strongly than others. You have to pick your battles, and this just didn’t seem to be one that I could win. And I want Meg to have healthcare. I do. I love her, and I’m happy to do this for her. And then there is, of course, all the romantic crap that goes along with it too…till death do you part, you’re the only one for me, etc, etc. I hope her family and mine forgive us, because we’re not doing it in a church, or a synagogue. The event will have no religious significance, and there will be no one in attendance but us and the impartial witness we’re required to have. A judge will do it. There will be no pomp, no ceremony, and when it’s done, we’ll be man and wife, and there will be healthcare for all. I like to think that when it came to the most important things in my life, I did them my own way, on my own terms, and my marriage will be among them. All of that being said, even if we are doing it for pragmatic reasons, I’m honored to be Meg’s husband, and I will try to be the best partner to her that I can, which is not to say I haven’t been doing that anyway. I’m losing a bet with my sister that we made more than twenty years ago: we bet twenty bucks that I’d be married by the time I was thirty. I said I wouldn’t be, she said I would. I’m still about eighteen months away from thirty; so close, and yet so far. But you have to compromise about some things, sometimes. It’s all about priorities. It’s all about what, and who, is most important.