Doug the D-Bag presents: Boise Hate

'Sup jocksniffers? That's right. I said "sup." Of course I said sup. It's more d-baggy.

For those of you who don't know, I'm Doug Gottlieb, the only accurate analyst on ESPN. You may recognize me from College Basketball Live, when I disagree with everyone else just because they're on the same set as me. Or you may recognize me from my radio show, where I mention my wife every five minutes because she's the only chick hot enough and smart enough for a guy like me. Or you may recognize me from college basketball broadcasts, when I deliberately say dickish things and exude a dickish attitude as the color guy, messing up the nice dynamic the hack play-by-play guy is trying to establish.

Turns out I'm friends with DJMJ, co-blogger here on Creative Differences. He's really pissed about Boise State winning another Fiesta Bowl. But if he said what he really wanted to say about it, every race/religion/political affiliation/sexual preference would storm his apartment with pitchforks and pathos. So he passed it off to me, Doug the D-Bag.

Hey, Boise State, who the fuck do you think you are? That guy on Fox tonight said that you "solidified your status as a college football power." The only status you solidified is that of the erect schlort of every woefully ill-equipped male Boise State fan. You know, the same guys who taunted LeGarrette Blount from the stands and then hid behind each other faster than Byron Hout fell to the ground. Why the hell do you go to school in Idaho? Didn't we sell Idaho to Canada 20 years ago? Is that what you are now? Is that why your nerf turf at Bronco Stadium is Labatt Blue? Go slam a few more bottles and try to score with the butt-ugly band chicks who represent the hottest co-eds on BSU's campus. As for your football team, give me a fucking break. So you've won two BCS games against teams whose body language was silly putty. Okahoma and TCU clearly didn't give a shit about the game because they were playing you and not, I don't know, a program that doesn't treat chicken-shit trickery like it's fucking fundamental. The second-place team in your conference lost to Notre Dame 35-0. But hey, keep trumpeting the W(h)ac(k). Keep telling us you're getting tested week in and week out. Tested for STDs after sleeping with subpar competition, maybe. But not tested by real teams. And don't even try to throw that Oregon win at me. That Oregon team looks as much like the eventual Pac-10 champion as Rupaul looks like Zoe Saldana. Who's your most famous alumnus, Boise State? Kimo Von Oelhoffen? Ryan Clady? How's Diggity Dan Hawkins doing now that he's coaching a decent program in a BCS conference? Sucking shit? No, I don't think you should worry about him. I'm sure Colorado loves losing two out of every three games it plays. You'd be lucky to do that if you moved into a BCS conference. Until then, keep sweeping through the local Pop Warner league and neighing about how you deserve a shot at the national championship. Have fun watching Alabama and Texas like the rest of us, dickwads.

I look down and whisper...no

One of the most interesting elements of the graphic novel "Watchmen" is Dr. Manhattan's comprehension of the universe. A nuclear accident has redefined the parameters of his vision, how he sees time as a mostly unalterable spacial dimension, how his scientific knowledge now fuels his disinterest in mankind. Whereas human beings are confined by their relativity, he's able to experience the universe as it is. Imagine the Earth's entire population situated on a cliff in the Rocky Mountains, and then imagine Dr. Manhattan standing a couple miles away, able to see the whole range.

As both a hardcore fan of the graphic novel and a proponent of comic book movies, I feel very similar to Dr. Manhattan when discussing Zack Snyder's film version of "Watchmen." All my friends have talked about how cool it looks, and how it's going to be a more intellectual comic book movie, and how it's going to work on film in its own way. After seeing it in Burbank in glorious IMAX, I can't do anything more than shake my head.

So before I start my rant, I apologize. I'm sorry you aren't smart enough to see the totality of this film adaptation like I do. I'm equally sorry that I can't just chill the fuck out and enjoy the movie like you did. I truly am.

With that in mind, I'll begin at the end.

The truth is that most of the movie is incredibly faithful to the graphic novel, from the dialogue to the details of each shot. But the changes made to the ending tear down the fundamental nature of Ozymandias' plan. (By the way, if you want to avoid spoilers about both the book and the movie, you should get lost pronto. And if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, you won't have any clue what I'm talking about.)

While Ozymandias didn't necessarily embrace the Keene Act (the legislation that outlawed costumed heroes), he did embrace the opportunity it gave him to become a hero of a different sort. As a man who started out with nothing, Adrian Veidt trained his mind and body to become a remarkable human being. The mask and costume only helped him be louder about it. After the Keene Act, he became the ultimate philanthropist, helping people through the same honest, hard-working means that built his global company. There wasn't much bitterness in his crusade, except bitterness toward mankind's inevitably savage nature.

Well, the way the movie pins his plot to destroy several major cities on Dr. Manhattan seems fairly bitter to me. Shifting the blame -- along with some hostile words for Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II -- cuts the legs out from under the plan. In the novel, Veidt teleports a giant squid-like creature to New York City that explodes upon arrival, killing more than three million people. The Americans and Soviets are both tricked into thinking that aliens have attacked Earth, and they suspend their hostilities in order to work together to combat the new threat. The whole scenario is somewhat ridiculous, yes, but as Veidt notes, Hitler proved that people will believe a lie if it's big enough.

In the book, Veidt is a man who reveres ancient cultures and their leaders and believes he can transplant their ideology into conflicts of the atomic age. In the film, he's a ferocious dickhole whose far more dictatorial than benevolent. He seems less like the bravura and arrogantly altruistic figure created by Alan Moore and more like the spiteful Richard Nixon who's stayed in power for his own benefit.

As part of his reworked ending, Snyder also chooses to cut the brief exchange between Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias, which contains Dr. Manhattan's immortal final line: "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends." It's one of the cruxes of the novel delivered in understated fashion. It's also the kind of subtler storytelling that Snyder apparently doesn't believe in.

The movie is loud, perversely violent and more than happy to wallow in its own excrement. Because the central plot is crammed into 163 minutes, there's no space for the fictional literature that follows each chapter and provides necessary depth to the characters and world of "Watchmen." There's no way to duplicate the 30-some pages of symmetrical panels in the chapter "Fearful Symmetry." There's no room to intersperse the irony of the "Black Freighter" comic. There's no time to ponder Dr. Manhattan's intriguing suppositions about time and space, or any of the characters' opposing viewpoints for that matter. There's no time to spend with the citizens of New York at the newstand, and that may be the worst omission of all. Their interactions in the novel remind us that humanity isn't entirely dishonest or irresponsible. Since the movie focuses solely on costumed adventurers in a fucked-up world, it feels like the people they're trying to save deserve to die, anyway.

All that can be summed up in one sentence: The storytelling of "Watchmen" doesn't translate to the screen. It's that simple. It's what Moore's been saying for two decades. It's what people who don't understand storytelling can't comprehend. Snyder was as faithful to the graphic novel as one could hope, and that's a big reason why the movie doesn't work.

That said, the movie isn't totally without merit. The title sequence is excellent, with Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" playing as the events of the alternate timeline are detailed. Juxtaposing Billy Crudup's soft voice with Dr. Manhattan's towering figure is the only time the movie approaches the irony of the book. Jackie Earle Haley absolutely steals the show as Rorschach, who's probably one of the five greatest characters in comic book history. Haley is unrecognizable with his mask on, and somehow even less recognizable with his mask off. He fully inhabits the role and seems to channel a frequency separate from the proceedings. His performance isn't much different than the one that just landed Heath Ledger an Oscar.

But those are really the only things the movie carves out for itself. Of course these are great characters. Of course the dialogue is pulp-tastic. Of course the story is brilliant and relevant. It was written that way 20 years ago.

And please, don't be an idiot who claims I'd feel differently if I hadn't read the book. The film's ad campaigns have labeled Snyder as a "visionary" director, and the movie looks good. But it's also way too crowded and incoherent (I can't imagine how people who haven't read the book actually keep up with everything). The pacing is terrible, the atmosphere is one-note and some of the performances are incredibly amateurish (Malin Akerman, I'm talking to you). These are fundamental flaws that would be noticeable without ever reading a word of Moore's work.

These flaws exist because you can't film "Watchmen." Too bad Snyder didn't have the vision to see that.

Creative Differences Off-topic: Facebook, Middle Names and You

I could spend days, weeks, months, virtually any length of time talking about things that I don't like. In fact, I've already done so before. This list includes but is not limited to: People that drink domestic beers and then make fun of people that drink craft beers, people that drink craft beers and make fun of people that drink domestic beers, Pennsylvania drivers, the sadness I feel when a great cut of meat is poorly cooked, sales jobs, sales managers, etc.

However, the one thing that's been pissing me off for months now is the ongoing trend I've seen on facebook: Putting your middle name in as your last name, instead of, you know, using your real last name. I was going to give a few people I know a pass about this, because they're teachers, and some small part of me can at least see a little bit of logic in that, but then I realized that the only people that are doing it are teachers. So with that in mind, everyone gets it.

The ironic thing about this trend is that it started in part because, as facebook started to morph into a professional networking tool, people did not want their prospective employers to find them in various states of undress, drunkenness, or my favorite, and preferred style, both. Amusingly enough, these people, who are the same ones who have sanitized their profiles beyond belief, are the ones that might well have a potential employer look for them on facebook and not be able to find them. Imagine that you'd taken the time to clean up your facebook and listed all your jobs and achievements and dreams to change the world (you fucking hippie) and had even taken the time to leave that group about wanting to beat your high school english teacher to death with a tire iron because he just made life miserable for everyone, dude, and then joining ones about saving puppies and the like, and no one could find you because your fucking posted name was Kimberly Ann. Not only do you now sound like a stripper, you also feel like one--anonymous and alone.

Maybe if people had the goddamn balls to just adjust their privacy settings to "super duper private", this wouldn't be such a fucking headache for my eyes. If an employer thinks you're some world-beater and hires you and three weeks into the job you're coming in hung over on a Tuesday, you think they might start regretting that decision and thinking a little less of you? Oh, and teachers? Just FUCKING DENY FRIEND REQUESTS! You're not there for these idiot kids you're teaching to be your best buddies, you're there to teach them. I wrote an article about this subject of profile cleansing and the like for a large college newspaper a few years ago (your annual clue as to my identity) and the response was lukewarm. By lukewarm, I mean that everyone was so busy scrubbing their facebook pages with disinfectant that it looked like no one had actually ever gone to college, they'd just claimed a degree. A facebook profile for someone between the ages of 18 and 25 should have some rocking pictures and good stuff on it. It's the business of a hiring company whether they put stock in what you have on what, at it's core, is simply a fun social networking site, or what you've actually achieved in your life. If they don't like it, fuck 'em, and for fuck's sake, keep your last name.

Man Takes on Car: Sadly, Car Cannot Finish Job

Little nuggets like this make me very happy that I have marginally functional lobes in my sizable cranium. The Melbourne police obviously feel the same way. To wit:

"Police are dismayed at the utter stupidity of a man who decided to play chicken on the Tullamarine Freeway," the statement said.

Ahh, to be young and carefree and unconcerned with running across freeways in my underwear again.

Creative Differences Tugs at Your Heartstrings

Enjoy this sad but damn good song by Ben Folds and the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra. There is some intense hate coming tomorrow.