Friday, December 28, 2007
How 'bout passing one of them NY State laws here?
Are we supposed to feel sorry for this goon, who killed a teenager because he was texting while driving his huge, oversized SUV? Sad that our culture would rather feel sorry (check the article; it's absolutely written with a tone of atonement for the murderer, a Boston Globe staple) for a moron than put him behind bars where he belongs for killing someone. Where's the outrage, and where are the cell phone laws designed to keep drivers from distracting themselves while driving?
16-0
In January 2007, just when many Patriots fans began to wonder whether or not the Super Bowl run of Brady and Belichick was over unless a complete overhaul of the team occurred, our wonderful team owner Robert Kraft goes out and overhauls the entire team - another example of why it's great to have a billionaire fan as an owner. This is a team that wants a fourth (and fifth...and sixth) Super Bowl so badly that being within one darn 5-yard grab by Jabar Gaffney of the Super Bowl forced the team to look at how, exactly, they needed to improve to ensure they didn't suffer the same fate during the next postseason. Most owners and management groups would chalk it up to bad luck and just try to do well in the draft with what they're given.
The result? The best receiving corps in the league and a few key free agents. Sammy Morris, the team's rushing leader until he went down with a chest injury not to return this season, was averaging over 100 yards per game. Adalius Thomas came here from Baltimore to help the team's aging linebacker corps, and has been doing really well - and is especially needed now that Roosevelt Colvin is out for the season with a foot injury. And back to that receiving corps, coupled with the best QB in the league, the Patriots have a chance to set at least four more offensive records on Saturday. Most TD passes by a QB, most TD receptions by a player, most points by a team...there's at least one other, I'm sure of it.
I just love how everyone is criticizing the Patriots team because they are under the microscope more than any other, saying they'll have a tough time with the Colts, or how the Jaguars are hungry, or how Pittsburgh might regroup. Lest anyone forgets, the Patriots had an intensely tough schedule and will still likely come out of it with a couple of (admittedly key) injuries, and a 16-0 record. 19-0 is not too far off. It'll be easily the best team sports achievement of the decade, and that's saying a lot for the new NFL Dynasty.
"You remember...surly-lookin' guy with the square jaw?"
Season 4 of Lost premiered at the end of January 2008 and is easily one of the most anticipated seasons of television in recent memory (obviously, The Sopranos was the most anticipated comeback show of 2007, with Lost Season 3 close behind).
For some strange reason, an obscure character in the series sticks out at me. That would be Federal Marshal Edward Mars, known in real life as Frederic Lehne. He has popped up in Kate's flashbacks nearly every single time, and I think the writers feel that good ol' Fred Lehne is a good enough actor - at least in that part he plays as a Federal Marshal - to keep him around as long as possible. There are a few interesting circumstances surrounding his character:
- He was the first character in the show who was murdered. Jack had to put him out of his misery after Sawyer attempted to use the last bullet (at the time) to attempt to do the same thing. All Sawyer accomplished was to puncture the guy's lungs, when he was already in painful shock due to shrapnel from the crash being lodged in his abdomen.
- He was the focal point of a few of the early episodes, in part because people wanted to know why he was carrying a gun
- My favorite: He was referred to as "the surly-lookin' guy with the square jaw...with the piece of shrapnel the size of Texas stickin' out his breadbox" by Sawyer during late Season 1, when the entire camp figures out that Kate was the prisoner being escorted back to the States.
- His voice is very distinctive. If you listen closely there's a nasal sarcasm which permeates almost everything he says, making it an adventure every time he opens his mouth. Even better, every time he does speak, he's usually criticizing Kate. During the episode, "What Kate Did", he tells Kate he knows exactly what she did and why, to which she rebuffs him, explaining that he has no idea why she blew up her "step-"daddy. He replies, "Lemme guess, goes something like this: white-trash mom divorces dad, marries new guy, only the thing is, he likes to drink. Daughter has listen to him bone her mommy in her old daddy's bedroom, and even that wouldn't be so bad if he didn't beat her mommy. Only the thing is...she loves him...she can't leave him. That sound about right?"
There are other amusing tidbits about the character, especially some of his verbatim quotes, which I'll post later. For now, go here for the "white trash" quote and to get a general idea of how great this character is. Every time the guy shows up, it's great. I only hope it comes out that he drew her to Australia and was somehow part of the plotline circulating on the fan forums, which comprises rich and/or powerful figures leading all of the survivors of the crash to the Island. It's likely wishful thinking but one never knows.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Ride the Bulleit! Part II
Massachusetts does not allow liquor to be mailed, neither within the state nor from out of state. It makes my quest to find a good bourbon more complicated, but it's more fun to hunt them down and ask about them at local liquor stores - at this point, at least. Having more than one bottle of bourbon in the house is already going overboard for me as I don't drink very often, but do enjoy finer spirits, when I do partake. If I become an amateur collector, I may have to move to a state that allows me to order bourbon!
One for me...none for you.
Does it really need to be more complicated than this? History is history for a reason - you study from it, you learn about it in hopes that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. But you keep history where it belongs. For an illegal immigration wave to suddenly change into a movement to reclaim the American Southwest...what would these people do with the land? Would the Mexican government give it back to the natives who inhabited the land before the Spanish came? Likely not. They would use it against the US as a resource, just as we did the same thing.
Message to Mexico: Learn from your past mistakes and stop allowing druglords to rule your country. But most of all, keep your parasites OUT of MY country.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Social Security and Medicare - thanks, US Gov't!!
Anyone wanna move to Canada?
(from http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34873242&blogID=339204971)
[P]ayment of Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A) benefits are limited by law to the balances in the respective trust funds. Consequently, future scheduled benefits are limited to future revenues plus existing trust fund assets. As discussed in Supplemental Information, the Social Security and Medicare Part A trust funds are projected to be exhausted in 2041 and 2019, respectively, at which time they will be unable to pay the full amount of scheduled future benefits. For Social Security, projected future revenues would be sufficient to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits in 2041, the year of trust fund exhaustion, and decreasing to 70 percent of scheduled benefits in 2081. Similarly, for Medicare Part A, projected future revenues would be sufficient to pay 79 percent of scheduled benefits in 2019, the year of trust fund exhaustion, and decreasing to 29 percent of scheduled benefits in 2081. p. 164-165 http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/07frusg/07frusg.pdf
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The sound of good Brit-pop dying a horrible death
Or at least the sound of good Brit-pop on a respirator with no hope of surviving.
Maybe it's more of a "last gasp".
Let me explain: I'm hopelessly and inexplicably obsessed with music from the 90's. Most of what I listen to has not come out during this decade, which is now close to being over.
This U2 performance of "Please" was one of the last gasps of 90's Brit-pop, at least as it pertained to American patience for the genre, at that time. Thankfully, after years of Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit, the internet music landscape has changed so drastically, we can ignore what's on MTV entirely and listen to good music again.
For some reason, after Oasis' Be Here Now came out (and, by the way, outsold Morning Glory worldwide and accounted for 2/3 of all music sold in Great Britain the week it came out), after Princess Diana died, and after the 1997 MTV Music Awards, the musical landscape in this country changed. Apparently people got sick of the cocky Brits and their wanna-be Beatles and Rolling Stones behavior. The Verve was really the last group standing, which toured through 1998 after Oasis had released their cocaine album and U2 was wrapping up PopMart, not to be heard from again until over two years later. When The Verve broke up in 1999, we of good musical taste knew the party was over at last.
It wasn't just the groups breaking up or indulging in far too many drugs to retain a decent touring schedule, it was the lack of American counterparts taking the place of bands like The Verve and Oasis. There will never be even an attempt at replacing or outdoing U2, but the US response to Oasis was Third Eye Blind. Third Eye Blind? Even Foo Fighters were pretty good for a bit, but it's been downhill since The Colour and the Shape...apparently, Dave Grohl used the "u" in "Colour" to attract the Brits to some decent American music, and since then, he's been shamelessly playing to the UK audience while becoming a self-parody. Can we blame him for playing to the UK audience, though, when no one in the US was listening? On the other hand, every band wants to become DMB these days; albums come secondary to touring schedules and raping customers of their hard-earned cash with absurd ticket prices.
Sadder still is the example of the Smashing Pumpkins, who seemed to age overnight with constant drug problems and then the sacking of Jimmy Chamberlain, perhaps the best Neil Peart knockoff who ever existed. The video for Thirty-Three could easily be the funeral music of the last true Smashing Pumpkins moment that mattered. "Adore" had to be the worst post-1997 alt-rock album. Garbage kept things hopeful for a bit with "Version 2.0", but ultimately, couldn't keep the "alternative music" segment, that strange grouping of bands as diverse as Green Day and Pulp, going by themselves.
Part of the problem in the late 90's was that there was a time when everyone wanted to have center stage, have it all, be the next big thing; and then of course it all imploded. Oasis' attitude toward their fame, after winning the battle of the bands vs. Blur, could partly be blamed for that attitude. Garbage may have been a bit immune to that because nearly the entire group (except that redhead who, ya know, had nothing to do with their success or anything) was made up of music producers who were too busy with other projects to worry about whether or not they were the highest-grossing new act of the 1990's. But I recall one time in particular when I was watching an airing of the Smashing Pumpkins in the UK, and they were playing Tonight, Tonight. The stage was covered in flowers and Corgan was yukking it up with his bandmates half the time instead of performing the song; I realized then that the Pumpkins had outgrown even Mellon Collie's huge borders, and just wanted to be big for the sake of being big. Gone was the badass, messed-up looking kid who defiantly sang "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" with a backdrop of disturbing-looking individuals rolling around in mud. In his place there was a bigger-looking guy with clean teeth and a polished, shaved head, sporting dark clothes everywhere he went. Billy Corgan had become a product, nothing more.
Every band followed the lead, and interestingly, PopMart was the least of it. PopMart was a colossal joke on the American psyche that, ironically, we were too stupid to understand. A band of alt-rock heroes like the Pumpkins becoming too big, Green Day trying to outdo themselves with Insomniac (though, in fairness, they recovered quite well with everything they've done since), Oasis snorting far too much coke and unplugging themselves from their fanbase, The Verve not being able to handle their would-be savior role...these were all symptoms of the genre collapsing, making way for the record executives to say "you had your shot doing it your way; now we're going to use the 'push' method and just force any junk down your throats that we can cram in there".
Now, ten years later, we have iTunes, torrent sites, blogs, and other methods of grabbing great music out of the airwaves (or the cable internet pipeline). We also, finally, have great bands again, like White Stripes, BRMC, etc., who can at least partially thank the internet and a loyal cult following for spreading the word. It might be more segemented and the record companies might have a harder time keeping tabs on their own "business"...but I dont' think any of us fans of a much better time in music are complaining.
Sure, the new era comes with its own set of complications: there's more pressure on bands to keep themselves ultra-connected to their fanbase; these bands still only make money off touring, and with the shrinking attention span in this country it's become harder to retain a good reputation in our insta-internet world by the time a decent money-making tour can be organized; record contracts for six-plus albums still exist, which keep bands locked down to a horribly tradionalist and 50s-esque way of releasing music...but overall, the scene is much better than going through commercialized genre-pushing decade in and decade out.
Sports Guy Q&A session
Q: If Boston gets Santana from the Twins, why don't you just take my wife and my 14-week-old daughter while you are at it? Minnesota is truly the farm system for every single Boston professional sports team. I can't wait to watch Brady hand off to Adrian Peterson in three years.-- Adam W., Rosemount, Minn.
Classic. Did I mention the Celtics are 19-2?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/071214
OK maybe this one is my favorite...
Q: While visiting one of our friends in Boston this past weekend, a few of my college buddies and I spent Saturday getting hammered at various bars near Fenway. When we called it a night, we took the T back to the Maverick station, a trip that included half of the train spontaneously singing "Don't Stop Believing." When we got off the train, we decided to step into this bar called Eddie C's, a dive with none other than Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap. When we got inside, we encountered a few regulars with the strongest accents imaginable, who asked us if we were Sox fans. We aren't, which was fine by them, until my friend Tommy proclaimed his allegiance to the Yankees. They all gasped immediately, and one of them shouted, while smiling ear to ear, "... let's tie him to a tree!!!" He proceeded to reach into his jacket and, I kid you not, pulled out a 12-foot rope. We went outside and my friend was, yes, tied to a tree, complete with some road cones. The scene was unbelievable. We decided to leave when the same guy showed us his knife and said that he could cut some more rope if we needed it.-- John, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
"Eff-you" Patriots update
Gotta love Brady and Belichick having fun at the expense of another player:
Brady exploited Smith again on the very next offensive series. He faked the handoff to Laurence Maroney and watched with glee as the safety came up to help stop the run, then got burned on Brady's 63-yard bomb to Moss. Asked if he intentionally called a play to embarrass the kid, Brady answered, "No, he just ended up being in the right place at the right time."
And then he burst out laughing.
There were yuks all around at Smith's expense. Even coach Bill Belichick, who never will be mistaken for Chuckles the Clown in his postgame news conference, joined in. When asked if he used Smith's guarantee to rally his team, Belichick deflected the question to comments made by Rodney Harrison earlier in the week. Under normal circumstances, the coach would have immediately reverted to his usual Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, but he couldn't resist.
"We've played a lot better safeties than him, I'll tell you that," he said.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
FINALLY!
The other was general bitterness. These people stay illegals for ten years, ride the gravy train of our economy, some get arrested and spend their terms in jail cells paid by us taxpayers..and when the economy goes south they just pack up and leave with a "don't come back for ten years" message by our wonderful Ministry of Homeland Security. On top of that, the media actually has sympathy for these people, as if living in America and sucking off taxpayer dollars is a right. It's not. It's a privelege. The people who feel priveleged to be here and act accordingly, trying to find some level of cultural identity in this crazy country, are labeled as bigots or worse for wanting people who don't belong here out of the country. Wonderful.
I kinda hope the economy sucks for years just so they continue leaving...
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Santana may be coming to the Sox
Santana is a two-time Cy Young winner - if given the opportunity to play during the last year of his contract, Minnesota will have no leverage because Santana will just keep pitching real well until he hits unrestricted free agency. Minnesota knows this as he already turned down Minnesota's highest offer, $18million per year, so Minneosta has been shopping him around so they get something in return for him. Enter Boston and New York, the usual suspects.
It looked for a couple of grim days as if the Red Sox were willing to part with Jacoby Ellsbury, their prized 2008 Rookie of the Year, who only outdid Coco Crisp in CF, particularly on offense, when it counted. Now it appears as though the Sox will be letting go of Jon Lester, the cancer survivor who went 11-2 this year and clinched Game 4 of the World Series, Coco Crisp, and a couple of prospects. I hate the idea of giving up Lester but the reason the Sox have such a deep farm system is precisely so they have building blocks, as well as some trade bait for a team like Minnesota ready to trade a superstar player. Lester would only play every five days and no one knows what he will do over the next couple of years. Ellsbury, on the other hand, has not played as long as Lester in the bigs, but he's got so much speed and natural talent that he just should not be traded away, period. You can never have too much pitching but the Sox have to think about a rotation that makes everyone happy; with Ellsbury, they can get rid of Crisp with a clear conscience and start their CF of the future. Everybody wins.
Thank you, Minnesota...you've single-handedly broken 86 years of baseball drought AND 21 years of basketball drought, all in the same decade ... just for the wrong CITY. Losers.
^Boston
<--Minnesota
It's strange....Moss, who came from Minny originally...Garnett...Ortiz...now Santana? I think since McHale started working there he's been infesting every sport with his hairy self.
"You are what you doooo....."
Yes, Rambo. Rambo is an American hero, and I guess ol' Sly decided he wasn't going to allow Bruce Willis to keep ridiculous sequels that should never have been made to himself. No, Sly decided that he would indeed ride John Rambo to victory for a fourth time.
Let's start from the beginning. Quaid is played iun serviceable fashion by Ah-nuld, a guy whom we are quick to find out is stuck in a Matrix-like reality: hot woman, nice house, good job. Turns out he used to be a super secret agent on Mars, part of the bad guy alliance fighting the "rebels" who want more clean air (air on Mars is controlled by Ronny Cox's character). They erased the memory of the man who is now known as Quaid (formerly Hauser) so they could plant him on Earth, give him a desire to go to Mars, and infiltrate the rebels so he could destroy Kuato, the 'George Washington' of the rebellion.
Quaid, not knowing who he really is, decides to check out "Recall" to have a memory of a Mars spy mission implanted into his brain, so that he feels he was actually there (another future convenience - fake memory implants that seem real. When will this stuff actually happen?)
This is one of the most underrated scenes in the film. The actors who play the "Recall" staff (Bob McClane (any relation to John McClane?), Dr. Lull, Ernie) are perfectly cast and their lines & delivery are excellent. Quaid nearly has (one of my favorite terms in the film) a "schizoid embolism" before they have a chance to implant the fun memory. With his steroid-assisted muscles, Quaid nearly fights off these three Recall staff members while screaming about a mission to Mars (even though Recall hadn't implanted the memory yet). They subdue him with those cool, futuristic subdue-type-thingies; syringes that appear to act on pump-action. Once he's under, the conversation between the three Recall staff members is classic. Not only is Bob McClane, the sales rep who loses a customer to the distraction, visibly pissed off, but he calls Dr. Lull a "dumb bitch":
Other random moments of perfection include Richter's pursuit of Quaid, so frustrating for poor, doomed Richter that he ultimately makes an error that costs him his arms. As Richter's body falls to the ground with Quaid holding the bloody nub-arms, Quaid screams, "See you at the party Richter!" in response to Richter's prior sucker-punch. Richter had punched him earlier because the "bad guys", Quaid's former employees on Mars who are controlling all of the airflow, are about to erase his Quaid identity and revert him back to Hauser, so he can party it up, be rich, and never know what it was like to lead a good life and care about others. If I were Quaid I probably wouldn't have fought so hard against this...
Other classic scenes include Benny the Mutant ("face it man...his fortune-tellin' days are over") who ultimately dies at the hands of Quaid, assisted by a perfect line ("Benny! Screwwwww youuuuu!"). Kuato himself is classic and, with the growth of the internet, just google Kuato and you'll find lots of goofy stuff modeled after the original character, along with crazy YouTube videos of Kuato with "In Your Eyes" voice overs, etc.
There's other deep stuff in this movie, like Quaid breaking through his former identity and realizing that he didn't want to be a super-spy for the bad guys; identity crises galore; whether or not what's happening is a dream or reality and whether or not it even matters, etc. But let's face facts here: the book might have been chock full o' these themes, but this is one of those timeless movies that can be taken just as much at face value as it can be picked apart and analyzed. That's why seeing this or Robocop (another Paul Verhoeven classic) on cable late at night always makes one stay up past one's bedtime: waiting for the buildup to lines like "schizoid embolism" and Kuato's first appearance (and his subsequent, untimely death) are worth every minute.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Ten new Patriots rules
Special Rules for the Patriots
1) In the course of an NFL game, if the Patriots go up by more than 31 points, they are not allowed to play offense until the opposing team draws to within one score. (Pats will kick-off after an opposing team's touchdown or FG).Once the team is within one score, the Pats offense may play, but Tom Brady may not, unless:the Pats play with 8 players (including Tom), or the Pats play with 9players, but 1 player for the Patriots is chosen by the opposing team from the stands. no Patriots linebacker is allowed to play offense,unless that LB is inserted at quarterback. However, Mike Vrabel cannot be quarterback.
2) If an opposing player states "It's like were playing 7-on-5s" (7 offense, 5 defense during practice), such as indicated by Justin Smith,DE, Cincinnati Bengals 10/1/07, the Patriots must take a time out and serve ice cold lemonade or hot tea (weather dependent) to the opposing team. Scones are optional.
3)Once the 31 pt rule is in effect, Patriots may challenge any play, but the opposing team gets veto power over the referee.
4)Once the Pats offense is allowed back onto the field (7 pts), for any forward pass the Pats QB must point to the receiver and call out his number BEFORE passing. If Tom Brady is quarterbacking at the time, he must do that, plus turn the opposing team's water cooler into wine BEFORE passing.
5)Belichick must diagram any Patriots play to the opposing defense and ensure they understand exactly how to disrupt the play. This all must be done within the play clock. If this process is not complete prior to the play clock expiring, the Patriots will be assessed a delay of game and double unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.
6)Randy Moss must play with 10lb ankle weights on each ankle. An additional pound will be added for each TD this season.
7)Wes Welker is not allowed to have "that crazy look" in his eyes. 10yd, "crazy eyes"penalty assessed.
8) Tom Brady must immediately stop dating supermodels as he will not be allowed to date anyone that is more attractive then the least attractive significant other of an opposing team member (including coaches). He also must start doing commercials for every product imaginable, especially ones where he chants "cut that meat!"or refers to himself "as a 6'5" quarterback with a laser-rocket arm"
9)Bill Belichick is not allowed to be within 100 yds of any infant, for fear that his evil supergenius powers would assimilate such a defenseless creature into the Patriots System. We have already seen this effect on an inordinate amount of chipmunks, squirrels, and 'possum that commit suicide while crossing Rte 1 to reach Gillette Stadium.
10)Patriots must respect all opposing players feelings and apologize for every first down. Touchdowns must be followed by a written apology and a fruit basket presented with a hug.