Rambling On

I thought this article was interesting: Bill Simmons' search for baseball's "purest era" (and not just because he references one of my personal favorite baseball moments.)

It illustrates what I think is one of the best arguments for not keeping Bonds, Clemens, insert next superstar player to get entangled in PED scandal, etc. out of the hall. And that argument is this: cheating is nothing new to baseball, or sports in general for that matter. For as long as there have been organized sports played on an elite level there have been players with a "win at all costs" mentality who were willing to bend, if not outright break, the rules in order to be successful. Is seeking a chemical advantage that much worse than the more accepted forms of cheating: spitballs, cutting/scuffing balls, stealing signs, etc.? (I understand that stealing signs is a part of the game and that it's on you if you don't change up/protect your sign, unless there's telescopes/electronics involved, that is.) Also, I've never been 100% sold on exactly how much steroids will help you in baseball. Yes, you'll get stronger and faster and recover faster from injury, but it's not going to improve your hand-eye coordination or your pitching or swing mechanics. I don't consider myself a Bonds apologist, but I don't care what kind of drugs you're on, you don't hit 73 homeruns (or 45 while being walked 232 times) without being a supremely talented hitter. Also, I think you can only judge players against their era. Numbers of the past are suspect because of factors like the lack of minority players, lowering of the mound, etc. but no one talks about taking away any records from those eras, or even slapping asterisks on them. Since we know so many players from the current era used steroids or other PEDs, I think that the players whose numbers stand out shouldn't be penalized in that way either since they were playing against enhanced competition. There are also lots of average and below average players that have been linked to steroids proving they don't instantly turn you into a baseball machine. Anyway, I'm running out of juice (pun egregiously intended.) Blog over.

P.S. Apparently, some HOFers, juice or no juice, sometimes enjoy hooker parties on hockey players' money.

My Week in Movies.

I've seen several movies over the last week or so. I figured I'd write something about them. Here.



Run Fatboy Run

This movie stars Simon Pegg as a down on his luck screw-up who leaves his pregnant fiance (Thandie Newton) at the alter. A few years down the road, he finds himself alone and pretty much going nowhere and wishing he could win back the mother of his child. When he meets her new very succesful and in shape boyfriend (Hank Azaria), who's running in a local marathon, he decides that he needs to run in it too, and hopefully in the process prove to everyone that he's not the quitter that they think he is.
I thought this was a very fun move, and I'd definitely put it towards the top of the list of movies of seen in the romantic comedy vein. The main reason that I was drawn to it was because of Simon Pegg and the fact that I think he's comic gold in pretty much anything he touches, and he didn't disappoint, though this was much more conventional fare than his previous movies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). Another thing that made me want to see it is that it was written by Michael Ian Black. Also of note was that this was David Schwimmer's dirctorial debut. Yep, that David Schwimmer. Overall, this is a great movie if you're looking for a good laugh and some great gags. (A-)

State of Play

This starred Russel Crowe as a sort of old school reporter in Washington DC covering a story about a couple of murders in the city. Ben Affleck plays a Congressman who was a college buddy of Crowe's character and who is heading an investigation into a defense corporation. On the day that the hearing is supposed to take place, the head researcher on his staff is killed. When Crowe finds evidence that her death may be linked with the murders that he's investigating, things begin to twist and turn.
This was a great conspiracy thriller with a lot of nice plot twists and a strong cast including Rachel McAdams as an online reporter who Crowe begrudgingly agrees to work with, Helen Mirren as the gruff, no-nonsense editor in chief, Robin Wright Penn as Affleck's jilted wife and Jason Bateman as a sleazy PR agent. I'm not sure how much of a compliment this sounds like, but this movie seemed to me like the kind of movie that I'd catch on TNT in the middle of the night and not be able to stop watching. (B)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
This was the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a very successful magazine editor who suffered a stroke and became almost completely paralyzed, otherwise known as locked-in syndrome (which you may know a little about if you've watched House this season.) He can only move his left eye. He learns to communicate through a system devised by his physical therapist in which she recites letters in order by how frequently they're used and he blinks when she gets to the letter he wants to spell words. He writes the book that this movie is based on this way.
I know that watching a guy sit there and blink probably sounds about the most boring thing possible. And, I'd say the first half of this movie, which is largely shown from Bauby's perspective is a little hard to watch. However, I think that they break away from the perspective shots at just about the right time for it to be effective, and that as the second part of the movie unfolds, interlacing scenes of him coping with his condition with flashbacks of his sort of playboy lifestyle that he had before, it really works and creates an inspirational story of regret and hope that makes you think about what's really important. (B+)

Star Trek
Not sure how much I really have to say about this one except that J.J. Abrams & Co. obviously know what the hell they're doing. He did great job of making this movie very accessible while still throwing in some nice tidbits for fans of the old series to chew on. I've personally never watched any Star Trek (except maybe a few episodes of TNG when I was a kid), but I did catch some of the little throwbacks that were put in there just because they're things that are so ingrained in the vernacular of pop culture. Excluding the fact that this was a Star Trek movie, it was just a great, fun summer blockbuster with a good mix of action, comedy and special effects. They even threw in some LOST-y time travel stuff that I won't say too much about here. (A)

Some Sunday Baseball Stuff

I just finished watching the Braves-Reds game on TV this afternoon. The game itself wasn't pretty. The Braves lost 8-2 after being shutout for 6+ innings by Micah Owings who had been 0-2 with and ERA just south of 6.00 coming into the game. Last year's rookie sensation Jay Bruce smacked a couple of homers continuing the ownership of the Braves that he's exhibited in his short career. He's hitting a lifetime .609 (14-23) against them with 4 homers, 8 RBI and 11 runs scored. It wasn't all bad news though, as Chipper went 3-4 and Joey Votto, who's on my fantasy team, went 2-3 with a couple of doubles and 3 RBI. So, silver lining and all that, I guess.

Anyway, there was something else I found interesting about this game. In the constant quest by the announcers to fill the downtime that inevitably comes during baseball games, commentators Jon Sciambi and Joe Simpson decided to put together their top five lists of intro music/walking to the plate songs. Being the list loving guy that I am, I thought this was a great idea and thought I'd share their lists with you and make one of my own. So, here are the lists:

Sciambi's list
5. No Sleep Till Brooklyn - Beastie Boys
4. Where the Streets Have No Name - U2
3. She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult
2. Breathe - Prodigy
1. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes

Definitely the more modern of the two lists, which make sense because Sciambi is the younger of the two announcers. I did think that it was funny/a little mind blowing that Joe Simpson said that he didn't know any of these songs. I think (at least I hope) that might be more a case of not knowing the names of songs. Overall, I think this is a pretty strong list, and I like all of these songs, I'm just not sure if the pump-up factor is there for me with most of them (with the exception of Seven Nation Army.)

Simpson's List
5. Hot Rod Lincoln - Commander Cody
4. La Grange - ZZ Topp
3. Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
2. The Walk of Life - Dire Straits
1. Bad to the Bone - George Thorogood & the Destroyers

I like this list as well, although I have no idea what "Hot Rod Lincoln" is and I think that "Walk of Life" is played out and there was no need for two Dire Straits songs. I think that "La Grange" and "Bad to the Bone" are good pump-up songs with some nice chunky guitar riffs. But, as much as I love "Sultans of Swing", I'm not sure if it really has it, although I do like the double entendre with the word "swing."

Ok, here's my list.
5. Enter Sandman - Metallica - Ok, maybe a little cliche, and I'm sure it's been used a thousand times, but I think it's a great song to get you pumped up with the building action of the intro. I think that it might take a little too long to build for the purpose here. I'm guessing that for these intros you probably get at most a 30 second snippet of the song and I think this one might take a little too long to really get going.
4. Brain Stew - Green Day - another chunky riff, which i think might start a pattern here. I might not use the actually intro to this but the later parts when they start playing those little palm-muted parts between the chords.
3. I Wanna Be Your Dog - Iggy Pop and the Stooges - An intro riff that I just love, nice and muddy.
2. Led Zeppelin - Kashmir - Another one I'm sure would be on a lot of lists for this sort of thing, don't know that it needs much explanation.
1. Wake Up - Arcade Fire - One of my favorite songs of the last couple years and one of the few song that I listen to on a regular basis that I would say get me pumped.

Honorable mentions - Sorry, I couldn't keep it to just five. Here are a couple that I thought of as I was writing this that I thought at least deserved acknowledgement.
Rudy Can't Fail - The Clash
The Underdog - Spoon
Both of these are a little less conventional for this type of thing, mainly beacuse of the lack of distorted guitar. However, I think they're both really upbeat songs with great energy.

Movie I Just Watched: Smart People

So, I'm trying to clear up the massive logjam of recorded movies that's been accumulating on my DVR and I thought I might try to write a little bit about some of them as I watched them. Today I watched Smart People. This movie stars Dennis Quaid as a middle aged literature professor, still kind of hung up on his dead wife, who's becoming more and more disillusioned and dissatisfied with his students, job, family and just life in general. Through a strange and somewhat unlikely set of circumstances his dead-beat, free wheeling adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church) comes to live with him. Through some of the same set of circumstances he ends up kind of falling for a doctor who used to be a student of his played by Sarah Jessica Parker. There's also his family life, consisting of an uber-achieving teenage daughter (Ellen Page) whose main concerns are acing her SATs and getting into the school, of her choice, and who acts more like his wife than his daughter, and his art major/poet son (Ashton Holmes) who is for the most part an ancillary character. I found this movie enjoyable for the most part. The actors were all very good, with the exception of Parker, who I thought was basically the same neurotic, slightly obsessive woman she seems to play in everything I've seen her in. The writing/dialogue also had its high points although as a whole the plot was pretty predictable: Free spirited, not so bright guy shows uptight academic types that there's more to life than school and books and whatnot. The only other problem I had with this movie was the soundtrack. It just didn't feel like it matched the tone of the film, it was just too poppy or young sounding in a mainly adult film. I'm not sure of the names of any of the artists or songs in the movie, and I probably would have enjoyed some of them on their own, but they just didn't seem like the worked in this movie. All in all when I first saw a trailer for this movie I thought it looked like something I'd like and it didn't completely dissapoint but it's nothing I'd be running out to see again.
I'd give it a B-.

WBC: The new March Madness?

Ok, so probably not quite, but I sure have been enjoying it. There are certainly number of criticisms you could level towards the World Baseball Classic, such as the fact that a lot of the big name stars opt not to play because of the time of year, a time when they're usually just trying to stretch out and get into playing shape and would prefer not to risk injury by trying to play at too high a level too early. And that the postseason atmosphere that is attempting to be created may be somewhat subverted by the strict pitch counts and mercy rules of the early rounds. Despite all of that, it really just feels good to be watching baseball again. Team USA is sailing right along and look good going into the second round despite their loss to a Venezuelan team that closely resembles the Detroit Tigers starting lineup. Also, like the event more commonly referred to as March Madness, the Classic has already given us a cinderella story. I mean, who'd have thought a Netherlands team with only four players that even have any major league experience could beat a Dominican squad loaded with not just major leaguers but bona fide stars (Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, David Ortiz just to name a few), let alone do it twice? So, while the Classic is certainly not the greatest athletic competition ever devised and definitely has its flaws, I'll take anything that gives me real baseball a month earlier and will be watching for the next couple of weeks. Even if my favorite player has already been injured after going 0-7 with 5 streikeouts.

Vagaries

A couple of Sundays ago, I was watching Flight of the Conchords, when who should I see playing the role of an Australian ambassador? It was none other than Alan Dale AKA Charles Freakin' Widmore. Of course, my initial reaction was: "What the hell is Charles Widmore doing on FOTC? And since when is he Australian? Is this some sort of trick? Is he trying to bring Bret and Jemaine to the island? How does it tie in? Then Jemaine broke into a song about hurt feelings and I remembered what show I was watching.
But, I started thinking about it the other day and it made me wonder what it must be like to be a cast member on LOST. I'm sure it's probably great right now. You're on a highly successful show with thousands of avid followers waiting eagerly for any little nugget of information that will be thrown there way. You've got rabid hardcore obsessed fans watching episodes over and over, meticulously breaking down every move each character makes, looking for the slightest shred of significance in even the most mundane details. You're getting lots of recognition, your name's getting out there.
However, Lost is one of the few things I watch where I have trouble separating the actors from the characters. I'm sure this is an effect is more easily achieved on tv series than it is in movies, just because it's like you're living with these characters week after week. And in Lost, the job they do of getting you involved with the characters is just phenomenal. There's so much back story and so much individual attention placed on each member of the ensemble that you feel like you're really inside their lives. This makes me wonder whether anyone on that show will ever be able to get out from under those characters when the show's finally over. I know that from my perspective, even cast members that I knew before Lost, if I see them the very forst thinh that I'll associate them with is their Lost character. For example: if I ever see Dominic Monaghan in anything, he''l always be Charlie first and a Hobbit second. I know that I've seen bot Terry O'Quinn and Naveen Andrews in things both before and after Lost, but they are forever Locke and Sayid now. Henry Ian Cusick doesn't even stand a chance of being anything but Desmond, whatever he may do post-Lost.
In a mostly unrelated note, when I was looking at Alan Dale's IMDB page I noticed that he was in an episode of the short lived sci-fi series Time Trax. I don't remember much about this show except that I thought it was awesome when I was in middle school, and that I wished that I had the ability to slow down time. Anybody else ever watch it? Anybody else even know this blog exists yet? That's what I thought.

One more attempt.

In a last ditch effort to see if I can get this thing to post text and
a picture at the same time, here's a picture of beer.

Text

So, that last post was actually supposed to have some text attached to
it. I think it still holds up pretty good nevertheless. I guess I
still need to figure out how this thing works.

Nanerpuss!