Sunday, June 14, 2009
Hard Ticket to Hawaii = Must See Movie
So we just watched Hard Ticket to Hawaii, a movie that, if any better, would be unbearable to watch.Here's what I mean by that: it was soooooo bad (and I think intentionally so) that it was funny and just absurd and great to watch. If it had been simply putrid trash (like Transformers) and not the actual feces of a herd of gorillas, it would have been just bad and not good. Thankfully, it was nothing close to Transformers.
It was written, directed, and produced by Andy Sedaris, and he presents an interesting story. He was a pioneer in television, specifically sports television. He directed hundreds of sports events and even won Emmys (freakin' Emmys!) for them, including the 1969 Summer Olympics. And you know that shot during football games where they just point the camera at the cheerleaders for a minute? Yeah, Sedaris invented that, even coining the name: "honey shot." Just ridiculous.
So somewhere in the early 80's, Sedaris got the idea to do a string of movies under the group title "Bullets, Bombs, and Babes." They were to include 1) Shitty no-name actors (one of which who went on to a 27 year and counting run on The Bold and the Beautiful); 2) Bullets, bombs, explosions and all those things that make Michael Bay movies so terrrble; and 3) Playboy Playmates. That's correct: everyone has Playboy Playmates - and they're always naked, all the time.
These movies have some of the worst dialogue, the worst acting, and the worst plots that have every graced a TV screen, and that's saying something considering we're including things like "Lost" and Armageddon. But that's why they're great, because stuff that bad is just so hilarious that if you don't laugh, you're clearly missing what's going on.
How the hell did Sedaris go from pioneering sports broadcasting to bullets, bombs, and babes? I have no fucking clue, but it's god damn awesome.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
So....... (or "The First Blog Post after a Long Absence")
This the first blog post after a long absence. I didn't bother to fact check, but it's something like forty years. Maybe fifty. It's hard to tell, really.
Anyways, these blog posts feel a lot like meeting your ex-girlfriend for the first time after breaking up ("So...how are things?"). Always a terrible experience. And this is very similar because the relationship between Blogger and Audience is in some ways akin to Girlfriend and Boyfriend (or whatever interchangeable genders fit your style): the Blogger puts out shit, the Audience reads that shit, and then comments with their own shit, and a cycle is born. In the same way, the Boyfriend (or whatever) puts out shit and the Girlfriend reads it, and gives back some more shit.
Now, what happens with the Boyfriend/Girlfriend can happen with the Blogger/Audience: shit gets ugly, one side gets upset/depressed/stupid/etc. and things, perhaps, come to an end. I suppose that's what happened here. I got tired/bored/stupid/depressed/whatever and stopped blogging. I'm pretty certain no one reads this thing, but potential readers operate in much the same way as actual readers, with concern to the Blogger.
Anyways (again), I suppose I'll write some more stuff. Thankfully for all readers, actual and potential, the NBA Finals is pretty much over, thus basketball is over, so the only sports writing will be baseball related, and I doubt I'll be writing much about America's Favorite Pastime, so there is, maybe, a God, I guess.
As for me, I found out (that is, I came upon this realization, rather than decided in any sort of autonomous fashion) that I pretty much hate most other people. Sure, there's a lot of people I really like, lots of cool people, but most of the people I meet on a day to day basis tend to suck. But then again, don't I suck, too? Aren't I just as retarded and stupid and ugly and not nice as they are? Is it all that, though? Or is it that everyone I meet doesn't give a shit about anything other than A) what's between their legs; or B) what's between their shoulder blades (their heart). You see, it's all about penis/vagina interaction (and some anus, obvs) and "how my heart feels." But isn't there a third part to that? What goes on between the ears? Shouldn't thinking and reasoning and learning be on a par with sex and love?
The world, apparently, doesn't agree.
But let's step back. Aren't I just like everyone else when I complain that the world doesn't adhere to my views? Yup. I'm just as much of an asshole as everyone else. So my complaints are stupid and don't matter and there's really no reason to voice them.
But then how do I relate? Because that second part (love) is all about relating to and with other people in a way that's more significant than "Would you like fries with that?" And how do you relate to other people when you're so distanced psychologically from them?
I don't know. That's my difficulty at the moment. That's my "conundrum" (I hate that word, btw). I'm having trouble relating to other people - fulfilling Need #2 - and thus I'm having trouble living.
It kinda sucks, you know?
Probably.
But most people will misinterpret this post as depressingly hateful/potentially suicidal. Sigh. So, relating to and with other people is like standing in a dark room trying to figure out who's standing in front of you - and the whole time you're not certain there's even somewhere there.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Colbert Raps and Michael Steele Rap
Michael Steele said he wanted to bring it to the urban, inner city hip-hop crowd and so Colbert invited him to a rap battle. Steele has never come on the show but Colbert brings it rather hard in this clip.
He raps, people. He freakin' raps.
And then Michael Steele raps.
Seriously. It's ridic.
But the video won't embed correctly. Comedy Central uses some html tags blogger won't support. So go to this link and watch it there.
Do it.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
This time it's Kelly's fault
I can't stay away from lists, and she was doing a list she stole from someone else. Apparently you just write down thirteen things you did today, because it's "Thirteen Thursday," or some such nonsense.
1. I wondered about how easy it would be to hit someone in the bike lane on Washington just East of Mill because at night (tonight, in fact) you can't see them in your review mirror when you're at the light and start to turn right on Scottsdale/Rural. There were two of them. Thankfully I had this thought 50 feet before the light.
2. I slew the president of Mozambique with a chainsaw. I couldn't find a samurai sword.
3. I went to Starbucks and got free Starbucks because a guy I had a class with two years ago works at Starbucks.
4. I thought about going back to Starbucks later to get some more free Starbucks from the guy who works at Starbucks.
5. I didn't go back to Starbucks.
6. I considered staying on campus after class to listen to a speech by a philosophy professor from Princeton, but I got hungry instead.
7. I tried to go to Jon's choir concert tonight, but I swear he said "turn on Mill," and after spending ten minutes looking around Mill and it's offshoots, and since Jon was already in it (I was late) and couldn't respond to texts, I went to Borders instead and bought a David Foster Wallace book for an egregious 16 fuckin' dollars.
8. I vented to nobody in particular about the ridiculous fuckin' prices for a new paperback book nowadays. 16 dollars? Really? And a 57 page book of poetry by an old professor who works at ASU is also 16 dollars? Unreal.
9. I wrote a very facetious one page response/thought/thingy for a lit class and I'm a little afraid that my teacher might actually seek me out for the purpose of securing reparations for having had to read the response.
10. I wrote a blog before this one.
11. I read some stuff from the April issue of Harper's Magazine, because I somehow convinced my mom to buy me a subscription, and it came today.
12. I thought about how much of an asshole snob I am for having a subscription to both Harper's Magazine and the Sunday Edition of The New York Times.
13. I listened, throughout the day, to a lot of Dr. Dre. The Chronic and 2001 are, ahem, bombass muthafuckin' albums, biotch. Suck deeeeez nuts!
Read more...
1. I wondered about how easy it would be to hit someone in the bike lane on Washington just East of Mill because at night (tonight, in fact) you can't see them in your review mirror when you're at the light and start to turn right on Scottsdale/Rural. There were two of them. Thankfully I had this thought 50 feet before the light.
2. I slew the president of Mozambique with a chainsaw. I couldn't find a samurai sword.
3. I went to Starbucks and got free Starbucks because a guy I had a class with two years ago works at Starbucks.
4. I thought about going back to Starbucks later to get some more free Starbucks from the guy who works at Starbucks.
5. I didn't go back to Starbucks.
6. I considered staying on campus after class to listen to a speech by a philosophy professor from Princeton, but I got hungry instead.
7. I tried to go to Jon's choir concert tonight, but I swear he said "turn on Mill," and after spending ten minutes looking around Mill and it's offshoots, and since Jon was already in it (I was late) and couldn't respond to texts, I went to Borders instead and bought a David Foster Wallace book for an egregious 16 fuckin' dollars.
8. I vented to nobody in particular about the ridiculous fuckin' prices for a new paperback book nowadays. 16 dollars? Really? And a 57 page book of poetry by an old professor who works at ASU is also 16 dollars? Unreal.
9. I wrote a very facetious one page response/thought/thingy for a lit class and I'm a little afraid that my teacher might actually seek me out for the purpose of securing reparations for having had to read the response.
10. I wrote a blog before this one.
11. I read some stuff from the April issue of Harper's Magazine, because I somehow convinced my mom to buy me a subscription, and it came today.
12. I thought about how much of an asshole snob I am for having a subscription to both Harper's Magazine and the Sunday Edition of The New York Times.
13. I listened, throughout the day, to a lot of Dr. Dre. The Chronic and 2001 are, ahem, bombass muthafuckin' albums, biotch. Suck deeeeez nuts!
Some things I've overheard around campus lately
Well, first, these two education majors in one of my lit classes are talking about where they want to student teach and, apparently, it's quite popular nowadays to go overseas, particularly to places like Costa Rica, and teach there. From what I know of education majors (and there are significant disaporas in all of my lit classes) I'm afraid for the denizens of places like Costa Rica.
But that's not what's important. What's important is that the following bit of dialogue took place:
"Oh cool. What are the other two."
"Nicaragua and Chile."
"Awesome."
They both nod knowingly.
"Where is Nicaragua?"
"I don't know."
- childish laughter -
"I was thinking it was in Africa, but that must be wrong," She pauses. "Right?"
"Year, or well, I don't know."
I had to say something.
"It's south of Mexico."
"Oh, cool. Thanks."
"Yeah, great help."
Alright, so I don't much care that they didn't know that Nicaragua was south of Honduras and north of Costa Rica, but they should have at least known (1) it's NOT in Africa and (2) it's south of Mexico. Or, hell, South America would have been acceptable.
Here's the other thing I overheard, and, really, I hear this a lot. So many times around campus I hear the following sentence in almost the exact same form: "I like to read, I just don't have time for it."
Really? You don't have 30 mins a day? I mean, if you don't want to read, cool, fuck it, I don't give a shit. Really, I don't. But please don't say you like to read but don't have time. Unless you're a triple-job working single mother of three, I'm pretty sure you have 30 mins a day.
Read more...
But that's not what's important. What's important is that the following bit of dialogue took place:
"Oh cool. What are the other two."
"Nicaragua and Chile."
"Awesome."
They both nod knowingly.
"Where is Nicaragua?"
"I don't know."
- childish laughter -
"I was thinking it was in Africa, but that must be wrong," She pauses. "Right?"
"Year, or well, I don't know."
I had to say something.
"It's south of Mexico."
"Oh, cool. Thanks."
"Yeah, great help."
Alright, so I don't much care that they didn't know that Nicaragua was south of Honduras and north of Costa Rica, but they should have at least known (1) it's NOT in Africa and (2) it's south of Mexico. Or, hell, South America would have been acceptable.
Here's the other thing I overheard, and, really, I hear this a lot. So many times around campus I hear the following sentence in almost the exact same form: "I like to read, I just don't have time for it."
Really? You don't have 30 mins a day? I mean, if you don't want to read, cool, fuck it, I don't give a shit. Really, I don't. But please don't say you like to read but don't have time. Unless you're a triple-job working single mother of three, I'm pretty sure you have 30 mins a day.
Monday, March 16, 2009
It's All Andrew's Fault
Andrew linked an article about gay marriage to me, so the entirety of this post, including the motivation, is clearly all his fault. He's wholly responsible and should be, obviously, destroyed.
The article he linked me was this one and it got me thinking about just what the hell anyone ought to do about the whole thing.
Now, I've got an idea that wouldn't work: make marriage available to any combination of two human beings (man/man, woman/woman, man/woman, or any other transgender fun you can imagine). It wouldn't work, obvs.com, because people would just lose it over such a liberalization of something so sacred [sic] and wonderful [sic] as marriage, something that's timeless [sic] and totally great [sic] and has always [sic] led to great [sic] and wondrous [sic] joy [sic].
Andrew's article discussed an idea by two lawyers on opposite sides of the California mess arguing that marriage should not be governed by the government, only by the churches. What they would like to see (really just to compromise and bring an end to the whole thing) is the government grant civil unions to anyone and then allow whatever religious organizations out there that have the desire to grant any kind of supplementary title like "marriage."
But why sacrifice the word "marriage?" I think that would just piss everyone off even more. And it seems a little strange to more or less guarantee that marriage is then a religious thing. A lot of people, religious and otherwise, would be pretty upset about that inevitable label.
I say we just try to force through my original plan: making marriage available to any combination of two human beings. It would take money, time, and a fair amount of violence, but hey, what are things like equality and justice for if not to fight and die for?
This always makes me wonder about bigamy. Is it really a bad thing? Andrew, Philippi, Fillman, and I had a chat about this a few weeks ago and I think the general conclusion we came to (at least I think it was "we"; it might have just been me, I guess) is still significant: that the follies of marrying multiple people are the result of the person and not the situation. That is, the reason so many bigamist marriages are fucked up and evil and wives get beat up or abused or not taken care of is because people are messed up, not the marriage itself.
And really is there is anything different that occurs in a bigamist marriage not in a regular ole' man/woman marriage? Surely domestic violence happens in both and surely bad shit in general happens in both. It may be that more bad shit happens with bigamist marriages, but that's probably due to the type of people that try to live bigamously, which is illegal. I can't imagine all men and women who want to marry multiple people are awful, turrrble, and just all-around shitty human beings.
It's worth a thought, I suppose.
Read more...
The article he linked me was this one and it got me thinking about just what the hell anyone ought to do about the whole thing.
Now, I've got an idea that wouldn't work: make marriage available to any combination of two human beings (man/man, woman/woman, man/woman, or any other transgender fun you can imagine). It wouldn't work, obvs.com, because people would just lose it over such a liberalization of something so sacred [sic] and wonderful [sic] as marriage, something that's timeless [sic] and totally great [sic] and has always [sic] led to great [sic] and wondrous [sic] joy [sic].
Andrew's article discussed an idea by two lawyers on opposite sides of the California mess arguing that marriage should not be governed by the government, only by the churches. What they would like to see (really just to compromise and bring an end to the whole thing) is the government grant civil unions to anyone and then allow whatever religious organizations out there that have the desire to grant any kind of supplementary title like "marriage."
But why sacrifice the word "marriage?" I think that would just piss everyone off even more. And it seems a little strange to more or less guarantee that marriage is then a religious thing. A lot of people, religious and otherwise, would be pretty upset about that inevitable label.
I say we just try to force through my original plan: making marriage available to any combination of two human beings. It would take money, time, and a fair amount of violence, but hey, what are things like equality and justice for if not to fight and die for?
This always makes me wonder about bigamy. Is it really a bad thing? Andrew, Philippi, Fillman, and I had a chat about this a few weeks ago and I think the general conclusion we came to (at least I think it was "we"; it might have just been me, I guess) is still significant: that the follies of marrying multiple people are the result of the person and not the situation. That is, the reason so many bigamist marriages are fucked up and evil and wives get beat up or abused or not taken care of is because people are messed up, not the marriage itself.
And really is there is anything different that occurs in a bigamist marriage not in a regular ole' man/woman marriage? Surely domestic violence happens in both and surely bad shit in general happens in both. It may be that more bad shit happens with bigamist marriages, but that's probably due to the type of people that try to live bigamously, which is illegal. I can't imagine all men and women who want to marry multiple people are awful, turrrble, and just all-around shitty human beings.
It's worth a thought, I suppose.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Lakers and Boats and Stuff
I realize this sort of effusion is not what everyone likes to hear but I just watched the game and I had to say something, even if it's just to the vast Intar-Web-Net.
The Lakers had a casual, 15 point lead on the Dallas Mavericks in the third quarter about an hour ago and then, in typical 2008-2009 Lakers fashion, they let it slip away and by the middle of the fourth quarter, they were down by six - at home, against the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas, btw, is the same team that gives lots of minutes to people like Brandon Bass and James Singleton.
So there's the big negative against the 2008-2009 Lakers: they get casual, all the time, and let games get away from them. A positive, though, something Keith and Jon have heard me say so many times they probably wish I would just die, is that the Lakers, when they shed their casual attitudes, are the deadliest, most wicked team in the NBA. And they shed it in the middle of the fourth, just like I hoped they would, and won by seven.
But it's that type of casual attitude that gets them in trouble, the same attitude that made them lose 13 times this season instead of only 6 or 7. They're not worlds better than Cleveland or Boston, but when they're on, they're better than anyone (except maybe Detroit when Dtown actually plays zone defense; Zone D kills the Lakers and you'd think more teams would employ it against Gasol and Odom and Bynum and Bryant and just about everyone the team).
So today's game showed the best and worst of the Lakers: the casual attitude that loses big leads and puts them in three possession holes, and the intensity and brilliant skills that allow them to overcome those same holes.
And, uh, enjoy this:
Read more...
The Lakers had a casual, 15 point lead on the Dallas Mavericks in the third quarter about an hour ago and then, in typical 2008-2009 Lakers fashion, they let it slip away and by the middle of the fourth quarter, they were down by six - at home, against the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas, btw, is the same team that gives lots of minutes to people like Brandon Bass and James Singleton.
So there's the big negative against the 2008-2009 Lakers: they get casual, all the time, and let games get away from them. A positive, though, something Keith and Jon have heard me say so many times they probably wish I would just die, is that the Lakers, when they shed their casual attitudes, are the deadliest, most wicked team in the NBA. And they shed it in the middle of the fourth, just like I hoped they would, and won by seven.
But it's that type of casual attitude that gets them in trouble, the same attitude that made them lose 13 times this season instead of only 6 or 7. They're not worlds better than Cleveland or Boston, but when they're on, they're better than anyone (except maybe Detroit when Dtown actually plays zone defense; Zone D kills the Lakers and you'd think more teams would employ it against Gasol and Odom and Bynum and Bryant and just about everyone the team).
So today's game showed the best and worst of the Lakers: the casual attitude that loses big leads and puts them in three possession holes, and the intensity and brilliant skills that allow them to overcome those same holes.
And, uh, enjoy this:
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