Polivision?

Superman's Death & Return, Summarized

2012-02-09T16:32:00.004-05:00

"The Death Of Superman" was a seminal event of my childhood. While I was a big comic book reader at that time, and was a fan of Superman via cartoons/comic strips/etc., I hadn't actually ever read a Superman comic book itself until, of course, he died. I was a Spider-Man guy through and through, with only a slight detour into Thor that spurred on by, of course, a Spidey guest appearance.

So, Superman's death was not just my entrance into Superman comics, but DC in general. (Knightfall was similarly my entrance into the Batman mythos.) It was an interesting look into what was, and still somewhat is, a different way of writing and producing comics than Marvel. I think what impressed me most was, of all things, the organization. At the time, Superman was featured in four different titles --- Superman, Adventures of Superman, Action Comics and Man Of Steel --- that each had their separate writing and art team that more or less acted independently, but every title was held together in a general continuity. The "four Supermen" gimmick was brilliant since it allowed all four titles to each have their own hero for a little bit, before bringing it all together for the storyline's finale. Looking back, this was clearly a sign I'd get into journalism as a career; what other kid reads Superman comics and is most impressed by a tight editorial hand? Would I have read an entire issue about Perry White proofing Clark Kent's column? Probably.

Anyway, as much as I enjoyed this storyline and still regard it as one of the all-time best and certainly most influential (moreso for Green Lantern, oddly enough, than for Superman) in comic book history....this goofy summary is not too far off.

Use Your Illusion I and II*

2012-02-06T20:55:00.002-05:00

Our first bit of visual trickery has two rules. Stare directly at the red dot for about 30 seconds. Then, look away at a blank surface and start blinking your eyes rapidly. A rather surprising image will appear as you blink. You guessed it, it's Frank Stallone.

Our second illusion is a man who appears to be losing his head. Not, losing his head in an INXS fashion, which is all the more ironic since Michael Hutchence lost his head via auto-erotic asphyxiation, but rather this fellow appears to literally have his skull vanish. Ooooh! That's incredible! *cymbal crash*

* = My friend Misha (maybe the biggest G&R diehard on the planet) no doubt saw this blog title, thought "All right, Mark is going to review these albums, this should be interesting!" and was then horribly disappointed. Sorry, Misha. Even worse, if I do ever review those records, I'll have to use a different title. Maybe I can just allude it, so 'Use Your Allusion' or something? Use Your Allusion 2? I dunno.

UFC 143 Picks

2012-02-04T14:07:00.001-05:00

* Roy Nelson over Fabricio Werdum, decision
Werdum returns to the UFC after an overall successful (yet bizarre) Strikeforce stint that saw him win three of four fights, become the first man to ever submit Fedor Emelianenko and yet also look like an absolute horse's ass in a decision loss to Alistair Overeem. If you missed that fight, Werdum spent most of it on the mat trying to engage Overeem on the ground, only to have Overeem refuse. That speaks to Werdum's main issue --- he is entirely one-dimensional, but the one dimension is fantastic. He is one of the better submission guys in the sport and if he gets anyone on the ground, the fight is probably over. BUT, Werdum's standup is, how you say, not good, and his takedowns aren't much better.

Against someone like Roy Nelson, that's a severe problem. Big Roy is a solid wrestler who can keep it standing, and he has a MAJOR striking edge over Werdum. If the fight does hit the ground, Nelson is certainly at a disadvantage, but his own BJJ black belt should allow him to at least survive against Werdum and avoid submissions. My guess is that Nelson is able to control where the fight goes and lands enough punches to earn himself the decision.

* Ed Herman over Clifford Starks, decision
Geez, this is on the main card of a pay-per-view? Give me Poirier vs. Holloway any day….sure, it's Poirier beating up a kid barely out of his teens, but Poirier could be next in line for a shot at Jose Aldo's featherweight title. He could use a nice showcase fight to build him up, though I suppose the UFC's logic is that if Poirier has such a showcase on free TV on FX, more people will see it. Whatever, my main point is that Herman/Starks is not PPV-worthy. Seriously, Ed "Short Fuse" Herman? I don't care that he's won two fights in a row, this isn't 2007.

* Renan Barao over Scott Jorgensen, submission, R3
Awwww man, speaking of showcase fights, here we go. This could definitely be seen as a #1 contender's bout in the bantamweight division, were it not for the fact that the BW belt is held up until July thanks to Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber coaching the next Ultimate Fighter season. So, the winner here will have to face someone else in the interim with the winner of THAT getting the first shot at Cruz/Faber. The delay is a little unfortunate since you could argue that bantamweight has a couple of contenders ready to go in Barao and Michael McDonald.

I say Barao is ready to go and not Jorgensen since, while Jorgensen is a tough guy and a quality fighter, Barao might be the next big thing. After losing his first-ever fight back in 2005, Barao has reeled off 28 straight results without a loss. 28! That includes a 4-0 mark in the WEC and UFC, and I think Barao will hit five wins after Saturday. Jorgensen, hope you know where you find an extra kidney, since you're about to suffer renan failure!….okay, the trash talk needs work.

* Josh Koscheck over Mike Pierce, decision
Pierce's only two UFC losses came to Johny Hendricks and Jon Fitch, which tells me that he's a guy who might very well be a gatekeeper. As much as I hate Koscheck, he's proven enough that he's one of the better welterweights in the UFC, if a clear cut below the upper echelon. I'm not just sure what Pierce brings to the table that would allow him to beat Kos, unless Koscheck fights like an idiot again and relies too much on his striking, leaving himself open to get clobbered. Koscheck wins here and then probably moves on to a bout against the loser of our main event….

* Nick Diaz over Carlos Condit, decision
The one bright side of Georges St. Pierre's knee injury is that a division that had been under lockdown for years is suddenly wide-open. Between these two fighting for the interim championship, you also have welterweights like Jake Ellenberger, Rory MacDonald, Hendricks, Koscheck and others all in the mix to make their case for a shot at the interim gold before GSP returns. Now, St. Pierre has said that his rehab is going extremely well and he could be back in July or August, rather than his expected timetable of November or December. My guess is that GSP wants to hurry back for the big payday/grudge match against Diaz, but he'll go back to taking it slow if Condit wins the title. Condit is also a Greg Jackson-trained fighter, so it wouldn't surprise me if GSP is doing what he can (limited as though he may be in training) to help Condit prepare for this fight.

But anyway, let's forget GSP for a moment and focus on these two fighters since this matchup deserves it. It's a tough, tough fight to call. Condit is the better wrestler but wrestling isn't his bread and butter. Diaz has the edge in submissions but Condit is no slouch in that department and Diaz prefers to keep it standing anyway. When it comes to striking, Diaz is the better boxer and will rain punches nonstop for as long as it takes, while Condit throws bombs that can end fights quickly.

I think Diaz's constant pressure and iron chin will net him the win, and I can't believe I'm saying this given how just a few months ago I derided Diaz as maybe the most overrated fighter in the sport. You'd think a win over an out-of-shape BJ Penn wouldn't turn my opinion so quickly but it's more a case where I just see Diaz matching up particularly well against what Condit brings to the tables. I still think Diaz gets smoked by an above-average wrestler, but Condit isn't that kind of fighter. Hate to say it, but I see Diaz winning the belt and we have to see his ugly, Moe Szyslak face promoted as a top draw for the next several months. Hurry back, Georges.

Undercard….
* Henry Martinez over Matt Riddle, decision
* Edwin Figueroa over Alex Caceres, submission, R1
* Dan Stittgen over Stephen Thompson, submission, R2
* Matt Brown over Chris Cope, decision
* Dustin Poirier over Max Holloway, TKO, R1
* Michael Kuiper over Rafael Natal, decision, in a result that elates a confused Roger Federer

Random Nonsense

2012-02-03T14:38:00.003-05:00

Ahh, this art is all so good!

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If you've seen me at any point in the last nine (!) years, you'll likely have seen me in my blue windbreaker, a jacket that was as practical as it was increasingly unstylish. What a great jacket. Just warm enough to sustain me on cold days (presuming I wore a reasonable sweater) and yet light enough to keep me from sweating my face off on those hot days when I drastically misread a weather report and overdressed. And the pockets, oh the deep pockets! The apex came in university, when I was once able to fit an entire 600-page history textbook inside a single pocket on a day when my backpack was overstuffed.

After nine (!) years of use, however, the jacket finally met its end. The zipper just, essentially, exploded the other day. My roommate suggested that we could possibly re-attach it with a clothes pin or something, but because I'm not a loveable street urchin, I declined. No, it was time to put the old boy out of his misery (the jacket, not my roommate) and get a new coat. This new jacket also has pretty deep pockets, I guess, but you see, the zippers on the pockets go in the opposite direction, so I'll have to completely rearrange my entire routine for when I'm carrying three things at once while also trying to wrangle my keys out of my pocket. #hardlife

I'm not going to throw out my old jacket, however. My plan for now is just to leave it in the front closet….forever. You see, my townhouse has had a number of different tenants over the years, so there's something of an accumulation of stuff left around that we all presume used to belong to someone that once lived here. We hope. Now, I figure my old jacket can be my little contribution to the house's history. It's sort of like the vengeful spirits in American Horror Story, except my windbreaker is a better actor than Dylan McDermott.

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Two great human beings have waded through the mountain of contradictions within the Simpsons over the years and produced a full Map Of Springfield. Among the many amusing notes on this map, I think my favourite was how Springfield State Prison is apparently across the from a day care centre.

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Okay, after seeing 'The Grey,' it has to be asked….Liam Neeson's character from The Grey vs. Neeson's character in Taken. Taken/Liam believes that Grey/Liam has kidnapped his daughter, Grey/Liam is told that he will survive if he kills Taken/Liam. The battle takes place in the forest at 0 degrees Celsius (37 Fahrenheit, for my American readers). Neither man is armed, but they are allowed to use whatever they can find as a weapon, be it a rock, stick, snowball, etc. Who wins?

Winner faces the winner of the other semi-final, between Aslan and Qui-Gon Jinn. I probably should've made this brackets a bit more even.

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Just when you think Kristen Bell couldn't be more adorable, she reveals her obsession with sloths on the Ellen Show. Who would've thought that all this time, the villains on "Veronica Mars" just needed to release a few sloths onto the streets of Neptune to keep Veronica distracted?

Now, I realize this is poor form given her marriage to Dax Shepard and all, but really, this sloth obsession is rock-solid evidence that Bell and I are soulmates. If she's already this fired up about one hairy, lazy, slow-moving creature, wait'll she gets a load of me.

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Shit Liz Lemon Says. Don't worry, this is the only 'Shit People Say' video I will ever post on this blog. (Editor's note: guarantees not valid.) I'm making the exception since Liz Lemon is a personal hero and, in my ways, I'm a male Liz Lemon. Laszlo Lemon?

If you're keeping track, in this post alone I've compared myself to both a sloth and to a notorious train wreck of a fictional female sitcom character. And waxed nostalgic about the fact that over nine years, I was too cheap to buy a new jacket. In an unrelated story, my Valentine's Day plans are pretty wide-open.

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Stop everything, Jack White has a new solo album coming out. Here's the first single, "Love Interruption," which is thankfully really good since my expectations for this record could not be any higher. Between solo work, the Dead Weather and Racounteurs, hopefully White uses the next decade to put out a Ryan Adam-esque amount of music, except, y'know, much better than Ryan Adams' music. Nothing against Adams, but White is playing with a much higher ceiling.

Food for thought: would a Meg White solo record not be immediately one of the most fascinating projects in music? I'm not sure anything could top such a disc for sheer curiosity factor. Meg should do this for laughs if nothing else --- announce a release date of April 1 and then put out a Ringo Starr cover album.

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And, just to find the exact sonic opposite of Jack White, here's London Is The City Of Opportunity. Yes, that's right, my hometown now has a theme song. And, apparently, a song taken from, like, an advertisement for a dentist office in the early 1990's.

Compounding the hilarity, it was written by Jim Chapman, a local conservative radio host/political thriller writer/vintage car collector/musician. I actually semi-worked with Chapman back in my student radio days, and he was a very pleasant fellow to chat with in person, but…man, my brief summary of his biography doesn't nearly get over the sheer cheesiness. Chapman is a renaissance man in the same way that Alan Partridge is a renaissance man.

If London has to have a theme song, I think we can all agree it should be the theme from the 1960's Batman TV show, except with "LONDON!" replacing "BATMAN!" in the lyrics. Or some kind of mashup of London's two most famous musical acts, Guy Lombardo and Kittie.

The Breaking Bad RPG

2012-02-02T14:18:00.002-05:00

Well, not a REAL Breaking Bad game, but rather an amusing little mock-up from College Humor. Underrated highlight: the digitized version of "DLZ" by TV On The Radio playing during the Jesse dialogue scene. Awesome, perfectly-rated highlight: the joke about the game's sequel.

See more at CollegeHumor

The 'More Famous' Acting Lists

2012-02-01T15:19:00.001-05:00

Twice on this blog, I've provided lists of actors who I feel should be more famous than they were at the time of the post's writing. One list was from 2008, the other from 2010. Since every producer in Hollywood doubtlessly reads this blog for advice, let's look at these lists with a bit of hindsight and see how these actors have fared.

First, the 2008 list. This also gives us the opportunity to laugh at both my blog's primitive layout structure (no header! Ha!) from back in the day, and also at my other rankings in this 'Listamania' post. For instance, I cannot fathom how I didn't have Tretiak at least in my top five goalies of all time. That's obscene. But, onto the actors' list.

10. Laura Dern --- Since 2008, Dern's biggest role is her current starring gig on "Enlightened," which I haven't seen due to poor reviews though I like both Dern and creator Mike White. This sounds like one of those HBO shows which I'll get around to watching in two years' times, only to find out that it's been canceled and I'll spend my viewing time elsewhere. While Dern seems likely to notch at least a couple of Best Actress In A Comedy Emmy nominations, those don't really count as adding to stardom as much as they add to the "I've never heard of that show" file. BIGGER STAR? No.

9. Judy Greer --- I've got a ton of residual Judy Greer love from 'Arrested Development,' and it's only grown due to her voice work on Archer. She has also done guest spots on virtually every show on TV over the last four years, and now seems to have a semi-regular role on (ugh) Two And A Half Men. I think it's gotten to the point where folks might not know her name off the top of their head, but you showed them a picture of her, they'd instantly recognize her as "That Girl From _____." BIGGER STAR? Yes.

8. Sam Rockwell --- Man, I would've thought Rockwell would've at least had a supporting actor Oscar nomination in the last four years, but if anything, his number of quality roles seems to have diminished since 2008. Other than starring in the underrated "Moon," Rockwell has been sticking to junk like Iron Man 2, G-Force, and Cowboys & Aliens. Come on, Sam! You're better than this! BIGGER STAR? Status unchanged

7. John Carroll Lynch --- Despite appearing in roughly a zillion things in his long career, he's still probably best known as Drew Carey's cross-dressing brother. (On Carey's show, not in real life…as far as we know.) He's settled into a groove as a middle-aged, friendly-or-menacing big dude character actor, but I always thought he was one supporting role on a quality series away from breaking out. BIGGER STAR? No.

6. Harriet Sansom Harris --- HSH (as all the tabloids and gossip websites call her) mostly sticks to stage work, as evidenced by the fact that since I wrote the original list, she has just four film/TV credits on her IMDB page. I notice that she's somehow reappeared on Desperate Housewives, which is odd since her character was killed off years ago, but I'm in the dark about that one since I gave up on that show a long time ago. In case you're wondering who HSH is, she played Frasier Crane's soulless agent. I can now hear you saying, "Oh yeahhhhh, her," even over the internet. Like Lynch, Harris also seemed like someone who was one supporting role away from making it big. Doesn't Harris seem destined for a couple of Supporting Actress Emmys? BIGGER STAR? No, and if anything, she's less famous.

5. Thandie Newton --- Just a few months after I wrote this list, Newton was in "Rocknrolla," sharing a memorably goofy dance scene with Gerard Butler that I felt was another nice building block in her career. But, she still hasn't quite made the leap, and at age 40, she's about to get shunted into mom roles for the rest of her career. Hollywood sucks. BIGGER STAR? Technically yes, thanks to L'Oreal ads. Admittedly, I didn't factor "having great skin" into what constituted being a bigger star.

4. Chyler Leigh --- Joined the cast of Grey's Anatomy basically just as soon as that show disappeared into the "that's still on the air?" void. To put it into perspective, my mother doesn't even watch Grey's anymore, and at the peak of her interest in the show, she half-considered retroactively changing my name to Patrick. You'd think the statute of limitations on naming a child would be two or three days, not two or three decades, but I know about as little about birth certificates as Donald Trump does. BIGGER STAR? Yes, since a regular gig on a network show at least beats the absolute nothing she did between Grey's and "Not Another Teen Movie."

3. Nathan Fillion --- Captain Hammer! Fillion had the biggest jump in fame of anyone on this list, going from being a cult favourite actor from Firefly to starring in a network drama about an eccentric guy who solves crimes alongside a skeptical female partner. No, I can't be more specific. You know what I'm talking about! Fillion has also cleverly kept up his nerd cred by voicing Hal Jordan in DC Universe cartoons. BIGGER STAR? Yes.

2. Chiwetel Ejiofor --- Another one I can't figure out. This guy is a terrific actor, but rarely gets quality roles. Since 2008, he's basically just been in "2012" (Thandie Newton was in that one too), Angelina Jolie's Commissioner Gordon figure in Salt and in a British TV series called "The Shadow Line" that I've never heard of but sounds quite cool. What are you waiting for, Ejiofor?!….my god, that was the worst rhyming pun of all time. I apologize. BIGGER STAR? No.

1. Jeffrey Wright --- To give you an idea about how underrated this guy is, you can type 'Jeffrey Wright' into the IMDB menu and his name doesn't even come up as an autofill option. Good lord. Wright is another actor who primarily focuses on theatre work, playing just key but supporting roles in various films. What Wright has going for him is that I'm hardly the only one who's wondering why this guy isn't a well-known star. Google returns 217,000 results for "Jeffrey Wright + Underrated" and often gets mentioned by his fellow actors as one of the best in the game today. Wright is basically the acting version of the band Spoon. BIGGER STAR? No.

So, not a lot of big breaks from my 2008 list. Now, onto the 2010 list, which had the slightly-different title of Top 10 Actors Who Should Be More Famous. Splitting hairs, somewhat, but I should point out that this title (unlike the 2008 list) doesn't specify these actors as being good at their job, it just argues that they should be more famous. For the record, these are all very good actors, and this is arguably a better pound-for-pound list acting-wise than the previous edition. Also, since this list was written just about a year and a half ago, these actors have had much less time to "get famous." Argue away!

10. John Hawkes --- I'm pretty sure he's here since, in August 2010, I was plowing through Deadwood's three seasons and had also just seen his incredible performance in "Winter's Bone." That ended up being Hawkes' big break, as he notched an Oscar nomination and is now popping up in all kinds of roles. If I had my way, Hawkes would be nominated again for his awesome, creepy-as-shit role in "Martha Marcy May Marlene," but the Academy has somehow yet to fully entrust me with the Oscar results. I don't understand it, don't they realize every producer in Hollywood reads my blog? BIGGER STAR? Yes

9. Andrea Savage --- A Groundlings alumni and one of those "I'm pretty sure I've seen her in something else" faces that's popped up on a hundred TV shows and movies. To give you an idea of Savage's chops, when "Party Down" was originally conceived in the early 2000's with Paul Rudd as the lead, Savage was tabbed to play what ended up as Lizzy Caplan's role and frankly, I think she would've been even better than Caplan in the part. Her Groundlings connections will always get her roles, but she still lacks that signature part (to wit, the fact that I had to describe her via a part she "would've gotten" if a show had been on the air five years earlier). BIGGER STAR? No.

8. Emily Mortimer --- She seemed pegged for one of those careers so common to British actors, i.e. appearing in various ensemble casts and BBC productions and period dramas and whatnot well into her old age. Even her name seemed destined to fit the part; if you had to guess what "Emily Mortimer" did for a living, "British character actress" is the obvious choice, right? However, while this may be Mortimer's future, she seems to be gaining a bit of heat at the moment. She's becoming a Martin Scorsese favourite (roles in Shutter Island and Hugo) and she's also in Aaron Sorkin's new drama about a TV cable news show. Only downside here is that her character's name on the show is 'Mackenzie MacHale' and…well, that she's a woman on an Aaron Sorkin show. It's for reasons like this that the phrase hit-or-miss was invented. BIGGER STAR? Slightly, yes.

* = surely her friends call her Morty but man, that's just a horrible nickname for a woman, even if said affectionately.

7. Anthony Stewart Head --- Giles! The Headster played a supporting role on that Hank Azaria/Kathryn Hahn sitcom that lasted for about five minutes on NBC last fall, but other than that, he's stuck to British TV and film roles. I attribute this to the fact that he's British. Huh. Man, do I ever wish Joss Whedon's proposed idea for a Giles-centric show, set in England on the BBC and titled "Ripper" wasn't just a pipe dream. I would download the crap out of that….uh, I mean, order BBC Canada on my cable box just to watch that show! Yes, that's the ticket. BIGGER STAR? No.

6. Michael "Fassbinder" --- Yeah, I misspelled his name. Yikes. You know this guy needed a boost of fame if I couldn't even get his name right, but never fear, Michael F. Assbender overcame my inability to proofread by appearing in roughly 45 movies in the last year. The most notable of these was 'Shame,' where he was both acclaimed for his performance (not a euphemism) and judged by most to be snubbed for an Oscar nomination. If it's a choice between an Oscar nomination and having your giant schlong become a running joke at the Golden Globes…well, that's not a bad consolation prize. Too bad Assbender may actually be a shitheel in real life, given his past domestic assault charges. Poor form, Assbender. Just for that, I'm going to keep up this running joke about your silly name. BIGGER STAR? Absolutely, yes.

5. Patrick Wilson --- He's been associated with some high-quality (Young Adult, Little Children…huh, didn't realize how those titles meshed) and big-ticket projects (Watchmen, A-Team) but it hasn't quite happened for Wilson yet. He is currently starring on a Friday night drama for CBS, so he'll probably have work for the next eight years though everyone under the age of 45 will forget he existed. BIGGER STAR? By the slimmest of margins, yes.

4. Rose Byrne --- For a while, Byrne was right up there with Eric Bana on the list of actors who I like despite appearing almost solely in awful movies. Byrne has righted the ship somewhat thanks to Get Him To The Greek (well, it wasn't AWFUL), the latest X-Men film and, of course, Bridesmaids. Here's the odd thing, however, Byrne was seemingly the only person involved with Bridesmaids that didn't get a boost from that movie's success. Kristen Wiig? The new face of women's comedy! Melissa McCarthy? Oscar nominee and the female Chris Farley! Wendi McLendon-Covey? A lot more famous than being known as the star of Reno 911! Chris O'Dowd? Now a known quantity in America! Rose Byrne? *crickets chirping* BIGGER STAR? Technically yes, but realistically, no.

3. Sally Hawkins --- To this day, I still cannot fathom how she wasn't Oscar-nominated for "Happy-Go-Lucky." Blargh. That may end up being the turning point that shuffles Hawkins down the British character acting path, and now she has a head start on Emily Mortimer. BIGGER STAR? No.

2. Samantha Morton --- The Academy Awards are admittedly a weakness of mine, which is why I may be off-base by so often using Oscar nominations as a factor in gauging the candidates on these lists. For instance, Samantha Morton has two Oscar nominations to her credit, but you probably haven't heard of her; Morton's best-known part is still probably as the chief pre-cog in 'Minority Report.' If I had to guess from her choice of roles, however, Morton isn't gunning for fame and fortune, just interesting parts. She looks to be well on her way to a Gary Oldman-esque career of disappearing into character parts and appearing on "why aren't these actors more famous?" lists well into her old age. BIGGER STAR? No.

1. Tom Hardy --- If the Hollywood Stock Exchange dealt in actual money, two things would be apparent. One, I would be a zillionaire. Two, while the best time to invest would've been around April 2010, now is still a great time to buy stock in Tom Hardy. He's being groomed as the British tough-guy star who can actually act --- sorry, Statham --- and is starring in both the Mad Max reboot and (more immediately) as Bane in the upcoming Batman sequel. Hardy is a good enough actor that he's completely convincing as a bad-ass even though he can't be taller than 5'6". Yeah, his bio allegedly says he's 5'10", but come off it now. BIGGER STAR? Yes.

Random Nonsense

2012-01-28T13:24:00.001-05:00

I'm at the store the other day buying cereal (and other groceries, though my diet is single guy-sad enough that a cereal-specific trip to Shoppers Drug Mart wouldn't be out of the question) and I came across a box of Corn Pops that expires in October…on my birthday.

Now, I bought the cereal in question because, well, Corn Pops are delicious, but also because I'm vaguely afraid this cereal could be tied to me in some kind of portrait of Dorian Gray-esque manner. Like, for every Pop that's eaten, that's one step closer to my end of days. But now that I'm in possession of the box and can control the ebb and flow (eat and flow?) of the contents, I'm now virtually immortal. It's funny, this was actually a deleted scene from Highlander that the director cut since it really detracted from the whole sword fights-and-beheading theme to have Chris Lambert just hoarding boxes of cereal.

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Fun link here: the Literally Unbelievable website, which catalogues instances where people (let's call them 'idiots') actually think an Onion headline is true and then comment about it on their Facebook wall.

It's hard to believe anyone could fall for an Onion headline, except when it deals with mild-mannered NBA star Tim Duncan. The Onion's ongoing teasing of Duncan is entirely plausible. "Tim Duncan Offers To Do Taxes For Entire Spurs Team"? I can see it. "Tim Duncan Sends Belated 'Great Game' Card To Celtics For February Defeat"? Just seems like a polite thing he would do. "Tim Duncan Urges All-Stars To Use Inside Voice During Game"? Sure, ain't no reason they've gotta be so loud.

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I have some issues about Coca-Cola's "save the arctic" campaign. First of all, their donation of $2 million to arctic preservation is nice, but…$2 million? For a company as large as Coke? This is like me dropping a twonie into a Salvation Army bucket and thinking I'm a real big shot.

Secondly, I may be crazy, but the Coca-Cola in these new white polar bear-themed cans seemingly doesn't taste like the Coke in the normal red cans. This almost has to be psychological on my part, sort of like how while I claim Coke and Pepsi taste entirely different, if you snuck Coke into a Pepsi bottle or vice versa, I probably wouldn't be the wiser. The other theory is that the Coke in the polar bear cans is actually FLAVOURED WITH POLAR BEAR BLOOD. MY GOD. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!

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Not to be one of those guys that brags about his Word Mole score, but……9714! Good god! Is this my calling in life?

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If you were asked to guess what the catchiest pop song of all time was, how many guesses would it take before you landed on 'We Are The Champions'? I'll save you the time, as research has proven it to be true. I love that this is what a team of researchers has been doing with their time. Yeah, science!

Can't quite agree with the study's results since it doesn't pass the common sense test. Come on, is 'We Are The Champions' even in the top five catchiest Queen songs? Surely 'Under Pressure' alone has a stronger case, though I may be biased as that's my favourite Queen tune, both my favourite to listen to and to perform in karaoke. Some say it's impossible for one man to perform both the Mercury AND Bowie parts, but I'm not just any one man.

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Just before everyone freaks out over this, it's clearly just a Super Bowl commercial. It's not a hint at an actual Ferris Bueller sequel, as interesting as that would be after all these years. It would also be kind of funny if a sequel was only now happening due to John Hughes' death, as in Broderick was like, "FINALLY, he kicked the bucket! Okay, I'll happy do a sequel now that Hughes is out of the picture. Damn, that guy hadn't made a good movie in 20 years, and that's taking the leap of classifying 'Home Alone' as a good movie!" Then Broderick chomps on a cigar and flicks ash on Hughes' grave. What a dick.*

* = also my three-word review of 'Shame'

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UFC on FOX 2 predictions!

* Demian Maia over Chris Weidman, decision
Anderson Silva broke Demian Maia. Before he fought Silva, Maia was a submission master, finishing opponents with all manner of incredible holds and maneuvers. After Silva clowned him for 25 minutes, however, Maia has completely hit the brakes, devolving into a cautious, grind-it-out style of fighter that just uses his jujitsu mastery to control guys rather than put them way.

For that reason, I'll take him over Weidman in a fight that Weidman is taking on short notice. Weidman is an up-and-comer with an impressive wrestling background, but he's never faced anyone on Maia's level. Both fighters are about equally mediocre on their feet but Maia has the experience to at least do a little bit of something if it becomes a slugfest. I'm expecting a 15-minute relative snoozer here that Maia ekes out. As down as I am on Maia right now, a win here might set up a real battle of submission specialists in he and Rousimar Palhares, which would be a very interesting fight.

* Chael Sonnen over Michael Bisping, decision
Just to complete Sonnen's devolution into a pro wrestling heel, he's now carried his "I'm the real champion" schtick to its natural end by actually carrying around a fake UFC title belt. Good lord. This card was originally supposed to feature Maia vs. Bisping and Sonnen vs. Mark Munoz, but an injury to Munoz caused some shuffling and set up this match between arguably the two most obnoxious, unlikable fighters in the company. Seriously, who's the lesser of two evils here? This is like picking which STD you'd prefer to contract.

Sonnen should be able to win pretty easily given that Bisping is just not a very good fighter and certainly the most consistently protected guy on the UFC roster. But, admittedly, it would be hilarious to see Sonnen's trash talk blow up in his face if he got submitted by, of all people, Michael Bisping. It's not totally out of the question; you figure Bisping's been working on his BJJ anyway to try and ward off Maia if that fight had happened and gone to the ground. Maybe Bisping can catch Sonnen in a triangle and tap him out, given Sonnen's non-existent submission defense. Even funnier, that would set up Bisping to face Anderson Silva, which would be the most one-sided bout in MMA history. My grandma would have a better chance against Silva than Bisping does….my grandma may be 91, but she's very well-preserved. Probably has something to do with a magical box of Corn Pops she keeps in her cupboard.

* Rashad Davis over Phil Davis, decision
Now that the 'Jon Fitch code' was thoroughly cracked (along with Fitch's jaw) by Johny Hendricks, I nominate Rashad Davis as the new most secretly-interesting man in MMA. You almost get the feeling Evans is as mild-mannered as Tim Duncan, yet feels the need to try and build himself up with trash talk because that's the way things go in MMA. The problem is the fans pick up on this phoniness and just boo the crap out of Evans on principle. It also doesn't help that Evans lost the PR battle in his latest rivalry with Jon Jones. After Jones (then a teammate with Evans) said he'd take a title shot against Evans and then became light-heavyweight champ by beating Shogun Rua, Evans moved to a new team and claimed Jones had gone against his word. Unfortunately for Evans, fight fans don't care about this 'inside baseball' stuff and just want to see the best fights. "Teammates fighting each other over a title? Sure, bring it on!" It's another case of how Rashad may have a legit, real-world point, but it falls on deaf ears when it comes to fighting.

Anyway, yeah, Phil Davis, I should probably mention him at some point. He's another nice up-and-coming prospect with an unbeaten record and a terrific wrestling/submission style. Evans has the clear advantage in striking but on the ground, it may be a tossup or even an edge to Davis, despite Evans' own wrestling background. The bigger issue may be that Davis hasn't fought since March due to injury and he's making a major step up in competition. A Davis upset wouldn't shock me, but it would be a real eye-opener if he managed to be just the second man to beat Rashad Evans. Davis' win wouldn't get him an immediate title shot at Jones (that would go to Dan Henderson) but it would certainly put him next in line.

You might notice I've picked all decision finishes on this show. Call it karma. After the UFC's epic fail at not putting the incredible Ben Henderson/Clay Guida fight on their first FOX card, they will pay the karmic price by having multiple televised fights on this show but they'll all be fairly uninteresting decisions. Tough break, UFC.

Undercard….
* Mike Russow over John-Olav Einemo, KO, round 2
* Evan Dunham over Nik Lentz, decision
* George Roop over Cub Swanson, decision
* Shane Roller over Michael Johnson, submission, round 1
* Charles Oliveira over Eric Wisely, submission, round 2
* Lavar Johnson ove Joey Beltran, decision
* Chris Camozzi over Dustin Jacoby, decision

Oscar Nomination Reactions

2012-01-24T12:31:00.006-05:00

I don't want to spoil my annual "Markademy Awards" post (truly the highlight of everyone's awards season), but I had a tough time filling out a ballot this year. There were maybe four movies that I considered to be really great, then maybe 10 more that hit 'very good' status, 10 more that were 'good' and then a wholllllllle bunch of flawed-to-mediocre-to-outright bad pictures. As it happened, some of the latter group ended up nominated for major Oscars, so this should be fun.

* Just to eliminate any major suspense, 'The Artist' is almost surely going to win Best Picture and probably a nice chunk of the other awards to boot. The only possible upset contenders are 'The Descendants' and 'Hugo.' I think the buzz for 'Descendants' is already dying off, a la how Clooney's last two big Oscar movies (Michael Clayton and Up In The Air) got a lot of noms but both basically petered out by Oscar night. 'Hugo,' on the other hand, has so much affection going for it, had Scorsese and is about film preservation, a topic near-and-dear to the Academy's heart. I think Scorsese will end up taking Best Director and it wouldn't completely shock me if 'Hugo' takes the top prize as well.

* In the first year of the Academy's new "anywhere between five and 10 Best Picture nominees" rule, we ended up with nine BP candidates. Artist, Midnight In Paris, Descendants, The Help and Hugo were all thought to be sure things. Moneyball was also a likely pick due to general affection across the board. Tree Of Life got in due to its number of passionate supporters; under a balloting system where you allegedly needed just five percent of the first place votes to make the field, there were certainly enough Academy voters who considered this film to be an utter masterpiece that it no doubt easily cleared the necessary 5% total.

If you looked up "Oscar bait" in the dictionary, you'd probably see listings for War Horse and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but their being nominated was still a bit surprising given that neither film (especially ELIC) seemed to take off. Don't underestimate the Academy's love of cheesy bullcrap, I guess.

* And with that, let's get into the ones I didn't like! ELIC was undone by an overwrought premise and an absolutely godawful performance by the kid in the lead role. When you're acting alongside the likes of Hanks, Bullock, Von Sydow, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, etc. and not even they can carry your performance, you know you're a brutal actor. War Horse was I suppose okay, if sugary enough that it murdered many a diabetic. I was let down the horse didn't take out a few Germans in hand-to-hoof combat. And finally, we have Tree Of Life, which was all the most frustrating since there seemed to be kernels of a good movie in there, buried underneath about an hour of pretentious horsecrap. Any of these winning would be an abomination on par with 'A Beautiful Mind' winning Best Picture, but don't worry, Artist (or maybe Hugo) has got this thing.

* I am cheering hard, HARD for 'Man Or A Muppet' for Best Original Song. I want so badly to see Bret "Brit" McKenzie from Flight Of The Conchords with some Oscar gold. It's only up against one other nominee (some obscure song from 'Rio'), so it's literally a coin flip. Let's hope everyone's affection for the Puppets pulls it through.

* Aside from McKenzie, perhaps the most amusing nominee is Jim Rash, one of the co-screenwriters of 'The Descendants.' Who's Jim Rash, you might ask? He's the freaking Dean from Community! Even while on hiatus, I'm still seeing that show everywhere. Gillian Jacobs' face appeared in my soup the other day.

* It's still kind of crazy that Jonah Hill, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig (screenplay) can now put "Oscar nominee" on their resumes.

* Now that Gary Oldman has finally been nominated for an Oscar, who takes over the mythical title of 'best actor without even a stinking nomination'? Alan Rickman?

* The unstoppable Greg P. Russell is back again. He's picked up yet another nomination for sound (for, ugh, Transformers 3), and we'll see if Russell can finally break his 0-for-15 streak at the Oscars.

* No Albert Brooks for supporting actor, a big surprise since he'd been nominated for/won virtually every other critics' award. Everyone had conceded the trophy to Christopher Plummer but Brooks was seen as a lock for a nomination, if nothing else. Seems like Brooks got the shaft in favour of Max Von Sydow, as the ELIC love was much greater than anticipated. 'Drive' itself only got one token nomination for sound editing, since Bad-Ass Jackets is still not an Oscar category.

* Biggest snub to my mind, however, was no 'Adventures Of Tintin' in the best animated film category. WTF? How was that possible? Does motion-capture not count as 'animated' for whatever reason? Hell, I thought there were enough European voters in the Academy with affection for the old comics that Tintin was a dark horse BP nominee.

* Other semi-snubs included no Tilda Swinton (We Need To Talk About Kevin) for best actress, no Ben Kingsley for supporting actor (surprising since Hugo was nominated for everything else), no Leo DiCaprio for best actor (for J. Edgar, and probably my vote had I had a ballot), no Shailene Woodley (Descendants), no Michael F. Assbender for any of the 15 movies he appeared in last year (Shame topping that list).

* Now that we have our nominees, it's prediction time. Artist is still the major BP favourite, with either Scorsese or Michael Hazanavicius winning Best Director. Plummer has supporting actor in the bag. Octavia Spencer and George Clooney have to be seen as the big favourites for supporting actress and actor, respectively. Best Actress is almost wide-open in my mind, as you can make a case for Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Michelle Williams or even Glenn Close winning. Hugo and Midnight In Paris will win the screenplay Oscars, Tree Of Life will win cinematography and what the hell, let's presume Greg P. Russell will lose again.

Recent History (NFL Conference Championships)

2012-01-22T13:53:00.002-05:00

* Giants over 49ers
I give up. This damn New York team may legitimately be a team of destiny and an overall very good football operation, even if they were absolutely gift-wrapped a win from the Packers last week and…..nope, I swore I wouldn't bring this up again….

Ah fuck it, let's bring it up again. New York beat a Green Bay team that played like total garbage from start to finish. San Francisco beat a New Orleans team that had a horrible first quarter but righted the ship thereafter. So really, the 49ers delivered the more overall impressive performance last week and now that they're at home, have the edge over the Giants, right? Unfortunately, I think it may be wrong. New York's defensive line is legitimately crazy. Between Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora, you have THREE guys who demand double-teams, leaving openings for the likes of linebacker Michael Boley (also a very good player in his own right) to swoop in and pick up sacks. As fun as the Alex Smith redemption story has been this season, I don't think it will last further than this afternoon, when he'll be picking grass out of his facemask for 60 minutes.

When the season began, some pundits pointed out that due to the lockout and abbreviated training camps, you wouldn't really see the league's elite teams start to rise up until later in the season. This is what's happened with the Giants. They muddled through the first few months but now have everything healthy and on the same page. New York is a tough team to beat and I don't think the Niners can do it. Eli's coming.

* Patriots over Ravens
What a rough game to predict. Part of me thinks the Patriots are kind of frauds in the (sigh) Green Bay sense, in that their utter lack of defence will wreck them if their offence has an off-day, and Baltimore's D is certainly tough enough to stall Tom Brady and company. Just look at how many problems the Pats had in losses to the Giants and Steelers this year, who are both very Ravens-like defences. Then again, another part of me thinks that Baltimore has no answer for the Gronkowski/Hernandez combo, especially since Ed Reed seemed to wreck his leg in the dying minutes of last week's game. Then again, Ed Reed has seemingly played half-dead since about 2005 and he's still one of the best safeties ever, so what's one more injury?

Then again (third straight "then again," by the way), there's Joe Flacco. The Flack Daddy has been in the news lately, first by complaining to reporters about how he deserves more credit, and then last week when Reed called both Flacco and the offence as a whole out for being inconsistent. It kind of hurts Flacco's case for more credit when he can't even get credit from the rest of his team.

My Ravens-loving brother* constantly brings up Flacco's "record-setting" performance, as apparently no QB in history has collected as many a) wins and b) playoff wins so early in his career. What shoots this argument to hell is that I think the second-place guy on this list is Mark Sanchez, who's terrible. As they've done for so many years, Baltimore is winning in spite of their quarterback, not because of him, and their lack of adapting to the ever-increasingly pass-friendly NFL is a reason why the Ravens have underachieved for this entire decade. Ozzie Newsome is a tremendous general manager and is a master of drafting talent everywhere except at the QB position, which is a bit of an issue given that it's the most important position on the field. If they'd had even a decent quarterback for the last 10 years, the Ravens would've won at least two Super Bowls and quite possibly more.

* = Here's a fun sidebar to this game. My brother loves the Ravens and my mother loves the Patriots and/or just Tom Brady's chiseled features. It stands to reason there could be a side bet in the ol' household for this one. Probably something like if the Ravens win, my mom will have to cook my bro his favourite meal, and if the Patriots win, my brother is written out of the will. You know, modest stakes like that.

Then again (#4), I'm not sure if Flacco is even that big a factor given the lousy New England defence. Is it a better unit with Patrick Chung back from injury? Sure, but it's still not a GOOD unit by any means. Even if Flacco is his usual Tebow-ish self, Ray Rice can still run wild against this defensive front. New England's best hope would be to stack up against the run and make Flacco beat them; the Pats' lousy cornerbacks, however, make that a "stoppable force vs. the movable object" kind of tossup.

All things considered, I'm going to hesitant pick New England simply because when in doubt, pick the team with the all-time great at quarterback. Brady hasn't had any great playoff moments since 2004, but when the chips are down, he can still deliver. I'm taking the Pats to win but since New England is inexplicably favoured by 7.5 points, Baltimore is a great bet to at least cover.

For Parks & Recreation Fans....

2012-01-20T14:21:00.002-05:00

Here's the full list of things that Leslie Knope supports, as per the scrolling list on her campaign ad from last night's episode. Credit to a few different blogs and Tumblr pages around the net that freeze-framed and catalogued the whole thing. Also, if you don't watch Parks & Rec, start now since it may be the best show on television.

Leslie Knope's List of Local Issues....

* More dog parks
* Senior citizens rights
* Safe streets
* Safe sidewalks
* Better schools
* Lower taxes
* Better parks
* Better business climate
* Better Better Business Bureau
* Cleaner streets
* Improve greenways
* More snow plows
* Protecting Pawneeans
* Improving tourism
* More trash cans
* Energy-efficient street lights
* Westside Detoxification and Revitalization Project
* Repaving Grand Avenue
* More teachers
* Fewer libraries
* Improve intergovernmental agency communication
* Clean-up Barefoot Lake
* Passing Pawnee Jobs Bill P-129.4
* Playgrounds in every park
* Playgrounds in every schoolyard
* Playgrounds in every residential block
* Clean energy
* One police officer for every 5 citizens
* One park ranger for every 10,000 raccoons
* Resodding Hilltop Cemetery
* Start talking to Cuba again
* Emergency evacuation drills
* Plow for Charity
* Forming an Ad Hoc Sub-Committee Oversight Committee
* Challenging the norm
* Pawnee Corn Subsidies
* Finally Passing PR-61, formally recognizing South Korea
* Official peace treaty with the Wamapoke Tribe
* Four-way stops at every intersection
* Unionizing ice cream trucks
* Get Europe out of debt
* Free trade with Illinois
* Enact RRP - Raccoon Relocation Project
* Pawnee Community College tuition in exchange for 4 years of public service
* Doubling Pawnee Hospital’s emergency room nurse staff
* Legalize Korean
* Lower the obesity level
* Stop global terrorism
* Re-open the toucan exhibit at Pawnee Zoo
* Find Gabe the Toucan
* More community gardens
* Ordinance 11F: To Re-pave City Sidewalks
* Budget reform
* Updated Technologies for Local Schools
* Better retirement benefits for city employees
* Edward Phillips Senior Center Remodeling
* Speed bumps in front of elementary schools
* Unemployment benefits
* Re-instating the Main St. Farmers Market
* No turtles as pets
* New uniforms for youth sports programs
* Free public Wi-Fi
* Updated childcare facilities
* Shutting down the Child Left Behind program
* Handicap parking placards for the obese
* FREE PARKING EVERYWHERE
* Cleaner drinking water
* Regulate heights of trampolines
* Memorial for those lost in the trampoline “incident”
* Control the floods
* Funding for public art commission
* Fencing in correctional facilities
* New police patrol cars
* Funding overtime hours for police
* Rebuilding the PTA
* Prosecuting former PTA president Linda Trifle
* Profitable government organizations
* Shutting down underground shooting ranges
* Making sure city contracts employ local workers
* Providing more economic development grants and micro-loans to small businesses
* Foster partnerships with sister cities
* More buses to speed up morning commutes
* More streets to accommodate additional buses
* Require all city employees check and respond to email
* Working sewers
* More parades
* Grants for scientists to discover new forms of energy
* Leave a lasting impression on all visitors
* Challenge the norm
* Finish the statue of Burt Bacharach
* No more conflict diamonds
* Bulletproof glass everywhere
* Free cookies at every street corner
* One school for every student
* Require flattering mirrors in public restrooms
* Develop a municipal composting operation
* Enforce existing speeding and noise ordinances
* Upgrade existing parks
* Create an anti-graffiti, youth outreach program
* Free cake when it’s your birthday
* Reevaluate NAFTA
* Rickshaw Wednesdays
* Making it illegal to refuse a hug
* Make downtown more people-friendly
* Sell candy in government buildings to pay down the debt
* Get Pawnee a licensed pharmacy
* Better screening processes at local adoption agencies
* Finding homes for the adopted children of Day Labor Corp.
* Prop 6A: To Recognize All Five Food Groups
* Replacing all glass with plastic at Pawnee Psychiatric Clinic
* Curfew for minors at The Pawnee Mall
* Stop paying Sweetums the so-called “thank you for being here” tax
* Mini-golf renovations
* Subsidizing educational and eco-friendly businesses
* Removing Zorp from all written laws
* Reducing Federal Government Experiments in town to 10 per year
* Ordinance 8R: A Goat Cannot Own/Inherit a Farm
* Legalize clapping
* New railway
* Prop 14: Religion Is Not a Science
* No longer recognizing the winner of the chili cook-off as a government position
* Stricter testing at Pawnee Blood Bank
* Boarding up unsanctioned “drop off” slot at Pawnee Blood Bank
* Encouraging the FDA to re-analyze our farms
* Funding for better and safer sewage treatment
* Thicker cement for containment of old sewage treatment factory
* Mandatory sexual harassment seminar for government employees
* Starting a dialogue with the people who live in the trees
* Pay off our debt to the Ringling Bros.
* Prove that we can safely host a circus again
* Ordinance 43K: Laws Cannot Be Secrets
* Recall Food N’ Stuff branded hand sanitizer
* Disseminate the fund for a Pawnee Military
* Find the stolen cell phone tower
* Reduce obesity by .01% (100 lbs per family)
* Make the Pawnee Cemetery less flammable
* Less nudity on public-access television
* Capping the number of local public-access channels at 50
* Eliminate permit application process for legal ownership of a calculator
* Making Li’l Sebastian Day a legal holiday

Charlie Brown Is A Creep

2012-01-19T13:20:00.002-05:00

I've always had an affinity for Charlie Brown, even to the point of dressing as CB for Halloween one year. It's hard not to relate to the poor guy, whether you're prematurely bald (check) or just feel like life has got you down from time to time. Of course, for most of us, the key is "from time to time," whereas Charlie Brown's life was an unending cavalcade of failure. To wit, this video. Watching it, your attitude goes from "Poor Charlie Brown! I know how he feels!" to "Poor Charlie Brown! Man, things aren't going my way right now, but at least I have it better than that sad sack. God, people are actually dancing around him in a circle, pointing and laughing! What a loser!" The video also continues to make the case that the choral version of "Creep" is the greatest song cover of all time.

Two notes. First, the little red-haired girl actually signs her notes as "Little Red-Haired Girl"? WTF? I just presumed that was Charlie Brown's only reference point since he was too much of a putz to even ask her name, but if LRHG is even referring to herself by that nickname…I dunno, is this a Badly Drawn Boy situation? Is LRHG a stage name? Is she trying to create her own specific persona in grade school, sort of like how I've been trying to get people to call me 'Mark the Shark' for at least 20 years?

Secondly, good lord, how deranged does Charlie Brown look when he's approaching that football? He's got the crazy eyes! I'm starting to think ol' Chuck has a future on an NFL special teams squad. He can play for the Cleveland BROWNS. (rimshot)

Also, just so that video doesn't leave you totally heartbroken on Charlie Brown's behalf, here's the edition of the Peanuts strip where he actually got to be the hero for his baseball team. This was widely regarded as the greatest act in house league baseball history until my equally-heroic "faked getting hit by a pitch" routine in 2001.

A Green Bay Packers Postmortem (or, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HOLD ONTO THE DAMNED FOOTBALL!)

2012-01-15T21:03:00.003-05:00

It doesn't matter how many weapons you have if you keep shooting yourself in the foot. That's what makes the Packers' upset loss to the Giants so frustrating --- it was nothing the Giants did to win, it was all what Green Bay did to lose. Nine dropped passes, three lost fumbles, an inexplicably unnecessary onside kick attempt in the second quarter and (perhaps most deflating) giving up a goddamn hail mary touchdown at the end of the first half. Is it sacrilegious to put 'goddamn' and 'hail mary' right next to each other? Tebow forgive me.

I didn't once believe the "Green Bay is getting too many wins, they'll have trouble keeping up the intensity through the playoffs" meme, but man, it turned out to be true. After beating the Bears in Week 16, the Pack rested several starters for a meaningless Week 17 contest with Detroit and still won. Maybe that was the problem. The team began to think, "Man, if we can beat playoff teams with our backup quarterback, we're on easy street." Between that and the week off, it seemed to really take its toll. Green Bay hasn't played a game that's really mattered in over a month, and it's hard to get that intensity back, especially against a New York team who have been playing for their lives over that same stretch.

I firmly believe in the concept that it's better to be lucky than good. The Manning brothers are living proof. Peyton holds dozens of passing records, has tons of wins, is acknowledged as an all-time great…but he has just one Super Bowl win due to buzzard's luck in the playoffs. Be it kickers missing easy field goals, inopportune turnovers, opponents having monster performances or Peyton himself just playing poorly, Peyton hasn't caught many breaks in the postseason. Eli, on the other hand, has one inexplicable run to a Super Bowl already and now he's lucked into facing the fraud Falcons and the self-inflicted wound known as the 2011-12 Packers. The Giants/49ers matchup next week is a tossup but San Francisco is certainly not a flawless team. Could Eli somehow sneak his way to another NFL title? Ye gods.

Big picture: the Packers won the Super Bowl last year, blah blah, five-year no complaining rule, blah blah blah, the team had so much go right over the last year that they were due for some bad luck, BLARGH. Forget the big picture, this one still hurts a ton.

It's probably not a coincidence that Green Bay won the title last year with Jermichael "Hands Of Stone" Finley and Ryan "Laurence Maroney" Grant injured. What a couple of stiffs. Grant is completely washed up at this point and should be instantly cut. Finley, I'm afraid, is a bigger issue, since he has enough tools and ability that he'll be kept around as the primary tight end threat, but trust me, there is a yawning chasm between this guy and REAL tight end threats like Jimmy Graham, Rob Gronkowski and Vernon Davis. Finley right now is giving off a real Braylon Edwards/Kellen Winslow Jr. vibe, and that's not something you need. Ditch both of these guys, draft some more bodies on defence, hook B.J. Raji up to either the rejuvenation machine or with a new pot dealer and reload from there.

Another issue: distracted coaches. I'm not even talking about the personal tragedy suffered by Joe Philbin this past week, but rather the fact that former Packer exec Reggie McKenzie is the new Oakland Raiders GM. He's apparently already targeted Packer coaches Winston Moss and Dom Capers for interviews to be the new Raiders head coach. Between this, Philbin interviewing for the head coaching job in Miami and quarterbacks coach Tom Clements being mentioned for coordinator jobs around the league, one wonders if the organization's total focus was on the New York Giants this week.

So yeah, that about concludes this post I absolutely hated to write. This will probably mark the end of my NFL picks posts for this winter; in fact, I've already made plans to attend a pub trivia night on Sunday rather than watch the fucking Giants play for the NFC championship. I'm just going into a little shell of football bitterness for the next seven months. It won't be an overall sports fan shell, at least. Baseball season is just around the corner and hey, the Leafs could make a Stanley Cup run….oh god, my eyes are watering….

The Hardest Road (NFL Playoffs, Round Two)

2012-01-14T14:30:00.002-05:00

* Ravens over Texans
With their first playoff appearance and now their first playoff win in franchise history, this has already been a red-letter year for Houston. It's going to come to an end but really, how the team be mad? They overcame injuries to virtually all of their best players and still found themselves in the final eight. That's a nice showing all-around, and if you're looking for dark horse Super Bowl contenders for 2012-13, you could do worse than betting on a fully-healthy Houston Texans side.

Baltimore is going to win this game because if they don't, the team has to be torn apart and rebuilt. The Ravens will never have as good a chance as they do right now to reach the Super Bowl now that their arch-nemeses from Pittsburgh have been eliminated. Either the Patriots or Broncos are very beatable opponents for the Ravens, so they can't waste the opportunity by losing at home to a team quarterbacked by Tyler goddamn Yates. I think Houston's only chance would be if Arian Foster just goes off or Andre Johnson* eats Baltimore's lousy cornerbacks alive and cements himself as the best receiver remaining in the postseason.

* = My list of the best wide receivers in the NFL. 1. Larry Fitzgerald, 2. Calvin Johnson, 3. Andre Johnson, 4. Wes Welker, 5. Steve Smith. There are a whole lot of guys in the mix for fifth and you can argue all day that numerous great receivers are held back by lousy quarterbacks, but I'll take my chances saying Welker, Fitzy and the Johnsons are the hands-down top four.

For the second straight year, we're looking at a realistic possibility of a Packers vs. Ravens Super Bowl, a.k.a. Armageddon between my brother and I. It's a good thing I'm moved to Toronto year-round now or else the two weeks leading up to such a Super Bowl would carry more tension around my house than a Montague/Capulet family vs. family flag football game. If it really comes down to Packers/Ravens my brother and I will have to wager a slap bet on the outcome just to really crank things up to eleven.

* Patriots over Broncos
I don't think Tim Tebow can call himself a virgin anymore, since he screwed millions of bettors last week with his latest nail-biter victory over the heavily-favoured Steelers. Just when you thought Tebowmania was running cold, the Broncos get their biggest and most improbable win yet, and one rife with religious metaphors. To wit….

"In the Pittsburgh game, they played in the stadium that's closest to heaven (Mile High). Tebow threw for 316 yards. Rothlisberger's interception came on 3rd and 16. Pittsburgh's time of possession was 31 minutes and 6 seconds. Tebow's average yards per completion was 31.6. Someone named John told Tebow to pull trigger on the final TD. And Demaryius Thomas, the target for Tebow's game winner, was born on Christmas." --- Matthias Lahn, Bill Simmons reader and a man more into finding meaning in numbers than your average Lost viewer

But surely, not even the magical mystery Tebow can go into New England and defeat a rested, prepared, just-plain-way-better Patriots team, can they? Well…the Pats have fallen victim to the Jets and Ravens in recent years, two teams that also play the same conservative, defense-first-and-second gameplay as the Broncos. New England's secondary is so bad that even Tebow will be able to rack up the yards. If Denver just keeps it close, the pressure will start building on the Pats, the home fans will start quieting down since they feel the guillotine lifting, and they won't be able to escape the feeling that if it's close at the end, Tebow will find a way.

Of course, the other nine out of 10 times, the Patriots hand Denver a mighty loss just like they did back in Week 15. As one internet commenter put it, "I don't think God favours anyone more than he favours Tom Brady, so Tebow is out of luck." My prediction is that the Patriots ultimately win comfortably, though the Broncos are able to keep it relatively close for a few quarters. Tebow ends up passing for exactly 350 yards, meaning his playoff yardage total adds up to 666, creating a new round of conspiracy theories for the offseason.

* Saints over 49ers
Hardest game of the week to call, by a wide margin. New Orleans is just on such a massive roll that I have to pick them but the 49ers are hardly chopped meat. They're 13-3 for crying out loud. They're very well-coached, tough defensively, never get blown out even then do lose and they have a big, tough running back in Frank Gore. This is a team built to slow down the Saints at worst, and make them submit at best. The Saints, remember, were only 5-3 on the road this year and Candlestick Park is not an easy place to play.

Argh, I feel like I'm talking myself into picking San Fran here. Let me check out their roster and see who their quarterback is again…..ah, that's right, it's Alex Smith. There we go. Enthusiasm, deflated. Smith has turned himself into at least a middling QB this season, but the 49er offence is definitely of the bend-but-not-break variety rather than being legitimately threatening. I just don't see how the Niners can mount a comeback if they fall behind by anything more than 10 points.

A word about Patrick Willis, universally regarded as one of the very best linebackers in football and arguably THE best linebacker in football. I've written about this before, but in the 2007 draft, Willis was seen as a can't-miss prospect. Literally every prognosticator and draft pundit said Willis was going to be a stud LB for the next decade. So, naturally, Willis is taken….eleventh overall. ELEVENTH. How did this happen?! How do 10 teams see this sure-thing, star-in-the-making linebacker and all pass on him?! It boggles the mind. The only teams I'm letting off the hook are the Lions, Browns and Vikings, since they took Calvin Johnson, Joe Thomas and Adrian Peterson, which are okay selections. But god, this was the infamous JaMarcus Russell #1 overall draft. What the hell, Raiders. This was the draft when the Dolphins reached to take Ted Ginn two picks before Willis went to San Francisco. Gaines Adams went fourth overall and he's fucking DEAD now. The moral of the story is, don't pass on Patrick Willis.

* Packers over Giants
Though I knew Atlanta was a fraud and was going to get smoked last week, I still picked them in the name of the Packers getting an easier matchup. Oh well. Green Bay faced nothing but hardship on their route on the Super Bowl last year, so having to host a very flawed Giants team at home is hardly the worst thing that can happen this time around. In terms of real-world bad things, offensive coordinator Joe Philbin losing his son this past week infinitely dwarfs any complaints the Pack may have about their tough draw.

Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora are monsters, absolute monsters, and will give Green Bay's O-line all they can handle. This is the key matchup of the game, no question. If the Giants can pressure Aaron Rodgers, they can more than slow the Packers down. If Rodgers can withstand the pressure and still fire passes off, then New York's otherwise mediocre defence will fold and the Packers will get a comfortable win. It's as simple as this.

With the Giants' fearsome pass rush, their late-season win streak and their matchup against an offensive juggernaut, folks are noting the similarities to New York's 2007 Super Bowl title team. Yeah, well, calm down. The Falcons (frauds), Cowboys (lousy) and Jets (lousy) are not exactly the three biggest scalps to have in your three-game win streak. On the road, at Lambeau Field, against the best quarterback in the world and his 15-1 team? I'm not buying it. The Giants have the ingredients to upset the Packers but the recipe is missing a few pages.

UFC 142 picks, oh, and also AN ELEPHANT

2012-01-13T16:00:00.001-05:00

My picks for UFC 142….pick all the Brazilians. When UFC last had an event in Brazil last August, the Brazilians went 7-1 when matched against fighters from other countries. This time we have eight more Brazil vs. The World bouts, so the only trick is picking who the one will be to prevent a clean sweep. Let's hope it's London's own Sam Stout, who has a tough but winnable match against Thiago Tavares. For the three Brazil vs. Brazil fights, flip a coin.

Also, I like the UFC and everything, but if you think I'm ordering this show on the same night as Patriots vs. Broncos, you're dreaming.

*********************

So, that was a much shorter UFC prediction post than usual. What will I fill the space with? I know, stock photos!

My friend Amanda recently pointed me in the direction of the Awkward Stock Photos tumblr page, and oh, the cleverness. I want to know absolutely everything about that elephant photo, such as "was there some space between the elephant and the crowd, or were the people standing in front of the creature saying 'oh fuck…' ?"

Dexter's Dreadful

2012-01-12T17:37:00.002-05:00

SPOILER ALERT...though, if you get spoiled, it'll spare you from actually watching this Dexter season, so you'll come out ahead

I had this big post planned out last month about "shows going downhill" that included the Office, Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother and Dexter. Unfortunately, since I never got around to writing it, Family Guy had a string of good episodes in a row, I made my peace with HIMYM settling into a Friends-esque B/B- groove rather than shooting for A-pluses, and this Grantland article basically summed up my frustrations with the Carell-free Office.

So, just Dexter. Holy lord, was this latest Dexter season terrible. This might be the most precipitous drop off in quality since 24's infamous sixth season, when a nuke went off in Los Angeles and was seemingly forgotten a couple of hours later, the big bad was Jack Bauer's elderly father who disappeared for half the year and the thing ended with Jack staring pensively out onto the ocean.

Ugh, yet another bad TV memory. Let's stick to….a more recent bad TV memory. Now, Dexter hasn't been a really great show since its first season. The second season was quite good and the fourth year was shaky but carried by a legendary John Lithgow performance, but really, Dexter is another of those programs that's content to be what it is --- a reverse-procedural featuring Dexter killing bad guys and the wacky Miami cops who are following in his wake.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with a show that lacks initiative, but there's a lot wrong when a show is not just lazy, it's lazy about being lazy. My biggest issue with S6 of Dexter was that everyone on the show was suddenly an idiot. Dexter Morgan's clearest personality trait is his caution; following "Harry's Code" to the letter and approaching from the tracking of his victims to the folding of cellophane wrap methodically. This season, however, literally all of this legendary serial killer's kills were sloppy as hell, culminating in his final killing of the year (more on this in a season). In its early days, the show took great pains to show how a Dexter could exist in the real world by showing how careful he was to avoid capture and the great pains he took to keep himself and his crimes hidden. Hell, the whole point of Dexter being a blood splatter analyst is to show how he hides himself by using the police's own methods against them and how he knows exactly how to cover his tracks.

This season, however, Dexter is just randomly drowning people in shallow water, stabbing crooked ambulance drivers, pitchforking Nebraska pot dealers, etc. He's leaving a trail of evidence a mile wide and yet (unlike in S4 or even S5) it isn't part of any ongoing plot about how Dexter is 'off his game' due to his duties at home. A dumber Dexter is just the new reality of the show so we'll have to deal with hit. To add to the problem, the Miami Metro police (never the sharpest knives in the drawer to begin with) have reached cartoonish levels of incompetence. In past years, Dexter's intelligence was a rising tide that lifted all ships --- by making him so smart, the fact that he was hiding under the cops' noses didn't diminish them. This season, however, you literally had Angel and Quinn in a drunken brawl while on duty, with no repercussions. Plus, Debra's promotion to lieutenant just provided more of the never-interesting Miami Metro inter-office drama.

These two issues collided when we had the big climactic moment of the season finale, as Dexter murdered the Doomsday Killer just as Debra entered the room. Inevitably, you knew that Deb would eventually discover Dexter's secret. It was the moment the show had been building to since the very beginning. I still look forward to seeing what Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter will do with this next season, since they're good enough actors to rise to the occasion. And yet, the big moment was undercut by the season's dumbest subplot, Deb's therapy sessions and her subsequent realization that she's in love with Dexter. Yep, this really happened. Yep, the writers decided to introduce this plot *after* Hall and Carpenter divorced in real life. Yep, they're siblings, though since Dexter is adopted, I'm sure the writers will try to make things as non-icky as possible….nope, wait, too late. You don't come back from an incest storyline.* It was weird enough having Dexter and Deb share a lot of "you're not there for me" dialogue this year with the Hall-Carpenter divorce hanging over things.

* = With one exception. Before "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" goes off the air, we need to see Dennis and Dee hook up. That would be the cherry on top of that show's depravity sundae. The writers should save the D+D pairing for the series finale, just to go out with a literal bang.

And to top it all off, the villains stunk. The Doomsday Killers (Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos) were far and away the least-interesting major villains this show has ever had. The alleged 'big twist' that Olmos' character was all in Hanks' head --- the ghost-Harry to his Dexter, essentially --- was predictable was the very first episode. Hanks, god love him, is also definitely not his dad when it comes to acting. Last season the central villain was minimized a bit, so as to not invite comparisons to Lithgow's impossible-to-top Trinity Killer from the previous year. Doomsday, however, was built into an even bigger threat than Trinity ever was and the character just completely failed to deliver.

I'll still give Dexter a shot in the seventh year since I'm pretty invested by this point and, admittedly, I'm interested in seeing how the show will be forced to evolve now that Debra knows the secret. If it's anything short of Deb starting a nationwide manhunt for Dexter it'll be a total sellout of her character, but hey, they're in wuuuuuvvvvv. *facepalm*

Good Commercial/Bad Commercial

2012-01-10T14:14:00.003-05:00

BAD: Trevor Linden, Sellin' Glasses
Nobody should be surprised to see athletes endorsing any product, given how we've been subjected to the likes of Michael Jordan selling underwear, O. J. Simpson selling kniv…uh, rental cars and Keith Hernandez/Walt Frazier/Emmitt Smith/Randy Johnson/good lord, how many are there? selling hair colouring. But still, it's kind of weird in 2012 to see Trevor Linden pop up in an ad campaign selling, of all things, glasses.

Having not checked ClearlyContacts.ca's website, I can only presume that it's either a) part-owned by Linden himself or b) based out of Vancouver, since that's the only city that still considers Trevor Linden to be relevant in this day and age. With all due respect to Linden, who is by all accounts a class act and was a solid hockey player, Canucks fans treat this guy like he was the second coming of Gretzky, not the borderline All-Star, less than a point-per-game player he actually was for 20 years. Then again, it's perhaps fitting that underachieving franchise that its iconic player is an underachiever, but still, only a real Canucks-hater (like me) would dare to suggest such a thing.

But hey, since I've already cited that Just For Men ad above, it's not uncommon to see retired athletes still get endorsements from time to time. And really, athletes aren't exactly quality actors, so Linden's stiff performance here is hardly unexpected. So why does this commercial stand out as being particularly lame? I think it all has to do with Linden's posture in the opening seconds of this commercial. He's tilted ever-so-slightly to the side, so between that and his stiff delivery*, it takes a weak situation and makes it worse. The director of this ad should hang his head in shame, provided he isn't already looking down at Daniel Sedin highlights on his smartphone. And, I'm no business major, but Clearly Contacts seems like a poor name for a website that sells both contacts and glasses in equal measure. It would be like if Burger King named itself 'Just Fries.'

* = If you showed this commercial to someone from another country who had no idea who Trevor Linden was, how many guesses would it take for them to identify him as a Canadian hockey player? Two? Three? I think it's the "Shooes for going oot?" line that really gives poor Trevor away.

Another odd note to this commercial: Trevor Linden in glasses looks oddly like another journeyman actor, friend of the blog Eric Lutes. Given that Lutes has forged in television for close to 20 years, there's hope for Linden yet. I look forward to seeing him co-starring with Ron James on a CBC sitcom in 2018.

GOOD: The Dark Knight Rises
Ok, well, I'm kind of cheating here since while a movie trailer is technically a commercial, it isn't thought of as a commercial in the traditional sense. So basically this is just an excuse to post this bad-ass DKR trailer. I could not be more jazzed to see this movie. Admittedly, there are a number of red flags (the third film in a trilogy is rarely good, Bane's fur coat of evil looks rather silly, and really, an 'earthquake machine'?) but Christopher Nolan's track record is spotless. I look forward to bemoaning this movie's lack of Oscar attention in February 2013.

I think the shot of Hines Ward looking at the field, only to see devastation, occurred during the Steelers' playoff game last weekend. Hey-o!

'Wire' Prequels

2012-01-07T13:40:00.000-05:00

If I was approached by a mysterious guy in a trenchcoat who whispered that he could sell me a sixth season of The Wire for $1000, I would cut the cheque without hesitation. So, when I recently found out about a few Wire 'prequels' filmed as extras for the DVD set, I pounced on them like a cat on a ladybug. Damn, even if it's just fart jokes and mimicky child actors, I still can't get enough of watching anything from this show.

Young Prop Joe

Young Omar

Bunk and McNulty meet for the first time

Holy Smoke (NFL Playoffs, Round One)

2012-01-06T11:56:00.002-05:00

* Steelers over Broncos
Ok, my thoughts on Tim Tebow. They are not too surprising; I think the guy's a pretty lousy quarterback. Sure, the 'Tebow Time' thing is entertaining and all, but let's be honest, even during Denver's implausible six-game winning streak, all those close wins came against lousy teams. The Broncos beat their three mediocre AFC West rivals, the Vikings (terrible), the Jets (overrated clowns) and the Bears (terrible after losing both Forte and Cutler). It's not like Tebow was pulling these incredible last-minute victories over other playoff teams.

So with the Broncos making a pretty good case for being the worst playoff team in many years, the only thing that could stop Pittsburgh in this game is if they're totally crippled by injuries. Ben Roethlisberger is still banged up. Rashard Mendenhall is gone for the entire posteason. Ryan Clark's body may explode if he plays another game in Denver. All these knocks might lead Denver to covering the spread in what'll probably still be a somewhat close game despite the fact that Pittsburgh is a way, way better team…..but come on, the Steelers have got this one.

CHANCES AGAINST THE PACKERS: Zero percent for Denver. If the Broncos were to somehow get to the Super Bowl and actually beat Green Bay, I'd tattoo Tebow's name and the Bible verse of his choice on his back. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is a much more serious threat, and they're actually my pick to make it out of the AFC unless injuries totally kill them. I'd give the Steelers (presuming Roethlisberger plays) a solid 43% chance of avenging last year's Super Bowl and knocking off the Pack.

* Texans over Bengals
This is the toughest pick of the first round since both of these teams definitely got into the playoffs through the back door. Houston clinched their first-ever playoff berth in Week 14 (upsetting who else but the Bengals in Cincy) and then had a much-needed three-week virtual bye, since half their team is nursing injuries. While the last three games weren't games that the Texans needed to win, they're stone-cold right now. It's hard to get that momentum back after so many weeks of phoning it in, even despite the fact that Andre Johnson, Arian Foster and other injured starts will apparently be back in action.

The Bengals have the opposite problem. They've been playing hard right down to the wire to clinch their playoff ticket, but barely edging the Rams and Cardinals and then looking out of gas against Baltimore doesn't exactly a team much steam going into a road playoff game. Cincinnati has exactly two quality wins this season --- they won in Seattle and in Tennessee, and since neither the Seahawks or Titans made the playoffs, these are definitely 'quality' with a lower-case Q. It's easy to see this being a one-touchdown game (it will have to be for the Bengals to have any chance), but in the end, I think Houston will be able to flip the switch enough to get a close victory. Of course, I reserve the right to completely and utterly switch this pick if Jake Delhomme ends up playing for the Texans.

CHANCES AGAINST THE PACKERS: I'd put it at 15% for both teams. For either Houston or Cincinnati to reach the Super Bowl they'd have to go on an incredible roll, and of course you never want to be facing a red-hot team. But really, I don't think either team brings anything to the table that Green Bay can't handle --- if Mario Williams and Matt Schaub were playing for the Texans maybe I'd be worried but the Packers can beat the Texans' B-team.

* Saints over Lions
When it comes to playing at home, the Saints are Superman, Rocky Marciano, the Undertaker at Wrestlemania and the Unsinkable Molly Brown all rolled into one. I don't think any team in the NFL can top the Saints on their home turf so Detroit, sorry dudes, your nice comeback season is going to come to an abrupt end. Can the Lions (no strangers to scoring points themselves) find a way to actually disrupt New Orleans' offense and win this game? Probably not, since in the time it took me to write that previous sentence, the Lions drew two penalties.

CHANCES AGAINST THE PACKERS: It's always tough to play a division opponent in the postseason since they know you so well and all bets are virtually off. However, Green Bay has beaten Detroit twice this year, once at Ford Field when the Lions embarrassed themselves with a zillion penalties, and once at Lambeau when the Lions allowed the freakin' backup QB* to throw for six touchdowns and 480 yards. So, it's safe to say the Packers have the Lions' number, which is why I'd give Detroit just a 10% chance against Green Bay in a hypothetical second-round matchup. As for the Saints, well, I'm goddamn terrified of the Saints. New Orleans is a different team on the road but they can match the Packers point-for-point for a shootout and nearly did that very thing in the season opener at Lambeau. I want no part of a Green Bay/New Orleans NFC championship game but I believe I'll be seeing it. I give the Saints a 49.5% chance of beating Green Bay.

N.B. I can't wait to see which quarterback-needy team signs free agent Matt Flynn to an eye-popping contract this offseason. The Seahawks? The Browns? The Dolphins? The Redskins? The most headline-grabbing (and kinda hilarious) options would be if Flynn winds up with the Jets or Broncos.

* Falcons over Giants
Atlanta is another team that's in the postseason due to a somewhat fortunate schedule since they're seriously lacking in quality wins. But, I've got to pick them over New York simply since I think the Giants are incapable of getting their shit together for an extended period of time, especially at home. After two straight big wins to clinch the NFC East title, it would be so Giants (in the manner of "that's so Raven") to totally lay an egg here against the Falcons. Surely Victor Cruz can't bust out a monster TD catch every single week, right? I confess, a large part of me thinks New York will actually win here and prove the Falcons are frauds, but I can't ignore the fact that upsets happen every single year in the NFL playoffs and I need at least one underdog to triumph in first round. So, if you're a betting person, the smart money is probably on the Falcons getting trounced, followed by the Bengals, Broncos and Lions all pulling off wild upset victories, leaving my ProLine card a shattered mess.

CHANCES AGAINST THE PACKERS: Atlanta has lost twice to Green Bay in the past calendar year, both times at the Georgia Dome. If they can't beat them at home, they sure as hell can't beat them on the road at Lambeau in January, so the Falcons have a shiny zero percent chance of beating Green Bay. New York on the other hand, I'll give up to a 40% chance of the upset. The Giants are capable of beating any team in the league and losing to any team in the league --- they're so hot-and-cold that when they're firing on all cylinders, it's easy to see them beating the Packers. Heck, they almost did on December 4, dropping a tight 38-35 result to Green Bay. After Super Bowl 42, I will always be very wary of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning's weird anti-magic.

The Best Posts Of 2011

2011-12-31T15:09:00.000-05:00

It's always been a dream of mine that I, a guy named Mark, would become so known as a brilliant blogger that I'd be unofficially nicknamed 'Markie Post.' If only I'd adopted that as my posting name rather than this whole 'Question Mark' nonsense. How is the Riddler a good influence?! A criminal so inept he actually leaves clues behind so he can be caught? Come on!

Anyway, the end of the year is the time to reflect on bad choices such as these. In case you made the bad choice of not checking this blog every hour on the hour for new updates, here's a look back at some personal favourites that you may have overlooked because you're a big smelly jerk. HOW DARE YOU [/Geoff Peterson]

December 17: A big vent of happiness about how great the past season of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" was. Fun thing I forgot to mention: the performance of Alanna Ubach as Frank's whore (literally) fiancee. My mind was blown since Alanna Ubach gained childhood immortality playing the original assistant on Beakman's World. Good lord! Someone needs to write an elaborate fan-fiction about Charlie trying to set a trap to catch Lester the lab rat.

December 15: My review of "My Week With Marilyn." For some reason, most of my recent reviews have covered films that I didn't love or even necessarily really like, but simply found interesting. Honestly, that's probably the most fertile ground for analysis --- a concept that's *almost* there but was misconstrued in some way. Basically, I just like being a Monday morning quarterback. The more I think about it, it seems to be Michelle Williams' Oscar to lose at this point.

November 29: Case in point, this review of "Anonymous," which is really more a review of Roland Emmerich's dumb-ass theories about Shakespeare. A fantastic by-product of this authorship controversy is the fact that my brother believes it whole-heartedly. Actual quote from my brother recently: "Biggie was a better writer than Shakespeare. At least Biggie was real."

November 20: A big, long, bet-hedging screed about why the Packers weren't going to finish with a perfect record. Sure enough, they did indeed lose a game, which is probably better for their Super Bowl chances in the long run since now they can rest Aaron Rodgers and the other regulars this week. Hilariously and obviously, the game Green Bay finally lost was against Kansas City, the opponent I considered "the only gimme" remaining on their schedule.

November 4: I write 550 words about a ruined pair of pants. There's no such thing as a small topic, only a small author....or an author with way too much time on his hands. (Author/blogger, whatever.)

October 20: Some of the great audience reactions I've experienced at the movies. I look forward to adding another one to the list next week when the entire crowd joins together as one to chant "WAR HORSE, WAR HORSE, WAR HORSE!" #itcouldhappen

October 5: I update my rankings of the best comic-book movies ever made. In hindsight, doing this just months before 'Dark Knight Rises' gets released may have been a mistake.

September 27: I judge my immortal soul by seeing how many of the Ten Commandments I've broken in my lifetime. This one wins the prize for most popular post of the year among my friends, going by the unscientific method of Facebook likes and "Hey, I thought that post of yours was really funny!" mentions. It's probably disturbing that so many of my friends found the idea of my eternal damnation to be so amusing.

September 12: Pearl Jam and a very special guest just absolutely rock the fuck out at a Toronto concert and I'm there to see it. I dunno why I'm being so coy about the special guest...it was Neil Young. It's right there in the post's title, no need to hide it now.

September 8: My preseason NFL picks. Top four worst predictions, in no particular order: San Diego winning the AFC, the Saints finishing THIRD in the NFC South and missing the playoffs, Phil "Fantasy Team Killer" Rivers as the offensive player of the year, and the Rams winning the NFC West. On the bright side, at least I realized the Eagles would be a disappointment.

September 4: Analyzing my dream about an intergalactic flamingo attack. Androids dream of electric sheep, but I dream of alien flamingoes.

August 28: My day with the Stanley Cup. I can admit it now, this post was just slightly fictionalized.

August 21: This one isn't really *my* writing, but rather just a collection of terrific Grantland pieces from the site's first few months of existence. What the hell, I'll include it here, the stories are still great.

August 18: Pour one out for my old Macbook, which suffered an unfortunate and untimely demise this past summer. This is apparently a common affliction among Macs, since some friends of mine have also had their laptops suddenly die without warning. AND, Steve Jobs died before his time. What do they have over there at Apple, a bunch of hourglasses full of Skittles?

August 8: A look at how everyone turned on Tiger Woods, which basically could've been subtitled "Haters Gonna Hate, Even Though The Hate-ee Is Admittedly A Dickhead." It's also amusing, in hindsight, to note that nobody is exactly sticking to Stevie Williams as a cult hero, eh?

August 6: A bunch of random nonsense. Everything about that Antonio Banderas hat still fascinates me.

July 26: A collection of movie reviews. The fact that 'Tree Of Life' is getting legitimate Oscar buzz is baffling and infuriating. There's surely no way this thing could actually win Best Picture, could it? I never thought I'd see a BP winner worse than 'A Beautiful Mind,' but yet...

July 25: A breakdown of the most recent UK Apprentice season, and a general endorsement of the entire UK Apprentice series. My buddy Kyle tells me that there's such thing as "UK Junior Apprentice," that features a teenage cast. The thought of Lord Sugar berating some 15-year-old Cockney punk straight out of 'Attack The Block' is just amazing to me.

July 14: The annual tradition known as the Alterna-Emmys. As much as I enjoy writing these posts, I'd enjoy it a lot more if the Emmys actually got it right just once and rewarded deserving shows.

July 12: My fifth U2 concert, and so far they're 5-for-5. The post-concert highlight was my friend Ravi (who was also at the show) calling me up afterwards and having a 30-minute conversation about both the concert and U2's current musical standing in general. It was deep stuff, man.

June 30: The stretch of Dufferin between King Street and the CNE gets my vote as the worst street in Toronto. I think the best street in town might be that stretch of Eastern Road by the bakery whenever they're cooking fresh bread. Having a nose is AWESOME.

June 20: The final instalment of my 30-day Movie Challenge. (The first four parts are linked in this post.) I've got to be honest, it was more fun posting this was Facebook since I got to seek out all those cool pictures of the films. "Hey Mark, couldn't you have just posted those same pictures to the blog?" Uh, well, technically yes, but...shut up, Voice of Reason!

June 15: The infamous list of baby names. If I had a child, what would I name it? Or, if I had 44 children (22 boys, 22 girls, nice and even), what would I name each of them? It occurs to me that this list is a great potential pickup opportunity. You know, a woman is reading it, realizes she'd also love to have a daughter named Svetlana, and then falls madly in love with me. I should re-post this list once a month just to take advantage of his possibility since (if you can possibly believe it) blogging doesn't often get me laid.

May 23: I fix a toilet and am WAY too proud of myself about it. It's still astounding my apartment wasn't washed away in a Noah-esque flood.

May 16: My ranking of the best Survivor players of all time, sticking to just the show winners. This has been updated, by the way, to include the winner of the just-concluded Survivor: South Pacific season and it'll probably be updated for the rest of time to reflect future winners. So essentially, I'm condemning myself to even more future hours writing about this increasingly silly program.

May 15: This is easily the most anyone has ever written about journeyman actor Eric Lutes.

May 12: I ask the question, 'is Tiger Woods finished?' Given that he went the rest of the PGA Tour season without winning or really seriously contending in a tournament, the answer is still...maybe. And don't give me that bullcrap about Tiger winning the Chevron World Challenge or whatever that cheesy, 17-man field, silly season event is called. That's not a real victory. That's like winning a Golden Globe and claiming you're an Oscar winner.

May 6: Another random nonsense post, including my celebrity encounter with Mad Men's Rich Sommer.

April 23: Another dream analysis, this one vaguely concerning the Royal Wedding. No, this isn't just a dirty story about Kate Middleton.

March 28: A look inside Blogger's statistics to see just which of my blog posts are actually the most popular with readers. Y'know, instead of just relying on anecdotes and personal opinion like....uh, this post.

March 12: That damned Spider-Man Broadway musical that cost millions of dollars, dozens of actors' good health and most importantly, cost me from hearing a new U2 record this year. I never thought I'd directly quote Dr. Octopus like this, but damn that infernal wall-crawler!

February 25: The Markademy Awards! Not to spoil things for the next edition coming up in two months, but there have been very few films I've considered to be truly capital-G Great this year. Plus, if the Academy actually nominates a bunch of crap like 'The Tree Of Life,' I'll have PLENTY to rant about.

February 14: A solid instalment of the Hot! Live! Music! series. It includes my being totally ignorant about Adele, which is kind of funny since she went on to be the biggest musical star of 2011. Almost a year later, I've learned MUCH more about Adele, such as the fact that "Someone Like You" was co-written by the guy from Semisonic. Okay, that's the only Adele fact I know, and really, it's more about the guy from Semisonic. Maybe I should make it my 2012 resolution to learn more about that guy....like, for instance, his actual name.

February 5: I picked the Packers to win the Super Bowl and WAS TOTALLY CORRECT! YEAH BABY! Not to blow my own horn amidst this entire post detailing my greatest blogging hits, but I was really impressed with my "the Packers overcame every major story of the 2010 NFL season" theory.

January 30
April 11: I'll break with the chronological order for these ones. In January, I outlined the stupidity of the NHL's "Guardians" promotion, then in April, I used the Guardians as the basis for my Stanley Cup predictions. And I WAS TOTALLY CORRECT! YEAH BABY!...wait, the Lightning beat the Blackhawks in the Cup final, right?

January 13: An update on the ongoing slap bets I'm a) participating in and b) am overseeing as commissioner. Oddly enough, they both involve my buddy Kyle and (even more oddly) this particular update doesn't involve me being slapped in the face.

UFC 141 Predictions

2011-12-28T17:24:00.001-05:00

Just a reminder if you're ordering this show. It's on FRIDAY night, at 10 PM. The UFC is airing a rare Friday PPV so as to avoid New Year's Eve, and the PPV start times are returning to 10 PM since…well, they're blaming the switch to 9 PM as the reason for their declining PPV buys. I guess it makes sense given that starting at 6 PM on the west coast is awfully early, but I dunno guys, maybe the decline in buys could have more to do with the fact that there are suddenly about four UFC shows a month, eh?

* Donald Cerrone over Nate Diaz, decision
There's really no doubt that Jon Jones is the 2011 fighter of the year given the caliber of competition he dominated and the fact that Jones is a champion, but man, Cerrone can put in a great case for the silver medal. A win over Diaz would make Cerrone a perfect 5-0 in 2011. Cerrone just beat Dennis Siver two months ago and he's already back in the cage, with possibly just one more win standing between he and a title shot. Diaz is tough but Cerrone might quietly be one of the best fighters in the world who we just haven't yet identified as such. Of interest --- the only man who's legitimately beaten Cerrone was Benson Henderson, who did so twice in the WEC. So if Cerrone does win and lay his claim to a title shot, he could be held up if Henderson beats Frankie Edgar for the title in February. I can't think of anyone more deserving than Cerrone who'd be next in line, however, since Gilbert Melendez is still slumming it in Strikeforce.

* Jimy Hettes over Nam Phan, submission, R2
With all due respect to up-and-comer Jim Hettes, this is one of the least-worthy main card PPV fights in recent memory. The UFC should thank its lucky stars that Lesnar and Overeem stayed healthy since if one of them had to cancel on short notice and leave this show without a main event, the PPV buyrate doesn't even crack six figures. Anyway, Hettes has nine submissions in nine careers fights, so I suspect he'll continue his tap out streak against Phan. While Nam Phan has never been submitted in his career, he has lost a LOT (17-9 career record) and it's safe to say he's Not A Good Fighter.

* Jon Fitch over Johny Hendricks, decision
In the spirit of Chief Wiggum's "yeah, now we love the house!" attitude, I've done a total 180 on Jon Fitch. Whereas I used to think he was the dullest fighter under the sun, I've come to see his matches as less competitive fighting and more as performance art. The guy just canNOT be beaten (except by Georges St. Pierre) and it's HILARIOUS. I'm now openly rooting for opponents to "get Fitched," a.k.a. getting clutched against the fence and perhaps taken down, wherein Fitch will position himself in a half-assed half-guard position and rain light, ineffective punches down for the duration of the round. Rinse, repeat, Fitch gets another decision. Hendricks is a talented wrestler himself so Fitch may have more trouble controlling him than usual, but let's be honest, we all know how this one ends. If Hendricks actually does beat Fitch in a huge upset, he should immediately get the first crack at Carlos Condit/Nick Diaz's interim WW title. That's the respect that should be shown to a man that actually cracks the Fitch Code.

* Alexander Gustafsson over Vladimir Matyushenko, TKO, R3
I love this booking. This is classic "up-and-coming young star against a tough-as-nails veteran looking for one more run" matchmaking. I'm a big Gustafsson fan and think he might just be a fight or two away from losing to….er, that is, "challenging" Jon Jones for the light-heavyweight belt. That said, Matyushenko has shattered the dreams of many a young guy looking to make his name off "The Janitor's" reputation. Man, do I love that nickname. "The Janitor." I realize the symbolism of Vlad wanting to get himself over as the guy who likes to take care of the proverbial dirty work, but how long into his 14-year MMA career do you think he started to regret his choice of nickname? Six months? A year? The first time the announcer said it and caused a good chunk of the live crowd to openly laugh? I cannot deny that it's the absolute perfect moniker for the hard, old-school guy that Matyushenko has turned into, but still, 'Janitor.' Amazing. He should have Neil Flynn as his cornerman.

* Brock Lesnar over Alistair Overeem, TKO, R1
The result here is pretty easy to determine. Either Overeem catches Lesnar coming in and knocks him silly, or Lesnar takes Overeem down and pounds him into oblivion. It's a coin toss as to who will implement his special first. My coin came down on Lesnar's side despite the fact that Lesnar is fighting for the first time in 14 months and for just the fourth time since November 2008. It takes a lot to pick a man who's been ravaged by diverticulitis but my bigger issue with Overeem is that he might not actually be any good. Sure, he's the "Strikeforce heavyweight champion" and 10-0-1 over the last four years, but Overeem has an Andy Warhol record --- lots of cans. You can argue his only solid win in that stretch was over Fabricio Werdum, and Werdum is only dangerous if he gets you on the ground. Overeem avoided that scenario in a blah decision win over Werdum last June but Lesnar's takedowns are slightttttty more dangerous than Werdum's. Just slightly. By a factor of fifty. I'm not even sure Brock's so-called glass jaw is a factor, since even though Cain Velasquez knocked Lesnar silly last year, Lesnar was certainly able to withstand a ton of punishment from Shane Carwin and still win.

I suspect the UFC wouldn't mind seeing their big draw lose here, since an Overeem victory would establish him as a new big deal in the company and set up a major unification bout against Junior Dos Santos. Overeem is kind of killed by a loss here, while Lesnar losing can just be written off as a case of ring rust and whatnot. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Overeem actually win but I'll stick with my Lesnar choice. I'm not so easily 'diverted.' Ha ha, because he had diverticulitis! Ha ha, health problems! And he's the guy I picked to win!……groan.

Undercard….
* Diego Nunes over Manvel Gambuyran, decision
* Ross Pearson over Junior Assuncao, decision
* Dong Hyun Kim over Sean Pierson, KO, R2
* Luis Ramos over Matt Riddle, decision
* Danny Castillo over Anthony Njokuani, decision
* Jacob Volkmann over Efrain Escudero, submission, R1

Survivor Ratings: Sophie

2011-12-23T15:54:00.003-05:00

So the 23rd (!) season of Survivor is in the books and the 22nd Survivor champion has been named. Where does Sophie Clarke stack up against past winners of the show? As someone who has already written way, WAY too much about Survivor, let's analyze her victory…

The three main criteria in my previous 'best players ever' post was to judge the winners by the manner in which they won their season, their so-called skillset and the likelihood of them winning Survivor again should they make a return appearance. By all of these standards, Sophie did a more than solid job.

How she won: an old-fashioned Survivor gameplan of getting into an alliance, sticking to it to the very end, and then getting yourself into a sub-alliance within the larger group that would get to the final tribal council. Given how solid the Upolu alliance ended up being (thanks in large part to Brandon and Coach's religious hectoring), Sophie basically had this thing wrapped up the moment the Upolus got Cochran to flip and give them the numbers advantage at the merge.

Now, I say 'basically had this thing wrapped up' unless Ozzy had, of course, gone on an immunity run and gotten himself into the final three, since obviously he would've won going away in yet another example of why the Redemption Island gimmick is stupid. But if you had never seen Survivor before and judged this season solely by how the show was being presented and edited, you would've thought Coach would be the winner by a landslide. If the show was to be believed, Coach was the one that swung Cochran (who was no doubt a bit starstruck by dealing with a Survivor icon), which ended up being the key turning point in the game. Coach was also by all accounts the 'leader' of the Upolu tribe, kept them in a tight group with no thoughts of flipping (besides Albert's half-assed plans) and all things considered, played a terrific game.*

Except….well, Coach is a terrible Survivor player. We know this and the players in the cast know this. I find it hard to believe that this guy who was an utter and total clown for two seasons suddenly flipped a switch and became a poor man's Boston Rob in his third try. Instead, I find it MUCH easier to believe that what we saw on the show wasn't *really* what happened, but instead was another example of Survivor's increasingly piss-poor editing. The producers' favourite quartet of Coach/Ozzy/Brandon/Cochran took up at least 85% of the screentime this season since they were the ones with the biggest personalities that the show wanted to highlight as the 'stars' of the season. This isn't to say that Survivor hasn't always been edited with an eye towards producing a heightened reality of the show, but at least in past seasons they weren't so obvious about it.

Anyway, getting back to Sophie, it was clear that her strategy was to get in an alliance filled with goats. You had Coach, the living Survivor joke. You had Rick, the nearly-invisible cowboy who was all about loyalty and was thus the perfect fourth wheel in an alliance. You had Edna, loyal because she had to be and also seemingly ignorant as to her low standing in the tribe. You had Albert, who was so transparent in his desire to curry jury votes and be seen as a real mover and shaker and it lost him everyone's respect. And then you had Brandon, the borderline-psychotic who seemed to be on orders from God to be a loyal tribe member. It seems like Sophie would've won in just about any final-three combination of this sextet, though Rick (who seemed well-liked, if low-profile) might have drawn enough votes in a Rick-Coach-Sophie scenario to force a tie in the final vote, which, if I understand my Mayan calendar correctly, turns Jeff Probst into a pillar of salt and triggers the end of the world.

* = I believe that Coach fell into his success in this series purely by accident, since if he'd had any sense of what he was doing, he should've won this thing going away. The fact that Coach was so adamant about having Sophie in the F3 was stunningly bone-headed, on par with Russell believing the likes of Natalie, Sandra and Parvati were all 'easy to beat' in a jury vote. Had Coach been in the end with literally anyone in his alliance other than Sophie, he wins since the rest of Upolu was Goat City USA. You could argue Coach saw the value in keeping Sophie and Albert since they were the alliance's only chance of beating Ozzy in a challenge, but that ignores the fact that Upolu basically gave Ozzy two byes at Redemption Island by having him face Edna and Cochran. If you send Sophie against Ozzy at one of those last two RI challenges (particularly the vertical Rubik's Cube thing that Edna lost), she stands a more than good chance of beating him there and preventing him from ever re-entering the game. If Coach was smart, he would've had Sophie voted out at F6 and thus ensured that either she or Ozzy would be out for good.

Skillset: Good at both physical and mental challenges; winning that last challenge and ousting Ozzy literally clinched Sophie the game. Loyal, within the Survivor context. Shrewd about making moves or, perhaps more accurately, when NOT to make moves, as Sophie realizes early on that she was in a pretty strong situation and thus never joined in Albert's crazy plans to shake up the game. Great poker face, since apparently she isn't religious but was able to fake it enough so as to not be cast out by Brandon/Coach/Albert as a heathen.

Her alleged weakness would be her "condescending" personality, as Whitney put it, and the fact that she apparently came off as somewhat entitled. To this end, Sophie's little crying spell at the F5 tribal council actually helped her a lot, since it brought back the curtain a bit and made her seem more human than hypocrites like Albert and Coach. But really, Sophie's "condescension" actually makes me think more of her as a player since she still won. The golden rule of Survivor is to make sure you're at the final tribal council alongside players who aren't as liked and/or respected as you. Survivor's iceman, the Dexter-esque Brian Heidik, knew he'd eventually have to stab his allies in the back to make it to the end, so he made sure he was in the F2 with the even-more-unlikable Clay Jordan. In Sophie's case, even if she wasn't quite aware of how her attitude was coming off to the other players, it ultimately didn't matter since she positioned herself to be at the end with Albert and Coach. An "it's just business" attitude is much preferable to a jury than Albert and Coach's two-faced, "I play this game with honour but sorry guys, I'll have to vote you out anyway" attitudes.

(And AGAIN, as Cochran noted while voting for Coach, had Coach just owned his gameplay, he still might've won. Had Coach said, 'I turned your perceptions of me from previous seasons against you and got to the end,' he would've won a lot more respect as a strategist. Why the hell am I talking about Coach so much? Damn, this slanted Survivor editing is even getting to me.)

Could They Do It Again?: If Sophie ever plays this game again, I think she'd stand a very strong chance of making another deep run. An underrated factor to Sophie's success is that, if you read her post-game interviews, she's basically the female Cochran. She's a big Survivor fan except, unlike Cochran, she was smart enough to not wear her fandom on her sleeve and actually prepared for the game, whereas Cochran seemed stunned to realize that Survivor took place outdoors. Sophie is also smart enough to adjust her game a second time around, based on how she perceives she's being perceived by her new tribemates.

Sophie's MO this time was a blend of the Amber/Natalie Strategy (be seen as the good cop next to a more outwardly aggressive and less likeable player) combined with Heidik's cool detachment. That's a hell of a combination. Going back to my initial ranking of Survivor winners, I can't put Sophie in the top tier of Sandra/Parvati/Brian, but I'd definitely slot her amongst Tina/Earl/Chris in the next tier of champions. That's no worse than #7 all-time and perhaps even as high as fourth. Very impressive for a woman whose screentime was largely shafted in favour of yet more goddamn footage of Ozzy climbing a tree.

Merry Xmas, Calvin & Hobbes

2011-12-20T19:30:00.002-05:00

There are few pop culture items I miss more than Calvin & Hobbes (greatest comic strip of all time, hands-down) and yet I respect the hell out of Bill Watterson for his decision to not just end the strip, but to not even slightly revisit bringing it back in any form. Watterson simply felt the strip had run its course and wanted to go out on top. To that end, he also has refused any attempts to license the characters for any sort of merchandise, animation, films, etc. You have to admire that kind of principle...even if I secretly think a well-done Calvin & Hobbes film would be amazing. It'd have to be animated (no real seven-year-old kid could properly play Calvin and having him interact with a CGI Hobbes would look goofy) but there is no shortage of lovely animation that could be generated from the original Watterson artwork. Put someone like Brad Bird at the helm of this project and I'd be first in line at the theatre.

Or, hey, forget Brad Bird, maybe get these animators to do it. I'll take even the most minor new C&H-related material so finding this video was like finding the Holy Grail in my dishwasher. This analogy doesn't really work since I would've theoretically found the Grail to put it in the washer in the first place, but....damn.

It's Always Funny

2011-12-17T11:08:00.001-05:00

It's rare for a show to last for seven seasons on the air. It's even rarer than a show is still watchable in its seventh season. It's NIGH-UNHEARD OF that a show's seventh season is actually its best one, and yet, I think this is what has happened with the latest series of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Thirteen episodes, twelve of them gems (we'll get to the non-gem in a moment) and really, no signs whatsoever that this show is anywhere near slowing down.

If you've never seen IASIP before, good lord, drop what you're doing and hit up Netflix. The show can and has been most easily described as "Seinfeld, except with sociopaths." I've always felt this description somewhat undercuts just what terrible people the Gang are. The Seinfeld crew were already more or less sociopaths --- the IASIP Gang take it to a far more depraved and terrifying level. On Seinfeld, you were always somewhat rooting for those characters to win; on ISAIP, you're whole-heartedly rooting for the characters to lose since my god, imagine a world in which these people were successful?

Things kicked into high gear even before the season started when word broke that Rob McElhenney had put on 50 pounds solely because he thought it would be funny if Mac was suddenly a big fat guy. Just amazing. Mac's outfits for the year were nothing but comically tight t-shirts and Hawaiian shirts, topped off by the thick beard that made Mac look like a foul-mouthed, rage-filled young Orson Welles. Actually, keeping with the Welles theme, imagine this except stretched over 6.5 hours.

Yet, despite the fact that McElhenney risked his health for the sake of the show, I'm going to have to split the season's MVP award between Kaitlin Olson and Glenn Howerton. The Reynolds siblings were in nothing less than rare form all year round. There is no good reason why Olson doesn't have at least a couple of Best Supporting Actress Emmys already, and Howerton just gets funnier and funnier as Dennis' pure sociopathic nature becomes more and more apparent over the run of the show. Mac takes third place, while Charlie Day (while still as funny as ever) comes in last behind Danny DeVito. Why Frank in fourth?

* "RUM HAM!"
* A heavily made-up, sweaty, panicked Frank trying to assure a gymnasium full of people that he isn't a pedophile
* "I'm going to whip this little bitch in the face!"
* Relating the entire history of the Gang to a group of confused Asian tourists while in the midst of hijacking their tour boat

These are among Frank's all-time greatest moments, and the fact that they're all in the same season is enough to let him escape the Character Ranking basement. Sorry, Charlie. And, the fact that Frank had such an amazing year and only finished fourth is a testament to just how hilarious the entire cast continues to be in these roles.

So, the weak link. The "Frank's Brother" episode was unique amongst IASIP episodes in that for 80% of it, it wasn't trying to be funny. It was a legitimately straight-forward tale of Frank's early life and it was odd to watch. It was 22 minutes of waiting for the other shoe to drop, yet as presented, it actually gave Frank (heretofore one of the most scheming, evil bastards on planet Earth) a softer side in his younger days. I wouldn't call it a bad episode, per se, but…man, it was just weird. I can't be entirely mad about any episode that features Lance Reddick, though, and one lacklustre episode doth not a season ruin. The White Album had 'Revolution 9,' after all.

Best episode? Well, I'm partway there already, let's rank all 13 from bottom to top:

13. Frank's Brother
12. The Storm Of The Century
11. The High School Reunion Part 2
10. Sweet Dee Gets Audited
9. How Mac Got Fat
8. Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties
7. The Anti-Social Network
6. Thunder Gun Express
5. The Gang Goes To The Jersey Shore
4. Frank's Pretty Woman
3. Chardee MacDennis: The Game Of Games
2. The High School Reunion Part 1
1. The Gang Gets Trapped

The top three, in particular, rank amongst the best episodes from all seven seasons. The first part of "High School Reunion" has what I'd say is probably the single biggest laugh of the entire series for me, and since I wouldn't dream of spoiling it, I'll just say it was 'the nametag scene' and leave it at that. That was a legitimate tears-of-laughter moment that had seven years of buildup behind it.

Parks & Recreation is still pound-for-pound the best comedy on TV (and arguably the best show), while Community is easily the most inventive comedy on TV. In terms of pure laughs, though, both shows will be hard-pressed to top what IASIP did. And, it will be a tough nut to crack for P&R and Community -- great shows as they are -- to still be this good in their seventh year. Yeah, that's right, I'm presuming Community can somehow make it to a seventh season. Believe. #SEVENseasonsandamovie

My Week With Marilyn

2011-12-15T16:40:00.001-05:00

It's time to look at this Michelle Williams thing. In the history of the Academy Awards, 162 performers have received at least three nominations for acting. Say what you will about the Oscars and lord knows they take some weird swings and misses…but they don't take three swings and misses on one person. It's safe to call anyone with three nominations a legitimately good-or-better actor.

With nods already in the bag for Blue Valentine and Brokeback Mountain, and a third nomination looking very likely (hell, maybe even a win) in line for My Week With Marilyn, some will argue that I'm very late to the party in acknowledging that Williams is already a hell of an actress. This is no doubt true, but I'm just continually stunned by the fact that seven years ago, Williams was known as nothing more than the weak link of the Dawson's Creek cast. Now she has two-going-on-three Oscar nominations?! What an upset. It's not like the Van der Beek/Holmes/Jackson triforce of power were known for being great actors or anything, but given how little focus Williams got in comparison to those three, this is like if Ringo had been the Beatle with the best solo career.

And make no mistake, Williams is a legitimately terrific actress, MWWM being the latest example. Given the supremely tough challenge of playing Marilyn Monroe, Williams could have chosen to just do an imitation (sticking to the Monroe personality quirks that we all know from 60 years of pop culture) or she could've gone the other familiar route of playing 'Norma Jeane,' in order to portray the 'real woman' behind the persona and then basically done whatever she wished. Instead, Williams goes for about a half-and-half mix of the Monroe persona and another character that basically represents a distilled "Marilyn" that is more human yet no less charismatic and attractive.

It's a tough balancing act, particularly since the movie is all about how this budding filmmaker named Colin meets and has a relationship with Marilyn while she was shooting 'The Prince And The Showgirl' in England in 1957. So Williams has to play her take on the role while still being "Marilyn Monroe" enough to live up to the fantasy image of the Colin Clark character. Yet Williams is more than capable of the task and does about as well as one can while playing one of the most well-known figures of the 20th century. Off the top of my head, only Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles or Morgan Freeman's Nelson Mandela have delivered comparable biopic performances in recent memory. It's an easy thing to screw up --- Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Will Smith as Muhammad Ali both didn't *really* hit the mark as their targets, but were still applauded for coming reasonably close.

Four paragraphs in, I should probably mention that MWWM as an overall film is pretty average. Clark is such an empty vessel that nobody really cares about his week as Monroe's companion. In a way, Williams' performance sort of works against the story in this respect; she's so alluring that the movie's premise of "gee, what would it be like to spend a week with Marilyn Monroe?" is immediately answered as, "well duh, it's awesome." Then again, another actress in the lead role likely wouldn't have been as good, dooming the whole project to the level of a second-rate TV movie.

Much in the way that Homer woke up in the dead of night screaming about how he hates Ted Koppel, I think I had a similar realization about Kenneth Branagh. I just do not like the guy's acting style. Other than his performances in Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, I have not enjoyed a single Branagh performance. He played a terrible Woody Allen avatar in Celebrity, muffed the hard-to-muff role of Professor Lockhart in the second Harry Potter movie, and just when you think Branagh at least has Shakespeare in his wheelhouse, he hams it up as Iago in the Oliver Parker adaptation of Othello. In MWWM, he plays Laurence Olivier and does exactly what Williams doesn't do with Monroe. Whereas Williams is playing a character, Branagh basically just goes a MadTV-caliber impression of Olivier's voice and calls it a day. It boggles my mind that Branagh himself actually has a bit of Oscar buzz for this role. Actually, let me check the records…ok, if he did get nominated, it would only be Branagh's second nomination --- after Henry V, which I impossibly have yet to watch --- so my whole "actors with three Oscar nods are the tops" premise wasn't just blown to bits within this very post. If Branagh is nominated over my man John Hawkes (who is just phenomenal in 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'), there will be hell to pay.

So in short, My Week With Marilyn has a great lead performance, lovely British scenery, nice period costumes and art direction, and that's about it. Williams' shot at an actual win on Oscar night will be hampered by the lower quality of her picture, but given that nobody is exactly going crazy about Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close's entry), The Iron Lady (can even Meryl Streep make Margaret Thatcher sympathetic?), Viola Davis in The Help (despite its high likelihood of a Best Picture nomination) or Young Adult (Charlie Theron's entry, which I REALLY still want to see), Williams will still carry a lot of momentum into the race. If she does win, I will personally send her $5 if she begins her speech with, "Fuck you, Pacey!"

I'm A Two-Time TIME Person Of The Year!

2011-12-14T15:08:00.004-05:00

What a special day. Just five years after TIME named me* their person of the year, I've captured the honour once more. Who knew that my protesting NBC's removal of 'Community' from its schedule would get me recognized (again!) by a prestigious magazine that I read every single time I go to the dentist.

Just getting one POTY title is a great achievement, but twice?? That puts me in truly elite company. Other multiple-time winners include Franklin Roosevelt (a three-timer!), Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill, Deng Xiaoping, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George Marshall, Richard Nixon (ugh), Ronald Reagan (yikes), George W. Bush (eep) and....uh, Joseph Stalin. Okay, well, the award isn't foolproof. Also, given that TIME's Person Of The Year in 1969 was "The Twenty-Five And Under Generation," I guess that means most of the modern winners were also two-timers, and Clinton is now also a three-timer. Though if you ask Hillary, he's still just a two-timer! /Leno joke

I promise to live to TIME's high standards by doing nothing for the next five years in order to give others a chance to catch up. Then I'll win my third honour in 2016 when TIME awards, I dunno, 'Bald People' or 'Bloggers' or 'People Who Dip Chocolate Chip Cookies Into Apple Sauce' as its winner.

* = "You pressed 'you,' referring to me. That is incorrect. The correct answer is 'you.' "

UFC 140 (In Toronto!) Predictions

2011-12-10T14:18:00.004-05:00

* Tito Ortiz over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, decision
"Little Nog" has lost two in a row and very easily could've lost three in a row were it not for a dodgy judge's decision win over Jason Brilz. He really hasn't looked impressive for a long time. So if I'm putting this much stock in recent results, why am I picking Noguiera to lose to Tito Ortiz, who is 1-5-1 in his last seven fights? In a word, ring rust. I often pick against fighters who are coming off long layoffs; basically, anything more than 10 months away from fighting is a red flag for me. Since this is such a factor in my fight-picking logic, I'm reversing it in Ortiz's favour here since Ortiz is on a regular schedule for the first time in years. Due to injuries and being picky over opponents, Ortiz fought just once per year from 2007-2010. It looked like he was becoming a ceremonial fighter. This bout with Nogueira, however, is Tito's third in a six-month span. For as much flack as Ortiz has taken in recent years, the fact that he's actually now training and competing on a regular basis can only be a good thing. This might go down as one of my dumbest-ever predictions in hindsight ("Mark, you seriously picked Tito Ortiz to win a fight in 2011?!") but what the hell, I'll go with Tito for literally the first time ever.

* Claude Patrick over Brian Ebersole, decision
Ebersole is 9-0 since September 2008, Patrick is 13-0 since April 2005 (with, admittedly, a couple of long layoffs in between fights). All things considered, this is surprisingly the toughest fight to predict on the card --- two mid-level guys, both on good runs, records a bit padded from years of fighting in lower-tier MMA orgs in Canada and Australia, looking for one breakthrough performance that might net them a contender's bout. It's basically a coin flip so I'm taking Patrick because he's from Toronto. Never let it be said that I'm not a homer.

* Frank Mir over Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, KO, R2
"Big Nog" is coming off the most emotional result of his career, a first-round KO of Brendan Schaub at the UFC's debut event in Rio that maybe saved Nogueira from being cut (speaking of Nogueiras fighting for their jobs...) and gave him a huge win in his home country. Had Nogueira chosen to retire right there on the spot, it would've been a storybook ending to a legendary career. But, he's still fighting and I'm thinking reality is about to interject itself. Mir already has one brutal knockout over Nogueira in a fight that many considered a fluke at the time -- Nog was suffered from a staph infection and couldn't properly train -- but I dunno, it's possible Nogueira's jaw could still be cracked. Schaub couldn't do anything with it, but Mir is a good enough striker to hang with all but the heaviest-handed of heavyweights. (That was the most Mike Goldberg-ish sentence I've ever written.) I'd be a lot of fun to see Nogueira win again, but I suspect Mir gets another win over the future HOFer. Is it a bad sign that I'm picking against two guys known as 'Nog' during the Xmas season?

* Mark Hominick over Chan-Sung Jung, KO, R2
I probably should just refer to Jung as 'the Korean Zombie' at all times because a) that's a great nickname and b) there are probably a lot of halfwit MMA fans out there who don't actually know his real name but love his fights. For sheer entertainment value, it doesn't much better than Jung. Besides the nickname, he's one of those nonstop, all-out fighters that almost always puts on a great fight. You never know what you'll see in a Zombie fight, and that includes him pulling out a goddamn Twister submission in his last match. All this being said, Jung is not a top-level featherweight by any stretch and a legit title contender like Hominick should more or less have his way with him. It'll be an awfully fun 5-8 minutes while it lasts, though.

* Jon Jones over Lyoto Machida, TKO, R3
The subtitle here could be "Past Juggernaut vs. Current Juggernaut." Just over two years ago, it was Machida who was riding high as the unbeaten light-heavyweight champ that nobody could figure out. Of course, Machida's dominance ended in rough fashion at the hands of Shogun Rua and now the Dragon is only getting another title shot due to a Rashad Evans injury. While Machida isn't a deserving challenger by recent form (sketchy decision over Shogun, brutal knockout loss to Shogun, sketchy decision loss to Rampage Jackson, blowout win over Randy Couture), he's still a tremendous fighter and a big challenge to Jones.

Just like how Alexander cut through the Gordian Knot with his sword, the way to figure out Machida is simply plow right into his defence (like Shogun's punch) or at least contain him with cage-control and dirty boxing, as Rampage did. Jones may be able to do this with his much-superior wrestling; while Machida has a black belt in BJJ, he has surprisingly few submission wins in his career. Could we see a 25-minute Georges St. Pierre special from Jones tonight? Possible, though I think Jones' ground-and-pound is vicious enough that if he gets a few good shots in on Machida, that might be enough to end it.

Of course, I've just analyzed this all from the 'how will Jones beat Machida' end since trying to figure how Machida can beat Jones is difficult since nobody's done that yet.* The book on Jones is that his chin is still untested, so Machida could replicate his strategy against (the then-unbeaten) Rashad Evans and possibly overwhelm him with strikes if he finds an opening. Evans, however, is built like a normal human, whereas Jones is some lanky hybrid between pterodactyl and man. As elusive as Machida is, he just simply might not be able to get close enough to land anything of consequence on Jones. I'm guessing the Jon Jones riddle goes unsolved for yet another event and the champ retains. This would set up either the long-awaited Jones vs. Evans fight, or possibly Jones vs. Dan Henderson, which would also be fun.

Undercard….
* Jared Hamman over Constantinos Philippou, KO, R2
* Krzysztof Soszynski over Igor Pokrajac, decision
* John Cholish over Mitch Clarke, TKO, R2
* John Makdessi over Dennis Hallman, KO, R3
* Walel Watson over Yves Jabouin, submission, R1
* Nik Lentz over Mark Bocek, decision
* Rich Attonito over Jake Hecht, submission, R1

Community Vs. Trivia

2011-12-08T16:42:00.003-05:00

It's just about gotten to the point where I would watch the cast of Community do anything, be it actually star in their TV show, play a game of pop culture Trivial Pursuit, solve mysteries, arrange a delightful rose garden, etc. Also, I don't want to brag, but...I would've done prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay well on those questions.

"Memoirs Of An Invisible Man: The Video Game"....ha!

NHL Realignment

2011-12-06T00:06:00.001-05:00

The NHL's current divisional setup was probably the fairest they could've achieved. While the geography wasn't a total fit, it was the best that could be done to keep an even 15 teams in each conference and thus give everyone an even playing field in the quest for the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Unfortunately, while the NHL's new alignment plan fixes the geography and is somewhat "fairer" in terms of everyone-plays-everyone, it fails in the most simplest of terms --- it is almost inevitable that every single season, at least one deserving team will be hosed out of a spot in the playoffs.

The NHL has cooked up an amplified version of the old four-division setup, getting rid of conferences altogether. Here are the new alignments….

* Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver

* Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis, Winnipeg

* Carolina, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington

* Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Montreal, Ottawa, Tampa Bay, Toronto

Using the Maple Leafs as an example, their schedule will now feature a home-and-home series against every non-conference opponent (23 teams x 2 = 46 games) and six games against each conference foe (6 teams x 6 = 36 games) so the 82-game schedule will be retained.

(It's different if you're in an eight-team conference. The Jets, for instance, have 44 out-of-conference games and 38 against conference rivals. So, the Jets will play each divisional rival at least five times each, and it will rotate each year as to which of the others they'll play an extra time.)

This isn't the big issue, however. The issue is that the conferences will be maintained for the playoffs. So now, to qualify for the postseason, you have to be one of the top four teams in your conference, rest of the league be damned. The first two rounds will feature intra-conference tournaments, with the winners then advancing to the Stanley Cup semi-finals, where they'll be reseeded (presumably by point total) for the final four.

Now, as a Leafs fan, I'm somewhat pleased that we now only have to worry about finishing ahead of three teams to get a shot at the Cup, rather than seven teams. But in the grander sense, are you kidding me with this horsecrap?! The NHL has created the AL East writ large, where quality teams would simply miss out due to their division, rather than their not being one of the actual best teams in their sport. You might argue, "If a team isn't good enough to finish ahead of four others, why should they earn a spot in the playoffs?" Because it's a SIXTEEN-TEAM FIELD! If you have five superb teams in one conference, is it fair that one of them gets omitted while laser teams from other conferences sail in?

Let's not even ignore the numbers game of the fact that the teams in the eight-team conferences are doubly-hard done by, since they have to beat an extra opponent to reach the playoffs. The solution could be that the NHL eventually plans to even things out via expansion teams….but good lord, the NHL doesn't even have 30 stable markets now. If the NHL knows of two great potential markets, let's move the Coyotes or Panthers or someone rather than stretching the league even thinner.

Realignment took place in large part because the NHL simply has too many teams in the Eastern time zone. It's been no secret that the Red Wings have been complaining for years about playing in the Western Conference, plus several other Western teams don't care for all the travel through the Pacific, Central AND Eastern time zones. I admit, as a Leafs fan, I'm so used to seeing our rivals on a regular basis that I overlook the fact that it's hard for, say, a Minnesota Wild fan to really rev up some hatred for the Oilers, Flames, Canucks and Avalanche. (Wild fans' only consolation is the team's gorgeous jerseys). The problem with going to a more geographically-centered format, though, is that it requires a shakeup every time a team is moved. If the Coyotes moved to Quebec City, for instance, I presume the solution would just be to have Quebec slotted into the Leafs' conference, so they'd suddenly have eight teams while the new 'Western' conference is reduced to seven. Still, not fair.

Still, this realignment could be a good thing in the long run since I suspect the re-formatted playoffs could be quickly revamped. How quickly? Oh, just about the first time a team like the Wings, Bruins, Rangers, Leafs, Blackhawks, Flyers or Capitals are the ones screwed by missing out on a postseason spot. Then you'll see Gary Bettman scrambling to cover his ass like there's no tomorrow.

Old Toronto (With Pretty Pictures!)

2011-12-05T16:12:00.003-05:00

BlogTO has a one-stop shop for a varied archive of photographs from throughout Toronto's history, chronicling the city's architecture and evolution over the decades. It's a very cool piece to check out, though admittedly I'm totally in the tank for these "here's how we were" kind of features.

Very relieved to learn that my townhouse isn't on the site of an old industrial waste plant. Instead, it was just built over an ancient native burial ground. Nothing bad could possibly come of this!

Anonymous review

2011-11-29T18:17:00.002-05:00

Anonymous is one of those cases where I wish I wasn't really as *into* movies as I am. Once I watch a film, I'll generally check it out online to see what the critics are saying, what the buzz is, get background about the production, etc. This is the inverse of what I do before seeing a movie, which is try to avoid hearing about it in order to avoid spoilers and whatnot. Obviously I'll carry biases going into a screening based on expectations, but I always try to keep a clean mental slate whenever a film starts.

In the case of Anonymous, I'd seen the trailer, which prompted this analysis back in May….

This is the definition of bittersweet if you're an English major. Hollywood is making a movie, titled "Anonymous," about the Shakespeare authorship question, one of the most fascinating mysteries in all of literature. Frankly, it's long overdue.

Problem #1: The film centers solely on the theory that Edward de Vere (the Earl of Oxford) is the true author. Okay, well, that kind of gives short shrift to the other candidates (Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, Sir Francis Bacon and my personal favourite, Henry Neville), but hey, okay, for the sake of a 100-minute film, I can understand the need to streamline things.

Problem #2: This is the trailer. Uh, it looks pretty swordfighty for a movie about playwriting, but still, ok, a movie's got to sell tickets and whatnot. Fair enough.

Problem #3: It's directed by Roland Emmerich. OH FUCK. As in, the guy who directed The Patriot, 2012, Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and a bunch of other shitty action movies. This is a bad, bad, bad sign.

Problem #4: The tagline is "We've all been played." Oh jesus christ.

In short, you can probably skip Anonymous unless you like stupidity. I pity the poor English teachers of the world, who will no doubt be faced with hundreds of essays from students citing this film as a definitive source. "My thesis is how Iago and Othello's relationship is a metaphor for jousting, which Edward de Vere was a champion at (as cited on Wikipedia), since we all know de Vere was really Shakespeare!"

Anyway, my expectations were pretty low, but Anonymous ended up being a thoroughly ludicrous but entertaining film. It's not any stretch to call this Emmerich's best movie, which is a little like noting that a broken clock is right twice a day, but still, I enjoyed it. Vanessa Redgrave and Rhys Ifans (in a dramatic role!) did their best to add gravitas to the theatrics of the plot and Rafe Spall playing Shakespeare as a straight-up bastard was pretty fun. Maybe I'm just a sucker for Elizabethean and/or "Shakespearean" costume dramas, but Anonymous gets a thumbs-up from this guy. Not a full thumb, but maybe the equivalent of three stars out of five. Geez, I would hate to lose two-fifths of my thumb.

The real issue with Anonymous is not the film itself, but more with the odd fact that Emmerich isn't treating his movie as just historical fiction, but rather as the truth. While Anonymous isn't even close to being as good as Back To The Future, imagine if Robert Zemeckis went around saying, "Oh yeah, time travel is real, and our film shows how it would happen." Or if Steven Spielberg claimed Jurassic Park was a literal blueprint for how to clone dinosaurs. We'd think they were nuts. Emmerich, meanwhile, says things like, "That's why everybody in the Stratfordian side is so pissed off because we've called them on their lies."

Did William Shakespeare actually write the plays attributed to him? It's at least possible he didn't --- there are certainly gaps that exist in the public record about Shakespeare and his work, more than you'd think there would be for a playwright of his stature, even one who lived 400 years ago. The authorship question is a fascinating one but it's at best just a sidebar in any study of Shakespeare's work since (let's be honest) the plays and poems were with at least 90% certainty written by William freakin' Shakespeare. I can buy that they may have been somewhat altered or re-edited from the versions that eventually appeared in the First Folio, but the overwhelming amount of evidence suggests the man from Stratford is indeed the man.

And, if Shakespeare didn't write the material, I can sure bet his name didn't end up on the plays thanks to some byzantine conspiracy involving the Royal Family as Anonymous suggests. I was all ready to praise Emmerich for making a good movie but man, the "gotcha, Shakespeare!" attitude just makes him look like a dope. I'll keep this in mind in 2313 when someone makes a movie about how Jeff Goldblum actually directed Independence Day but Emmerich got the credit due to…..MACHINATIONS! *swirls moustache*

Muppet Stuff

2011-11-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

Needless to say, The Muppets was adorable. It's a great trip down memory lane for long-time fans and it'll probably be successful in rebooting the franchise for today's generation. The script was half-tribute to old Muppets projects and half-general "hey, let's put on a show!" plot, but really, any excuse to simply let the Muppets go nuts on stage is appreciated. One of the few criticisms I'd heard about the movie was that it was too fixated on Jason Segel and Walter the 'new' Muppet, but I didn't find this to be the case at all. Segel is smart enough to more or less sideline his character for the middle portion of the movie so we can just focus on Kermit getting the band back together; Segel and Amy Adams and Walter are just supporting players, though Walter does get his big moment as the climax.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to review this film since it's basically just what you'd expect. If you've ever liked the Muppets, you'll like the new movie. There's no excuse for not seeing it. In the hospital in an iron lung? Have then wheel the iron lung to a theatre. Boom, doctored.

********************

Given that one of the songs is titled "Man Or Muppet" and the overall theme is Walter finding his place within the Muppets collective, it occurred to me watching the film that I'm basically Fozzie Bear. Bad jokes, always wears a hat, bald underneath, and the less said about the body hair the better. There are worse Muppets to be, certainly. Better Fozzie than realizing halfway through the movie that my life and personality exactly reflects that of Rizzo the Rat.

********************

Top Ten Favourite Muppets…
10. Sam the Eagle
8. (tie) Bunsen & Beaker
7. Link Hogthrob
5. (tie) Statler and Waldorf
4 Rowlf
3. Miss Piggy
2. The Swedish Chef
1. Kermit the Frog

I stuck to just characters from The Muppet Show here, keeping in the theme of the post. If it was the Muppet universe in general, you'd better believe some Sesame Street characters would be popping up here. Y'all know how much I dig the Street. Cookie Monster would easily hold down the #2 overall spot, though Kermit would still be on top.

**********************

And, to celebrate my two favourite Muppets, here's a great clip from Sesame Street. I could watch these Kermit/Cookie Monster sketches all day long. This one is particularly golden --- "arrivederci, frog," Kermit's look of disgust as CM is trying to butter him up, "just thought it might be a cookie, off-chance," etc.

Beckett and Andre, Hangin' Out

2011-11-22T13:39:00.003-05:00

As an English major/childhood pro wrestling fan, this story of the fabulous true friendship between Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant delighted me to no end. Surely some type of play/film/sitcom/mystery show where they drive around in the truck solving crimes needs to be made from this scenario. I guess you could reference cricket just a bit...perhaps have Andre's catchphrase be "This is a sticky wicket," or have Andre and Sam be accompanied on their adventures by a talking cartoon cricket named Sir Donald.

I think you could have Paul Rudd as Beckett if you added enough old age makeup, since clearly, Jason Segel is the only choice to play Andre. Is "Waiting For Andre" too obvious a title?

The Packers Aren't Unbeatable

2011-11-20T19:25:00.003-05:00

I don't care if the Packers have a perfect season; I just want them to be perfect in January and February. An unbeaten record would, of course, be awesome and incredible and would be one of the top-20 events of my life --- despite my not, officially, having anything whatsoever to do with it, not counting the good karma from my wearing Packers colours on gamedays --- but, a Super Bowl is infinitely more important.

I'm hedging my bets now since if I was a betting man (which I obviously am, giving that I'm hedging them), I'd say Green Bay will drop at least one game the rest of the season. The team's weakness is the defence, which has a bend-but-not-break philosophy but has been bent really, really far a couple of different times this year. In three of their last four games, the Packers allowed 27 points to Minnesota, 38 to San Diego and now 26 to Tampa Bay, three offences that range from struggling to lousy. GB's ridiculous offense ensured that all three games were still comfortable wins, but even still, a really good team with an above-average offense and who can at least contain Aaron Rodgers definitely has a chance to beat the Packers.

The remaining schedule…

* at Detroit. The Lions' dip in form makes this seem like less of a monstrous game than it did two months ago, but the Lions will still be geeked for this matchup. Thank you, Thanksgiving afternoon scheduling.

* at New York Giants. A big possible playoff preview here. I still have trouble believing this team is actually good, but 6-3 speaks otherwise. New York is a good team that is prone to the occasional stinker (their opening week loss to Washington and their inexplicable home loss to Seattle that sunk many a suicide league pool) but is by and large solid week in and week out. That said, the Giants need 'the good Eli' to show up in top form in order to beat Green Bay since I suspect Rodgers will just feast on New York's garbage secondary. Let's not also discount the fact that if Green Bay beats Detroit in that huge NFC Central game, the Giants could be a bit of a letdown game afterwards. One would think a Super Bowl champion team on a (by beating Detroit) 17-game winning streak would be mentally strong enough to avoid a letdown, but they're only human.

* home against Oakland. And, wins over both the Lions AND Giants would make this one a trap game. The Raiders are tough and can play with anyone but I don't think they're good enough to go into Lambeau Field and beat the Packers.

* at Kansas City. The only gimme left on Green Bay's schedule. Arrowhead Stadium may be a tough road venue and the Chiefs could still be in the playoff hunt thanks to that crappy AFC West, but the Packers shouldn't have any problems winning here.

* home against Chicago. This is the big red flag. The Bears, against all odds, appear to be for real. The 13-3 team that was universally expected to regress has instead stayed tough and are probably a top-five team in the NFL. A Christmas evening game, Green Bay vs. Chicago, mah gawd. The Bears are 6-3 now and another 13-3 record is actually not out of the question -- their remaining schedule is San Diego today, at Oakland, Kansas City, at Denver and the absurd Tim Tebow, Seattle, at Green Bay and then at Minnesota. I doubt they'll run the table but it's at least possible. Wouldn't shock me at all to see the Packers and Bears meet for a third time in the postseason.

* home against Detroit. The rematch against the Lions could be a huge game for both teams, a huge game for just one team or a nothing game that carries bitter feelings for Lions fans. By the time Week 17 rolls around, the Lions could be playing for a playoff spot and the Packers could be playing for a) an unbeaten season and b) home field advantage in the playoffs. Conversely, the Packers could have lost a game but wrapped up home-field so they'd be resting starters against a Lions team gunning for the postseason. Double-conversely, the Pack would have things wrapped up and the Lions could have fallen out of the playoff race altogether. I think only this latter scenario would favour Detroit since even if the Packers had clinched home-field, they'd still want to play hard to keep their divisional rivals out of the postseason.

The other factor for Green Bay: the freakin' 49ers. San Francisco is 9-1 and has this remaining schedule: at Baltimore, at Arizona, at Seattle, home against Pittsburgh and a home-n'-home with St. Louis. Only the Ravens and Steelers games are question marks, so the 49ers look to post (at worst!) a 13-3 record. If they steal just one of those games against Pittsburgh/Baltimore, they'll be 14-2, so Green Bay would have to be at least 15-1 just to get home field. It's possible Green Bay would have the tiebreaker edge if both teams finished 14-2 but I'd rather not leave things up to the vagaries of the NFL's tiebreaking system. Even if the Packers lose the perfect record, they'd still have to play hard for as long as it takes to clinch top spot in the NFC over San Francisco.

With all of this pressure bearing down on them, a perfect record is too much to ask. Not even the most perfect football player ever could help Green Bay go 16-0, not to mention 3-0 in the playoffs. (Unless Curt Hennig could play defense. Which he probably could've, he was perfect, for god's sakes.) I'd almost feel better about Green Bay's Super Bowl chances if they dropped a 'dress rehearsal' game to New York or Chicago, just so the team could focus on resting a few guys and getting 100 percent for their second-round game.

The Super Bowl is the key. It would be absolutely, positively heartbreaking if the Packers pulled a 2007-08 Patriots and went 18-0, only to lose the big one at the end. Hell, if 19-0 is so important, Green Bay has already won 16 in a row dating back to last year --- just win the next three and phone it in against Kansas City. The overall record for consecutive wins is 21, held by the 2003-2004 New England Patriots, but what the hell, let's let the Pats keep that one, Tom Brady doesn't have enough other plaudits. Throw him a bone, which he will pick up with the hand that contains his three Super Bowl rings and his Gisele Bundschen wedding ring. Damn you, Brady.

So there you have it. Even this most fervent of Packer-backers doesn't think an unbeaten season is necessary or even realistic. All that matters is that 14th championship. Mercury Morris and Don Shula can drink more champagne for the time being, Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy just want another ring.

"Mark, was this whole post an elaborate anti-jinx?"

Umm…..

UFC 139 Picks

2011-11-17T22:59:00.001-05:00

* Brian Bowles over Urijah Faber, decision
The winner gets the next crack at bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz, and both men hold losses to Cruz already. Faber, of course, has lost twice to Cruz, once by sub in the WEC four years ago and then by decision last July in Cruz's first UFC bout. You might wonder why Faber is once again in line for a title bout and the short answer is, he's Urijah Faber. He's the most well-known and marketable name in the bantamweight division so of course the UFC will go out of their way to line him up for one final crack at Cruz. It wouldn't surprise to see Faber and Cruz as the coaches on the next TUF season in order to build up the third fight of their trilogy and to get over the bantamweights.

So, with all this in mind, I'm picking Bowles because I think he's just the better fighter right now. Bowles' only loss was to Cruz and that was via a doctor stoppage when Bowles broke his hand in the second round. It's possible BB has what it takes to figure Cruz out, we just haven't seen it yet. Frankly, I think it might be better for the bantamweight division in the long run if more personalities and names besides just Faber and Cruz are promoted. I have no idea what Bowles' personality is like, but why not have him coach a TUF season? A Bowles win and the oncoming train that is Renan Barao could make things very interesting over the next year for the bantams.

* Kyle Kingsbury over Stephan Bonnar, decision
With four wins in a row, you'd think Kingsbury would have drawn someone higher up the food chain than Stephan Bonnar, which is why I'm picking Kingsbury to win. For all the guff Bonnar takes about being a C-level fighter who's kept around as a thank you by the UFC for his part in the original Ultimate Fighter finale, Bonnar is awfully hard to stop. In fact, he's never been stopped --- of his seven losses, five were by decision and the other two were TKO cut stoppages. Now, let's not kid ourselves and say that Bonnar is underrated but at least he deserves some credit for being a tough guy and avoiding getting finished by the likes of Jon Jones, Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin (twice). He can take solace in yet another decision loss here.

* Cung Le over Wanderlei Silva, KO, R1
This fight reminds me of that Simpsons scene when Homer is in hell's ironic punishment division. "So, you like knockouts, huh? Well, how about all the knockouts in the WORLD!" There is a 100 percent chance this fight ends with someone's unconscious head bouncing off the octagon floor. You have Cung Le, the mixed martial artist/former kickboxer/current action movie star who hasn't fought since June 2010 and has recorded all seven of his wins via knockout. Then you have Wanderlei Silva, the MMA legend who has 24 out of 33 wins via knockout and (perhaps more importantly) has an ever-glassening chin due to years of combat fighting. Yes, I realize 'glassening' isn't a word, bear with me. If it wasn't for the fact that Le hasn't fought in so long, I would pick him in an instant --- Silva just can't stand up to anyone who has any semblance of a striking game anymore. I'm still going with Le as my pick but the bottom line is, someone is getting KTFO.

* Rick Story over Martin Kampmann, decision
A real battle of hard-luck fighters here. Kampmann has lost his previous two bouts, both coming via questionable decisions; the bright side for Kampmann is if he loses here, the controversial nature of his losing streak will probably earn him one more shot in the UFC. Story stepped up on short notice to face Nate Marquardt in the main event of a Fight Night card in June. Unfortunately for Story, Marquardt dropped out due to his infamous lack of medical clearance the day before the show, and Story then was unprepared for substitute opponent Charlie Brenneman and lost a decision. Story had a six-fight win streak going before that loss, and I think he has somewhat turned a corner in his career where he can thought of as a legit lower-level guy in the upper-tier. (What a backhanded compliment!) Kampmann will be outwrestled to another decision loss, though maybe at least this one will be more straight-forward.

* Shogun Rua over Dan Henderson, submission, R3
Since losing to Anderson Silva in March 2008, Henderson is 6-1, with the only loss coming when he had a jacked-up back and lost a five-round decision to Jake Shields. Coming off his whipping of the legendary Fedor Emelianenko last July, Hendo is on top his game and back in the UFC. If he beats Shogun, another title shot is his for the taking.

So, why am I picking Shogun? In a word, I think Shogun is healthy. To go back to Shogun's past history of major knee surgeries, his first fight post-surgery is a loss or a near-loss (Forrest Griffin in 2007, the gas-fest against Mark Coleman in 2009, Jon Jones in March), his second fight is a knockout win (Chuck Liddell in 2009 and Griffin in August) and then by the third fight, he's back to being 'the old Shogun.' We saw the old Shogun beat Lyoto Machida and then robbed by the judges when they met on my birthday in 2009, and if that guy shows up on Saturday, that guy can beat Dan Henderson. Shogun in top form is arguably the top light-heavyweight EVER, and I would love to see a totally fit Rua get another shot at Jon Jones.

I see this going like Henderson's bout with Anderson Silva. Hendo will try to outwrestle Rua and take him down, but sooner or later, Shogun will catch him with a strike and then get a sub for the victory. I sound pretty confident in this result but (believe it or not!) I'm wrong about these things sometimes, so Henderson certainly has the tools to win or get a knockout himself. This is a fantastic, near-legendary matchup that I can't believe is only happening for the first time now and not years ago in PRIDE. I guess it'd be kind of funny if this one (like a certain heavyweight title bout) also ended in an 80-second knockout but at least if it happens here, we'll have enjoyed a full night of action beforehand. Well, wait, those of us in Canada did, since our version of the UFC's FOX broadcast featured the awesome Ben Henderson vs. Clay Guida bout. Man, it's great to be a canuck.

Undercard...
* Michael McDonald over Alex Soto, decision
* Chris Weidman over Tom Lawlor, TKO, R2
* Miguel Torres over Nick Pace, decision
* Danny Castillo over Shamar Bailey, decision
* Rafael dos Anjos over Gleison Tibau, submission, R2
* Seth Baczynski over Matt Brown, submission, R2
* Ryan Bader over Jason Brilz, decision

Liam Neeson = Comic Genius

2011-11-12T15:18:00.003-05:00

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's new series, Life's Too Short (starring Warwick Davis) debuted on the BBC and obviously if it's anything to close to The Office or Extras, it will be pure gold. This promo clip featuring Liam Neeson is a great start. It might even be up there with the legendary Patrick Stewart cameo from Extras, which I'm linking to again because it's just that fantastic.

The Big Fight

2011-11-11T16:12:00.001-05:00

Cain Velasquez hasn't fought in over a year thanks to shoulder surgery. While unbeaten and the world heavyweight champion, Velasquez's chin has been a bit of a question mark given that Cheick Kongo (admittedly a good striker) was able to wobble him in a few times in their 2009 bout. Cain overcame that by taking Kongo down and controlling him with wrestling and ground-and-pound en route to a comfortable decision victory, but still, one wonders what would happen if Cain got rocked and then found himself on the mat with, say, a BJJ brown belt?

Junior Dos Santos has a BJJ brown belt but we've never seen him use it, as all seven of his UFC victories have come via decisions, knockouts and one 'submission' from Mirko Cro Cop, who gave it up when Junior's punches broke his orbital bone. While there's no real reason to doubt that Dos Santos is good on the ground, we still haven't seen how effective his MMA submission game actually is. It's also worth noting that while Dos Santos packs a mighty wallop, he hasn't been able to finish Roy Nelson and Shane Carwin in his previous two fights, though he gave both men a hefty beating. Nelson and Carwin are tough, sure, but JDS didn't look at dominant facing higher-caliber UFC heavyweights. In fact, Dos Santos looked a bit winded as both of those fights went into the third round.

So you have long layoff and possible weak chin vs. question mark of a ground game and cardio issues. I'm focusing on the negatives since that's more interesting than just saying these are clearly the two best heavyweight fighters in the world, which they are, and why Saturday's fight is going to be such a huge tossup. I THINK, if all things were equal, I'd favour Velasquez because he can outwrestle Junior into a third round and beyond, perhaps tiring the Brazilian out. However, that year of ring rust is a big worry for me. I hate picking guys who have been out of action a long time, especially when that layoff is ended by facing the undisputed top contender for your championship.

Saturday's heavyweight title fight between Velasquez and Dos Santos is the biggest fight in UFC history. It will mark the UFC's network television debut and the entire show is (theoretically) just the one fight. So yeah, just a little bit of pressure on the guys to make things exciting, eh? This could put even more pressure on Velasquez, since his path to victory might come via some Randy Couture-esque dirty boxing and holding his opponent against the cage wall. It isn't the most exciting strategy in the world and wouldn't be what either UFC or FOX would like to see in this huge primetime debut. If Cain feels in any way pressured to keep things "exciting" and forced out of his gameplan, that would be very, very unfortunate.

Man, again I'm focusing on a negative when this is a legitimately fantastic matchup, one of the greatest in MMA history. You could hardly have a bigger potential fight for the UFC's first venture into network primetime. There's a good argument to be made that the epic Forrest Griffin/Stephan Bonnar fight on the first Ultimate Fighter finale 'made' the UFC as a legitimate televised sport, and if Velasquez/Dos Santos is even in the ballpark of that match, this will be a bonanza of a night for mixed martial arts.

Prediction: screw it, Velasquez's long absence scared me off. I'm picking Dos Santos via KO in the second round.

Undercard
Allegedly the UFC is sticking to the plan of just showing the main event on FOX and leaving the entire undercard to the internet. I find this hard to believe. Say that there's an undercard fight that features 5-10 minutes of furious action and a crazy finish; you're telling me the UFC and FOX wouldn't show that bout if Cain/Junior ends with a quick first-round finish? Especially the Henderson vs. Guida fight, which is a #1 contender's match for Frankie Edgar's lightweight title. It boggles the mind that this important fight is relegated to an under-undercard, rather than on PPV. Hell, it's a better fight than Mark Munoz vs. Chris Leben, and that one headlined the free UFC 138 on Spike last weekend. Munoz/Leben was a very good fight but still, mind-boggling.

* Cub Swanson over Ricardo Lamas, KO, R3
* Clay Harvison over DaMarques Johnson, submission, R2
* Robert Peralta over Mackens Semerzier, decision
* Norifumi Yamamoto over Darren Uyenoyama, KO, R1
* Pablo Garza over Dustin Poirier, decision
* Mike Pierce over Paul Bradley, decision
* Matt Lucas over Aaron Rosa, KO, R2
* Cole Escovedo over Alex Caceres, submission, R1
* Ben Henderson over Clay Guida, submission, R2….Guida's wrestling and lay-and-pray style will be neutralized by Henderson, who will eventually catch him in a triangle or something.

Have The Muppets Host The Oscars

2011-11-10T15:55:00.001-05:00

So now that Eddie Murphy has pulled out of hosting the Academy Awards and Brett Ratner has exposed himself as a dumbass (I know, right? What a shocker! The director of X-Men 3 turns out to be a dope.…who saw that coming?!), this spring's Oscar ceremony is suddenly having to start from scratch. Brian Grazer has already been brought in as the show's new producer but since the hosting gig is obviously more high-profile, that's where everyone is focusing their attention.

Now, I'll be honest, I love watching the Oscars just because it's The Oscars. Outside of the opening number and monologue, the host usually doesn't bring much to the actual show itself. Their duties the rest of the time are just to introduce people and maybe participate in one or two more skits over the course of the night, so even if the host is terrible (i.e. James Franco), their spotlighted portion of the ceremony is surprisingly small. So, frankly, the host isn't a drawing card for me personally, though I realize I'm in the minority on this one. I was interested to see if Murphy could bring back some of his old 1980's mojo to the job but if he hadn't, it certainly wouldn't have made or broken the show for me.

Given Grazer's lengthy career and number of major stars he's worked with in the past, there's no shortage of hosting options. They could bring back a former host (Billy Crystal has apparently already turned it down, but you could also go the route of Steve Martin, Ellen Degeneres, Hugh Jackman or Jon Stewart again), bring in someone like Neil Patrick Harris who's proven adept at hosting every other awards show on TV, or perhaps Grazer brings in the big gun of Tom Hanks, who can do comedy, bring gravitas and is Mr. Academy Award already. Oscar host seems like a natural move for Hanks as he settles into the "beloved Hollywood legend" portion of his career.

But, to paraphrase that guy from Blazing Saddles….never mind that shit, here comes Gonzo! I am 1000% behind the mounting online campaign to have the Muppets host the Academy Awards.

Talk about a perfect way to totally escape the stink of the Ratner controversy. The Muppets have the new movie out, the characters are universally beloved, and virtually every plot in Muppets history is about the gang putting on a show --- what better way to cap that off than to have them put on the biggest show in the business?

The possibilities are endless. The Swedish Chef cooking the food for the after-show party. Statler and Waldorf up in the balcony, cracking all the jokes that are too mean for Kermit to say. Miss Piggy comparing how she's dressed to the clothes of every actress in the building. Fozzy Bear delivering even hackier jokes than the ones Bruce Vilanch already writes. Rowlf and the Electric Mayhem in the orchestra pit playing people off. Amy Adams and Jason Segel can easily step in for the parts of the show that require actual humans, since it would be odd to have the list of recently-deceased actors be introduced by, say, Sam The Eagle. Then again, watch this clip, dry your eyes and try to tell me the Muppets can't pull off emotional moments.

A Muppet-hosted Oscars is a can't-miss, solid-gold idea. Sure, there's a chance it would somehow offend Sean Penn, but…..wait, that isn't a downside.

Fashion Week

2011-11-04T18:50:00.002-04:00

My tan cargo pants are history. Tragedy. After five or six years of constant use, the crotch has been worn out, and since I'm not (immediately) planning on becoming a male exotic dancer, I have no choice but to relegate the ol' tan cargos to the level of "comfy pants I wear around the house but not in public." It's a sad end for these fine pants and I can't help but think they deserve more than to live the rest of their days as glorified pyjamas. It's like seeing Brett Favre finish his career with the Jets and Vikings rather than with Green Bay….and, ironically, both Favre and my cargo pants were undone by their crotches.

I do own, like, three other pairs of cargo pants, so you won't have to worry about my wardrobe suddenly requiring me to wear shorts in November. In my vast experience as a fashion expert, I'd have to say that cargo pants are basically the best garment ever invented. What's not to like? Comfy, reasonably fashionable, not formal by any stretch but you can wear them out to most events and not be laughed at (to your face), and the pockets, my god, the pockets. Laurent Paquette, the inventor of pockets back in the year 103 A.D., can rest in peace knowing that his greatest creation found its perfect mate in cargo pants.

Need a place to put your phone? Lower right leg side pocket. Your wallet? You could go the traditional route of your back pocket, but when you're a stout fellow like myself, sitting on your wallet runs the risk of one's fat ass crushing your credit card digits. Instead, boom, just slide that wallet right alongside your phone or, if you like privacy, just slide it into your lower left leg side pocket! Got a toque that you always wear because your bald head gets cold? Put it in, you guessed it, one of the side pockets! Always like carrying a pen in case you get an idea for your latest hilarious blog post and need to write it down? Carry a pen in your regular pocket! I suppose it's possible the average person might not carry so much crap on their person at any given time, but I was in Cub Scouts for four, hilarious, neckerchief-filled years. It was there that I learned to Be Prepared in case Shere Khan from The Jungle Book suddenly appeared and tried to maul me to death. I think this was the message…all the Jungle Book imagery kind of blended together after a while.

This is all a round-about way of saying that if you're interested in buying a slightly-used pair of tan cargo pants, contact me. They can be yours at the very reasonable price of $89.99 Canadian dollars. This might be technically more than I originally paid for the pants, but now they're VINTAGE. You're not just buying a pair of cargo pants that are somewhat drafty in the testicle area --- you're buying a passport to the halcyon days of 2006 fashion.

Also, this would be a great/awful time for any of my friends to say "Hey Mark, you've had that hole in your crotch for two months, we all just thought it'd be funny to not tell you."

Achtung Covers

2011-11-01T15:53:00.000-04:00

I probably won't buy the new Achtung Baby cover album, created to celebrate the original's 20th anniversary. U2's original record is, indubitably, my favourite record of all time. It's certainly one of my deserted island albums. Getting the covers version would be like cheating on your wife with a woman that looked 80% exactly like her --- what's the point?

This isn't to say the covers album isn't good. I've certainly listened to it (thanks YouTube!) and all in all, it's an interesting set of interpretations. Here's the track listing….

1. Nine Inch Nails/Zoo Station
2. U2 (Jacques Lu Cont remix)/Even Better Than The Real Thing
3. Damien Rice/One
4. Patti Smith/Until The End Of The World
5. Garbage/Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
6. Depeche Mode/So Cruel
7. Gavin Friday/The Fly
8. Snow Patrol/Mysterious Ways
9. The Fray/Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World
10. The Killers/Ultraviolet
11. Glasvegas/Acrobat
12. Jack White/Love Is Blindness

If there's a common element it's that several of the covers take the same tack of reducing vibrant songs to somewhat straightforward, more acoustic numbers. Snow Patrol's cover of 'Mysterious Ways' strips all of the danceability from one of the grooviest songs ever, which kinda ruins it. Conversely, Patti Smith's bare bones version of "Until The End Of The World" is quite powerful, giving it a Johnny Cash, American Recordings kind of vibe. Somewhere in between is Nine Inch Nails' cover of "Zoo Station" and Gavin Friday's cover of "The Fly," neither of which has nearly the rocking energy of U2's originals, but they carry JUST enough of that energy to pull it off.

The only tracks on the album I didn't care much for were Snow Patrol's tune and "Even Better Than The Real Thing," which wasn't actually a cover, but rather U2's version heavily remixed by Jacques Lu Cont. They couldn't find a band to do a proper cover? Seriously, I'm not sure Lu Cont's version is even in my list of top five EBTTRT remixes…oh yes, I've heard several! Besides these two songs, most everything falls into the category of acceptably good. Garbage's version of "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," for instance, is exactly what you'd expect a Garbage cover of that song to sound like.

I've highlighted my three favourites below. There's Patti Smith, first of all. The Killers deliver a nice, playful version of "Ultraviolet," which I'd argue is one of U2's most underrated songs and a tune that, for most other bands, would've been a huge hit single rather than a semi-unknown song buried on the back of a record. Then we have what's unsurprisingly my favourite, given my love of the White Stripes. Jack White's "Love Is Blindness" is just raw and yearning and shredding guitars and pure awesome. God, do I ever wish the White Stripes were still active, or if Jack White did a proper solo album instead of submerging himself within the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs or producing covers of Mozart songs by the Insane Clown Posse.

"Until The End Of The World," Patti Smith

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)," The Killers

"Love Is Blindness," Jack White

Steve Buscemi = Dead

2011-10-30T22:49:00.003-04:00

Ironically, "Ghost World" was one of the few films in which Steve Buscemi didn't get ghosted. This is quite the compilation of Buscemi endings, and it's probably worth mentioning a SPOILER WARNING, just in case you plan on watching any movie Buscemi has ever made.

Some YouTube commenters (society's lowest rung) seem to think it's somehow humiliating to be killed by Christopher Lloyd, but these people are too blinded by Doc Brown to remember that Lloyd has a history of being a badass. Remember his evil Klingon villain in Star Trek III? And, more importantly, as Judge Doom? Shit, that's still horrifying. "Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked... just... like... THIS!"

Death Of Context

2011-10-29T18:27:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that I haven't written one of my legendary out-of-context texts posts in a few months. That's because of some pretty amazing recent developments. In the spirit of "Shit My Dad Says" and "Texts From Last Night" getting sitcom development deals, my own out-of-contexts have been optioned for a new series on ABC.

In the show, two buddies (Joey Lawrence, David Alan Grier) find themselves in possession of a magical smartphone that periodically spits out completely random text messages. Then, the pair are teleported to a mysterious universe that reflects the bizarre scenario outlined in these texts. With the help of a wizard (Andrew Dice Clay) and his apprentice witch daughter (Kathy Ireland, but only using archival footage of her from the early 1990's), the two pals have to figure out how to solve a problem presented by the text before they can return to their true reality. We're hoping we can land Ian McKellen to play the phone, but his asking price is ridiculous. Like, "if you want me to play a goddamn talking smartphone, you will have to pay through the nose" ridiculous. Provided Sir Ian signs on the dotted line, the show should be launched by midseason to replace any of ABC's sure-to-fail other shows. We're thinking probably Pan Am's timeslot once America gets fully creeped out from Christina Ricci's face. Has she always looked vaguely like E.T., or is this a recent development?

….okay, the preceding paragraph may not have been true. (The part about Ricci's face was true.) But no, there's no sitcom in development and I didn't cash in on my blog. The real reason for the lack of out-of-context texts is that cataloguing them all has become a bit of a chore. With my old, crappy phone, the inbox only held 50 messages at a time, so whenever I hit 50, I knew it was time to clean things out and write a post. With my Blackberry, however, I can essentially hold a limitless amount of texts, and they're all kept alive in specific threads, not a finite number of messages of which I can keep track.

Now, I guess there's no *reason* I couldn't continue the series. I'm still certainly getting odd messages and while it would just take more time and effort to catalogue them all, it's certainly not an impossible task. So basically it just comes down to laziness. But it's a metaphor! The Blackberry has made multitasking so easy in so many different ways, but ironically, it has kept me from completely this single task that brought so much joy to millions, thousands, hundreds, dozens, nay SOME people!

If you ever wanted to replicate the "out of context texts" experience, steal someone else's phone. Simple!

N.B. This is Mark's attorney. Mark is not actually advising you to steal a phone, nor is he endorsing theft in any way, nor is he liable if your phone actually does get stolen. Just ignore Mark. I personally find him insufferable, but hey, he pays his bills on time…or at least he will, once the money from this sitcom deal comes through.

Tebow Taiwan-imation

2011-10-27T13:36:00.002-04:00

The Taiwanese news animations have become a staple of late-night comedy in recent months, but they never fail to be completely goofy and loveable. The latest one takes a look at the Tim Tebow phenomenon. This is also the first time I've laughed at a video of a dolphin being viciously stabbed with a trident -- usually I just applaud say, "Get 'em, Aquaman!"

UFC 137 Predictions

2011-10-26T23:27:00.001-04:00

* Matt Mitrione over Cheick Kongo, TKO, R2
It's time to start taking Mitrione seriously. The goofball from the 10th TUF season has quietly gone 5-0 in the UFC and if he beats Kongo, will get himself into a contender's bout in his next fight. How in the world did this happen? It happened by Mitrione being a generally tough nut to crack, able to take a punch, land a punch and knowing enough basic wrestling and jujitsu to stave off more experienced guys in those disciplines. Kongo is, as ever, going to try to keep it standing but I'd expect Mitrione to take him down a couple of times, and eventually Kongo will tire out and Mitrione will land a bomb or two that ends it.

* Scott Jorgensen over Jeff Curran, decision
Curran is your classic gatekeeper fighter that loses to top-level guys and beats lower-level guys. I don't think Jorgensen is quite a top-top-level fighter who will be seeing a title shot anytime soon (especially since Dominick Cruz just beat him for the WEC belt last year) but he's got enough to top Curran. It'll be a pretty exciting 15 minutes, but Jorgensen's got this one.

* Hatsu Hioki over George Roop, submission, R2
I'm breaking one of my cardinal rules here in that I'm picking the highly-rated Japanese fighter who's making his UFC debut. In a lot of cases the guys who competed in DREAM, PRIDE, CAPITAL LETTERS and other international organizations had their reps boosted by facing inferior competition (this is known as 'pulling a Diaz') and then getting a reality check when fighting in North America. The thing is, in this case, I think Hioki is actually legit and George Roop, while only tops out at decent. Roop will probably get himself tapped and Hioki will get himself established as a new contender at featherweight. Should Hioki win, I'd suspect he might get the next shot at Jose Aldo, probably at the UFC event in Japan in February. It's either Hioki or possibly Chad Mendes, though Hioki has the advantage in that he isn't criminally boring. Sorry Chad, next time hail from a country that's hosting a UFC PPV. (Though, according to Wikipedia, "Mendes is of Portuguese, Italian, Puerto Rican, Irish and Indian descent," so you figure it's just a matter of time.)

* Roy Nelson over Mirko Cro Cop, KO, R3
Man, poor Cro Cop is definitely in the "Jordan with the Wizards" phase of his career, except Jordan just missed the playoffs in Washington. He didn't walk off the court and get knocked unconscious at the end of every season. If Frank Mir and Brendan Schaub and catch Mirko at this point in his career, then certainly Roy Nelson can as well. Nelson, for all the crap he's taken about his physique and cardio, still took Mir and Junior Dos Santos to decisions in his last two outings. Roy escapes getting cut (both literally and figuratively) once again by beating Cro Cop to stay in the UFC.

* B.J. Penn over Nick Diaz, decision
When Georges St. Pierre pulled out of this card with an injury, thus cancelling the main event against Carlos Condit, I considered not even bothering with a predictions post. But, hey, why pass up the chance to publicly bash Nick Diaz? Anyway, Diaz (a.k.a. the most overrated fighter in the world) has sullen-ed his way into a high-profile bout in his return to the UFC following five years in smaller promotions. In that time, Diaz has gone 11-1-1 with wins over such notables as…uh….well, guys who either used to be good (Frank Shamrock, Mach Sakurai) or guys with negligible 'potential' (Cyborg Santos, Marius Zaromskis, Paul Daley) that haven't capitalized on it because they're not actually good, or just outright cans. In spite of this unimpressive win streak, Diaz has fooled a number of MMA fans into thinking he's actually an elite fighter, and when combined with his unabashed punk attitude, it's made for a really obnoxious wall of hype going into this event. Had Diaz not been unprofessional and no-showed a press conference, it would've been the one getting the shot at St. Pierre on this card.

Instead, he gets B.J. Penn. It's not going to matter. Diaz can't beat GSP, Diaz can't beat Penn, Diaz can't beat Jon Fitch, Diaz can't beat Condit, Diaz can't beat Josh Koscheck, Diaz can't beat Jake Ellenberger….do you want me to keep going? I can keep listing top-10 welterweights if you wish, but the bottom line is, Diaz is an overrated fighter to say the least.

The only, ONLY way that Diaz has a chance here is if Penn has one of his half-assed training camps and comes into the fight in poor shape. It's possible Diaz could outwork BJ for two rounds out of three and steal a decision, but really, Penn is usually fine in the first couple of rounds unless he's against a real elite guy like GSP or Frankie Edgar. If Penn can manage to crack Jon Fitch in the first two rounds, I'm sure he can goddamn figure out Diaz, and there is zero chance Diaz can win a 10-8 round in the third to steal a draw like Fitch did. I'm saying Penn by decision but really, it's also possible BJ just knocks Diaz out cold since Penn is an actual boxer, unlike Diaz and his pitter-patter punches. In short, Penn wins by however he wants. The bright side for Nick is that once he's proven to be irrelevant, he won't have to attend any more press conferences when he's fighting on the undercard. Hooray!

Undercard…..
* Francis Carmont over Chris Camozzi, submission, R1
* Danny Downes over Ramsey Nijem, decision
* Donald Cerrone over Dennis Siver, submission, R2
* Bart Palaszewski over Tyson Griffin, decision
* Brandon Vera over Eliot Marshall, decision
* Clifford Starks over Dustin Jacoby, decision

-30-

2011-10-24T19:36:00.002-04:00

Today is my thirtieth birthday.

Roger Federer is generally considered to be on the downswing of his career. It seems like Novak Djokovic and (when healthy) Rafa Nadal have passed him by in the overall tennis world and if Federer is going to add to his record total of 16 major titles, it will be seen as something of a upset. But, regardless, he could retire tomorrow and still be Roger Freakin' Federer, probably the greatest tennis player ever and someone to be remembered as long as tennis will be played.

So, to recap, Federer has enjoyed a peerless career, worldwide fame, is the second-most respected man in the world and is now edging gracefully into the twilight of his tennis life. Federer turned 30 last August.

Now, since Federer has been on this planet longer than I have by two whole months, obviously that head start was all he needed to outpace my lifetime achievements. While I can't match him tennis majors, however, ol' Rog and I are tied in terms of doing something we love for a career, having scores of wonderful friends (I may have Roger beat in this category, since now he's down one Tiger Woods), more than one city we call home (I have London and Toronto, he has wherever he's from in Switzerland and presumably homes around the world), and, while I can't implicitly presume this about Federer, I can guess he's as satisfied with his life as I am with mine.*

* = You could argue that Federer has a wife and kids while I'm still single and childless, so he has one up on me. Not so! Has Roger Federer ever gone on a mission to find several free hamburgers in a single day? Doubtful. Surely that's as fulfilling as being a husband and father. *dusts off hands triumphantly*

It's been a fun 30 years. Let's hope my next 30 years are just as good. The 30 after that will probably be increasingly grim, but, what can you do?

Great Audience Reactions

2011-10-20T15:46:00.001-04:00

Watching a movie in a crowded theatre adds immeasurably to the viewing experience. Whether it's group laughter that makes a joke seem funnier than it actually is, outright gasping that adds to the effect of a horror movie or the outright "I can't believe I paid to see this shit" tension that comes from watching a true piece of garbage, groupthink is a lot more positive in a theatre than it was in 1984.

Here are, in only a mildly particular order, the top 15 audience reactions I've experienced amongst a large group of film-watchers.

15. In The Line Of Fire. When I was 11 years old, I only had a vague knowledge of who Clint Eastwood was, based on general pop culture and the fact that his old westerns and Dirty Harry movies were aired on a semi-daily basis on TBS. (I didn't actually watch any of these films at the time, just the ads.) So, I didn't have a full shot of the Clint experience until I was in a theatre for some other movie during the summer of 1993. During the previews, the original trailer for "In The Line Of Fire" ran and wow, does the ending scene ever look corny watching it today. But, in a theatre in 1993, there was an audible "WHOAAAA" from the audience, in the sense of "All right, Clint's gonna fuck some assassins up!" It was at that moment my young self realized just what a bad-ass Clint Eastwood was. This feeling has continued until the present day, with perhaps a slight dip during the "Bridges of Madison County" era.

14. Daredevil. As I've written about this film before, it's quite bad but has three memorable scenes. One is when Daredevil can 'see' Elektra because she's being framed by the raindrops, the second is when Kingpin gets dropped (for its unintentional hilarity) and the third brings us to the 13th entry on the list. At one point, Jennifer Garner makes her big entrance at a ball and looks like the hottest thing on earth. That's it --- that's the whole scene. In fairness, it was indeed a really nice dress, and 2003 was just about Jennifer Garner's absolute prime. The entire audience reacted with a sharp intake of breath and I'm pretty sure every guy in the theatre got at least a semi. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, the "entire audience" was actually just me and four friends. We took in Daredevil during a rainy night at a theatre in Florida during spring break 2003 and the five of us were the only ones there. I'd still say this counts as an "audience reaction in a theatre," though. We paid for the tickets! We were the audience! Let's just move on.

13. Crazy Stupid Love. For the reverse of the Daredevil incident, I give you the scene in CSL when Ryan Gosling takes off his shirt to reveal his 'photoshopped' abs. Literally every woman in the theatre gasped and, presumably, the older women temporarily had their menopauses reversed. And this was in a packed theatre, not just some poorly-attended theatre in Florida. C'mon ladies, I'll give you 2011 Ryan Gosling if you let us have 2003 Jennifer Garner, that's a fair trade for not judging me and my pals to be shallow yahoos.

12. Contagion. I recently noted this during my review of the film, but after it was over, we're all filing out of the theatre when somebody coughed. Some other smart-ass immediately yelled out, "Oh no, we're all gonna die!" It got a nice reaction of about 90 percent laughter and 10 percent "Wait, are we REALLY going to die? Can you catch a fictional virus just by watching a movie?" This 10 percent then all ran in a panic out of the theatre and into traffic, so hey, Darwin Awards.

11. I Am Legend. I also recently wrote about this during my Contagion review, so here it is verbatim….During 'I Am Legend,' they have that scene of Emma Thompson talking about how she's engineering a strain of the measles meant to fight cancer, followed by an immediate cut to a desolate Manhattan. As if on cue, the guy in front of us in the theatre yelled "Uh oh, they couldn't cure the measles!" Doesn't sound great on paper, but the timing was perfect and it just cracked the entire audience up. Probably the highlight of that movie aside from the scene where Will Smith strangles his dog, then asks "How come he don't want me, man?"

10. City Lights. When the TIFF Lightbox theatre opened last year, it ran a 'greatest 100 films ever' promotion, screening 100 all-time classics so audiences could enjoy them on the big screen for possibly the first time. Last year I had the pleasure of watching Charlie Chaplin's legendary City Lights for the first time, and while I enjoyed it, I'd seen so many of the scenes before in various Chaplin retrospectives that it didn't feel totally fresh. That is, until we got to the famous "cigar butt routine." I've included the clip below but it needs a bit of setup: the Tramp has been befriended by a drunken millionaire that has let the Tramp have use of his car. Despite this temporary access to wealth, the Tramp is always out to pinch pennies, so he can't pass up trying to catch a quick smoke from a discarded cigar. Then….

The theatre EXPLODED. This was one of the most sustained laughs I'd ever heard from any audience. It's a pretty simple scene on its own but man…what really sets it off was Chaplin's "pwned" look back towards the homeless guy, whereas the poor bum is just dumbfounded, wondering if he really just got cigar-jacked by a guy driving a Rolls-Royce. If you had any doubts about Chaplin's enduring genius, just look at the that this scene got a monster response almost 70 years after its release.

9. Paranormal Activity
8. Signs. Duel entry here, since both deal with the same basic idea of how watching a horror movie amongst several dozen people can greatly enhance what you're watching. I saw both films on their opening weekend, when the theatres were at their most packed, and it should be noted that virtually the entire audience was comprised of dopey teenagers. It was an audience that was *ready* to be freaked out, and thus they responded with literal shrieks at even the slightest bit of tension, and literal SCREAMS during sudden movements. Cheesy as it sounds, it made both movies seem frickin' awesome. Signs, for instance, suffers anyway from a total lack of tension once you know the twists (a.k.a. Shyamalan disease) but moments like the alien's hand suddenly appearing when they're in the basement just carry no punch whatsoever a second time around.

7. The Dark Knight. SPOILERS. (Though really, if you haven't seen Dark Knight by now, it's your own fault.) This might be another example of an audience that is just ready to be entertained. TDK, opening night, standing-room-only audience and there wasn't a person there who wasn't expecting the movie to kick ass. This is actually three moments from the film, but I've grouped them into just the one entry. Firstly, the pencil scene: a reaction of gasping, followed by immediate "Ha ha, holy SHIT." Secondly, Batman's little rev of the Batcycle up a wall following that big chase sequence: this drew a huge cheer, somewhat inexplicably. I mean, it was a nice chase, but c'mon. Thirdly, when Gordon removes the riot gear helmet and we see that he's been alive the whole time: wild applause. I dunno if we were cheering the plot twist (which wasn't that big a twist since it's not like they're going to kill off Commissioner Gordon….right?) or just the fact that Gary Oldman made Gordon into such a decent guy that we were pumped to see him again.

6. Devil. Poor M. Night Shymalan. Such promise, such a quick spiral into garbage. His negative influence even stretched poor "Devil," a film he didn't even direct himself. The trailer began and things looked promising: five people caught in an elevator, there's a demon in there, all good, all good. Then, just when the audience is starting to get hooked, this pops up in big letters on the screen: FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN. Everyone just started laughing. The crowd couldn't have been more turned off if the executive producer had been Osama Bin Laden. 'Devil' actually ended up being a decent little movie, too. Shymalan, it may be time to change your name to Chuck Meriweather and start over.

5. Kiss Of The Dragon. By all rights this should be at least #2, but I'm forced to dock it since it didn't actually happen when I was present. My pals Dave and Trevor went to see Kiss Of The Dragon and came back talking not so much about the film, but about one phenomenal reaction from an audience member. During one particularly impressive kill from Jet Li, some guy yelled out, "That's a broken neck, brutha!" Needless to say, Dave & Trev forgot everything else about the movie and began to recite this line at the drop of a hat for the next, oh, year. In the interest of research, I really should've grilled them about how the rest of the audience reacted, how busy the theatre was, etc. This incident may have already led to a fantasy baseball team called the Broken Neck Brothers.

4. Blade II. My buddy Dave again takes centre stage for this entry, as he caused it himself. During one of the climactic fight scenes, Blade is battling the enemy vampire and, inexplicably, begins using pro wrestling moves to subdue his opponent. Where a daywalking vampire suddenly got the idea to imitate Randy Savage I'll never know, but at one point Blade hits the enemy with a full suplex, then dives across the room with a Macho Man-esque elbow smash. Dave literally stood up from his chair, pumped his fist, and screamed "OHHHHHH!" as if the actual Macho Man had just dropped the big elbow during a Wrestlemania main event. Our group immediately stopped laughing at the ridiculousness of the movie and began laughing at Dave's overblown reaction. I know, I know, this is kind of cheating the concept of the list since it was just us (not the whole audience) reacting, but man, was it ever funny.

3. Rear Window. SPOILERS. I had planned on just being an English major when I began attending university, but switched to a combined English/Film Studies since my first-year film course was just so much fun. Part of it may well have been inspired by the consistently fired-up reactions from the students during screenings. Sure, a good 30 percent of the students were taking the course on a lark, but the other 70 percent really wanted to be there. Given that I'd tried and failed numerous times to introduce my friends to more artistic fare during our movie nights ("Hey guys, I know you want to watch Terminator, but have you ever heard of a little movie called….Fellini's Roma?!"), it was a pleasure to be in an audience that not only appreciated the classics*, but also got as into them as if they were brand new. To wit, Rear Window, during the climactic scene when Raymond Burr suddenly realizes he's being watched, and turns up his head to look directly at Jimmy Stewart's telescope and --- since we're in his point of view --- at the audience. Given that Hitchcock had ramped the tension up to intense heights over the course of the movie, Burr finally noticing he's being watched was a total release of that feeling, and the audience reacted with a noise that was part scream, part gasp and part gulping panic. I'd imagine it was akin to how hot dogs feel when Burr turned his hungry eyes on them.

* = one exception, and it was another Hitchcock film. Segments of the students were laughing and hooting so much during some of the cheesier scenes of 'Vertigo' that, after the screening, our very laid-back professor got angry for maybe the first time in his life and chewed everyone out for "not respecting the film." Talk about a release of tension.

2. Inglourious Basterds. Minor SPOILERS here, though it's only a spoiler in context of the movie itself. You might know what this is already if you saw this film in theatres since I suspect it inspired the same reaction everywhere. But…Shoshanna is sitting with Landa and wondering if he recognizes her, then Landa orders a glass of milk from the waiter. Fuck. A 500-person theatre gasped as one when Landa made his order. Just absolute ridiculous tension in this scene from start to finish.

1. The Big Lebowski. Yet another one from first-year film class. Of all the hilarious or memorable scenes in this classic movie, what was it that got the biggest reaction? It was Steve Buscemi. That's it, just Steve Buscemi. The moment Donnie makes his first appearance, the film students started applauding. I kid you not, actual applause, like he was a heralded theatre actor coming on stage for the first time. I think this was truly the moment when I realized that in the midst of my fellow film geeks, I (unlike Donnie) was in my element.

Community Outtakes

2011-10-12T17:23:00.002-04:00

"Watching a blooper reel from one of your favourite comedies is one of life's simplest joys. Also, they really need to somehow work Annie's Rosie Perez impression into an actual episode." -- Walt Whitman

The (Updated) Comic Movie List

2011-10-05T12:18:00.002-04:00

To be frank, updating my my last ranking of films based on comic books might be a waste of time. Sure, it's been three years, but there is not a ton of new quality entering the field here. Put it this way --- there are six entries in the bottom two categories against only four combined in the top two categories. I'm basically taking time out of my busy (?) schedule to give you breaking news about mediocrity….then again, I also cover Toronto FC games, so this is old hat.

I've made a few minor adjustments to my original rankings, plus included longer descriptions of the new additions to the list. I'm going to continue to omit the Ninja Turtles movies because a) I forgot them on the first list, b) I haven't seen any of the movies in almost 20 years and c) I'm turning 30 years old next months, for god's sake, I'm certainly not going to go back to watch them because they're in all likelihood secretly awful. In fairness, we did name our family turtles 'Michelangelo I' and 'Michelangelo II' when I was seven years old, so I figure that's a decent enough tribute.

Onwards!

THE DREGS
50. Batman & Robin
49. Jonah Hex -- This movie was so bad that I gave it some genuine consideration for the very bottom spot. Of course, "Batman & Robin" was probably the worst movie ever made so its spot was safe, but still, the fact that Jonah Hex actually made me think about it is a victory in itself, since I never thought I'd see anything approach B&R in my lifetime. The biggest thing going in JH's favour is that it's a purer failure. I can buy the fact that, during the making of B&R, Joel Schumacher or some of the cast and crew might've bought into the concept and thought they were actually making a fun, tongue-in-cheek comic book movie. With Jonah Hex, I find it hard to believe that this was considered to be a good idea at any point during its production. The screenwriters must've thought it was half-assed, the studio felt they had to go ahead with production because of deadlines, the director was just trying to get a credit, the cast had already spent their paycheques, etc. Truly a horrific film all-around and very worthy of the fact that it was a tremendous box office disaster.
48. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
47. Wolverine -- The best part of Wolverine occurs in the first five minutes, when we see the montage of the near-ageless Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting in various wars through the 20th century. After that, holy crap, does this thing fall off a cliff.
46. Fantastic Four
45. Superman IV
44. Superman III
43. Hulk
42. Blade Trinity
41. X-Men 3
40. The Green Hornet -- I just don't get why this movie wasn't witty. It tries to be funny, in the sense there are jokes and Christoph Waltz's character is a joke himself, but there's no tongue-in-cheek wit whatsoever in Green Hornet. It's baffling since Seth Rogen actually co-wrote the thing and, more importantly, even the original Green Hornet show was very aware of itself as being a silly Batman ripoff. Also, Cameron Diaz is at least a decade too old to be playing the sexy love interest in….well, anything.
39. Daredevil

THE PRETTY MEDIOCRE
38. Punisher: Warzone -- The original Tom Jane Punisher movie is a guilty pleasure, but this one, yikes. To save you the time, here's every kill in the film, helpfully put together in a YouTube montage. (#40 is inarguably the best, and a genuinely funny scene.) Fun fact: I saw this movie before I saw 'The Wire,' so sadly this was my first impression of Dominic West. He gives a GOD-AWFUL performance in this movie. Just terrible. He plays Jigsaw as the Joker, if the Joker was a swaggering Bronx tough guy. West was so bad and it took me at least three episodes into The Wire to stop hating Jimmy McNulty. Not that McNulty is an inherently loveable character anyway, but still.
37. Green Lantern -- Incredibly, I may be being generous with this ranking, since it seems like GL has been universally panned. Hey, don't get me wrong, it was a bad movie clearly made to sell toys and 7-11 souvenir cups, but it was only bad, not an abomination in the eyes of God and man. There's a chance that the sequel could be an upgrade, right? Right? /power ring generates a green tumbleweed
36. Blade II
35. Ghost Rider
34. Wanted -- The last line of this movie is literally, "What the fuck have you done lately?" Hey, get over yourself, Wanted. I live a full life writing about comic book movies on the internet. This last line is spoken directly into the camera, too, like Dr. Hibbert asking Chief Wiggum if he can solve Mr. Burns' shooting. If Green Hornet takes itself too seriously, then Wanted's whole "hey, let me make the unique observation that working in an office SUCKS" schtick definitely needs to be dialled back a ton.
33. Superman Returns
32. X-Men

THE DECENT-TO-PRETTY GOOD
31. 300
30. The Losers -- An almost-instantly forgettable action movie that's basically a homeless man's version of The A-Team, and ironically it came out literally a week or two around the time the actual A-Team movie was released. Still, it gets a higher nod than Green Hornet or Wanted since, unlike those other films, 'The Losers' at least had a sense of humour about itself and doesn't try to be anything but a straight-forward action movie. Bonus Wire points for casting Idris Elba. By the way, I am heavily on board the "Idris Elba as the new James Bond" train. Make it happen, Sony.
29. Men In Black
28. Iron Man II -- The first, and most irritating, manifestation of Marvel focusing all its attention on next year's Avengers movie. Fortunately they toned down the tie-ins for Thor and Captain America (I'll get to them later) but geez, Iron Man II makes us care way too much about Clark Gregg's character. The Avengers stuff sums up the basic problem with this film, in that there's just too much stuff going on. You have two villains, Tony Stark acting more like a drunken douche than a charming superhero, Gwyneth Paltrow walking around doing nothing, and things just never really get on track. A real letdown given the quality of the first Iron Man movie.
27. Superman II
26. Blade
25. Hellboy
24. Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- Confession: I remember almost nothing about this movie other than the fact that I liked it. So, what the hell. Ignorance is bliss.
23. Ghost World
22. Punisher
21. Spider-Man
20. Spider-Man III
19. Watchmen -- Part of me thinks the movie should've just stopped after the opening credits, which are phenomenal and easily in the conversation of the best opening sequences in movie history. (Only slight hyperbole.) There was so much hand-wringing over how much Watchmen would have to be altered and 'ruined' on the big screen that Zack Snyder played it safe by pretty much sticking straight to the original comic text, albeit with a modified ending. Probably the smart move given that, well, Zack Snyder ain't much of a filmmaker so at least he knew to not over-extend his reach, but it leaves you with basically just a filmed version of the graphic novel, rather than a unique entity unto itself. Basically the only extra emphasis Snyder seemed to add was devoting way too much time to the Nite Owl/Silk Spectre sex scene. I picture Snyder on the set with an old-timey director's megaphone, yelling "More thrusting!" at a visibly uncomfortable Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson.
18. Thor -- A thoroughly solid film that, unlike Iron Man II, incorporates the Avengers stuff in a relatively painless and logical way. I get the feeling that the movie included a bit too much stuff that wouldn't make sense unless you were already familiar with Thor and, by extension, Marvel Comics (like the whole backstory of the Asgardian Destroyer or Sif and the Warriors Three) but since I know this stuff anyway, it had no effect. My basic rule for Kenneth Branagh is director = good, actor = bad, and 'Thor' continues the streak.
17. The Mask
16. Road to Perdition -- A note about Road To Perdition, which made a noticeable jump up from the original list. I recently saw the movie again and quite enjoyed it, so I think my first viewing was coloured by the fact that I was expecting A Classic and was therefore let down, whereas if you just expect A Good Movie, you'll be certainly satisfied. Hmm, maybe I should similarly give Jonah Hex a second chance and NOPE.
15. X-Men: First Class -- Hey, I don't know if you realized this before, but I THINK (call me crazy) that being a mutant is a metaphor for teenagers not fitting in. I figured out this hidden secret of the X-Men series! Anyway, thematic hammering aside, this was a solid, safe reboot of the X-Men franchise, which was definitely needed after the lousy X-Men 3 and the failure of the Wolverine spinoff. I think everyone was eager to restart things after X-Men 3, but the only question mark would be how the new guys (James McAvoy and Michael F. Assbender) would live up to the iconic performances of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Xavier and Magneto, respectively. They both did fine work, and also had the added bonus of getting a few more women into the theatres. My friend Sarah's Twitter review: "It was a good movie but I kept wanting Professor X and Magneto to make out."

THE VERY GOOD
14. Superman
13. Batman Returns
12. Kick-Ass -- The ending gets a little goofy and not really true to the nature of the "this guy dresses like a superhero but doesn't know what he's doing" story, but overall, yeah, this movie is pretty frickin' awesome. I am not exaggerating (or, looking the IMDB page, lying) when I say that this is Nick Cage's best performance since 'Adaptation.'
11. Captain America -- From my original review: "Captain America is basically sold by the fact that Steve Rogers is a genuinely good guy. He's five-foot nothing, a hundred and nothing (tm Notre Dame football), but he wants to enlist in World War II more than anything because he just straight-up feels it's the right thing to do. He's short and tough without a Napoleon complex, and while his parents both served in WWI, Steve isn't enlisting just to follow in their footsteps. He's just a class act all the way around. While we've been indoctrinated to believe that all superheroes (especially Marvel characters) need to be driven by angst and conflict, Captain America has always been presented as the most clean-cut and noble of heroes and you know what? It totally works."
10. Batman
9. V For Vendetta
8. X-Men 2
7. From Hell

THE MINT COLLECTION
6. Iron Man
5. Sin City
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World -- Probably one of the most pure adaptations of any on the list, as Edgar Wright went out of his way to capture the comicky atmosphere of the original Scott Pilgrim books. It's just a fun, fun, fun movie. It gets bonus points for incorporating so much of Toronto into the setting, more bonus points for including Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza in any way, and even more bonus points for the hilarious Tom Jane/Clifton Collins cameo. Minus one bonus point for the fact that a lot of my London friends won't watch it because "it just looks too hipsterish," thus making me question for a brief moment that I might be a hipster, which is a reality too terrifying to imagine.
3. Spider-Man II
2. Batman Begins
1. The Dark Knight -- Not a lot of suspense on this one. What more is there to be said about TDK? It has probably become 'the' iconic pop culture image of Batman, moreso than the other films, the cartoon or even the original comics themselves. Underrated example of Dark Knight's influence: since the Academy faced so much backlash for not nominating it for Best Picture at the Oscars in 2008, the Academy Awards have basically gone nuts with their nominating process. For the last two years it was a 10-movie Best Picture field, which led to such gems as The Blind Side being recognized in history as a BP nominee. Now, this year, there is no set number of Best Picture nominees, other than we know it will be a minimum of five and a maximum of ten; basically, if any film is ranked first on at least 5% of ballots, it makes the list. Just think, all of this nonsense could've been avoided had the morons at the Academy considered TDK to be a better movie than goddamn Benjamin Button.

UFC 136 Predictions

2011-10-04T18:38:00.000-04:00

* Chael Sonnen over Brian Stann, decision
This is tough matchmaking from a ticket-selling point of view. Both guys are top contenders at middleweight and the winner will get the next title shot against Anderson Silva….but man, the UFC must hate cutting Stann off at the knees like this. Stann is a former Marine and is basically being pushed right now as Captain America v. 2.0. However, I don't see how he can possibly beat Sonnen, who's just going to immediately take Stann down and ride him out for three rounds. Even Sonnen's big mouth has been silenced in the build-up to this fight since what's Sonnen going to do, hate on the war hero? If I was the UFC, I might'd had Sonnen face Mark Munoz, another high-ranked middleweight and one who isn't as big a potential box office draw so a Munoz loss wouldn't cost the company money. Then again, what the hell, it's a sport --- if Stann is good enough, he'll win anyway. Besides, the UFC will have box office gold anyway in a rematch between Silva and Sonnen, where hopefully Silva just ends Sonnen early and shuts that idiot up once and for all.

* Nam Phan over Leonard Garcia, decision
Garcia is on one of the strangest runs in MMA history. He's an even 3-3-1 in his last seven fights, except all three of his wins were via very controversial decisions. Without controversy, the man is on an eight-fight losing streak. One of Garcia's dodgy wins was over Nam Phan last December, and after both men had other opponents drop out with injuries, we'll get the rematch. Given that both of these guys are fourth-tier featherweights at best and the loser will certainly be cut, this is not exactly an important bout….but it is guaranteed to be an exciting one. The first Phan/Garcia match was awesome, Garcia's fight with "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung was named the fight of the year for 2010 and if nothing else, both these guys just throw caution to the wind in every appearance. I'm giving it to Phan just because I like seeing justice done, but what the hell, for all I know Garcia will get another bizarre decision.

* Melvin Guillard over Joe Lauzon, decision
These guys have been around the lightweight division for so long that I can't believe this is their first meeting. The book on Lauzon is simple --- he is the perfect gatekeeper, losing to anyone in the upper or second tier (since 2006, his only three losses have been to Kenny Florian, George Sotriopoulos and Sam Stout) and he'll whip anyone lower than that. So basically he's the perfect guy to get in the cage with Guillard so we can see if Guillard is truly the real deal. Melvin is on an 8-1 run and seems to have turned the corner in his career so that's my basic logic for thinking he'll overcome Lauzon's submissions here. This could possibly end up being a semi-dull fight since Lauzon will be looking for subs and Guillard will want to keep it standing, so a stalemate could easily develop.

The winner of this one will probably get a very interesting next fight. It's been assumed that the winner of the upcoming Clay Guida/Ben Henderson bout gets the next LW title shot, but there are also rumours that the UFC is bringing in Strikeforce LW champ Gilbert Melendez. If Gilbert is signed and we get a unification bout, then the Guida/Henderson winner can either go on the shelf to wait for their shot, or take another fight in the interim….like, say, the winner of Guillard/Lauzon. Conversely, we could also see Melendez face Guillard/Lauzon as a tune-up fight to get UFC fans familiar with him before he challenges whomever the lightweight champ is. And, of course, if a Guillard is able to beat both Lauzon and Melendez, then he's the clear-cut #1 contender. I love that I spent more time talking about post-fight fantasy booking than I did the fight itself.

* Jose Aldo over Kenny Florian, KO, R2
There's a popular groundswell of support behind Florian for this fight since a)he's a popular vet and an underdog and b) Aldo gassed and looked fairly unimpressive against Mark Hominick last April, so the 'Aldo is the next pound-for-pound king' train basically ran off the tracks. So this notion I say, good lord. Aldo's struggles against Hominick may have been due to the flu, not because he's suddenly forgotten how to fight. I think this one will be a quick, decisive, reminder from Aldo that he's as good as anyone and is the undisputed top dog at featherweight. Also, let's be honest, Florian's record in pressure situations is not good. 0-2 in championship fights, lost the original Ultimate Fighter finale to Diego Sanchez, and he lost a #1 contender's bout to Gray Maynard two years ago. Until Kenny actually breaks through and proves he's not a choker, I can't pick him in a title bout against a superb opponent like Aldo.

* Frankie Edgar over Gray Maynard, decision
Honestly, I just want this fight over with. The Edgar/Maynard rivalry has been a roller-coaster. When their last fight was booked, I spent four months dreading a boring decision between a genuinely dull fighter in Maynard and the bastion of peppery stand-up known as Frankie Edgar. Then, wouldn't you know it, their bout ended up being exciting as hell and ending in a controversial draw. A rematch was signed….and then postponed due to injuries to both fighters. So now, nine months after their last bout, these two will finally finish things and we (and the lightweight division) can move on with our lives.

I'm picking Edgar because I just think he can handle Maynard. In January, Edgar was dominated in the first round (losing 10-8 on all cards) but came back to win three of the next four rounds and ultimately salvage a draw. That first round was everything Maynard had in his tank and Edgar was not only able to withstand it, I feel that it was enough of a fluke that Edgar can prevent anything like it from happening again. So, on Saturday we'll see five rounds of Edgar fighting off takedowns and peppering Maynard with quick rights and lefts, en route to a decision victory and the last word in the rivalry. If one of these two guys gets hurt in the next few days, I'm going to scream.

Undercard….
* Stipe Miocic over Joey Beltran, submission, R2
* Steve Cantwell over Mike Massenzio, decision
* Aaron Simpson over Eric Schafer, decision
* Demian Maia over Jorge Santiago, decision
* Zhang Tie Quan over Darren Elkins, submission, R1
* Anthony Pettis over Jeremy Stephens, decision

Development Deal

2011-10-03T14:27:00.001-04:00

Arrested Development, arguably the funniest TV series of all time, is returning to television with a 10-episode mini-run that will set the stage for the long-awaited film adaptation.

I'm withholding final judgement until the actual product is on my screen, since lord knows we've heard a lot of stops and starts with any new AD projects over the last several years. Plus, it hasn't even been firmly established which network will carry these new episodes, which is kind of a major point. And, the idea of devoting one episode to a particular cast member (sort of in the style of Lost and its flashback-centric gimmick) would give everyone a showcase, but the beauty of Arrested Development was in how the characters all interacted with each other and had their stories all intermingle. I'm not sure if 22 minutes of just, say, Maeby telling strangers to marry her would necessarily be interesting. This seems like it's a concession made to the busy schedules of the actors --- it's a lot easier to get Will Arnett for one episode than for 10, given that he's on another show right now --- rather than the best possible creative decision.

Now, with all of this being said, YYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE'RE GOING TO GET NOT JUST A MOVIE, BUT ACTUAL NEW FREAKIN' EPISODES OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT?!?!?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I JUST HAD AN OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!

via Maggie....

Andy Rooney, Out Of Context

2011-09-30T14:53:00.002-04:00

Andy Rooney is a near-legend. His 33 years on '60 Minutes' is coming to an end this weekend, and his career as a journalist and television writer stretches back to his time writing for Stars & Stripes during World War II.

And yet, like so many of us, Rooney can be made to look like a lunatic simply by editing together random moments from his commentaries over the years. Fun fact: he really DID make his own desk.

On Notice!

2011-09-28T16:22:00.003-04:00

Rather than pad out my post totals simply by linking to each of these in separate blogs, I figured it would save time to just put you all 'on notice' about these links in one fell swoop. Look at this efficiency!

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Did you enjoy that scene in Bridesmaids when Kristen Wiig argues with that snotty teenager at the jewelry store? If so, well, here's a full 10 minutes of it. "Two years, it was fun, and look at me now." As much as I'm over Wiig as a Saturday Night Live cast member, I find her weirdly entertaining as anything aside from an overdone SNL character. Like, 10 minutes of juvenile insults? Sold. Two minutes as that hammy Broadway star in the 'Secret Word' sketch? I want to shoot out my TV like Elvis.

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The 100 most beautiful words in the English language. I call horseshit on this list due to the omission of….well, "horseshit." What a beautiful, rich sound. The two competing S-sounds in the middle of the word create a lovely gushing effect. 'Horseshit' could've easily taken the place of 'tintinnabulation' or something. Ugh, what a dreadful, tinny word!

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Keeping with the top 100 idea, here's a montage of 100 years of East London fashions. This is not to be confused with 29 years of West London fashions, which is just a video of me wearing every t-shirt I've ever worn in my life, from No Fear to my homemade green-and-black question marks Riddler shirt.

Really, the London thing has nothing to do with it, since it's basically just a montage of how fashion has evolved through the last century. It's a clever idea for a video, certainly impressive from a costuming and technical standpoint, and it makes me kind of wish I'd been alive in the 1920's. Just as long as I could time-travel out before the whole Depression thing. Would've gotten depressing.

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Brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs. This page is the gift that keeps on giving. I only just realized, surfing to it again for this post, that it's continually updating, so you can keep going back and checking out even more funny signs. It's also possible that the hanging 'do not walk' man is a Banksy.

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Every so often you see a website go from zero to 60 seemingly overnight. Letters Of Note has been operating for over two years now in relative anonymity, yet in the last month suddenly it's exploded. I'm seeing links to a 'Letter Of Note' on a near-daily basis on any number of other sites.

The premise is simple: Letters Of Note reprints and scans letters, postcards, and other sorts of correspondence from various famous and notable people on a variety of subjects. It has everything from Matt Stone writing the MPAA about some changes to the South Park movie to David Bowie's hilariously cheerful response to his first piece of American fan mail to Richard Nixon's backup speech in case the Apollo 11 mission went awry, reprinted below. There is no shortage of fascinating material on this website. It might even have a copy of my letter to Santa Claus in 1986 where I asked for Apple stock. (Didn't get it…thanks for NOTHING, Santa.)

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Speaking of David Bowie, here's a clip of a music video by Seona Dancing, an early 1980's synth/pop band from England. Needless to say, these guys are heavily, heavily influenced by Bowie, especially that lead singer, who's doing everything possible to ape Bowie's look. Man, what a clown. I wonder what ever happened to that guy….

….oh, wait, it's RICKY GERVAIS. I shit you not. Gervais, to his credit, has poked fun at his old pop star past and frankly, it benefits him that this video still exists, since he might see it as proof of the non-existence of God.

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Archie, Out Of Context. Yep.

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As a huge Arrested Development fan (it's the only TV series I own on DVD), I can't help but enjoy this recreation of the show in Lego. Also, as a huge Arrested Development fan, I can't help but notice that this link doesn't include any mention of the AD movie, so I'm unsatisfied! Wait'll I register my displeasure on an internet message board, that'll sure show Ron Howard!

Ten Commandments Scorecard

2011-09-27T13:52:00.001-04:00

So I was sitting around today and wondered, am I going to hell? This thought may or may not have occurred after I'd just watched an episode of Jersey Shore, but still, it's a pressing theological question that obviously needs answering if I'm going to get on the with the rest of my life. After all, if I'm already a lost cause, I might as well just start sinning it up like the DJ at a Reno strip club. (Fun fact: 'DJ at a Reno strip club' was voted seediest job in America by Newsweek Magazine. This poll, admittedly, was bullshit, since I can't believe that 'janitor at a porn theatre' could've possibly lost. Damned faulty Newsweek voting methodology.)

I decided to judge my piety based on that wonderful ancient scorecard known as the Ten Commandments. I'm very familiar with the rules, having watched 'The Ten Commandments' over four straight weeks of Sunday school back in my childhood. It occurs to me now that my Sunday school teacher might've just been really lazy, which may be a sin, but it technically doesn't break a commandment. Maybe the teacher was trying to teach us about grey areas.

Anyway, let's see how my soul is doing, from the least-followed to most-followed commandments….

10. Thou Shalt Not Take The Name Of The Lord Thy God In Vain
Well, this one is off the books completely. I bust out some blasphemous curse like 'God!', 'Goddamn!', 'Jesus Christ!', 'Hay-Zeus Christo!',' 'Sweet Tap-Dancing Christ!' or something of that ilk at least once per hour, every single waking hour of the day. And, honestly, probably even during sleep, if I should happen to wake up in the middle of the night, realize it's 5 AM or something and mutter 'goddammit' before passing back out.

My relatively religious friend Joanne, interestingly, sticks to this one pretty closely. She'll always substitute 'gosh-darns' whenever necessary and even corrects me when I say 'goddamn,' though the catch is that she'll drop one of the major curses at the drop of a hat. Like, she'll describe someone as a "gosh-darn motherfucking piece of shit." I personally feel like she's exploiting a loophole here, but then again, I'm no theologian.

9. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's"
I copied this one directly from that invaluable religious text known as Wikipedia so I could get the exact wording, because it's hilarious. First of all, was God trying to pad out a word count in the Bible? Why not just write, "thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbour's"? You don't need to cite six specific examples of things not to covet if you're just going to wrap it up with "oh, yeah, just to stay safe, don't covet anything at all." That last part really screws me for this commandment. I mean, I can safely say that I've never walked down my street and thought "I sure do wish I had an ox that could plow a field as half as well as Bill's ox," but when you expand the commandment to literally everything Bill has, well, I'm bound to slip up at one point or another. Bill has a 46-inch flatscreen? Yep, that counts as coveting, so I'm going to hell.

It's also great that in the list of specific things, the neighbour's wife is SECOND. Second! On the same list of commandments that has its own anti-adultery rule! Was "thou shalt not be a squatter" the eleventh commandment but cut during the final edit?

8. Remember The Sabbath Day And Keep It Holy
There's more to this one that specifies that not only do YOU have to not do anything on Sundays, but also you're responsible for making sure that everyone in your family, plus your servants, plus your cattle (again with the damn oxen) and "thy stranger that is within thy gates" doesn't do anything either. This one has way too many trapdoors. What if I have some soulless enemy who sneaks into my house on a Sunday and starts, I dunno, mopping my kitchen floor? Would I get condemned just because this guy is a jerk? I'd come downstairs, react with shock, and then he'd just be laughing and saying, "When you get to hell, tell 'em Itchy sent you!"

Whatever, it's a moot point since I've worked plenty of Sunday shifts at various jobs over the years. Hellbound! And I reckon I may have written about this before, but isn't "I'll see you in hell" just a really funny insult? It's just so extreme ("We are BOTH going to rot in agony for all eternity, but you'll be there thanks to ME!") that it's hilarious.

7. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour
Depending on who you talk to, this commandment either means "do not give false testimony under oath," like in a court of law, or "do not lie about other people" in general. If it's the first, then I'm totally in the clear, since I've never testified in a trial. I've only ever been called for jury duty once but didn't get picked since I was a student at the time. (It was a murder case, too. That might've been awesome!)

If the second interpretation fits, however, then oh man, my goose is cooked. I am secretly one of the biggest gossips you'll ever meet, though with the caveat that I don't mention specific names. Like, I'll tell a story about a friend doing some funny and/or bizarre thing but won't actually say who it is. And when I do this, I don't describe them in a way that makes it obvious who the person is, like Larry David's therapist. So really, I go out of my way to protect my friends' confidence….uh, while also relating some personal detail about their lives. Hmm. There isn't a way of sugarcoating this, is there? Let's hope God meant the first interpretation.

6. Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee Any Graven Image...
5. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me
I'm grouping these two together since I feel like both are affected by the fact that I'm not actually religious. I'm, at best, an agnostic, so since I technically don't believe in any specific god, I might be technically following these. Like, I'm not putting any gods before the Christian God since I've got pretty much all the deities on the same level, right next to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Also, I'm not worshipping any false idols since, if I believe the concept of a conscious supreme being is inherently faulty, no idol can be 'false.' Man, I should've gone to law school! (Though, that would've probably led to me breaking everything on this list.) You'd think being agnostic would be an auto-fail for the Commandments themselves, but what the heck, I'll just give myself an NA for these two.

4. Thou Shalt Not Steal
Okay, now we get into the positive ones. Did I once own a Napster account? Yes. Did I perhaps snatch an extra cookie off the tray during a potluck? Sure. But these are petty, petty thefts, and since I'm certainly not stealing anything major, I'd give myself a positive on this one. Sure, the commandment isn't "Thou Shalt Not Steal Anything Major," but c'mon, unless God is actually Lars Ullrich, he's not going to get on my case for downloading an MP3 file of "Drop Dead Gorgeous" by Republica in 2001, will he?

3. Thou Shalt Not Kill
Don't freak out that this isn't #1, I'm not Dexter or anything. But I have indeed killed in my life….ants, flies, moths, all sorts of lower creatures. See, this is why I'm fine on that 'thou shalt not steal' commandment, since even though this one technically says you can't kill anything at all, there's surely some allowance if you have a mosquito on your arm. Heck, throughout the rest of the Bible, there's no shortage of cattle or horses or whatnot being slaughtered. A surprising amount of the Good Book is really about farm maintenance. Are we sure Moses descended from Mount Sinai on foot, or did he ride down on a John Deere tractor?

2. Honour Thy Father And Thy Mother
My parents are awesome! I'll happily honour them at any point. I guess I've been a disobedient son at few times in my life, but certainly nothing major. The closest I came to a rebellious phase was when I started staying up late on Saturdays to watch sketch comedy shows on the Drambuie Showcase Revue. Wow, was I ever a nerdy kid. Anyway, I've argued with my folks way fewer times than I've slaughtered insects, so this one gets the runner-up position.

1. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery
And here we go. Never been married myself so I'm not cheating on anyone, and I've never slept with a married woman, so I'm not the Sloan-esque other man. So if you've keeping track, this is ONE out of ten commandments where I'm 100 percent in the clear, three others where I'm in the 98-99th percentile in the clear, three others that are very questionable, and three that I break on a regular basis.

Overall, it's not the best batting average, but to this I argue, are these commandments in any particular order? Like, was Moses going from top rule to least-important rule, or what? Since frankly, if the worst I'm doing is dropping a few g-d bombs, covering a game on a Sunday afternoon or thinking my neighbour has a sweet car, that doesn't sound all that bad to me. Would you rather hang out with a guy who was breaking these commandments, or with a guy who was sass-mouthing my mom, banging your wife and pushing you in the path of a moving bus? That's just flat-out anti-social.

In conclusion, I'll see you all in hell……from heaven.

Contagion

2011-09-24T18:08:00.001-04:00

Contagion is trying hard to be THE virus pandemic movie, much in the same way that Jurassic Park was THE dinosaur movie, or Jaws was THE shark movie, or Powder was THE moody albino with electromagnetic powers movie. And, while Contagion hasn't quite caught on to become a pop culture phenomenon like those other three films (uh, two out of three films), its high profile and general quality should be enough to at least give it the duke over 'Outbreak.' Tough break, Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and various apes.

I'm a sucker for ensemble films that present a world, give you the 'rules' of the world and then explore various scenarios that would naturally take place within this new reality. In Contagion's case, a deadly airborne virus is killing millions worldwide and causing a global panic. There are a lot of ways you can go with this story, but Contagion basically touches on all of them, showing several different vignettes featuring different characters. Not all of the vignettes are knockouts; Marion Cotillard's storyline wasn't that impressive, but maybe I just expected more from it since Cotillard is my favourite actress. That said, the sheer scope of the movie more than makes up for any shortcomings in respective parts.

It's stunning that Steven Soderbergh directed the Ocean's 11 trilogy yet this film, by far, is his most star-studded cast. Here's the list of Oscar nominees alone in Contagion: Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, John Hawkes and Matt Damon. Then you have beloved TV stars like Bryan Cranston*, Enrico Colantoni and Demetri Martin, and finally, there's Jennifer Ehle who basically steals the whole movie. Ehle is on some goofy-ass CBS drama this year and she looks a LOT like Meryl Streep, so maybe this qualifies her for both categories?

* = Not that Cranston isn't a great actor and can make me believe in him playing another character, but I've gotten so used to him on 'Breaking Bad' that it's now suddenly a bit jarring to see him in roles other than Walter White. Then again, it's an easier transition because in non-Walt roles, Cranston has hair and no goatee.

As you'd expect from this crew, there isn't a bad performance in the bunch. Law stands out just because you're never quite sure where his character his going until it suddenly hits you in the face. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here.) That said, I feel like the star is the premise and Soderbergh's direction. Contagion would have been just as effective, if not even more effective, had the cast been full of no-names. Of course, then Soderbergh probably doesn't get the budget necessary for a picture of this scope, but still.

A word about the last scene. I don't think it ruins too much to reveal that the final scene in the movie shows how the virus got into the human population, though I won't go into detail because hmm, spoilers. It's par for the course in such an unsettling film that this deadly virus that wipes out millions and causes one of the great panics in (this universe's) history is first transmitted in such a banal way. I'd be interested to know if the ending was originally the actual ending, or if it was an editing/directorial decision to slot the scene from the beginning of the movie to the end, since it really packs a creepy wallop as you're leaving the theatre. Also, the ending is yet another reason why I don't take many pictures on my camera phone. I'm just trying to prevent a worldwide catastrophe so that's why I don't have many pictures of my new apartment, MOM.

Final comic note: virus movies are great for smart-ass comments in theatres. As folks were filing out of Contagion, someone coughed, which lead to one clever wit yelling "Oh no, we're all gonna die!" Got a nice laugh. It puts me in mind of the greatest audience comment I've ever experienced. During 'I Am Legend,' they have that scene of Emma Thompson talking about how she's engineering a strain of the measles meant to fight cancer, followed by an immediate cut to a desolate Manhattan. As if on cue, the guy in front of us in the theatre yelled "Uh oh, they couldn't cure the measles!" Doesn't sound great on paper, but the timing was perfect and it just cracked the entire audience up. Probably the highlight of that movie aside from the scene where Will Smith strangles his dog, then asks "How come he don't want me, man?"

UFC 135 Predictions

2011-09-21T15:13:00.001-04:00

* Nate Diaz over Takanori Gomi, submission, R2
The book on Gomi is pretty easy: avoid his stand-up game by taking him down and submitting him or outwrestling him for a TKO. Under normal circumstances I'd think that Nate might be stupid enough to actually stand with Gomi, but Nate's lost two in a row and presumably he doesn't want to get cut from the UFC. (Then again, who knows how these Diaz brothers operate.) Fun fact: Nick Diaz famously upset Gomi in PRIDE but the result was turned into a no-contest after Nick tested positive for marijuana afterwards. Oh, those Diaz kids. What scamps! Nick Diaz might be the real-life version of the guy in Pearl Jam's song "Off He Goes."

* Travis Browne over Rob Broughton, KO, R2
This could and should be a slugfest between big ol' heavyweights. It isn't quite my usual "pick against British fighters since British fighters generally suck" rule since Broughton brings some decent wrestling and submissions to the table rather than just going in there and swinging his arms like Lisa Simpson. But, while I wouldn't put a ton of emphasis on Browne's unbeaten record, he's beaten a higher caliber of opponents than Broughton. A win here makes Browne 3-0-1 in the UFC and probably on the verge of a contenders' bout in the thin heavyweight division --- pretty impressive for a guy who we still don't know is actually a good fighter.

* Ben Rothwell over Mark Hunt, submission, R1
I can't believe Mark Hunt actually won a fight. Chris Tuchscherer (a.k.a. 'The Guy Who Hunt Knocked Out At UFC 127'), you should be ashamed of yourself, and you were deservedly cut. Now, SURELY Ben Rothwell, since you're not a total tomato can, you can put this guy into retirement, right? Hunt's career MMA record is 6-7, for god's sakes. Rothwell is no great shakes as a fighter but even he should be above Hunt's stature at this point in his career.

* Josh Koscheck over Matt Hughes, submission, R2
The fight was originally supposed to be Hughes vs. Diego Sanchez, but once Sanchez got hurt, Koscheck stepped up for his big return to the cage. When last we saw Kos, Georges St. Pierre was jabbing him again and again and again and again and again and again and again until Koscheck's face began to resemble a Halloween mask. It stands to reason that he could be a bit gun-shy in his first match back, which is why I'm predicting a sub win over Hughes. Basically, this one is "Koscheck by however he wants," since he is a big step beyond what Hughes is capable of beating at this point in his career. Hughes' only chance is if Koscheck is REALLY gun-shy and Hughes suddenly finds himself with an advantage in striking. Chalk this one up for a comeback win for Koscheck and then Hughes can continue taking semi-ceremonial fights in the twilight of his career. I'd still like to see him face Sanchez, that would be an interesting matchup.

* Jon Jones over Rampage Jackson, decision
As a johnny-come-lately MMA fan who got into the UFC when everyone else did (2006-07), I've never seen Rampage Jackson in trouble. I've seen him get hit hard a few times and I've seen him get taken down to the mat, but still, I can't recall a UFC Jackson fight where I've actually thought he was going down. Now, Rampage has certainly lost before and gotten his ass kicked before, perhaps most notably three beatdowns from Wanderlei Silva and Shogun Rua in PRIDE, but to my eyes, the idea of Rampage being totally worked over is almost inconceivable. He's 10-2 in his last 12 fights and those two losses were close decisions to Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin.

Now, here comes Jon Jones, the guy who's been destroying everyone in his path. We sort of have an unstoppable force vs. immovable object situation here except there are hints that neither fighter quite lives up to that billing. While I'm *almost* ready to buy into the Bones Jones hype, I'd argue that he needs a decisive win over Jackson to cement him as the next big thing. Whipping Shogun was impressive, but that was a Rua who was coming off a year layoff and major knee surgery. Besides the Shogun result, Jones' best win is over Vladimir Matyushenko, who's a tough guy but certainly not in the upper tier of light-heavyweights. (Though Jones' destruction of him was admittedly very impressive.) Rampage, while he's been winning, hasn't looked great in recent wins over Lyoto Machida, Matt Hamill, Keith Jardine, and that Machida fight could've easily gone the other way.

Is Rampage really over the hill and he just hasn't fought anyone explosive enough to take advantage of this yet? Or, will Jones be swallowed by the hype of his first LHW title defence and start to panic (or tire in the later rounds) if Rampage isn't fazed by his striking? My pick is Jones simply because he might just be that good and Rampage's recent performances have left me something to be desired….but it wouldn't shock me whatsoever if Rampage lands a big shot and Jones crumbles, having never been tested like this before. Terrific matchup and a really hard-to-pick main event.

Undercard….
* Tim Boetsch over Nick Ring, decision
* Tony Ferguson over Aaron Riley, TKO, R3
* Junior Assuncao over Eddie Yagin, submission, R1
* Takeya Mizugaki over Cole Escovedo, decision
* James Te-Huna over Ricardo Romero, TKO, R2

Abandoned List Posts (Survivor, Hockey)

2011-09-14T16:26:00.000-04:00

So as I'm still picking up the pieces from my computer crash last month, a couple of list posts were aborted in the process. I had very rough copies of these posts saved via e-mails to myself, so you're basically just getting the nuts and bolts. The first is the second part of my 'Best Survivors Ever' series and I don't think anyone wants to read "another several thousand words on the topic. Hilariously, the only entry I wrote out in full was about Russell Hantz, who wasn't even actually on the list. Also, with the new Survivor season starting tonight, it's very possible that this list could immediately become out of date. Sigh.

The other post idea was a random comparison of various star hockey players to various legendary rock bands that didn't quite come off, nor did I really put as much research or creativity into it as I should've. On the bright side, it also probably prevented me from making a tasteless wisecrack about Amy Winehouse and….uh, geez, there really have been a lot of tragic hockey player deaths this summer, haven't there? But I didn't actually make the joke, just DISCUSSED the joke, so it isn't tasteless! Loophole!

So basically, since both of these idea were half-assed, then combined, they make for one full ass of a post. Enjoy the….uh, ass?

************************

With the new Survivor season just days away, it's high time for the second instalment of my 'Best Survivors Ever' series. Don't worry, unlike the Winners Edition, this one is only very long instead of incredibly long. I was a bit surprised because, if you're trying to rank the 'best' out of people who didn't actually complete the primary objective of what they were attempting to do (win Survivor), you'd think I'd have a bit more to say. In several of these cases, however, the players can be summed up as "Well, they knew what they were doing, and it didn't work out for them. Oh well."

As with the first list, I'm using these criteria….

* how this person performed in their respective season(s). While I'm selecting several players who finished anywhere from second place to not even making the merge, final standing has to count for something.

* how this person could perform if they were put into another Survivor season, or basically, ranking their skillset. This is a pretty subjective category since Survivor has changed quite a bit in its 22 (!) seasons, so what could win you the game in 2001 is a lot different than what could win you the game in 2011.

* for this particular list, I'm looking at WHY these people didn't win their season and if it was due to a correctible flaw.

And now, without further adieu, let's start with the guy who is quite notably not on the list, just because he's probably the most controversial omission.

X. Russell Hantz
He didn't crack the top 23. He wouldn't have cracked the top 53. "But Mark," you'll say if you're a Russell fan, "he finished second twice! And he was a power player in all three of his seasons! As someone who's watched the show since all the way back in 2009, Russell is clearly the greatest Survivor ever!"

You know those long-drive competitions they occasionally show on ESPN? These golfers spend all their time perfecting their swings so they can achieve maximum distance, so when they step out on the range, they can boom the ball a good 400 yards. While these big hitters are certainly impressive, however, there's a big difference between these guys and actual pro golfers. The main reason these guys are in made-for-TV long drive competitions and not playing on the PGA Tour is that their games simply aren't well-rounded enough to compete at the elite level. Sure, they can hit a golf ball 400 yards, but can they hit it straight? Or can they navigate a dogleg left? Or, most importantly, once the ball lands, can the big hitter manage to putt it into the hole?

Russell is, essentially, Survivor's answer to the long-drive golfer. He shows up on the island with a driver in his bag and nothing else. He has no finesse. If a situation calls for the game-playing equivalent of a delicate chip out of a sand trap, Russell just goes for the driver again.

What really makes Russell a bad player, however, is that he has no idea why he's a bad player. The fact that he voluntarily "took" the likes of Natalie, Parvati and Sandra to the final vote with him (they really took him, but play along) because they "didn't do anything" is a sign that Russell is just flat-out clueless about the all-important social aspect of Survivor. Even worse, he's dismissive of it, calling it a flaw in the game. The nerve of this guy. To return to my analogy, imagine if the winner of that ESPN long drive competition won a spot in the Masters. This golfer shows up at Augusta National and misses the cut by a mile since he can't chip, putt or play short irons. Then imagine this golfer complained to the media afterwards that, "Oh, putting is irrelevant. I can hit it farther than these guys, I should be the true Masters champion!" Nobody would take this argument seriously, so why are some people still convinced that Russell Hantz is God's gift to Survivor?

23. Jonathan Penner
22. Susie Smith
21. Gregg Carey
20. Holly Hoffman
19. Danielle DiLorenzo
18. Taj Johnson-George
17. Lex van den Berghe
16. Colby Donaldson
15. Greg Buis
14. Jerri Manthey
13. Ozzy Lusth
12. Jonny Fairplay
11. Matthew von Ertfelda
10. Amanda Kimmel
9. Peih-Gee Law
8. Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien
7. Tracy Hughes-Wolf
6. Ian Rosenberger
5. Stephen Fishbach
4. Yau Man Chan
3. Rafe Judkins
2. Rob Cesternino
1. Cirie Fields

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Wayne Gretzky = The Beatles (undisputed best)

Gordie Howe = The Rolling Stones (around for-friggin'-ever, though the obvious difference is that Howe was still great by the end)

Bobby Orr = Led Zeppelin (legendary, changed the game, gone too soon, I'm not crazy about this one since I think most would agree that Orr is the second-best player ever, whereas Led Zep isn't nearly a clear-cut #2. I mean, they have a case as #2 but it's certainly debatable.)

Steve Yzerman or Mark Messier = U2

Peter Forsberg = The White Stripes (band without a bassist, player without a foot)

Guy Lafleur = The Who (phenom in their prime, kind of a joke now)

Jacques Plante = Pink Floyd (great, but mostly remembered for accoutrements today rather than their play. Plante is best-known for the goalie mask, and Floyd is best-known for The Wall tour. This one needs some work.)

Mario Lemieux = Bruce Springsteen (another 'best ever' candidate sabotaged by outside factors, yes I may be comparing Hodgkin's disease to the Ghost Of Tom Joad album)

Ted Lindsay = Neil Young

Eric Lindros = Oasis ("next big thing" that didn't pan out)

Paul Kariya = Counting Crows (they're still around??)

Rocket Richard = Elvis Presley (legend from a bygone era, perhaps the first icon of hockey/rock music)

Maurice Richard = Little Richard (just too obvious a pun to ignore)

Drive Recklessly

2011-09-13T15:15:00.001-04:00

As a former professional driver (well, okay, a pizza delivery boy), I heartily endorse this initiative.

Pearl Jam (and NEIL YOUNG!) At The ACC

2011-09-12T02:04:00.001-04:00

You never have to worry about spoilers when you're writing about a Pearl Jam concert, since PJ are known for drastic setlist overhauls on a nightly basis. So if you're reading this and thinking "Aw man, they're playing 'Porch' on this tour?! That's awesome, but I would've gone nuts hearing that not knowing it was coming!", never fear. It's even money that PJ doesn't even play the song again for the rest of this tour….so, uh, I guess you're disappointed in another way.

Every Pearl Jam show is a singular entity unto itself. For instance, Sunday evening's concert in Toronto featured perhaps the best grand finales I've ever seen in all my years of attending rock shows. Pearl Jam ended things off with "Rockin' In The Free World" and just when you thought they were wrapping up the song, NEIL FUCKING YOUNG HIMSELF comes on stage to take over and blow everyone's mind with ten minutes of shredding guitar solos. The arena went ballistic. Now, in fairness, given the number of big stars in town for the Toronto International Film Festival, we had whispered before the concert about how cool it would be if Young, or Bono, or the Edge made guest appearances. Random hypotheticals are nothing compared to actually seeing a capital-L Legend like Young stroll onto the stage and wail like there was no tomorrow.

Even without Young's appearance, this was still a show to remember. It was my second Pearl Jam concert, having first seen the band in London in 2005 at the John Labatt Centre, and I was accompanied by my pals Eric (his first PJ show) and Trev (his third….we saw them together in London and Trevor ranks Pearl Jam's 2006 concert in Toronto as the finest of his life) this time around. If the stage was at 12 o'clock, our seats were roughly at 5 o'clock up in the upper bowl, so we had a pretty good view of things. The bad news was that we were interrupted literally a dozen times during the show by various pieces of human garbage in our row who kept getting up to a) get beer, b) use the bathroom and c) presumably buy a beer and then drink it while actually urinating, eliminating the middle man. Also of note were the guys behind us who kept yelling for the band to play 'Crazy Mary' after every song. It was irritating but, admittedly, it would've been pretty awesome had 'Crazy Mary' actually been played.

This mini-tour from the band is to celebrate its 20th anniversary and to promote the "Pearl Jam Twenty" documentary, directed by Cameron Crowe, premiering at TIFF this week. Pearl Jam setlists are pretty varied on any tour, but with no specific album to promote in this case, literally any song from the band's huge catalogue is fair game to be played during a concert. Indeed, Sunday's show saw almost every album represented (nothing from 'Riot Act' or 'Pearl Jam,' though songs from both records were played during PJ's show in Montreal a few days ago) plus a few random B-sides and covers. One of those covers (Mother Love Bone's "Crown Of Thorns") was one of the highlights of the show, to boot.

Did I have a criticism of the show? Nope! This one was pretty easy to write. What am I supposed to do, complain that possibly my favourite Pearl Jam song ("No Way") wasn't played, given the nature of the band's random setlists? Nope! If anything, I'm pleased that "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me" didn't make an appearance. Don't click on the link, please, save yourself.

Great show, Pearl Jam. Great show. The setlist….

Long Road
Do The Evolution
Once
Got Some
Faithful
Nothing As it Seems
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
Setting Forth
Not For You (snippet from 'Modern Girl' by Sleater-Kinney)
Given To Fly
Just Breathe
Off He Goes
Daughter (snippet from "It's Ok" by Dead Moon)
Grievance
Down
Unthought Known
The Fixer
Porch
***********first encore***********
Nothingman
Better Man
Leatherman
Black
Rearviewmirror
***********second encore*********
Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns (Mother Love Bone cover)
Alive
Rockin' In The Free World (w/Neil Young)

NFL Preview & Predictions

2011-09-08T13:50:00.001-04:00

Thank god that lockout is over, eh? Let the title defence begin!

AFC West: San Diego, Kansas City, Denver, Oakland
The lockout and subsequent lack of regular offseason training camps will make this season even harder to predict than most. It's possible we could see a maelstrom of injuries since players haven't been properly worked into shape….or, we could see fewer injuries, since players are fresher from not going through all those meaningless drills. The lack of prep time could hurt teams with new coaches or quarterbacks….or it could hurt veteran, system-heavy teams who needed the extra prep time to fully get their routine in place. This is my long-winded way of predicting the Chargers are going to end up being a darkhorse contender since they're kind of halfway between the two camps. The coaching staff is still in place so there isn't a lot of new stuff to learn, but it's also not like Norv Turner's system and strategies are all that complex. San Diego could be that perfect middle ground team to avoid some of these lockout-related issues. And hey, the Chargers are notorious for their slow starts, so perhaps a change in the preseason routine is just what they need to avoid another 1-3 record in September.

The Chargers are the clear favourites in this pretty weak division. Kansas City got into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth last year and since their coaches have an inexplicable disdain for playing Jamaal Charles (maybe the best RB in the league) more than half the time, it's hard to see them holding serve as division champions. Denver gave its coaching staff a much-needed flush but it will take John Fox at least a year to start digging the team out of Josh McDaniels' mess. The Raiders are the Raiders, firing a coach who'd actually started to get them on the right track and Nnamdi Asomugha is gone too. It is a sad time to live in Oakland….well, it's always kind of a sad time to live in Oakland, but now especially.

AFC East: New England, New York*, Buffalo, Miami
As an old-school football coach, my dad pretty much loves everything about how the Patriots do business. As an old-school football coach, my dad hates diva players like Chad Ochocinco. Ergo, Ochocinco playing for the Pats this year is going to be an interesting experience. I predict it'll take until Week Four for my father to start saying things like, "You know, Ochocinco isn't that bad a player. That Belichick sure got his head on straight!" Anyway, the Patriots are fine, they'll likely win the division again. The Jets will lose just enough games to keep them from a division title since they're specifically built to challenge only the Patriots, Steelers, Manning-led Colts, Chargers and Ravens --- against the rank-and-file of the NFL, they struggle. The Bills will go 6-10 with at least three of those losses being complete heartbreakers. And let's talk a moment about the Miami Dolphins, who are going to SUCK this year. Woo boy, this team has 3-13 written all over them. Their new owner, Stephen "New Dan Snyder!" Ross, will have an excuse to bring in the big-name coach he's always wanted, leaving poor Tony Sparano to fall back on his residuals from Reno 911.

AFC South: Houston, Tennessee, Indianapolis, Jacksonville
After all these years of talking about how Peyton Manning is overrated, I'm finally proven right. Big bad Peyton can't play because of a teeny-tiny little….uh, neck injury. Awww, poor widdle Princess Peyton, does he need his mommy to kiss it and make the….er, serious neck problem that may require a third surgical procedure…all better? What a wimp! Anyway, Manning's injury does a couple of things. Firstly, Brett Favre's streak of consecutive quarterback starts is now possibly the most unbreakable record in sports. Secondly, the Colts are now terrible. Manning carried this sorry group for years and now Kerry Collins is supposed to do the same? Good luck. Indianapolis' stretch of winning seasons just came to an abrupt halt.

This leaves the division wide-open for….yeah, I can't believe it, the Houston Texans to finally reach the postseason for the first time in franchise history. Look, I hate picking Houston to do something before they've actually done it, but on paper, they have the fewest flaws of any team in this division. Tennessee has a new coach, old man Hasselbeck at quarterback and Chris Johnson as a walking injury waiting to happen since he held out of training camp and is even further behind in training than everyone else. Jacksonville is still Jacksonville, who inexplicably cut David Garrard the other day despite the fact that Garrard's mediocre self was still their best QB option. It would be classic Texans if they finally get their breakthrough winning season not by their own merit, but because the rest of the AFC South just fell backwards to them. I guess Houston would've had a winning season last year had their secondary even been bad instead of horrifyingly terrible, and since they've done some upgrading to the D, what the hell, maybe they really are better.

AFC North: Pittsburgh, Baltimore*, Cincinnati, Cleveland
The only suspense here is in picking which of the Steelers and Ravens will finish first, and which of the Bengals or Browns will finish third. Neither Ohio team has a hope in hell at at top-two finish. The Steelers are too strong a franchise to get bedevilled by the Super Bowl loser curse and Baltimore still has too many (aging but dangerous) weapons to fall apart completely. Rinse, repeat in the AFC North. On the bright side, Ben Roethlisberger didn't rape anyone this summer. How could he, with Batman in town to watch his every move.

NFC West: St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, Arizona
Ughhhh, this division is so lousy. All four teams are so bad that any final order of finish is possible. I'm fairly certain the Rams are the best team of the bunch so they will avoid the basement, but still, a third-place finish is very possible given their collective youth. If Kevin Kolb is actually a good quarterback, then the Cardinals suddenly shoot right back to the top of this division. If Jim Harbaugh is able to get something, for the love of god ANYTHING out of Alex Smith, it might be enough to get the 49ers over the top and into first place. If the Seahawks are somehow able to keep on keepin' on with last year's magic, since I still can't fathom how they actually won a playoff game, then what the hell, they could repeat as "division champs." (If you finish 7-9 but still win your brutal division, your achievement is forever tarred by quotation marks.)

Out of all this shit stew emerges the Rams, who may resemble a good team. Steven Jackson is still a beast. Sam Bradford is not as good as the quarterback-centric media would have to believe, but he's already pretty good and could take another step forward this year. They've added valuable Super Bowl-winning grit in the form of former Packers Al Harris and Brady Poppinga! (Ok, this may not be a major factor.) I'd probably be more down on the Rams if they were in any other division but amongst the blindness that is the NFC West, they're the one-eyed men.

NFC East: Dallas, Philadelphia*, New York, Washington
After years of mocking people for picking the overrated Cowboys to finish atop the NFC East, where I am picking the Cowboys to finish atop the NFC East. The key is this year, they're not the overrated team. That's definitely the Eagles, who will start regretting that six-year, $100 million contract to Michael Vick by around week three. Hell, even the Giants are overrated since a lot of people seem to be picking them for the playoffs despite the fact that half their defense is injured and Eli Manning is secretly a bad QB. The Cowboys, meanwhile, are getting Tony Romo back and once Jason Garrett took over last season, the team just seemed to gel a bit better. Given that the Giants are going to implode and the Redskins are starting Rex goddamn Grossman at quarterback, there's definitely room for Dallas to sneak in there and steal the division.

So, why won't Philadelphia win it? They have the most talent, they're loaded on both sides of the ball and Andy Reid (for all his game-calling faults) is a fine coach. The problem is, in a nutshell, Mike Vick. He's the most overrated player in not only the NFL, but possibly in all of pro sports. People love the idea of Mike Vick, or perhaps more accurately, they love the potential of Mike Vick. They see him have one monster game where he runs for 100 yards and throws for 400 yards and they think my god, here's the most revolutionary quarterback in the sport. The problem is, Vick is only capable of these games two or three times a season. The rest of the time, he's either hurt or tossing up interceptions. If I was Philadelphia, I would've hung onto Kolb for dear life since you can't go into a season with Michael Vick as your quarterback and expect him to play every game. (Getting Vince Young, a poor man's Vick, is not an acceptable Plan B.) Reid should be on the phone with David Garrard's agent right now trying to lock in a better backup QB for when Vick suffers his inevitable injury. The Eagles are going to make the playoffs by sheer dint of talent, but they're not going to make any serious noise with an inconsistent liability at quarterback.

NFC South: Atlanta, Tampa Bay, New Orleans, Carolina
A real paper-scissors-rock scenario here. I'm confident that the Panthers will come in last since their offence is still a garbage dump, but as to those other three teams, any predicted finish is possible. Maybe the Bucs will continue their progress and jump up to be champs. Maybe the Saints have recovered from the Super Bowl hangover and are recharged. Maybe the Falcons really have turned a corner as a franchise and will be a consistent contender for years to come. Those six Atlanta/Tampa/New Orleans games on the schedule will all be dogfights, no doubt about it. The Falcons are my choice but I'm not at all confident. As much as we joke about Arthur Blank looking like a 1930's department store owner, those guys had a rough go of it. You had the Depression, crime, and being made to look like fools by everyone from the Three Stooges to W.C. Fields. There's a lot of bad karma attached to the 1930's department store owner look. Blank should watch out.

NFC North: Your Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers, Minnesota*, Detroit, Chicago
Detroit Lions, I love ya and I'm more scared of you than any other team in this division, but you're this year's trendy preseason selection that fails to live up to the hype. They're going to make things interesting, no question, but I think 8-8 is their ceiling for 2011. In 2012, I'll start to get really worried, especially if Matt Stafford is actually capable of staying healthy for a full year and, y'know, is actually good. The Bears were arguably the worst and/or luckiest 13-3 team in football history last year and they'll plummet back to earth with a sickening thud. The only question for Chicago this year is how quickly it will take the fans to turn on Jay "Morrissey" Cutler. With these two down, it's up to the Minnesota Vikings to make the surprise turn-around and get back into the playoffs. This team has notable offensive and defensive line issues but hey, there's still some quality talent here. Minnesota is underrated after last year's debacle of a season when literally everything that could've gone wrong did go wrong, including their goddamn stadium collapsing in on itself in a scene that looked vaguely fake to me. (Seriously, look at it again. Doesn't the Metrodome look CGI'ed? Why did FOX have so many cameras set up at all those different angles? Are we sure FOX didn't make a quick deal with the special effects people from 'Doctor Who' to cook up this footage?) Leslie Frazier is a calming influence at head coach and while Donovan McNabb has lost a step, he won't bring the nonstop drama of a certain grizzled, cameraphone-loving Mississippian.

And then…..the champs. Green Bay had a quiet summer in free agency and I kind of wish they'd done a bit more to beef up the offensive line. But overall, this is the same team that whipped the NFL's ass from January onward last winter. If anything, the Packers should be better now that Ryan Grant, Jermichael Finley and various other injured stars are back and ready to go. The fact that Green Bay managed to win the Super Bowl without so many key players should make the rest of the NFL cower in fear. Getting these guys back may help stave off any post-Super Bowl complacency, since you know Grant, Finley and company are pissed about missing the party last season. Even if they weren't my favourite team, I'd still be very bullish about the Packers' chances at repeating.

PLAYOFFS
Cowboys over Vikings
Eagles over Rams
Chargers over Ravens
Jets over Texans

Packers over Eagles
Falcons over Cowboys
Patriots over Jets
Chargers over Steelers

Packers over Falcons
Chargers over Patriots

Super Bowl XLVI: Green Bay over San Diego

NFL Offensive Player of the Year: Philip Rivers
NFL Defensive Player of the Year: Patrick Willis
Coach of the Year: Leslie Frazier
NFL MVP: Aaron Rodgers

Amateur Dream Analysis

2011-09-04T23:21:00.003-04:00

DREAM: My family and I are on our way to Port Stanley, Ontario (perhaps better known as the happiest place on earth) when our car breaks down on the way. Our car, by the way, isn't any of our usual family vehicles, but rather Herbie the Love Bug. Yeah. Anyway, we pull into the parking lot of a farm/produce market just before stalling out and the kindly vendors and customers all take a look at our car and offer to call for help. Suddenly, everyone's smartphones start beeping with texts and news alerts, and word is spreading that the earth is under invasion from an alien race. We even see a formation of air force jets swoop through the air, no doubt on the way to the nearest largest city. (I'm guessing Toronto….sorry, hometown of London.)

That's when it happens. The sky splits open with some kind of interspacial wormhole as people run, terrified, to take cover. From the wormhole emerges the alien hordes….flamingoes. Yup, flamingoes. Dozens, if not hundreds, of them, just dive-bombing everything in sight. I caught the image of one farmer taking a home run swing with his umbrella and catching one flamingo in the face, instantly killing it. Then I woke up.

ANALYSIS: When and if humanity does experience some kind of extinction-level event in my lifetime, it won't be due to some cataclysmic event like an alien invasion, the Apocalypse, dinosaur rebirth, etc. It will probably be due to somethings stupid --- as in, humanity is doing something dumb to the environment that we don't even know about and it's causing a ruckus that will eventually kill us without warning.

Like, for instance, pissing off flamingoes. They're perfectly laid-back, innocent birds who want nothing more than to just hang around, and yet we not only destroy their wetlands, we also mock them by putting plastic flamingoes in our yards. (Well, not my yard, but white trash yards.) It's preposterous! I don't blame flamingoes for attacking humanity in some kind of coordinated, inter-dimensional attack.

Two theories: one, that flamingoes ARE aliens who just colonized themselves on earth centuries ago and have now called in the reinforcements from their home planet. Or, perhaps more cannily, flamingoes have somehow developed wormhole technology and are simply making it LOOK like an alien invasion in order to surprise humanity. Either strategy is pretty threatening --- lord knows I wouldn't want to fuck with a flamingo that could blast me into the outer regions of time and space.

I'm presuming the farm setting lodged itself in my subconscious since I recently indulged in some high-quality eatin' during a recent visit to my parents' house in London. Fresh meats, fruits, vegetables…and, in particular, some of the sweetest corn on the cob I've had in many a moon. I don't know if the folks picked it up specifically while going to Port Stanley, but my parents were indeed in the Port just last week seeing an Elvis impersonator concert. Uh, yeah.

Re: the smartphones going off. One of the most interesting aspects of social media is how quickly news breaks, details develop and then analysis begins almost instantly. For example, the east coast earthquake from a couple of weeks ago. I was at the computer and got up to make a sandwich. By the time I returned to the computer five minutes later, there were suddenly 70 tweets in my feed. Within five minutes, the progression went from "whoa, was that an earthquake?" and "Did you feel that?!" to confirmation that there was actually a quake hitting the east coast, to almost instant mockery of the weak-ass nature of said earthquake. The famous "stunning photos of devastation" links appeared almost immediately. Between this and my dream, it made me think that if aliens ever do invade, we'll be in for some AMAZING tweets.

As for the Love Bug, well, who didn't like that movie when they were kids? Perhaps my childhood love of Herbie is why today, I prefer to drive compact cars. Maybe I should just buy a Volkswagen with a racing stripe and be done with it. I'll get to buying a Herbie right after I purchase the Ecto-1.

Don't Screw With Captain Planet

2011-08-31T17:20:00.004-04:00

Now, I don't want to say this is a ripoff of my "Poison Ivy is reimagined in the Christopher Nolan Batman universe as an eco-terrorist and probably played by Tilda Swinton" idea, but......well, okay, it's clearly not. Actually, Swinton vs. Cheadle is a pretty even battle of acting ability, so it's KIND OF a ripoff of my idea. Like, one percent of a ripoff is still technically somewhat of a ripoff. I'll stop talking. Gillian Jacobs appearance!

Don Cheadle is Captain Planet from Don Cheadle

My Day With The Cup

2011-08-28T22:33:00.000-04:00

Hey, did I ever mention that I won the Stanley Cup? I got my hands on Lord Stanley's Mug for my role as the Boston Bruins' team hypnotist. Sure, my methods may have been controversial (and under investigation by the American Medical Association), but how else would the Bruins have won the Cup unless Tim Thomas had mentally coerced to play like Patrick Roy? The ends justify the means!

Anyway, while my hypnotism license may be up in the air, my status as a Stanley Cup champion is not. As per tradition, I was awarded my own singular day with the Cup to do with it as I pleased. Usually this is just reserved for players and coaches from the winning team but the Bruins made an exception in the team hypnotist's case…or, they were "convinced" to make an exception. Anyway, here's the account of my 24 hours hangin' with Lord Stanley.

0800: The Cup arrives at my doorstep, accompanied by its supervising trustee from the Hockey Hall Of Fame. It's even more beautiful than I'd imagined. (The Cup, not the trustee.) Upon being handed the Cup, a look of insane, crazed joy spreads across my face. The trustee takes a cautious step backwards.

0805: I ask the trustee if he'd like to see my walk-in closet, and before he can say, "Wait a minute, this is just a regular-sized…," I've shoved him inside and locked the door. Pfft, I don't need a chaperone!

0809: I drop the Stanley Cup down a flight of stairs, leaving at least three sizeable dents in the priceless trophy. Dammit! If only I'd had a chaperone!

0834: The girl manning the Tim Horton's drive-thru is a true hero and answers my request to "fill this up with a double double." She is also a star for calling the paramedics after I go into a minor coma from drinking that much sugary, creamy coffee.

0900: My heart restarts! Alright! The EMT says it's a miracle. I think he's referring to my revival, but it turns out he's referring to the inscription for the 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes.

0940: I'm taken to the hospital due to that pesky "standard policy when someone is clinically dead for 20 minutes," but it ends up being a blessing in disguise. What better place than a hospital to show the Cup to some folks who could use a bit of inspiration to get them through a difficult time? With that in mind, I swing by the voluntary cosmetic surgery wing. It makes my heart swell to see a patient, undergoing her fourth collagen lip injection, use those giant smackers to lay a big kiss on the Stanley Cup. Truly moving.

1030: Released from the hospital, I head home for a nap. This carrying around a Cup is exhausting! As I lay down, I make a mental note that someone has broken down my closet door and escaped.

1316: Great nap! I decide to take the Cup to my hometown of London, Ontario for two reasons. Firstly, my hometown deserves a rare opportunity to see the Stanley Cup in person. Secondly, there may or may not be an angry trustee hunting the streets of Toronto for me. I hop on a bus, and Greyhound has the nerve to charge me for two tickets since the Cup will be taking up a second seat. How unpatriotic!

1430: Well, it's official. The "Hey baby, check out the size of my Cup" pickup line never works, even when you have the actual Stanley Cup sitting right next to you. Oh well. Your loss, random woman on the bus!

1530: Arrival in London. I swing by my parents' place to show off the trophy. My dad goes on and on about how the old-time players were so much greater than today's players. My brother snidely points out that the Maple Leafs haven't appeared on the Cup in almost 45 years. My mother says, "Oh, so you can bring home the Stanley Cup, but you can't bring home a girlfriend for us to meet at Thanksgiving?" This trip may have been a huge mistake.

1633: Stanley and I head to the local arena so the youngsters on the ice can get a glimpse of hockey's greatest prize. Some parents balk at the $60 "Cup maintenance fee" I charge for a picture with the Cup, but c'mon, look at all those dents. The poor trophy is in bad shape. By the way, if you're an American reader who thinks there wouldn't be a hockey practice going on in August….c'mon dude, this is Canada.

1730: Since the city of London rejected my request for a parade, my next step is to just drive the streets at 10 KPH with the Cup duct-taped to my roof. Doing this during rush hour may have been an error, but I'm choosing to interpret all those honks as compliments, and all those fingers as modified "You're Number One!" salutes.

1900: Dinner time! I have to give it up to the staff at Arby's --- most restaurants wouldn't be able to fill a three-foot trophy with loose meat.

2006: Back on the bus to Toronto. We make a quick stopover at the Brantford casino, where I bet the Cup on the 'red' space at the roulette table. Red hits, meaning the casino owes me equal value for my wager. All they have is the Grey Cup, lost by Anthony Calvillo the week prior in a spirited game of pai-gow. Since I'm from anywhere in Ontario besides Hamilton, I just use the Grey Cup to tip the dealer.

2243: Sadly, this is where my account is cut short. We may or may not have run into a massive OPP roadblock set up by, you guessed it, the trustee who claimed the Stanley Cup was "stolen." Come on man, overreact much? But anyway, the police took his side, and I spent the remainder of my 24 hours with the Cup WITHOUT the Cup, locked up in custody. Even worse, my cellmates weren't at all impressed about my story of winning the Stanley Cup, since they were too busy ogling some other guy in custody who was selling Juno Awards for packs of smokes.

While I feel like the NHL still owes me 10 hours with the Stanley Cup, even still, it was a day I'll never forget. And the best part is, I'll be immortalized forever when my name is engraved on the Cup just like every other team hypnotist in hist…hey wait a second...

UFC 134 Picks

2011-08-25T15:23:00.001-04:00

* Forrest Griffin over Shogun Rua, decision
Since this is our third go-around in the "How Will Shogun Recover From Major Knee Surgery" sweepstakes, let's look back at past history. When Shogun went under the knife for the first time, he looked slow and lethargic in his first fight back --- a choke out loss to, uh, Forrest Griffin. After his second surgery, Rua again looked slow and lethargic in his first fight back against Mark Coleman, but Coleman was also so lethargic by dint of the fact that he's 43 years old and washed-up, so Shogun still won the fight. In Rua's SECOND fight post-surgery, he scored a simple knockout of Chuck Liddell, which doesn't tell us a ton since I think a stiff breeze could've knocked out Chuck during the last two years of his career.

So, in his first fight back from his latest surgery, Shogun was thoroughly dominated by Jon Jones and lost the LHW title. This brings us to this next bout. I honestly can't pick Rua until I see with my own eyes that he's back to being himself, especially when he's facing a tough nut like Forrest Griffin. Say what you will about Forrest, but he's a tough out for anyone not named Anderson Silva. Griffin is just about the last guy you want to face if you have questions about your cardio, since Griffin can easily wrestle and outwork you until you break. If Rua runs out of steam like he did in their first encounter, Forrest will win again. A victory here gives Griffin a three-fight winning streak and probably at worst a #1 contender's match against someone like Dan Henderson or the Lyoto Machida/Phil Davis winner.

* Edson Barboza over Ross Pearson, decision
For almost a year now, the UFC has gone out of its way to make every preliminary fight available to the fans. Most prelims are shown online on Facebook, and two prelims are shown live on Spike TV in the hour leading up to the pay-per-view. This idea of a "pregame show" (and, let's be honest, a last-minute pitch to convince you to order the PPV) is a nice one. Lesser-known fighters have a much larger platform to wow fans rather than just hoping that there's enough dead time on the PPV for their prelim bout to make the cut. Fans get to see more action. The UFC gets a lucrative tie-in with Facebook. Spike appreciates the ratings. It's a win-win-win almost all the way around….except that since Spike obviously wants a good show, they'll pick the most appealing undercard bouts for the live audience. This means that sometimes, you get a semi-dud pushed up on to the PPV card itself.

This is my laboured way of saying that I have no interest in seeing this fight. Ross Pearson is a scrapper and a decent fighter, but his total lack of legitimate potential cools me on his future prospects. Barboza, at least, is a quality prospect and could get himself a nice highlight here if he can stop a tough guy like Pearson, but there are at least two other undercard bouts I'd rather spend PPV money on than this one.

* Stanislav Nedkov over Luiz Cane, KO, R2
There was a time when I thought Cane was going to be a quality LHW prospect, but in hindsight, that three-fight win streak over Jason Lambert, Sokoudjou and Steve Cantwell wasn't exactly murderer's row. Cane was dropped by Rogerio Nogueira and Cyrille Diabate and then saved his job by knocking out Eliot Marshall last spring.

Nedkov is making his UFC debut and I have no reference point for picking the man other than the fact that Cane is fighting for his job and fighting in his home country….and surely not everything will go fight for the Brazilian fans on this evening. The underdog takes this one.

* Brendan Schaub over Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, KO, R2
Ugh. Big Nog is an MMA legend. He deserves more than to be unceremoniously knocked out in his home country by a second-tier guy like Schaub. But let's face facts --- Nogueira hasn't fought in 18 months, is coming off surgeries on his hip and both knees, his previously uncrackable jaw has been knocked out twice in his previous three bouts, and he might be the oldest 35-year-old on the planet. Seriously, when Nogueira fought Randy Couture last year, you would've sworn that Nog was the one in his late 40's. This all adds up to a sad end for the legendary Nogueira, finally fighting in Brazil again after all these years. Then again, Nog is also the same guy who recently said he wouldn't want to train with a gay student, so maybe Schaub can punch Nog into the 21st century.

By the way, is everyone ready for the spectacle that is Brendan Schaub, Heavyweight Title contender? I'm not joking --- if Schaub wins here, that's five straight victories. That's more than enough to make him the challenger to the Velasquez/Dos Santos winner, especially in the traditionally shallow HW division. The other alternative is that Schaub faces Frank Mir in a #1 contender's bout, but the rumour mill has Mir facing Brock Lesnar when Brock is eventually healthy enough to fight again. Geez, is there any doubt that either Cain or Junior would just KILL Schaub in a fight? Schaub isn't a bad fighter or anything, but he's clearly not in the class of being a championship contender.

* Anderson Silva over Yushin Okami, KO, R3
As the UFC hype shows have reminded us ad nauseum to drum up interest in this fight, Okami is indeed the last man to defeat Anderson Silva. Sure, it was five years ago and sure, it only occurred since Silva was disqualified for an illegal kick….but still, a win is a win, right? Right? Unfortunately for Okami, Anderson has a long memory, and now he has the opportunity to not just avenge that sketchy loss, but to do it in front of his home fans in Rio. It's very possible the east coast will take less damage from the earthquake than Okami's jaw will take from Silva's punches.

Okay, let's break down how Okami could win this. He's a solid wrestler, which Anderson has had trouble with in the past against the likes of Chael Sonnen and Dan Henderson. Okami also has a solid guard and is good at avoiding submissions, unlike Sonnen. While Okami isn't a particularly good striker, he's good enough that he's racked up nine knockouts of his 26 wins and he can at least hang with anyone standing. So, with all this in mind, Okami's best chance of winning the fight is if Silva somehow injures himself on the way to the cage, since there's nothing Okami brings to the table that Anderson hasn't dealt with, and beaten, in better fighters. I see a committed Anderson Silva getting yet another impressive finish (Okami's only been stopped once in 31 fights) in his legendary career.

Undercard…..
* Ian Loveland over Yves Jabouin, decision
* Paulo Thiago over David "Not The Star Of Peep Show" Mitchell, decision
* Dan Miller over Rousimar Palhares, decision
* Johnny Eduardo over Raphael Assuncao, decision
* Erick Silva over Luis Ramos, submission, R2
* Thiago Tavares over Spencer Fisher, decision
* Yuri Alcantara over Felipe Arantes, submission, R1…I usually don't talk much about undercard bouts, but man, Alcantara is 11-0 dating back to November 2009. Yeah, that's right, he's fought 11 times in under two years. He was 8-0 in 2010. Yikes. This is Alcantara's first bout in eight months, at least, so it's not like he's running on fumes.

Nooo, Not A Pacino Cameo!

2011-08-24T16:46:00.001-04:00

A bit of background on the films referenced in this clip….

Released in 1979, "Hardcore" stars George C. Scott as a man who goes on a crusade to rescue his daughter when she enters (maybe or maybe not voluntarily) the world of snuff porn. It's an odd, disturbing film, probably most remembered for one climactic scene where Scott's character is shown a porno featuring two men having their way with his daughter. Needless to say, this is about the worst thing a person could probably see, and Scott really acts the hell out of his scene to illustrate the sheer anguish.

Released in 2011, "Jack & Jill" is a pile of shit.

Now, for the first time, these two very different movies are brought together in this one hilarious clip. I love that Scott's reaction is now becoming a meme.

Grantland's Greatest Hits

2011-08-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

It's odd that Grantland has drawn so many haters since the site opened a few months ago. I suppose it was to be expected given that there would be some who would automatically dislike the site solely because of Bill Simmons' involvement but still, Simmons is just one part of the Grantland package. If you don't like this stuff, then great, you can read the material provided by any of the other dozen columnists on staff. I applaud any attempt to create a website that serves as a warehouse of Good Stuff To Read, so in my books, Grantland has been a tremendous success.

To that end, here are some of my favourite articles from the first few months of Grantland's existence. You'll notice that none are by Simmons or Chuck Klosterman, the two biggest names attached to the project. This isn't to say that neither have done good work, but rather than I'm just sticking to the best here, and I'm afraid both Simmons and Klosterman might not be able of delivering A-plus material anymore. To use one of his beloved basketball analogies, Simmons at this stage of his career is like Michael Jordan with the Wizards, getting by solely on veteran wiles and a general admiration for what he's done in the past. As for Klosterman, it's hard to deliver a truly 'great' article when you do nothing but write in circular arguments. Or is it? (There, there's a standard Klosterman 'undermine my premise' modifier.)

Anyway, enough of my criticisms, here's the cream of the Grantland crop….

* Katie Baker's hilarious NUPTIALS system for scoring the New York Times' wedding announcements. Even if you've never read a wedding announcement in your life (like me), this is still a very funny and well-composed idea.

* Alex French and Howie Kahn's oral history of The National, a short-lived sports magazine from the late 80's that managed to employ almost every major sportswriter in America. As a side note, I love the 'oral history' format. Tom Shales and JA Miller's oral history of Saturday Night Live is one of my favourite books of all time. I think I'd read anything written in an oral history format, including an oral history of oral histories. (Bonus: Charles P. Pierce's essay about actually working at The National.)

* Anna Clark's visit to Ty Cobb's old home in Detroit, which blossoms into an examination of Cobb, the city and the relationship between the two.

* Michael Schur and Nate DiMeo watch, and try to understand, a cricket match between India and Pakistan during the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Schur (creator of Parks & Recreation, former 'Office' and 'SNL' writer, and also the co-creator of the 'Fire Joe Morgan' blog) may or may not be a personal hero of mine and is a funny, funny man. Nate DiMeo, sorry buddy, but I've got so many stars in my eyes that I'm going to totally ignore your contributions. You've been Ridgeley'd.

* Brian Phillips' look at FIFA's scandalous history. This almost sounds like the lead-in to a joke. "Boy, that FIFA sure is corrupt." "How corrupt is it?!" "FIFA is so corrupt that people are getting killed over soccer stadiums!"…..okay, well, I didn't claim it was a good joke, did I?

* Kent Russell's brief history of the Stanley Cup, tied together with the Dawson City Nuggets' challenge for the Cup in 1905 against the champion Ottawa Silver Seven. An utterly fascinating piece and probably my favourite of the bunch. This was back in the day when the Stanley Cup wasn't awarded via an annual tournament but was treated more like a championship belt --- challengers would bid to play for the trophy and then travel to the Cup-holders' home arena for the series. As Russell notes in the story, had the Nuggets won the series, that probably would've been it for the Stanley Cup as we know it: "If his team won the Cup, Boyle figured it would remain perched over the bar in his arena forever. Any team that dared challenge him would have had to cross the Chilkoot and Dead Horse passes roped together in antlike columns before walking hundreds of miles up the frozen Yukon River to Dawson City."

Big Mac Attack

2011-08-18T18:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't been posting much lately but it's been for a good reason. Would you expect Mozart to write a symphony if his favourite piano was out of tune? Da Vinci to paint a masterpiece if he lost his favourite easel? Judge Smails to win a $40,000 golf match without Billy Baroo? Likewise, I've spent the last week recovering after losing my top instrument, my beloved old MacBook. The collapse occurred a week ago today, and if you've ever had a computer suddenly just die out on you, you know how much it sucks.

So within the span of just a couple of hours, I went from a fellow owning a four-year-old MacBook to the proud owner of a brand-new MacBook Pro. It has all kinds of impressive new upgrades over the old model, such as the fact that it has a gray exterior, rather than a black or white one. And I guess it's also faster and has more programs and whatnot, but still, gray! (Editor's note: Mark is a not a computer guy.)

The worst part is that I never had a chance to say goodbye to the old model….well, no, actually, the worst part is that I didn't get a chance to back everything up, since I don't need to say goodbye to an inanimate object. The bright side of owning a Mac is that they're incredibly problem-free, though the downside of that is you also don't really get any indication of when they're suffering some internal problems. There was no gradual slowdown like with my old PCs years ago. It was working fine one day and suddenly dead the next, like John Ritter. I created a backup disc about a year ago so I've got all my *major* stuff saved in some respect, but the trouble is that unless the tech dudes at the store are able to salvage my old hard drive, I'm going to lose a lot of material I've built up over the last year. To wit…

* Fantasy sports stuff. For instance, I'm right in the midst of an ongoing draft for my "historical league" team, where we pick players from the past and run simulated seasons with these players in different stadiums, situations, playing-time arrangements, etc. and see how our teams fare. It is exactly as cool as it sounds, which is not very, but still, now I've lost all my information about my team from our simulated 1985 season! Noooo!

* List of films I've seen this year. Yes, I actually keep a running tally for the sake of my year-end "Markademy Awards" post. I've mostly been able to cobble the list back together thanks to IMBD, and for all the films I've forgotten….well, if I forgot them, they probably weren't fake award-worthy anyway.

* Music. This is probably the biggest one. My entire iTunes library, gone. Only about 20 of the hundreds of songs I had on my computer were actually downloaded, and the rest were copied from actual physical CDs in my collection. It's going to take a hell of a long time to load everything back onto this new laptop, and in some cases, I don't have the original CDs anymore; I just copied the few tracks I enjoyed onto iTunes and then sold the actual discs to a used music store. Also, I had a list of "YouTube songs," or rather a list of singles that I enjoyed and often listened to via YouTube videos with the intention of probably eventually buying them on iTunes. Hindsight being 20/20 I should've just created a YouTube account and saved the videos in a favourites file there, but well, I'm an idiot.

* TV. Nope! I never download or watch television from unlicensed internet sites! I get all my TV by watching it on the networks, thank you very much, or at the very least, stream the shows on official network websites or Hulu! Online TV piracy is for the birds, kids! Only dopes do dope! Moving on….

* Minor writing projects. Thank the lord for procrastination. Had I actually gotten around to starting the novel/play/screenplay that I've been claiming I'll get around to writing for years, I would've been beyond enraged at losing it forever to a computer crash. Fortunately my 'big' projects were all on my backup disc, but over the last year I've still had a few ideas that were in the development stage. By 'development stage,' of course, I mean writing down the one-line synopsis of the idea in a big text file called BIG IDEAS. To be perfectly frank, most of these ideas didn't deserve a file with such a bold title. It's like that old Seinfeld episode where Jerry writes down a punchline that seems hilarious at 2:30 AM but later on he realizes that what he wrote down isn't funny at all. Imagine Jerry wrote that punchline 200 times and you have my BIG IDEAS file.

* Blog posts. This is also part of the reason I hadn't posted in a week. Namely, a few blog ideas I'd scribbled down were lost, lost, lost forever. For instance, my preliminary "Best Survivor players ever, non-winners edition" post will have to be rewritten from scratch. Scratch! How will humanity live without knowing how highly I rank Rob Cesternino's contributions to the game? (Spoiler alert: rather highly.)

So yes, nothing truly catastrophic came of my laptop's death. I'd been thinking of getting a new computer anyway so this just sped up the process. But while this new MacBook Pro seems fantastic, I'll always have a soft spot for my old MacBook non-Pro (MacBook Amateur?). It gave me a lot of good years. I'll definitely have to pour one out for my old homie this evening….though I'll pour the liquor far away from my new system, since I have to buy another fucking computer in the span of a week, I'm going postal in the Mac Store.

Paul Rudd: Marketing Genius

2011-08-10T15:14:00.001-04:00

I have a still-in-development theory that Paul Rudd is the most popular actor in the world. Not popular in the sense that all of his movies are instant blockbusters or anything, but rather that I'm not sure any actor is more universally "liked" than Rudd. He's popular with men and women alike, with the added bonus for the ladies (and gay males) that they also find him adorable. Everyone think he's a good actor, but not a great actor; this is a crucial step, since 'great' acting usually inspires quite a few haters. Like, Sean Penn is a great actor but his style of acting inspires some eye-rolling. (This is apart from his political beliefs and his general doucheiness, which also explains why a lot of people hate Sean Penn.) But Rudd is just an above-average, solid performer who can easily shift between dramatic pathos and zany comedy.

This is a long-winded introduction to a pretty simplistic Funny Or Die clip, but maybe that's further proof of my theory. Would I spend a long paragraph on just *any* actor?

Paul Rudd Pitches Harvey Weinstein from Paul Rudd

Everyone Hates Tiger Woods

2011-08-08T17:01:00.002-04:00

Stevie Williams is the toast of the town. To recap his story: Williams was unceremoniously fired from his long-time position as Tiger Woods' caddie a couple of weeks ago. Tiger said he fired Williams in person; Stevie said it took place over the phone. Still, it was stunning that Tiger was parting ways with the caddie who had carried his bag for almost all of his wins and major championships. Williams was open about how disappointed he was with the firing, claiming he'd "wasted two years of his life" defending Woods and how stunned he was that Tiger ended their relationship so abruptly.

Anyway, Stevie got (for the moment) the last laugh. Tiger made his big return to the PGA Tour last week after spending three months recovering from knee and Achilles injuries. He tied for 37th at the Bridgestone Invitational, a pretty middling performance considering he's won this tournament seven times in the past. As for Williams, he had a much better week....or, rather, his new boss did. Williams was hired by Adam Scott* and sure enough, Scott picked up the victory at the Bridgestone. Afterwards, Stevie said that this win meant more to him than any of the others in his career. Quite the dig at Tiger, no question, but also a dig at former bosses like Greg Norman and Ray Floyd, though I'm sure Williams only intended to insult his most recent employer.

* = As I've said many times, if Adam Scott would ever hit a long drive and then turn to the camera and say, "Are we having fun yet?", I would instantly become his biggest fan. I would shut down this blog and re-open it as an Adam Scott tribute site, complete with songs, poems and photoshopped images of Adam Scott inserted into famous moments in world history. "Hey John Hancock, save a bit of room for everyone else, since here's Adam Scott signing the Declaration of Independence!"

The odd outpouring of "yeah, way to stick it to him, Stevie!" running through the sports world leads me to a few conclusions. Firstly, Tiger Woods is apparently a huge asshole. Secondly, the greater golfing world, media and even the fans are hypocrites.

My first conclusion is not exactly an original one. I think if the last two years of scandal have taught us anything, it's that Tiger Woods is quite the douche. Stories and anecdotes about his icy/standoffish/awkward/hyper-competitive behaviour have abounded for years, though that didn't stop him from becoming one of the most popular athletes in the world. The difference is that now, Tiger isn't winning tournaments. One man's "in the zone" is another man's "acting like a dickhead." As the saying goes, it ain't bragging if you can do it, and since Tiger was devoting his life to winning 19 major championships and getting really close to that goal, well, hey, the man is simply doing what he set out to do. If anyone else set out to climb Mount Nicklaus, however, we'd roll our eyes if they suddenly shaped their entire personality towards being a single-minded golf cyborg. If you have an obsession and achieve it, congratulations, you're Alexander The Great. If you fail in your obsession, you're Captain Ahab. You might argue about Alexander's methods, but hey, "Great" is right there in his name, whereas nobody thinks Captain Ahab is a cool guy.

Tiger is such a dick, it seems, that people are forgetting the fact that for much of the last decade-plus, it's been Stevie Williams serving as the bad cop of the Tiger Woods family. Just mere months ago, it was Williams who was considered to be a douche for shushing fans, yelling at cameramen and acting more like Tiger's bodyguard than a caddie. Now, everyone is a Stevie Williams fan just because he showed up Tiger at the Bridgestone. The fans are the least to blame, since I guess for anyone who's been fired, the Scott/Williams victory represents a bit of vicarious joy over getting back at an ex-boss.

For the media and the golfing world, however, the "Tiger Woods Is A Douche" meme requires some introspection. Tiger's douchebaggery did not happen inside a bubble, no matter how private the man was and still is. It was the media, remember, who have championed the idea of Tiger's "single-minded focus on winning" as something to be emulated in all walks of life, not just golf. The Story was how Tiger Woods was the greatest golfer of all time. In the last several months, however, The Story has become Tiger's fall from grace, and thus the knives are out from all sides. Now that Woods is seemingly no longer the PGA Tour's golden goose, the media and larger golfing world are free to crap all over the man.

I'm not saying that this is undeserved, since as I noted, Tiger is an asshole. But man, the chorus of tut-tutting is getting tiresome. I'd reckon that there have been thousands of "Tiger needs to show more respect to the fans, the sport, etc." stories written that fateful night in November 2009 when Tiger's private life exploded, but what I'm interested in are the stories written along those lines BEFORE the scandal. At least a few writers had the balls to call Tiger out on his nonsense back when he was on top of the world, and after years of being accused of eating sour grapes, it turns out those guys were telling the truth.

Perhaps the biggest example of what I'm getting at is in the weeks immediately following the news of Tiger's marital infidelity and his subsequent hiatus from the PGA Tour. Tom Watson, as you would expect, was asked his opinion on what Tiger should do when he returned to playing, and Watson made the obvious point that Woods should be contrite about what he'd done. Then, Watson took a left turn and went off on how Tiger needed to live up to the professional standards of other golfing greats by not swearing or throwing clubs while on the course. This statement, if anything, told me that Tom Watson himself was also probably an asshole. This wasn't advice, this was Watson's pet peeve for the last 13 years, though only at Tiger's lowest ebb did he suddenly get the stones to bring it up.

It's very, very easy to take shots at Tiger Woods right now, as Stevie Williams showed in his post-victory interview. But, let's also take a moment to remember why Williams was being interviewed in the first place, since you see post-victory chats with caddies about as often as you see a pig fly. Woods is still the straw that stirs the PGA Tour's drink, a status that he achieved both by his incredible record and the fact that since 1996, the Tour and its media partners have been focused on hyping Woods as much as humanly possible since it meant money in the bank. Everyone seemed to know Tiger was an asshole in 2000-01 when he won four straight majors. Everyone seemed to know he was an asshole when he won the 2008 U.S. Open on one leg. Why is it that now, when Tiger isn't winning tournaments, that his being an asshole is suddenly an issue?

Random Nonsense

2011-08-06T18:17:00.002-04:00

I'm out at a restaurant last week when what do I see but a man in an Antonio Banderas baseball cap. I'll repeat that again -- an Antonio Banderas baseball cap. A regular black cap, with Banderas' name written across it in a script font. To boot, 'Antonio Banderas' was also stitched into the sides of the hat. At first I thought it was some sort of a reference to one of Banderas' films, like, this guy was part of the technical crew for "Assassins" and received a hat with the names of the stars written on it. But no, it was just a hat that was straight-up celebrating the life and times of Spain's greatest contribution to the world of film.*

* = This isn't close to being true, but whatever, I don't want to break the flow of the post.

What a stunning development. Had I seen a nine-year-old girl wearing a Justin Bieber t-shirt, I wouldn't have blinked an eye. If I saw a grown man in a Dion Phaneuf jersey, okay, still no problem, since you're celebrating someone in a socially-normal way, wearing his signature garb. But man, an Antonio Banderas hat? What was the thought process here?

"Man, I sure do enjoy Antonio Banderas' movies. What a fine actor --- and by all accounts, a fine gentleman, to boot. If only there was some way I could publicly express my appreciation for him. Oh well, I'll worry about this later. I'll just keep passing my time browsing the shelves of this hat store. What a wide selection of HOLY FUCK I FOUND AN ANTONIO BANDERAS HAT! WHERE IS MY CREDIT CARD?!"

See, even that scenario seems odd since that would imply that a company is producing Banderas-centic hats, presumably as part of a line celebrating several other second-tier film stars. Could I get a JK Simmons hat if I so desired? An Amy Adams scarf? A pair of Willem Dafoe sneakers? Is this yet another fashion trend that I've completely missed the boat on, or is it not too late for me to buy a pair of Joe Pantoliano pants, a.k.a. Joey Pants Pants?

N.B. If I were Antonio Banderas and I came across a guy wearing this hat, I would be freaked out.

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Personal hero Michael Schur (Parks & Recreation creator, former Office writer, FJM co-creator) sat down with the Onion AV Club to discuss P&R's third season, including a step-by-step look at each episode. It is thoroughly awesome. The interview was broken into four parts -- here's the link to the fourth part, which contains links to the first three sections. Am I seriously too lazy to insert the other three links myself? Yes. Yes I am.

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Speaking of laziness, here's a link to another compilation. The Big Lead recently collected YouTube links of some of the greatest soccer goals of all time and really, since they were already nicely collected in one spot like this, who am I to include the links myself? It would be downright rude. I'll embed just one, this bit of cheeky brilliance from Robinho.

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Is there a more thoroughly mediocre food than the fortune cookie? Who eats these things and thinks, "Mmm, that hit the spot" afterwards? The inventors of the fortune cookie clearly realized this, which is why they came up with the gimmick of inserting a fortune in the first place.

Because fortune cookies are so bad, people can't even be bothered to open the fortune anyway and pass them on to someone else in their dinner party. Say this person cracks it open and reads the fortune -- is this the future of the person who actually cracked the cookie, or is it the future of the person who originally had possession of the cookie in the first place? It sounds like a mere logistical question, but people's lives are at stake here, people! I think this should've been O.J.'s defense. "Your Honour, I certainly didn't want to kill Nicole and Ron, but the cookie said this was my fortune. Little did I know that this was actually Kato's cookie in the first place!"

So, to recap, that was a very Seinfeldian observation followed by an O.J. joke. This post may have been written in 1996.

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And, since this is 1996, let's get right to discussing this Tito Ortiz-headlined UFC card. Since the show is beginning literally as I post this, I'll just give my quick picks without any real analysis. After all, the analysis will be wrong anyway, so why bust my ass on this?

Main Card
* Jorge Rivera over Constantinos Philippou, TKO, first round
* Dennis Hallman over Brian Ebersole, submission, first round
* Yoshihiro Akiyama over Vitor Belfort, decision
* Rory MacDonald over Mike Pyle, submission, third round
* Rashad Evans over Tito Ortiz, decision

Undercard
* Alexander Gustafsson over Matt Hamill, KO, third round
* Mike Brown over Nam Phan, KO, second round
* Paul Bradley over Rafael "Not The Tennis Player" Natal, decision
* Nick Pace over Ivan Menjivar, decision
* Chad Mendes over Rani Yahya, decision
* Mike Pierce over Johny Hendricks, decision

"Headline Should've Read, 'Spare Tire Crushes Unidentified White Man At Goal Line.' "

2011-08-04T19:07:00.004-04:00

Charles "Bubba" Smith is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, has a retired jersey at Michigan State, was the first overall pick in the 1967 NFL draft, made two Pro Bowls, won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Colts, appeared in several TV shows, commercials and films as himself and in other roles, perhaps most famously starring as Officer Hightower in the 'Police Academy' series.

But to me, Bubba Smith will always be.....Spare Tire Dixon. I still use that "dropped you like third period French" line on a startlingly regular basis, despite the fact that I took French through my third year of high school. C'est vrai!

RIP Bubba

"I'm A Stupid Cat"

2011-08-03T23:03:00.003-04:00

I was a proud cat owner for years but while watching this video, let's just say the #nodsknowingly hashtag was out in full effect. Though my cat was at least smart enough to recognize both his name and the word 'cat,' which I believe he attempted to speak. GENIUS.

Movie Reviews

2011-07-26T21:32:00.002-04:00

With all of the hype and huge box office following Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part II, let's not fool ourselves into thinking these movies were really good. We're not seeing the conclusion of some epic era in film history --- rather, just the end of the most obligatory film series ever made. You knew when the books became such a phenomenon that film adaptations were inevitable and sure enough, Warner Brothers was so careful to not let this money train get off the rails that they produced eight of the safest, most more-or-less closely adapted movies they possibly could. Of the eight pictures, this last one and the third one (Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuaron) were at a B+ level, with the rest middling around the lower B's or C+/C range. So nothing really bad, but nothing really good, either. The movies just trundled along, collecting up billions of dollars and also providing retirement packages for literally dozens of British actors.

As I've written before, I think the turning point for the Potter movies was when the producers abandoned the idea of having a different director for every film. After the first two Chris Columbus-directed films threatened to sink the project, Cuaron was hired to pump some life into the franchise. Then, it was Mike Newell who did the fourth movie, then David Yates did the fifth....and that was it, Yates suddenly became the man for the rest of the series. It's probably telling that after watching four of his movies, I have no idea if Yates is a good director or not. He did a workmanlike job of adapting the novels to the screen, but I dunno, I expect more from an allegedly-epic film series than "workmanlike." From start to finish, the whole Potter series just lacked a bit of extra spark that would make them seem really worthwhile. It was never, "Oh man, the new Harry Potter movie is out, that's an opening night view for sure," but rather, "Well, here's another Harry Potter movie. I guess we should go check it out."

Now, hard as it is for me to believe, there's probably a sizable audience that's invested in these characters through just the films and who've never read a word of J.K. Rowling's books. For them, this probably has been a great, eight-movie journey, though for the life of me, if you haven't read the books, aren't these movies confusing as hell? I guess I understood the basic gist of Lord Of The Rings without ever reading Tolkien, but still, the films contain so many characters and slough over so many important (in the novels) situations that I can't see how a casual viewer can keep track. But, my issues with the franchise as a whole aside, HPATDH2 brings things to a satisfactory end and is a decent movie standing on its own merit.

Oh, and by the way, let's not also ignore the fact that these kids can't fucking act. You can stick all the Rickmans, Smiths, Oldmans and every other awesome British actor you can find to chew the scenery and carry scenes, but let's be honest, Radcliffe/Watson/Grint ended up bringing very little to the table. I could see Grint maybe carrying on as 'average British guy' in a few future movies, but let's hope Radcliffe and Watson saved their money. Is it wrong of me to outright dismiss the prospects of actors who are still just in their early 20's? Well, how are they supposed to improve? MAGIC?!

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I had the same basic problem with both Horrible Bosses and Bad Teacher so I've decided to combine their reviews into one space. Basically, the bosses were too horrible and the teacher was too bad. Ok, I realize this sounds like the dumbest criticism ever ("What was up with them finding redemption at Shawshank?? NO STARS!") but hear me out.

In Horrible Bosses, the premise is that these three guys are all employed by such terrible people that the guys have no choice but to murder them. Comedy! This would've been a much better premise if the whole film had been a black comedy, or if they'd taken the time to establish that the three guys were all kinda terrible people themselves for resorting to murder. (Jason Sudeikis is ostensibly killing Colin Farrell to keep him from dumping a bunch of toxic waste into a nearby wetland or something, but I dunno, it mostly came off like Sudeikis just trying to justify it to himself.) Since Charlie Day is right there, if you imagined the three guys from It's Always Sunny... committing themselves to a triple murder plot, that's suddenly a much funniest movie right there. However, since "Horrible Bosses" is committed to the idea of the three guys being the heroes, then they have to go overboard to make the bosses really awful.

Spacey and Farrell are both sort of cartoonishly rotten, but Jennifer Aniston's maneater dentist was probably the toughest sell. Charlie Day's problem is that Aniston keeps sexually harassing him, which as is even pointed out by Sudeikis and Jason Bateman, doesn't sound that bad. So the ante is upped when Aniston threatens to ruin Day's engagement by telling his fiancee that Aniston and Day are having an affair and, oh yeah, Aniston also has pictures of she and Day having sex when Day is knocked out from anesthesia. The film kinda just casually tosses in that, y'know, Aniston RAPED HIM but this is more or less glossed over with a scene of Day yelling in a high-pitched voice. If you're still wondering why I'm focusing on this, imagine the genders were switched. If it's Charlie Day raping Jennifer Aniston, methinks the plot wouldn't cavalierly move on from that point.

"Bad Teacher," similarly, can't get out from under the fact that Cameron Diaz's character is a lousy human being, a lousy teacher and (most importantly) isn't funny when being played by Cameron Diaz. I can buy a total degenerate lead character and certainly root for them if they're played by an actor with comic charisma. Hell, just going by the supporting actors here alone, I'd definitely watch 'Bad Teacher' starring Jason Segel as the Bad Teacher. Or Lucy Punch. Or Thomas Lennon. Cameron Diaz, nope, since Diaz isn't naturally funny and is only barely a passable actress. This isn't Billy Bob Thornton embracing his inner sleazeball in 'Bad Santa,' this is Diaz trying and failing to be lovable white trash.

*********************************

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Captain America is basically sold by the fact that Steve Rogers is a genuinely good guy. He's five-foot nothing, a hundred and nothing (tm Notre Dame football), but he wants to enlist in World War II more than anything because he just straight-up feels it's the right thing to do. He's short and tough without a Napoleon complex, and while his parents both served in WWI, Steve isn't enlisting just to follow in their footsteps. He's just a class act all the way around. While we've been indoctrinated to believe that all superheroes (especially Marvel characters) need to be driven by angst and conflict, Captain America has always been presented as the most clean-cut and noble of heroes and you know what? It totally works. Now, we'll inevitably see a lot of the fish-outta-water pathos in the Avengers movie and the inevitable Captain America sequel(s) as Cap adjusts to life in the 2010's, but for now, let's just enjoy a good old-fashioned tale of Captain America kicking some Nazi ass.

Also a nice touch --- unlike 'Iron Man 2' or 'Thor,' 'Captain America' was mostly a story unto itself, not an extended trailer for next summer's Avengers movie. (No pressure on that movie, by the way. Marvel has just been teasing it for five years, putting all its eggs in one basket and possibly threatening about six different film franchises at the same time if 'Avengers' fails. No biggie.) There are lots of little teases and easter eggs about the future, the largest of which is obviously Tony Stark's father as Cap's technical support aide in the 40's, but this is first and foremost a Captain America movie. You have the obligatory Sam Jackson cameo and, of course, the subtitle of "The First Avenger," but overall, if you're a Cap fan waiting to finally see your comic book hero come to life on the big screen*, you'll be very satisfied.

* = Uh, please ignore the legendarily shitty 1990 Captain America movie.**

** = Side note: Conan O'Brien needs to retire the "Looks Good" bit immediately. They are trying hard to turn it into the next Chuck Norris level-style gag, but it is just not working. This is in no small part because Conan's delivery of "looks good" sounds nothing like the ET guy's actual delivery.

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A theatre in Connecticut actually posted this notice in its lobby....

Hilarious. Imagine going to see The Tree Of Life without really having any idea what it was about. Would seeing this notice make you more curious about the movie to see what the fuss is all about, or would you immediately head to see, say, Bad Teacher after being so turned off by the snotty tone?

Unlike the poor unsuspecting Avon patrons, I knew Terrence Malick isn't into "a traditional, linear narrative approach to storytelling" and thus I was prepared. And sure enough, there's about a 90-minute chunk of TOF that indeed uses a fractured and moderately interesting story structure to tell us about a Texan family growing up in the 1950's.

Unfortunately, there's also dinosaurs. Yep. You see, Malick decides to use this family as a metaphor for basically, oh, all of human existence. And to get to the 90 minutes about the O'Brien family, you first have to wade through about 30 minutes of metaphysical horseshit that will bore you, make you suddenly fascinated with your watch and generally leave you wishing that Malick would've just become an exhibitionist in a particularly dirty sex club if he was this enthralled with the idea of jerking off in front of an audience. I can't blame Brad Pitt for appearing in the movie since I secretly believe he spends 70 percent of his time stoned, so this script probably blew his permafrosted mind. As for Sean Penn, well, who else for a role in an epic of self-importance? Tree Of Life is beautifully-shot, but holy lord, is there ever a lack of substance.

Malick is famous for taking years to craft and develop his films --- he's only directed six pictures in 32 years. He's basically a poor man's Stanley Kubrick, with the exception that Kubrick usually made those long waits pay off with some of the greatest films ever made. While Kubrick was no stranger for self-indulgence himself, he also never tried to elevate his childhood (Malick, btw, grew up in Texas in the 1950's) to universal proportions and asked viewers to watch it. The next time Malick is eight years' deep into a project, he should take another year to ask himself if this is really worth it.

UK Apprentice Thoughts

2011-07-25T23:58:00.001-04:00

I don't always agree with Alan Sugar's final hirings on the UK version of 'The Apprentice,' but this most recent series concluded in such a fashion that seemed to undermine the entire season. As opposed to hiring someone to work for him, this year Lord Sugar was looking for a business partner --- someone who had a business idea into which Sugar would invest $250K pounds.

Now, one could argue that even in a hiring situation, the Apprentice's tasks are an insufficient way to judge someone's worthiness of employment, given that they're made-for-TV trials meant to entertain the viewers, not necessarily weed out the best candidates. But this season, this new focus of the show made the tasks seem increasingly irrelevant, as shown by the final two. Lord Sugar's choice came down to Helen (an absurdly competent woman who won 10 of the 11 tasks, barely seemed to break a sweat in doing so, and unlike a lot of reality show contestants, actually seemed like a normal person) and Tom, an affable Clark Kent-ish sort of guy who lost almost all of the tasks and was constantly berated by Lord Sugar throughout the process for not being assertive whatsoever.

So, of course, Tom was the winner. The difference between the two was that Tom is a self-made inventor who already had experience in developing and selling products. Helen had made her mark as a CEO's executive assistant and had never started a business on her own in the past. This glaring gap in business-creating experience gave Tom the title despite the fact that, if you were going just by the show's results, this guy shouldn't have stood a chance in hell.

Lord Sugar admitted that had this series followed the others in being about just hiring someone to work for him, Helen would've won going away. In past seasons, though I haven't always agreed with who Sugar eventually hires, the winners have been from a wide variety of backgrounds and differing levels of experience, so there was no sense that the deck was stacked against anyone from the opening bell. This season, however, it becomes clear in hindsight that Tom (and Susan, another largely weak contestant who made the semi-finals) stayed around because their resumes fit what Sugar was looking for. As long as they weren't complete disasters, they would be there in the end, and in fact Tom won it all.

The finale left a bad taste in my mouth since it only occurred to me at the end that the rest of the season (which I enjoyed overall) was irrelevant. Given the new prize for the winner, the format should've been something different than the usual set of business-related tasks. For instance, it wasn't until the candidates were whittled down to the final four that we actually heard what their business proposals actually were, which seems unusual given that this was the entire thrust of the series. Shouldn't this have been covered in the very first episode?

Anyway, all of this aside, you should still watch the UK Apprentice since it is literally 100 percent better than the cartoonish Donald Trump version because....

* I don't believe for a minute that it's all on the up-and-up in terms of Sugar putting these through the paces to actually find an apprentice, but the show is shot and edited in a way that allows you buy into the conceit. As long as the show doesn't sell out its own premise (as I felt it sort of did this year), I'll happily watch and pretend that this is a legitimate job interview.

* The tasks are almost always interesting, and after watching a few seasons in a row, it's gotten to the point that I thoroughly look forward to classic assignment like "the teams have seven hours to purchase 10 items from around London, all of which have to be purchased at less than their market value." The first series of the Trump Apprentice was very popular with some of my friends from business school since that initial series actually taught some aspects of business, and while the Trump show went downhill quickly, the British series still seems to focus primarily on the different ways to succeed in the business world.

* It's all set in London! Immediate 10 cool points.

* The contestants, by and large, all at least have some slivers of intelligence to them. That is to say, there are no obviously terrible people brought to the show solely for entertainment purposes. Almost everyone gets a moment of brilliance that shows why they made the cut to be on the show in the first, yet conversely, the show pulls no punches in showing their screwups. The Trump Apprentice, for instance, usually makes it very clear early on in the process who is winning the show since they get the 'Jesus edit' over everyone else.

* And finally, Lord Sugar isn't an obnoxious gasbag like Donald Trump. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

So even though this past season wasn't the UK Apprentice's best, I still heartily recommend the program. And, in future seasons, I won't openly spoil the final results. Sorry if you had plans to watch Series 7 and now want to kill me. Uh, spoiler alert?

Keep Cool, Mah Babies

2011-07-24T13:55:00.001-04:00

So, my roommates are both gone for the weekend. Since they are kindly folks, they let me use BOTH of their portable fans, so combined with the fan I already had, this means I now have three fans. THREE. I'm like the Atlanta Thrashers! Having three fans is even better than having two knives, since knives can't help you during what might literally be the hottest, muggiest week in Toronto's history. But now, I'm invincible from the heat. Bring it on, North American "heat dome," do your worst.

....of course, now I have these three fans, there's a nice breeze outside and the weather is a barely-humid 24 degrees. Damn you, Mother Nature.