Monday, July 30, 2007
Celtics win Eastern Conference Title
It's amazing to see them wrap it up this early, months before the season even starts, but barring injury, I don't know how they're going to lose, given a core of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and oh yeah, former league MVP Kevin Garnett. Yeah, that guy. After twelve long years including the entirety of his adult life, Kevin Garnett is no longer a Timberwolf. An earlier trade to the Celtics fell through, to the relief of a lot of Wolves fans who didn't think it offered fair value for The Big Ticket. So when KG nixed a trade to Boston, the Celtics went out and did what they needed to do, trading away Wally Szczerbiak,who the Wolves previously shipped out to Boston because of tensions with Garnett (reportedly KG wanted to send him a card and mend fences, but couldn't remember how many z's there are in Sszz... Sczz... in Wally's name) and bringing in Ray Allen, whose all-star appearances have finally made him famous for something other than playing the lead in "He Got Game". Not to mention his supporting part in that Sarah Michelle Gellar cheerleader disaster about dropping acid and fixing Ivy League basketball games. So now we have a worse deal, since the original deal offered a #5 overall pick, and Kevin McHale is one step closer to his dream of having a team with nobody above 6'7"... you hear that Mark Blount?! I saw earlier that Bracey Wright is headed to play in Europe, and the Timberwolves are trying to buy out Troy Hudson's contract, so that's the #11 and #12 guys off the bench gone to little fanfare, and with the guys who are added, it's still a team of shooting guards with even less presence in the front-court, so this is really going to be ugly. On the plus side, the Wolves have some young talent, a couple more draft picks back, and perhaps most importantly, they have some expiring contracts and dumped KG's salary, the highest in the NBA last year. The stage may be set for a new GM to take over and build a team, if McHale is really going to step back and let The Mayor run the team. On the down side, they're still stocked with shooting guards and overpaid mediocre player signed forever, and after two trades with Boston, the Celtics are looking good and the Wolves have, as one fellow Wolves fan put it: all the players who couldn't win in the East with an all-star, are now stuck in the West without one. Yes indeed, this could be uglier than the Vikings passing game.
Five movies nobody's heard of that I won't shut up about (annoying, isn't it?)
Other than this spring, when the foreign film Oscar nominees and the rest of the awards stragglers like last year's Cannes winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley came and went, the first half of this year has been pretty uninspiring. Which means first and foremost, anybody who missed Zwartboek and The Wind that Shakes the Barley will have nothing to tide them over until winter but their memories of 300, Transformers, Hostel, and other statements of protest against the use of the definite article, but it also means the new DVD releases are pretty barren, given that three or four months ago there wasn't much of anything coming out in the states. There's been such a vacuum Lindsay Lohan snuck like six movies into theaters... but that's another story. So as a public service, here are five movies I keep inventing excuses to rave about, generally to blank stares since they're all somewhat obscure. (I only tracked them down because they were up for major awards: a benefit of my "OCD Spells Oscar" project of checking off every award nominee.)
1. Dead Man's Shoes
This is about the cheapest looking movie I've ever seen, and one I can guarantee nobody's heard of since it had a $1,825 opening weekend in it's North American release. I thought it was a miracle it was available on a region one DVD until I saw it, and realized film students are going to be watching this for years to see how to make an award-winning film in three weeks for less than the price of a Happy Meal. The underlying story owes a bit to Get Carter, but of all the remakes of that plot, Dead Man's Shoes and Steven Soderbergh's The Limey are the two worth seeing. Actually I already raved about it at length here, so I'll just add that the lead in this film, Paddy Considine, is fantastic in about everything I've ever seen him in, including small parts in 24 Hour Party People, and Hot Fuzz, as well as in BAFTA winner and all-around excellent film My Summer of Love, featuring Paddy Considine perfecting his fascinating, gentle yet menacing, "saved by the grace of God but I could still choke the life out of you" persona, and Emily Blunt, best known for a scene stealing part as the hysterically bitchy first assistant in The Devil Wears Prada. Paddy Considine also shows up soon in The Bourne Ultimatum, and I hope that means we'll see more of both him and Emily Blunt in America.
2. Me Without You
This film along with Elling and Igby Goes Down formed the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, a group of films populated with eerily familiar characters... halfway through I realized I'd almost ended up married to the protagonist of that film (only she wasn't English) and Michelle Williams' entire career seems like some cruel practical joke where she keeps playing eerily familiar analogues of my ex-girlfriends. Another film in the Rufus Trilogy featured another eerily familiar scene which I couldn't watch without wondering, "Didn't a girl exactly like that try to tell me the same thing about myself... possibly also in a NYC diner?" Because of all that, I know I can't evaluate any of those three films in a detached way, so I asked somebody to watch it and give me an independent review, and she concurred with my opinion as to the greatness of Me Without You, but then again she also dated me and was one of the people Michelle Williams seemed to channel as an eerie blonde specter, so her taste and judgment is equally questionable. In any case, Me Without You is the story of two inseparable friends who grow up next door to each other in England, and find over years of growing up, going to university, and beyond that their friendship may be entirely too intimate to be healthy. Michelle Williams and Anna Friel are great as Holly and Marina, and both remain tragically underrated.
3. No Man's Land
This film was promoted like the most claustrophobic and depressing, pointless tragedy that could be captured on film, in other words, as the quintessential American image of foreign film. The premise is certainly a bit dour: a Croat and a Serb are stuck together in a trench in no man's land during the civil war in Yugoslavia, at each other's throats with another injured Croat lying prone on a land mine, unable to move for fear it will explode and kill them all. In truth, it's a fairly grim comedy and comment about Europe helplessly watching Yugoslavia disintegrate in the early 1990s, also including a French sergeant with the UN peace keepers who finds that even when everyone theoretically sort of wants the same thing it's still impossible to help. It's blessedly more Catch-22 than All Quiet on the Western Front, and deserved its Oscar win in 2002, beating out Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain, which only doesn't make my list because people I talk to have actually heard of it (even if they won't watch it).
4. Joyeux Noel
I may watch this movie every Christmas, along with Love, Actually and The Hebrew Hammer (also tragically underrated). Joyeux Noel is a fictitious story based on the real unofficial truce on December 24th, 1914, when all up and down the western front, British, French, and German soldiers all collectively took a break from killing each other and came out of their trenches to celebrate Christmas, playing football together, joining in prayer, and exchanging letters. There is a desire to connect to other human beings that this film celebrates, and the difference in men who have looked into each other's eyes when they return to their trenches the next day. Some called it schmaltzy, but I say it's the good kind, beginning with something that really happened up and down the line that night: in the film, a German soldier sings Stille Nacht to his platoon, and is answered by Scottish soldiers across no man's land playing bagpipes and singing Silent Night, while not to be outdone, the French soldiers join in with Douce Nuit. And now it occurs to me I already got all maudlin about this movie last Christmas anyways.
5. Elling
I think this movie is hilarious, despite how much of a tiresome collision course to wackiness it sounds like. Elling is a Norwegian mental patient with severe agoraphobia released to live in an apartment in Oslo with Kjell Bjarne, his borderline mentally retarded roommate, who is fascinated to the point of stupefaction by big breasts and pork. With nobody to count on but Kjell Bjarne and his faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, Elling has a rough adjustment to the outside world until he discovers poetry, and expresses himself as the mysterious underground poet "E", leaving poems in packages of sauerkraut at the supermarket. While I don't know anyone who has Elling's deep faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, this was familiar enough to make it part of the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, and it's quite funny. The shot of Elling and Kjell Bjarne eating dinner and staring with bewilderment and trepidation at their ringing phone, with the camera angle nervously tilting back and forth, still just cracks me up. Per Christian Ellefsen and Sven Nordin are so simultaneously hilarious and endearing in these mentally challenged roles, I just wanted to give them a big ol' hug (with nervous Elling squirming away).
I'll give an honorable mention to a film I just saw, La Tigre e la Neve, which was not a big award winner, or really nominated for much of anything prestigious. In comparison to Roberto Benigni's other films, it lacks the relentless hilarity of Il Mostro, or the depth of feeling of La Vita E Bella, and some criticize it for being a pale imitation of the latter without the unlikely gravitas Benigni was able to bring to his moving Holocaust fable. But I still like it. Benigni as always plays a bumbling trickster and Italian poet, Attilio, who pursues his true love Vittoria (as always, played by Nicoletta Braschi) long past the point of annoyance, ignoring every brush-off, and her insistence that they'll never be together before she sees a tiger in the snow in Rome. When on the eve of the American invasion Vittoria visits his friend Fuad, an Iraqi poet played by Jean Reno, Fuad must call Attilio to tell him Vittoria is with him in Baghdad but badly hurt and dying, and Attilio in the middle of a war decides he must find a way to Baghdad to save her. Amid bombings, widespread looting, and total chaos Attilio, who in Rome can't even remember where he parked his car, is determined he can cobble together enough modern medicine from the rubble of Baghdad to save Vittoria, much to the amazement of Fuad and her Iraqi doctor. There are hints of the same romance before calamity and the flirtation with magical realism of La Vita E Bella, which is why it draws the unflattering comparison to a much greater film, but La Tigre e la Neve is it's own film, in a sense devolving in the opposite way at its resolution for Attilio and Vittoria. Where Guido in La Vita E Bella drew beauty and color out of the mundane to fight off the horror sweeping into his world, Attilio begins with joy and panache, but has to concoct something real or lose Vittoria and his imaginary relationship. But anyways, thinking about Joyeux Noel and No Man's Land brought to mind another film set in the current war.
And to Amstelboy and the future Mrs Amstelboy (or is Amstelgirl? Amstelfemme? Amsteldragon?) I apologize for the grievous lack of Drew Barrymore content in a post about film, but her films are generally sufficiently well promoted.
1. Dead Man's Shoes
This is about the cheapest looking movie I've ever seen, and one I can guarantee nobody's heard of since it had a $1,825 opening weekend in it's North American release. I thought it was a miracle it was available on a region one DVD until I saw it, and realized film students are going to be watching this for years to see how to make an award-winning film in three weeks for less than the price of a Happy Meal. The underlying story owes a bit to Get Carter, but of all the remakes of that plot, Dead Man's Shoes and Steven Soderbergh's The Limey are the two worth seeing. Actually I already raved about it at length here, so I'll just add that the lead in this film, Paddy Considine, is fantastic in about everything I've ever seen him in, including small parts in 24 Hour Party People, and Hot Fuzz, as well as in BAFTA winner and all-around excellent film My Summer of Love, featuring Paddy Considine perfecting his fascinating, gentle yet menacing, "saved by the grace of God but I could still choke the life out of you" persona, and Emily Blunt, best known for a scene stealing part as the hysterically bitchy first assistant in The Devil Wears Prada. Paddy Considine also shows up soon in The Bourne Ultimatum, and I hope that means we'll see more of both him and Emily Blunt in America.
2. Me Without You
This film along with Elling and Igby Goes Down formed the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, a group of films populated with eerily familiar characters... halfway through I realized I'd almost ended up married to the protagonist of that film (only she wasn't English) and Michelle Williams' entire career seems like some cruel practical joke where she keeps playing eerily familiar analogues of my ex-girlfriends. Another film in the Rufus Trilogy featured another eerily familiar scene which I couldn't watch without wondering, "Didn't a girl exactly like that try to tell me the same thing about myself... possibly also in a NYC diner?" Because of all that, I know I can't evaluate any of those three films in a detached way, so I asked somebody to watch it and give me an independent review, and she concurred with my opinion as to the greatness of Me Without You, but then again she also dated me and was one of the people Michelle Williams seemed to channel as an eerie blonde specter, so her taste and judgment is equally questionable. In any case, Me Without You is the story of two inseparable friends who grow up next door to each other in England, and find over years of growing up, going to university, and beyond that their friendship may be entirely too intimate to be healthy. Michelle Williams and Anna Friel are great as Holly and Marina, and both remain tragically underrated.
3. No Man's Land
This film was promoted like the most claustrophobic and depressing, pointless tragedy that could be captured on film, in other words, as the quintessential American image of foreign film. The premise is certainly a bit dour: a Croat and a Serb are stuck together in a trench in no man's land during the civil war in Yugoslavia, at each other's throats with another injured Croat lying prone on a land mine, unable to move for fear it will explode and kill them all. In truth, it's a fairly grim comedy and comment about Europe helplessly watching Yugoslavia disintegrate in the early 1990s, also including a French sergeant with the UN peace keepers who finds that even when everyone theoretically sort of wants the same thing it's still impossible to help. It's blessedly more Catch-22 than All Quiet on the Western Front, and deserved its Oscar win in 2002, beating out Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain, which only doesn't make my list because people I talk to have actually heard of it (even if they won't watch it).
4. Joyeux Noel
I may watch this movie every Christmas, along with Love, Actually and The Hebrew Hammer (also tragically underrated). Joyeux Noel is a fictitious story based on the real unofficial truce on December 24th, 1914, when all up and down the western front, British, French, and German soldiers all collectively took a break from killing each other and came out of their trenches to celebrate Christmas, playing football together, joining in prayer, and exchanging letters. There is a desire to connect to other human beings that this film celebrates, and the difference in men who have looked into each other's eyes when they return to their trenches the next day. Some called it schmaltzy, but I say it's the good kind, beginning with something that really happened up and down the line that night: in the film, a German soldier sings Stille Nacht to his platoon, and is answered by Scottish soldiers across no man's land playing bagpipes and singing Silent Night, while not to be outdone, the French soldiers join in with Douce Nuit. And now it occurs to me I already got all maudlin about this movie last Christmas anyways.
5. Elling
I think this movie is hilarious, despite how much of a tiresome collision course to wackiness it sounds like. Elling is a Norwegian mental patient with severe agoraphobia released to live in an apartment in Oslo with Kjell Bjarne, his borderline mentally retarded roommate, who is fascinated to the point of stupefaction by big breasts and pork. With nobody to count on but Kjell Bjarne and his faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, Elling has a rough adjustment to the outside world until he discovers poetry, and expresses himself as the mysterious underground poet "E", leaving poems in packages of sauerkraut at the supermarket. While I don't know anyone who has Elling's deep faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, this was familiar enough to make it part of the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, and it's quite funny. The shot of Elling and Kjell Bjarne eating dinner and staring with bewilderment and trepidation at their ringing phone, with the camera angle nervously tilting back and forth, still just cracks me up. Per Christian Ellefsen and Sven Nordin are so simultaneously hilarious and endearing in these mentally challenged roles, I just wanted to give them a big ol' hug (with nervous Elling squirming away).
I'll give an honorable mention to a film I just saw, La Tigre e la Neve, which was not a big award winner, or really nominated for much of anything prestigious. In comparison to Roberto Benigni's other films, it lacks the relentless hilarity of Il Mostro, or the depth of feeling of La Vita E Bella, and some criticize it for being a pale imitation of the latter without the unlikely gravitas Benigni was able to bring to his moving Holocaust fable. But I still like it. Benigni as always plays a bumbling trickster and Italian poet, Attilio, who pursues his true love Vittoria (as always, played by Nicoletta Braschi) long past the point of annoyance, ignoring every brush-off, and her insistence that they'll never be together before she sees a tiger in the snow in Rome. When on the eve of the American invasion Vittoria visits his friend Fuad, an Iraqi poet played by Jean Reno, Fuad must call Attilio to tell him Vittoria is with him in Baghdad but badly hurt and dying, and Attilio in the middle of a war decides he must find a way to Baghdad to save her. Amid bombings, widespread looting, and total chaos Attilio, who in Rome can't even remember where he parked his car, is determined he can cobble together enough modern medicine from the rubble of Baghdad to save Vittoria, much to the amazement of Fuad and her Iraqi doctor. There are hints of the same romance before calamity and the flirtation with magical realism of La Vita E Bella, which is why it draws the unflattering comparison to a much greater film, but La Tigre e la Neve is it's own film, in a sense devolving in the opposite way at its resolution for Attilio and Vittoria. Where Guido in La Vita E Bella drew beauty and color out of the mundane to fight off the horror sweeping into his world, Attilio begins with joy and panache, but has to concoct something real or lose Vittoria and his imaginary relationship. But anyways, thinking about Joyeux Noel and No Man's Land brought to mind another film set in the current war.
And to Amstelboy and the future Mrs Amstelboy (or is Amstelgirl? Amstelfemme? Amsteldragon?) I apologize for the grievous lack of Drew Barrymore content in a post about film, but her films are generally sufficiently well promoted.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
No more Tour updates
Team Astana has been extended a gracious "invitation" to leave the race and fuck off back to Kazakhstan after their team leader and several other team members failed doping tests, and the overall leader Michael Rasmussen apparently failed doping tests at every stage, so things are looking good for the Discovery Channel team, but not for the sport. There's no point in getting excited about it if half the field is cheating and half of the leaderboard may be "invited" to leave. People occasionally wonder why during the Olympics I so enthusiastically support the athletes of several small nations, but I get less excited about the United States, and it's because of all the drug samples "accidentally misplaced" at the '96 Olympics. If we're going to cheat for bragging rights, then why bother with the event, just skip to the end so we can find out who gets to thump their chest. David Stern said it best explaining a harsh decision regarding suspensions in the play-offs when he said sport is the one area of human endeavor created by an agreement to follow certain rules, so that without the rules, there can be no such thing as sport. The law is a set of rules, but all the situations governed by law and the legal system predate the legal system and would exist in its absence: crimes invite vigilante justice and mob rule, property disputes can be settled by force, and the ability to combine force of arms with reputation created the world's first banks: secure strongholds with armed guards. If you remove the rules from sport, there is no sport: a race can become one woman running 100 yards and one running 110 meters, each claiming to be the winner for finishing first and for running farther respectively, and it dissolves into two independent events without the governing set of rules to join them in actual competition. And now the Tour de France is just a bunch of guys out for a bike ride in colorful shirts. From now on I'm sticking to the biathlon for my fill of obscure European sports nobody watches in America. (And I can't believe Norway lost to Russia in the Men's relay... that was bad enough, but Sweden winning the mixed relay?)
Monday, July 23, 2007
Bio Jet Fuel... or, Goodbye Holland
I just read on Slashdot that Boeing is pursuing the development of a new biofuel, produced by algae on sewage treatment ponds, to provide a new stable, environmentally friendly source of jet fuel. If successful, this would not only reduce the carbon footprint of aviation but also hedge against their most volatile expense: petroleum derived jet fuel, the importance of which is clearly illustrated by the importance of per-seat fuel cost in driving the development of the A380 superjumbo and the 787 Dreamliner. The environmental benefits are a bit overstated, since biofuel won't help contrail formation, and cheap fuel encourages more flights and more contrails, but it's nevertheless an intriguing proposal.
The first question that has to be asked is whether this would be scalable to provide fuel for the entire aviation industry, given growth in air travel in developing markets counterbalanced by greater efficiency in new aircraft models, growth in rail, and potential environmental restrictions. But even if it didn't, it might be enough to remove some of the volatility from jet fuel prices and annoy some Alberta real estate speculators who shit kittens whenever energy prices threaten to drop. But based on the article, which is admittedly short on references, slashdot contributors calculated that producing enough fuel for current aviation needs would require an area roughly the size of the Netherlands. What I love about slashdot is the logical solution proposed by multiple people was "Great, let's flood Holland and use that." Most experts would point out that production could be distributed throughout the world's sewage treatment plants and America's deserts, but I say, why go to all the trouble when we can just flood the Netherlands?
At this point, what's their big contribution? I'll admit, I like the occasional slice of gouda cheese in a croque-monsieur, but that's about it. Plus once the town of Gouda was flooded, anybody could make Gouda cheese, just like we can all make parmesan cheese and champagne (but not roquefort or those poncy bastards will sue us). Losing Ajax's youth development would really hurt football, but then again, they've already set up shop in Capetown, probably already hedging against flooding, and the canals don't freeze anymore, so give the speedskaters an orange unitard, a ticket to Stockholm, and an ounce of prime Humboldt Co. bud and they'll never know the difference. Amstelboy's mom has long since emigrated, as have all the people anyone might like to hang onto: Robin van Persie's up in London, HP's off in Singapore, and Paul Verhoeven has made like one Dutch-language film in the last quarter century (the Belgians crank out all the cinema in the Benelux anyways). We can send over a helicopter to pick up the rest of Amstelboy's family (and Carice van Houten) off the roof of the Hoftoren. On his way out, Rudolf can pick me up a few kilos of gouda cheese and flick the switch to shut off all the windmills, and it'll only take one good rain to have the whole place flooded, and a major victory for alternative energy sources.
The first question that has to be asked is whether this would be scalable to provide fuel for the entire aviation industry, given growth in air travel in developing markets counterbalanced by greater efficiency in new aircraft models, growth in rail, and potential environmental restrictions. But even if it didn't, it might be enough to remove some of the volatility from jet fuel prices and annoy some Alberta real estate speculators who shit kittens whenever energy prices threaten to drop. But based on the article, which is admittedly short on references, slashdot contributors calculated that producing enough fuel for current aviation needs would require an area roughly the size of the Netherlands. What I love about slashdot is the logical solution proposed by multiple people was "Great, let's flood Holland and use that." Most experts would point out that production could be distributed throughout the world's sewage treatment plants and America's deserts, but I say, why go to all the trouble when we can just flood the Netherlands?
At this point, what's their big contribution? I'll admit, I like the occasional slice of gouda cheese in a croque-monsieur, but that's about it. Plus once the town of Gouda was flooded, anybody could make Gouda cheese, just like we can all make parmesan cheese and champagne (but not roquefort or those poncy bastards will sue us). Losing Ajax's youth development would really hurt football, but then again, they've already set up shop in Capetown, probably already hedging against flooding, and the canals don't freeze anymore, so give the speedskaters an orange unitard, a ticket to Stockholm, and an ounce of prime Humboldt Co. bud and they'll never know the difference. Amstelboy's mom has long since emigrated, as have all the people anyone might like to hang onto: Robin van Persie's up in London, HP's off in Singapore, and Paul Verhoeven has made like one Dutch-language film in the last quarter century (the Belgians crank out all the cinema in the Benelux anyways). We can send over a helicopter to pick up the rest of Amstelboy's family (and Carice van Houten) off the roof of the Hoftoren. On his way out, Rudolf can pick me up a few kilos of gouda cheese and flick the switch to shut off all the windmills, and it'll only take one good rain to have the whole place flooded, and a major victory for alternative energy sources.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Annoying Tour de France Update
A few years ago I had this girlfriend who maintained this outwardly calm, cerebral demeanor, focused on higher orders of human expression, art, literature, theory, and whatever was on the WB (nobody can keep it up 24 hours a day). She often took this amused, incredulous view of my various passions for the Vikings, Norwegian biathletes, and the films of Christian Bale, which was cute but made me feel a bit like an exotic species of animal she was studying with a telephoto lens and a logbook. That may sound paranoid but later I found her journal and read the entry from January 17, 1999*:
Rufus appears very agitated today, frenetically circling his territory in a purple shirt and silly hat making low howls or whines, and chasing away birds. Later he approached with his eyes downcast and made a half-hearted attempt at a mating posture, before scurrying back into his den muttering "Dirty birds, dirty birds".
But then, once a year, in a ritual as unfathomable as a salmon swimming upstream to die, she would turn into this manic, full on stat-head sports freak, for the duration of the Tour de France. It was like horror movies where backpackers wander into some idyllic, pastoral town only to find they've arrived for sort of cannibalistic annual festival... actually it wasn't like that at all, but I have some sort of lurking cannibalistic nightmare involving ex-girlfriends that spills out every once in a while. Anyways, I still occasionally think I'll tune into ESPN during the Tour and catch her on Stump the Schend answering questions about Eddie Merckx's domestique in the 1970 Tour de France and flicking yellow Lance Armstrong wristbands at Stuart Scott. Since I don't get Tour updates from the expert anymore, here's what I've decided you all must know to bring you up do date on the Tour de France (most of which will be inaccurate).
While principally a trek through the whole The Tour occasionally drifts into other countries, with stages in Belgium and Germany. This year, it began in London (aka Lun-donn) even though nobody's riding through the Chunnel (aka Europe's new toy). From Dunkirk, it procedes into Belgium before heading south to Provence (note to the Captain: do not even consider saying "That's a Nice way to go!") and into Bordeaux, turning north and ending in Cognac (home to some fine people), before picking up again in Ile de France for the run into Paris down cobblestone streets. Today the stage finished in Plateau de Beille, so close to the Andorran border you could pop over and see why neither Spain nor France want it.
Currently wearing the Maillot Jaune is Danish bank robber Michael Rasmussen, who almost certainly reads my blog, but will probably not get the marginally funny Rabobank/rob-a-bank joke about his sponsor and will therefore sue me for my $1.46 in ad revenue. The progress of the maillot jaune illustrates a couple important points about the Tour: until Bourg-en-Bresse, the overall leader was Fabian Cancellara, the time trial specialist who won the prologue, and the second biggest aphrodisiac to come out of Switzerland since cheese fondue. After the first stage, Robbie "Don't call me Obi Wan" McEwen took over the green jersey, which goes to the leading sprinter, and then he and Tom Boonen and other sprinters took the first few stages, while Cancellara won one stage but never relinquished the overall lead. Then they hit the mountains, where all the sprinters tend to pull over so they can throw up and bike home gently sobbing like the losers that they are, and the race really begins. The time trial specialist was the only one of them to wear the Maillot Jaune until the climbers took over because time trials matter in this event, and apparently count for more than winning sprints in the flat stages. (A lot of Lance Armstrong's mystique came from winning all the time trials, intimidating his opponents and getting some nice time bonuses to boot.)
Except for the first mountain stage, Rasmussen has been the King of the Mountains, the best performer in climbs, entitled to wear a very Euro pink polka dot jersey, and this has been good enough to make him the overall leader. Cycling is also a team sport, with defined roles, like the guy who carries water bottles in his shirt while trying to keep up with the pack, the guys who wear down the leaders and protect their own, and there are bonuses associated with a team's overall time. Robabank are third, behind Lance Armstrong's old team Discovery Channel, and Astana, the team from Kazakhstan who've heard all the Borat jokes, thank you. I was surprised to see of all things a Kazakh team second place overall, with two riders in the top ten. A Kazakh rider, sure, but seeing Astana up there with Lotto, Euskaltel, and Groene Appel Quickstep was kind of cool, and a great excuse to slip in Flemish pro-cycling/diarrhea jokes that will amuse nobody.
Meanwhile in America, the only coverage I've seen of the entire race has been repeated footage of Marcus Burghardt's crash, when he ran into a stray dog, hitting the poor animal so hard his front wheel is visibly deformed. The coverage is so sparse that Burghardt's name wasn't even mentioned. Burghardt and the dog are both reportedly uninjured, eliminating any chance T-Mobile spokeswoman Catherine Zeta Jones will fly in to nurse their team's injured rider back to health. The only time the Tour is mentioned in America is for novelty when an American wins, or if you're dating my spoke-head ex-girlfriend, although the charisma of Lance Armstrong helped.
On the topic of Lance, let it also be known that he is not the undisputed greatest cyclist ever, despite what the media who don't cover the sport have to say about it. He was a single race specialist who only led his team during the Tour (while they competed the rest of the season), and he was damned good at it. He also had a great team, with a fantastic #2 guy for most of his wins, none of whom ever rate any mention while anybody who took the floor with Michael Jordan's Bulls was instantly a Beethoven to his Mozart. Okay, maybe more a Berlioz. The closest thing to a "Michael Jordan of Cycling" was Belgium's Eddie Merckx, who was a five time Tour champion, five time Giro d'Italia winner, and also won just about everywhere else, rather than spending his whole year prepping for one race. To achieve what Lance Armstrong did is amazing, and nothing should diminish that... he wasn't just in the right place at the right time, he earned his historic run, and may be the best Tour rider ever. But does the history of cycling have to begin with Greg LeMond and his Taco Bell delivery boy commercials and end with Lance's cameo in Dodge Ball?
For more information on the Tour de France, just wait patiently until I can be bothered to check the results again at www.letour.fr and post something here. This will take a while since my attention span is short and my French is terrible.
*-Technically I didn't even meet my spokehead ex for another year after this, but when I explained the importance of January 17, 1999 as a key emotional event in my life, that was about the most bewildered reaction I ever got from her, and it still amuses me to remember that. Amstelboy and I were both literally doubled over in nauseated grief as the Vikings choked away a Superbowl run to the
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Twins 0 - 1 Ligers (Gosh!)
To summarize this game, you just have to look at Matt Garza's performance: 7 innings pitched, three hits, no earned runs, and a loss. He was sent down before the all-star break to deal with a schedule/rotation problem, and in his triumphant return to the majors he goes seven innings and gives up no earned runs, and still gets tagged with the loss, the 1-0 Bert Blyleven special. On the run, Brandon Inge reached first on an error by Twins shortstop Jason Bartlett, then Garza advanced him into scoring position on a wild pitch, and Magglio Ordonez sent him home on a single.
The Twins only real scoring opportunities were undone by the sleepy bats of the heart of the line-up. #7 reached reached first in the 4th, only to be thrown out 2-4 on a hit and run since #5 came up with a big K (for those of you playing Twingo at home). The big opportunity that people were talking about (bitterly) came in the 6th when Castillo and Bartlett both got on base, and then Mauer struck out without taking his bat off his shoulder, and Cuddyer struck out to end the inning, then Morneau led off the 7th with a strikeout to make it three in a row. This was most unfortunate, and the lack of hitting was matched with a failure to manufacture runs, like Cuddyer's hit and run strike-out, or Nick Punto's inability to lay down a bunt... actually that one's infuriating, since he keeps trying to hit bunt singles and shows bunt on the first pitch of every at-bat, so you'd think he could lay down a bunt. But without reading too much into one game in which a great batter (Mauer), an RBI guy (Cuddyer), and a power hitter (Morneau) all faltered, it stirred up the thought that the Twins really need more scoring.
The future of a lot of players is up in the air over the next couple of years, since the Twins are have to face contract negotiations with Johan Santana, Torii Hunter, and Joe Nathan, all critical parts of their pitching/defensive prowess, and decide who's making the rotation if Francisco Liriano comes back healthy. And talk still swirls around trading pitching for a power hitting third baseman to solve the Twins offensive woes. So here's my take: they have to start putting together the '10 Twins now. The big contract story in baseball recently was Ichiro signing a $100m contract with the Mariners, even though table-setters like him statistically aren't game changers... but Kings County just built two new stadiums in downtown Seattle, and as the face of the franchise, Ichiro had to be resigned, to give the fans something after they gave the Mariners their infrastructure for the next 30 years. Similarly in north Lon-Don, Arsenal fans are getting a little steamed, because the club went through a few lean years paying for a new stadium, and now that it's open, they're short-handed up front and selling off their superstar striker's contract, and their fans aren't too happy about it.
In a similar situation, after years of small ball, Twins fans and taxpayers just spread our legs under the overpass at 5th and 3rd so the Twins could erect a new ballpark, and there's a definite expectation that new revenue streams will mean a bigger budget. Personally I don't give a shit as long as the seats on the third base line face home plate and I don't have to spend the whole game on a yoga mat leaning out in the cobra position to see the at bat. But the faces of the resurgent franchise have been Santana and Hunter, winners of 4 division titles so far, and the Twins are acting like they can't keep them while the Yankees are talking like they're going on a Chicago Ave shopping spree this winter. If in the next year, Nathan is replaced by Neshek as closer, the rotation is drawn from Silva, Baker, Bonzer, Garza, Liriano, and Slowey, with decent relievers, they'll be okay in the regular season if not so intimidating in a play-off series. Without Hunter there will be a gaping hole in center field, with Michael Cuddyer our only decent outfielder, and an even weaker offensive output. If the Twins open the new stadium with gleaming new cash registers and then trot out a weaker line-up, that isn't going to go over too well, especially if Santana and Hunter end up in New York and Anaheim.
The current crop of talent and the increased gameday revenue on the horizon should be enough to keep the core intact, have a good rotation and bullpen and have enough pitching talent left over to trade for a hitter. There's obviously room at third for a hitter to slide in and make Punto a utility infielder, or in left field, or as a DH. After nearly ceasing to exist in the 90s, the Twins should have the foresight to do these things, and accept losing money until 2010, so they can put some pennants up and use this to sell seats in their sexy new stadium. If they blow a chance at winning to pinch pennies until the new stadium opens and alienate all the people putting down deposits for seats, then somebody save them from themselves.
The Twins only real scoring opportunities were undone by the sleepy bats of the heart of the line-up. #7 reached reached first in the 4th, only to be thrown out 2-4 on a hit and run since #5 came up with a big K (for those of you playing Twingo at home). The big opportunity that people were talking about (bitterly) came in the 6th when Castillo and Bartlett both got on base, and then Mauer struck out without taking his bat off his shoulder, and Cuddyer struck out to end the inning, then Morneau led off the 7th with a strikeout to make it three in a row. This was most unfortunate, and the lack of hitting was matched with a failure to manufacture runs, like Cuddyer's hit and run strike-out, or Nick Punto's inability to lay down a bunt... actually that one's infuriating, since he keeps trying to hit bunt singles and shows bunt on the first pitch of every at-bat, so you'd think he could lay down a bunt. But without reading too much into one game in which a great batter (Mauer), an RBI guy (Cuddyer), and a power hitter (Morneau) all faltered, it stirred up the thought that the Twins really need more scoring.
The future of a lot of players is up in the air over the next couple of years, since the Twins are have to face contract negotiations with Johan Santana, Torii Hunter, and Joe Nathan, all critical parts of their pitching/defensive prowess, and decide who's making the rotation if Francisco Liriano comes back healthy. And talk still swirls around trading pitching for a power hitting third baseman to solve the Twins offensive woes. So here's my take: they have to start putting together the '10 Twins now. The big contract story in baseball recently was Ichiro signing a $100m contract with the Mariners, even though table-setters like him statistically aren't game changers... but Kings County just built two new stadiums in downtown Seattle, and as the face of the franchise, Ichiro had to be resigned, to give the fans something after they gave the Mariners their infrastructure for the next 30 years. Similarly in north Lon-Don, Arsenal fans are getting a little steamed, because the club went through a few lean years paying for a new stadium, and now that it's open, they're short-handed up front and selling off their superstar striker's contract, and their fans aren't too happy about it.
In a similar situation, after years of small ball, Twins fans and taxpayers just spread our legs under the overpass at 5th and 3rd so the Twins could erect a new ballpark, and there's a definite expectation that new revenue streams will mean a bigger budget. Personally I don't give a shit as long as the seats on the third base line face home plate and I don't have to spend the whole game on a yoga mat leaning out in the cobra position to see the at bat. But the faces of the resurgent franchise have been Santana and Hunter, winners of 4 division titles so far, and the Twins are acting like they can't keep them while the Yankees are talking like they're going on a Chicago Ave shopping spree this winter. If in the next year, Nathan is replaced by Neshek as closer, the rotation is drawn from Silva, Baker, Bonzer, Garza, Liriano, and Slowey, with decent relievers, they'll be okay in the regular season if not so intimidating in a play-off series. Without Hunter there will be a gaping hole in center field, with Michael Cuddyer our only decent outfielder, and an even weaker offensive output. If the Twins open the new stadium with gleaming new cash registers and then trot out a weaker line-up, that isn't going to go over too well, especially if Santana and Hunter end up in New York and Anaheim.
The current crop of talent and the increased gameday revenue on the horizon should be enough to keep the core intact, have a good rotation and bullpen and have enough pitching talent left over to trade for a hitter. There's obviously room at third for a hitter to slide in and make Punto a utility infielder, or in left field, or as a DH. After nearly ceasing to exist in the 90s, the Twins should have the foresight to do these things, and accept losing money until 2010, so they can put some pennants up and use this to sell seats in their sexy new stadium. If they blow a chance at winning to pinch pennies until the new stadium opens and alienate all the people putting down deposits for seats, then somebody save them from themselves.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Twins 5 - 3 A's
Is Juan Rincon's job now to set up save situations for Joe Nathan? After eight shut-out innings from Santana and Neshek (with eight strike-outs for Santana) Rincon comes in and gives up two runs in the ninth in spectacular fashion, hitting the lead-off batter and then giving up a home run, all so Nathan can come in and get the save. This isn't the first time this year I've seen him come into a game the Twins were dominating and give up just enough runs to create a save opportunity, and it's damned annoying. What's funny is Nathan's first pitch should have ended the game, when Bobby "Bada-Bing" Crosby hit a ground ball to Jason Bartlett who turned a double play with Castillo... the throw to first was in time, but the umpire disagreed and Crosby reached on a fielder's choice. (This was the second bullshit double play call, after Justin Morneau lined out to short in the fifth, and Michael Cuddyer had to dive back to second base to tag up, made it, and still got called out for the double play, but these things happen when teams from lucrative TV markets hit town.)
Crosby made it home on a double by Jason Kendall, but Nathan got the last out off of former Twin Shannon Stewart, who went 0-5. I enjoyed Stewart's bad day at the plate because of the continuing debate amongst Twins fans over a pre-season decision to sign Lew Ford over Shannon Stewart, when both signed for similar salaries and Stewart has been having a great year at the plate, while Lew Ford remains a marginal player. There were numerous reasons not to sign Stewart as a fifth outfielder, like Ford's range allows him to back up Torii Hunter in center field, and Stewart's champions always seem to gloss over his shortcomings. Since those who can't let go of the road not taken are a pretty bitter lot, they're all waiting in the wings for Stewart to come back and haunt us, and it's gratifying to see him go 0-5 and force them to bide their time before they can tear down their own team again.
Nick Punto seemed to be clearly aware he's on the trading block, as the Twins weigh the relative merit of a 3rd baseman who plays great defense and runs the bases well, but can't get on base or hit for any power. Despite his public nonchalance, his error in the 8th seemed down to trying way too hard... up 5-0, he tried to make a rolling barehanded grab at a ground ball and throw it to first in one motion to stop a lead-off single, and instead threw the ball into the A's dugout. Neshek got the next three batters anyways, so Punto's error didn't cost the Twins anything, but a play like that, if successful, is the only reason to keep him around. Now the Twins just need to find somebody so astoundingly stupid that they'll take Punto and Rincon for a power-hitting third baseman... maybe they should try the Giants. And happy birthday to Brooke Ballentyne, wherever you are.
Crosby made it home on a double by Jason Kendall, but Nathan got the last out off of former Twin Shannon Stewart, who went 0-5. I enjoyed Stewart's bad day at the plate because of the continuing debate amongst Twins fans over a pre-season decision to sign Lew Ford over Shannon Stewart, when both signed for similar salaries and Stewart has been having a great year at the plate, while Lew Ford remains a marginal player. There were numerous reasons not to sign Stewart as a fifth outfielder, like Ford's range allows him to back up Torii Hunter in center field, and Stewart's champions always seem to gloss over his shortcomings. Since those who can't let go of the road not taken are a pretty bitter lot, they're all waiting in the wings for Stewart to come back and haunt us, and it's gratifying to see him go 0-5 and force them to bide their time before they can tear down their own team again.
Nick Punto seemed to be clearly aware he's on the trading block, as the Twins weigh the relative merit of a 3rd baseman who plays great defense and runs the bases well, but can't get on base or hit for any power. Despite his public nonchalance, his error in the 8th seemed down to trying way too hard... up 5-0, he tried to make a rolling barehanded grab at a ground ball and throw it to first in one motion to stop a lead-off single, and instead threw the ball into the A's dugout. Neshek got the next three batters anyways, so Punto's error didn't cost the Twins anything, but a play like that, if successful, is the only reason to keep him around. Now the Twins just need to find somebody so astoundingly stupid that they'll take Punto and Rincon for a power-hitting third baseman... maybe they should try the Giants. And happy birthday to Brooke Ballentyne, wherever you are.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Take Her to Bed
What is the difference between women aged: 8, 18, 28, 38, 48,
58. 68, and 78?
At 8 -- You take her to bed and tell her a story.
At 18 -- You tell her a story and take her to bed.
At 28 -- You don't need to tell her a story to take her to bed.
At 38 -- She tells you a story and takes you to bed.
At 48 -- She tells you a story to avoid going to bed.
At 58 -- You stay in bed to avoid her story.
At 68 -- If you take her to bed, that'll be a story!
At 78 -- What story??? What bed??? Who the hell are you???
(I have no idea where this originates, I just think it's funny.)
58. 68, and 78?
At 8 -- You take her to bed and tell her a story.
At 18 -- You tell her a story and take her to bed.
At 28 -- You don't need to tell her a story to take her to bed.
At 38 -- She tells you a story and takes you to bed.
At 48 -- She tells you a story to avoid going to bed.
At 58 -- You stay in bed to avoid her story.
At 68 -- If you take her to bed, that'll be a story!
At 78 -- What story??? What bed??? Who the hell are you???
(I have no idea where this originates, I just think it's funny.)
Sunday, July 08, 2007
These things are unrelated
1. Historic 32 run day for the Twins
The whipping the Twins put on the Black Sox Friday night was the most runs scored in a single day by a Major League team since the Red Sox scored 35 runs in a doubleheader back in 1939. The Twins won 20-14 in the first game, which is some pretty good run support for Kevin Slowey who gave up seven runs and still got the win. For reasons passing understanding that game wasn't televised, but I watched the second game, in which Matt Garza and the Twins bullpen shut out the Black Sox, and the Twins hit six home runs to win 12-0, scoring eleven runs off the homers by Morneau, Cuddyer, Hunter, and Cirillo, and the Piranhas drove in the twelfth with a couple base hits, and lead runner Nick Punto nipping a couple extra bases on each hit, just for Ozzie Guillen. The Black Sox tried everything too, like in the first inning when Jim Thome took out our catcher by over-swinging at a strike and letting the bat fly right into Mike Redmond's head. Some may say it wasn't intentional, but he managed to find the one spot on Redmond's head not covered by a mask and helmet, and he took a practice swing, letting go of his bat and hurling it all the way to the backstop on strike one (scaring the crap out of the people behind home plate). Because he caught the first game, Joe Mauer was in as a DH, and Gardenhire had just abandoned his usual three catchers policy, so Joe had to catch the rest of the game and the Twins lost the use of the designated hitter. The Twins had their pitchers hit and still spanked the Sox 12-0, ironically winning American League style playing under National League rules. Justin Morneau's 3-run homer in the first was the 100th of his career, and Morneau went on to homer not once, not twice, but thrice (apologies to Mr. Burns) en route to becoming the first Twin to hit three home runs in a game since 1973. The Black Sox won yesterday against BOOF in what seems likely to be Mark Buerhle's last start* in pale hose, and the decider is today with Carlos Silva facing Javier Vazquez.
*-Apparently Buehrle is willing to sign for less than his open market value to stay in Chicago but wants to be sure he stays in Chicago if he's giving up money to do it, so he's reasonably demanded a no-trade clause and the Sox won't give it to him. How they can manage to be a small market team strapped for cash while splitting a city twice the size of Boston with the hopeless Cubs is beyond me. I know it's fashionable to be a Cubs fan, and the Brewers and Cardinals, and to a lesser extent the Tigers, Reds, and Indians, squeeze out their TV market, but seriously they can't take the risk on a no-trade clause or pay full market value on a pitcher? The Twins haven't let their big targets go, and they're squeezing their revenue out everything west of the St. Croix, not south of Wacker Drive.
2. SpikeTV the Sick Man of Basic Cable?
This morning I turned on Fist of Fury, aka The Big Boss, which I tivo'ed off of SpikeTV, hoping to finally see the last of the big five Bruce Lee movies (Fist of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death) that I hadn't seen. At first, I was really disappointed to find how similar it was to The Chinese Connection, and how derivative it must have been being released just two years after Fist of Fury. I had this nagging feeling that I'd seen all this before, but I passed that off as remembering Jet Li's remake Fist of Legend. After a bit I started to lose interest, doubting there would be anything on the order of the epic fights with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Chuck Norris in Game of Death and Way of the Dragon, or even the great scene in Fist of Legend when Jet Li goes into the Japanese dojo, politely takes his shoes off, and beats the living hell out of the entire school and cripples the huge karate master, and then meekly strolls back out. But then letting it run in the background for a while, I eventually recognized a scene and realized it fucking was The Chinese Connection.
What the hell is this crap? I know Asians are all supposed to look alike to us round-eyed devils, and some of Bruce Lee's movies were recut to manufacture sequels and half the time he's not even in Game of Death, but nobody over there has seen The Chinese Connection? I was going to record Enter the Dragon and any other Bruce Lee movies Spike was showing, but now I wonder if I'll get a triple feature of Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and Brokeback Mountain instead... Bruce Lee, Ang Lee, Jane Austen John Saxon, close enough. Actually given the godawful voice actress who dubbed over Zhang Ziyi when they showed House of Flying Daggers, which was so bad I had to turn it off, maybe I'll just give up on Hong Kong films on American TV and just finish watching 8 Femmes and thank heavens that it didn't make a big splash here, or there'd be a bubble gum remake with Avril Lavigne, Lindsay Lohan, Mariah Carey, Madonna, and some American Idol finalists set in the Hamptons, only more "accessible" and "empowering".
3. 98.6 degrees... sounds like the hot tub at the Captain's place
It was almost 100 degrees out yesterday, and completely still leading to a total absence of ventilation in my apartment. About 10:30 when it was still 90+ degrees out I finally gave up and turned on the AC so I didn't have to sleep naked in a kiddie pool with my windows open. If this continues, I'm moving to Nunavut (which is a real place, even if none of my countrymen seem to have heard of it) and running the chicken hut in Baker Lake, NU. You may wonder why I'd go to Canada when I keep making fun of them, but consider two things: the cool people in Baker Lake are all Inuit, not British Canadian, and since Russia just claimed half the Arctic Ocean as part of their territory and paranoid Canadians on the internet insist the USA claimed the other half, (according to Canadians this annexation really happened but just wasn't reported in American newspapers and that's why you haven't heard of it), Nunavut's warm water ports on the shipping route from Asia to America and Europe won't be Canadian long. (I know they're not warm now, but give our SUV's, hairspray, and New York to Philly plane flights time to work, we'll have that sucker melted in no time.) So somebody email me when the new Batman is released, for The Dark Knight I'll fly back down into the sauna.
The whipping the Twins put on the Black Sox Friday night was the most runs scored in a single day by a Major League team since the Red Sox scored 35 runs in a doubleheader back in 1939. The Twins won 20-14 in the first game, which is some pretty good run support for Kevin Slowey who gave up seven runs and still got the win. For reasons passing understanding that game wasn't televised, but I watched the second game, in which Matt Garza and the Twins bullpen shut out the Black Sox, and the Twins hit six home runs to win 12-0, scoring eleven runs off the homers by Morneau, Cuddyer, Hunter, and Cirillo, and the Piranhas drove in the twelfth with a couple base hits, and lead runner Nick Punto nipping a couple extra bases on each hit, just for Ozzie Guillen. The Black Sox tried everything too, like in the first inning when Jim Thome took out our catcher by over-swinging at a strike and letting the bat fly right into Mike Redmond's head. Some may say it wasn't intentional, but he managed to find the one spot on Redmond's head not covered by a mask and helmet, and he took a practice swing, letting go of his bat and hurling it all the way to the backstop on strike one (scaring the crap out of the people behind home plate). Because he caught the first game, Joe Mauer was in as a DH, and Gardenhire had just abandoned his usual three catchers policy, so Joe had to catch the rest of the game and the Twins lost the use of the designated hitter. The Twins had their pitchers hit and still spanked the Sox 12-0, ironically winning American League style playing under National League rules. Justin Morneau's 3-run homer in the first was the 100th of his career, and Morneau went on to homer not once, not twice, but thrice (apologies to Mr. Burns) en route to becoming the first Twin to hit three home runs in a game since 1973. The Black Sox won yesterday against BOOF in what seems likely to be Mark Buerhle's last start* in pale hose, and the decider is today with Carlos Silva facing Javier Vazquez.
*-Apparently Buehrle is willing to sign for less than his open market value to stay in Chicago but wants to be sure he stays in Chicago if he's giving up money to do it, so he's reasonably demanded a no-trade clause and the Sox won't give it to him. How they can manage to be a small market team strapped for cash while splitting a city twice the size of Boston with the hopeless Cubs is beyond me. I know it's fashionable to be a Cubs fan, and the Brewers and Cardinals, and to a lesser extent the Tigers, Reds, and Indians, squeeze out their TV market, but seriously they can't take the risk on a no-trade clause or pay full market value on a pitcher? The Twins haven't let their big targets go, and they're squeezing their revenue out everything west of the St. Croix, not south of Wacker Drive.
2. SpikeTV the Sick Man of Basic Cable?
This morning I turned on Fist of Fury, aka The Big Boss, which I tivo'ed off of SpikeTV, hoping to finally see the last of the big five Bruce Lee movies (Fist of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death) that I hadn't seen. At first, I was really disappointed to find how similar it was to The Chinese Connection, and how derivative it must have been being released just two years after Fist of Fury. I had this nagging feeling that I'd seen all this before, but I passed that off as remembering Jet Li's remake Fist of Legend. After a bit I started to lose interest, doubting there would be anything on the order of the epic fights with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Chuck Norris in Game of Death and Way of the Dragon, or even the great scene in Fist of Legend when Jet Li goes into the Japanese dojo, politely takes his shoes off, and beats the living hell out of the entire school and cripples the huge karate master, and then meekly strolls back out. But then letting it run in the background for a while, I eventually recognized a scene and realized it fucking was The Chinese Connection.
What the hell is this crap? I know Asians are all supposed to look alike to us round-eyed devils, and some of Bruce Lee's movies were recut to manufacture sequels and half the time he's not even in Game of Death, but nobody over there has seen The Chinese Connection? I was going to record Enter the Dragon and any other Bruce Lee movies Spike was showing, but now I wonder if I'll get a triple feature of Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and Brokeback Mountain instead... Bruce Lee, Ang Lee, Jane Austen John Saxon, close enough. Actually given the godawful voice actress who dubbed over Zhang Ziyi when they showed House of Flying Daggers, which was so bad I had to turn it off, maybe I'll just give up on Hong Kong films on American TV and just finish watching 8 Femmes and thank heavens that it didn't make a big splash here, or there'd be a bubble gum remake with Avril Lavigne, Lindsay Lohan, Mariah Carey, Madonna, and some American Idol finalists set in the Hamptons, only more "accessible" and "empowering".
3. 98.6 degrees... sounds like the hot tub at the Captain's place
It was almost 100 degrees out yesterday, and completely still leading to a total absence of ventilation in my apartment. About 10:30 when it was still 90+ degrees out I finally gave up and turned on the AC so I didn't have to sleep naked in a kiddie pool with my windows open. If this continues, I'm moving to Nunavut (which is a real place, even if none of my countrymen seem to have heard of it) and running the chicken hut in Baker Lake, NU. You may wonder why I'd go to Canada when I keep making fun of them, but consider two things: the cool people in Baker Lake are all Inuit, not British Canadian, and since Russia just claimed half the Arctic Ocean as part of their territory and paranoid Canadians on the internet insist the USA claimed the other half, (according to Canadians this annexation really happened but just wasn't reported in American newspapers and that's why you haven't heard of it), Nunavut's warm water ports on the shipping route from Asia to America and Europe won't be Canadian long. (I know they're not warm now, but give our SUV's, hairspray, and New York to Philly plane flights time to work, we'll have that sucker melted in no time.) So somebody email me when the new Batman is released, for The Dark Knight I'll fly back down into the sauna.
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