The Reckoner! Blog Feed!

The Reckoner! At Philly Tech Meetup! Hooray!

The Reckoner! — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:01:02 -0000

Holy smokes! The Reckoner is going to be delivering a solid karate chop of good times to the fine attendees of this April's Philly Tech Meetup, who represent 250 of the sharpest and savviest minds of the Philadelphia technology scene!

If you're anywhere within a three hundred-mile radius of Philadelphia, why not swing by West Philadelphia's gorgeous Science Center tomorrow night (April 11th) to see me trot out some Reckoner-brand razzamatazz to the fine folks and future Reckonauts of America! RSVP here!

And for the folks who are coming here from Philly Tech Meetup, howdy! Welcome! Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Hors d'oeuvres are in the kitchen! Questions are right here!

Your pal in Reckoning!

The Reckoner Autobahns it to Podcast 4!

The Reckoner! — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:16:05 -0000

Mashing the gas pedal and avoiding the Autobahnpolizei, it's The Reckoner! Podcast 4! In celebration of the brand new picture uploading capability, Dan and Reckonbot tackle three more of the toughest and most outrageous Reckonings over the past three weeks, including:

Yuengling: The Best Cheap Beer?

This one was destined for podcast fame the instant it got posted. Dan and Reckonbot wax rhapsodic about America's oldest brewery and the golden waves of purity it unleashes on a grateful nation.

You're Driving on The Autobahn. How Fast Would You Go?

With Special Guest Star, Sir Anthony Coombs!

Dan brings in the ultimate knighted ringer to talk about the driver's Valhalla that is the Autobahn. Everyone gets choked up a bit. We all dream of Montana. North Dakota takes a few punches, but it's a trooper.

UHF! Weird Al! Awesome Movie, or So Stuuuuupid!

With Special Guest Star, The Official Significant Other of The Reckoner!

Sal is enough of a trooper to put up with Dan jabbering on about the Weird Al movie on Valentine's Day. At least, up to a point.

The next podcast is due live the first week of March. Until then, here's the best Valentine's Day to wishes to all, and happy Reckoning out there!

Thomas Jefferson Reads the Reckoner. So Does Robert E Lee.

The Reckoner! — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:19:05 -0000

The Jefferson Memorial has achieved something of a comic infamy, mostly as a result of its curiously irrelevant location. Both the Washington and Lincoln Memorials preside imperiously over the National Mall – prime real estate that would confer grandeur even if the memorials didn't have grandeur of their own. The Jefferson Memorial, meanwhile, sits marooned and neglected on the wrong side of the Tidal Basin, buried in the shrubbery and fodder for the seagulls and tides.

We Americans typically prefer our attractions condensed and accessible, so the Jefferson Memorial is a tough sell in the humidity of the stifling DC summer. That makes it less crowded, and since the southern bank of the Tidal Basin is an otherwise serene and pastoral place, it also makes it the best place in all of DC’s memorial parkland to actually get philosophical about America. There is no spectacle. There are few tourists. There is just you, a great man’s edifice, and his words.

Look at the southwest wall of The Jefferson Memorial and you'll see this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men.

Then look up at the underside of the dome:

...I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

And then it’s hard not to think – my God, the man owned slaves. How did he reconcile that? How is it possible to write these things and mean them? What went through his head when he gazed out over Monticello and saw people whose lives he owned outright, who were deprived of those self-same rights for which he wrote so passionately?

We can never know what goes on in a man’s head – even a man whose head has been as thoroughly dredged as Thomas Jefferson’s. He was large. He contained multitudes. His thoughts were complex and self-contradictory. And yes, he had the same capacity for hypocrisy as the rest of us. The man had ideals, and struggled and fought to build a nation worthy of those ideals, and in doing so overlooked a gaping void at the center of his own life where those ideals didn’t exist.

Jefferson has been dead for 186 years, and American slavery itself has been dead for almost 150, and we still live with that void – and its residue – every day of our lives. It is the original sin of America – an ichorous stain in the fabric that set right as it was being woven.

That is why, a century and a half later, we’re still asking: Should an Interracial Couple Get Married At a Beautiful – And Otherwise Perfect – Wedding Venue Named After Confederate General Robert E. Lee?

We all confront history’s sins. The present is really just the accumulation of all of history’s sins, compounded into one moment. But what do you do when the hostile symbols of that historical sin come to confront you? Do you confront them back? Do you ignore them? Do you run for higher ground?

Per The Reckonauts, or at least 78.8% of them, you stand your ground. Robert E. Lee was on the wrong side of history, and the things he fought for were on the wrong side of history. Why not rub it in his metaphorical face? What not drape the Thai flag over his statue and show him what it means to live in 2012? We don’t have to forget the past, and we shouldn’t forget the past, but that doesn’t mean we can’t refute the uglier parts of past whenever we get the chance.

And what about Thomas Jefferson? How do we deal with what he represented? He said that all men were created equal. We manage his symbol by actually meaning it.

The Reckoner Rocks and Rolls With Podcast 3!

The Reckoner! — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:13:03 -0000

Brand spankin' new and only nine days late comes The Reckoner! Podcast 3!

And where the heck have Dan and Reckonbot been? Down in the workshop, banging out brand new functionality for your enjoyment, all leading up to tonight's extravaganza! With Podcast 3, we take a look at three more of the hottest Reckonings and distill them into radio waves that can be beamed directly into your temporal lobe!

Here's what's on the docket tonight!

Indiana Jones Battle! Raiders Of The Lost Ark Versus Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade!

Dan stares into the void that is the modern film industry, sees that nothing is staring back at him, and thus discovers his character. Also, Indiana Freakin' Jones.

Should An Interracial Couple Get Married At A Beautiful - And Otherwise Perfect - Wedding Venue Named After Confederate General Robert E. Lee?

Dan and Reckonbot bust the ghosts of America's past, because bustin' makes them feel good.

Diners! Awesome, Or Meh?

With Special Guest: The Official Significant Other of The Reckoner!

Watch as Dan and Sal duke it out again, this time over the subject of whether diners are awesome. The collateral damage is your funny bone! Also, your spleen, liver, and kidneys.

The next Reckoner Podcast will be released two weeks from today on February 7th, and we mean that this time! No foolin' around! It's happening!

Take care, and keep on Reckoning!

The Reckoner on the Titans of My Basic Cable Childhood.

The Reckoner! — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:04:04 -0000

As someone who grew up in the milieu of the early 1990s, it is impossible to understate the presence of the action hero in my basic cable lifestyle. Schwarzenegger and Stallone were not merely popular entertainers, not merely granite-carved edifices on which America destroyed the memory of Jimmy Carter, one fifty-caliber squib at a time. They were the Colossi of Rhodes. They were Zeus.

But that’s the great thing about childhood movie heroes. They get older, but Conan The Barbarian never does, Colonel John Matrix never does, and John Rambo never does, unless you let them. The Terminator will always be back. Crime will always be the disease, and Marion Cobretti the cure. And we can stay young, right with them, eighty-seven minutes at a time.

When I posed the Schwarzenegger versus Stallone question on The Reckoner, it brought me right back to my sock-footed childhood, seven years old, taking in the neon pantomime of The Running Man. The raw carnage of Rambo: First Blood Part II. Movies that brooked no intrusion of reality, just the way I liked them. And I wanted to know, like a child with action figures, which of those American Gods reigned supreme in the heart of man? Where should I place my faith? Who had the largest flock?

Stallone got creamed. America cried Schwarzenegger.

Why did things go this way? I’ve got my theories:

The Stallone Empire was built on that curious mix of ambition and egotism that allows for titanic risks and incredible achievements, but also the sort of image-destroying calamity that no public relations campaign can mitigate. Stallone thought that he and only he could bring the true boxing underdog story to life, and famously insisted on playing Rocky when producers wanted Ryan O’Neal for his script. It worked. Stallone thought that he, and only he, could tap the surging jingoism of Reagan’s America, so he wrote and starred in both Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV, directed the latter, and had perhaps the best year commercially of any actor in American film history.

But those same instincts convinced Stallone he could sing country music, so he did Rhinestone. Those same instincts convinced Stallone he could direct dancing, so he did Staying Alive. Those same instincts convinced Stallone he could do comedy, so he did Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Stallone’s successes enabled profound failures, and the hubris involved created easy targets that make for easy punchlines, which we, always irreverent of our celluloid Gods, were always eager to provide. Eventually, these punchlines came to define the man.

Schwarzenegger himself is obviously a man of great ambition, but the failures of his career were rarely because he overreached. Sitting between the Zeitgeist-dominating parts of his career are unheralded mediocrities that could just have well starred Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and been released direct-to-video. Your Red Sonjas, your Raw Deals, your Red Heats. These movies are not well remembered, and at most they arouse the faint, pleasant sense of recognition when they emerge on sleepy Saturday afternoon syndication. It wasn’t until later in his career where Schwarzenegger grabbed for things he couldn’t reach, and even then, his highest profile failure – Last Action Hero – is more a lampoon of Stallone’s career than his own.

Schwarzenegger was a cannier risk taker. He bided his time. He assessed his skills and saw where he could go, and what he’d be forgiven for. Stallone tried to go to the moon without a space helmet, and was convinced he could breathe in space. And once or twice, through sheer miracle, he got there. And that’s why one man became a politician, and one stayed in acting, reaching for the planets, right until the very end.