neurological dryer lint

well, the west wing ended last night. while a lot of people referred to this series as 'liberal porn', i personally think it showed that cooperation on both sides of the aisle can happen, and when intelligent, caring, hardworking people step into public office and do the right thing, they get good results.

last night we had dinner for my grandfather's 90th birthday up at their place in dayton, and i got into a fascinating political discussion with my grandmother, my mom, and my aunt. fascinating because my grandmother tended to think the way i did and shared the same opinions, so her and i debated my mom and my aunt. i absolutely love that about my family - we can sit in a room and yell at each other and argue hotly about serious topics, and five minutes later we can sit and laugh and tell stories and there are no hurt feelings or bad vibes. renee got a taste of the goehrings and the terrible, unleashed power of our voices when we talk about things that we're passionate about. coming from a very quiet, non-confrontational family, it was quite a shock.

anyway. renee brought up the point - one i've mentioned before - that my views on what a president could be like draw a lot from Jed Bartlet - intellectual, compassionate, driven, wise, responsible, humble, a man with convictions. there has got to be someone somewhere in this country like that, a leader that we all could respect and look up to. maybe? no? is it simply a fantasy constructed by clever TV writers? maybe people like that enter the political arena and are slaughtered by the greedy, career-driven, corrupt gladiators. maybe they don't even bother. my mom and aunt both agreed that "those people don't run for president". and sadly enough it's the truth.

west wing illustrated that point a few times - in the beginning season when Josh goes to find Sam and bring him onto the Bartlet campaign. both of them have seen so many fakes, and Sam will only leave his law firm if Josh's guy is "the real deal". similarly, when the end of the second term begins to dawn, Leo sends Josh out to find Bartlet's successor - another guy worthy of the presidency in a sea of wannabe's. Will drops everything to run Vice President Lumbergh's campaign, even though the guy is an empty suit; ex-VP John Hoynes enters the race too, but he'd left office after a sex scandal; Governor Al Bundy enters and leaves the democratic race at will, waiting for the perfect political moment to dramatically show up and steal the show.

Josh's guy, Matt Santos, is the only one in the race with enough heart, honesty, and real drive to improve America to really make a worthy president. and in the end, he wins. is it too much to hope for?

so the last few weeks of the show drained most of the air out of the balloon slowly, and in last night's series finale let the last little bit out. it really crossed all the T's and whatnot. still a good episode, not sure if it was truly a worthy ending, but there was plenty of closure.

speaking of series' finales... they canceled Justice League Unlimited! this saturday's episode was the last one. currently the only cartoon i Tivo, with clever writing and fantastic voice acting, albeit having hit-or-miss storylines... i guess it was a good ending to the series - although i don't know enough about actual comic book storylines to know if it was true to anything - but they kill off lex luthor (voiced by the brilliant clancy brown). one interesting thing i didn't know - the main JLU writer is also one of the head writers for Lost. so we're still enjoying his work.

and speaking of Lost... bravo to JJ Abrams for making mission impossible 3 a quality flick. tony pointed out that the plot was fairly similar to MI2's... which was true, although it was done with characters you actually cared about and a villain that wasn't comically cheesy. in fact, philip seymour hoffman as owen davian could have been the best casting decision i've seen in years - he was flawless as a ruthless, devil-may-care arms dealer. granted, there'll be a whole lot of disbelief-suspendin' going on in the theater - not so much from the stunts as from tom cruise doing math problems - but hey, it's a hi-tech spy flick. worth seeing anyway.

one cool thing re: the end of west wing, series creator aaron sorkin has a new show lined up for the fall about the production crew of a sketch comedy show called studio 60 on the sunset strip, with WW's bradley whitford, amanda peet, matthew perry, DL hughley, and a few others. looks interesting.