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Bubba Ho-tep ought to have been great. I mean, hey: Elvis, JFK, Texas, and a mummy. What’s not to like?

I think the problem was that the setup creates a certain gonzo expectation, and the movie doesn’t want to be gonzo. The movie wants to be a tragi-comic exploration of old age in a nursing home, with a dark sarcastic twist in the form of the mummy. It works pretty well on that level, but it sabotages itself because, hey — it’s Elvis! Funny!

If Elvis and JFK had been more clearly delusional, that might have helped. However, Bruce Campbell does an absolutely spot-on Elvis. Now, it’s possible to believe that Ossie Davis’ character isn’t really JFK. In fact, it’s pretty easy, because he doesn’t do a very good JFK impression and he’s sort of the wrong ethnicity. Bruce is perfect, though. I couldn’t bring myself to doubt that this old man actually was Elvis, even though the backstory was pretty implausible.

Of course, the mummy was pretty implausible too. There’re those gonzo expectations again.

Anyhow, I still enjoyed it. There are moments of brilliance, both lunatic and otherwise. I really felt for Elvis/Sebastian. It’s just that the setup doesn’t work for the story.

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So, I ask myself on the way into work, what’s up with Iraq these days? And what do I think about the recent run of suicide bombings?

I don’t think it’s a Vietnam style quagmire. The situation is rather different; for one thing, the opposition isn’t funded by a superpower. We’re unlikely to see the kind of open warfare we experienced in Vietnam. The terrain wouldn’t support it and the technological gap has widened.

On the other hand, we are pretty rapidly approaching the kind of quagmire in which Israel and Palestine reside. Suicide bombers are now part of the Iraqi landscape. There are substantial and popular local resistance movements; if you don’t think the Shi’ite clerics are ready to stand four-square against the US, you’re not paying attention.

We need to expect that we will experience the kind of ongoing terrorist pressure that we see in Israel. It will continue, directed at our troops, as long as we have troops in Iraq. This includes troops based in Iraq after we turn over control of the country to a native government.

If Israel has been unable to stop such attacks, it’s folly to think we can do a damned thing about them. We are an occupying power in a foreign culture, and we do not have a MacArthur. We do not have a Hirohito, a powerful symbolic leader, to tell Iraq that this is for the best. The Iraqi Hirohitos are saying exactly the opposite.

Discussion about the Iraq occupation must, to be useful and relevant, acknowledge this fundamental fact. It’s going to be contested, and it’s going to be contested in the same way that the West Bank occupation is contested. That’s not a political point, it’s a reality.

More good commentary from Phil Carter and Juan Cole.

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I was gonna do a long review of Gamma World, but, well, here. I liked the design of the book much more than that guy, but his comments on the mechanics are right on target.

The community rules are both really inspiring and kind of disappointing. The idea of using PC stats to represent a group of people is great; I can’t remember where I first saw it (might have been Vampire, actually) but this is a really good implementation of it. Except that several of the stats have no game effect, and there’s no meat behind most of the ratings — no explication of what they mean.

I see, in Gamma World, a pretty stark example of the conflict between the relatively rules-loose style of White Wolf and the number crunching of D20. There’s more room for jazz in the Storyteller system, partially because the system is looser and partially because the expectations of the fans are different. D20 games need mechanics that interlock and function predictably. Gamma World doesn’t really have ‘em.

And it’s a shame, because it’s a really inspirational book. The updated background, involving a failed Singularity, is very good. It just needs a better ruleset.

Geeky, but there it is

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