Somewhat Manly Nerd

Russian Circles -- Enter

I have to give @310toJoba credit for posting a Russian Circles song on his sadly now-inactive blog. He posted “Geneva”, a song I was close to posting myself, but I forced myself to mix it up. I also have to give credit to @DrewGROF for making me go back to the band after only listening to their newest album a couple of times. Now I’ve been listening to all three of their instrumental albums. I think I made a nice selection. The song builds up wonderfully — like some charging, galloping force — then explodes in a ridiculous wall of sound, pulls back a bit, and then finally goes totally apeshit. It’s awesome.

If watching a team that was supposed to be a new dynasty piss away the admittedly disappointing primes of a couple of homegrown players isn’t enough, you can now read about another ultimately disappointing era in Mets history, and also a personal history of the franchise told by a man with a terrifying memory.

The Bad Guys Won! is exactly what that ridiculously long subtitle says. It consists of Jeff Pearlman utilizing his mediocre writing ability to describe the exploits of a Mets team that was actually great. It’s a fun enough read, but after reading an excerpt or two of Pearlman’s 1990′s Dallas Cowboys book, the 1986 Mets seem pretty tame in comparison.

Faith and Fear in Flushing is the book form of the blog named (surprise!) Faith and Fear in Flushing. Greg Prince really likes to write, and it shows in both his blog and book. He’s definitely also a huge dork, but hey, the guy knows his Mets. If you want an emotional and personal rundown of the Mets from their inception — well, a few years into their existence — to their frustrating present, it’s certainly a lot better than Wikipedia.

I want to give away these books to someone who might actually read and enjoy them. If you think you satisfy those two conditions, comment below and shoot me an email at cajolejuice@gmail.com. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this raffle open, so just comment when you see this — no procrastination!

I’ve been thinking about e-readers a lot lately. This may have something to do with Amazon greeting me with the above picture of its new Kindle every time I visit its site. And I’m not the only one influenced by Amazon–the new Kindle is the fastest-selling version of the e-reader. But doesn’t it seem as if the newest version of any product is always the one bought up the quickest?

Regardless, the $139 price tag is a big deal; just a year ago the Kindle was almost twice as expensive. I believe that this price drop has not been caused by competing e-readers, but by the iPad. Why would consumers buy a device that can only read books when they can get one of those fancy iPads that does everything (except support Flash) for only a couple of hundred dollars more? Yeah sure, consumers can be told that reading a novel on an LCD screen is not the same as browsing the internet or messing around with Excel spreadsheets at work, but many neither notice nor care. In response, ALL the e-reader manufacturers have had to compete with the Apple juggernaut. Who other than technophiles are going to be interested in the Kindle? And that same group of technophiles — at least the ones with money to burn — are definitely going to squeal over the iPad.

Perhaps Amazon is lowering the price of the Kindle because it’s following a razor and blades business model, selling its e-readers at a low price to generate a market for the Kindle Store. Whatever the reasons, e-readers are certainly reaching a mass-market price sooner than I expected. I’m just not sure they’ll ever reach mass consumption — until maybe flexible e-ink is widely available or some other unforeseen development, like people actually reading books more than their Facebook feed. A thin, flexible e-ink screen would be amazing. You could read the digital version of the New York Times, delivered to your flexible e-ink screen each morning; or flip over to your subscription of Wired or The Economist; or download the latest New York Post for a laugh. When you’re done, you can fold it up like a regular newspaper.

But if the technology were that advanced, wouldn’t it have a touch screen and enough processing power for the internet and streaming video and whatnot? It’d turn into an iPad-type device. Instead of reading novels or magazines above a 5th-grade level, they’d play Farmville 2024 and manage their fantasy teams. It boils down to how much people want to read, and I’m not sure that the average person wants to read at the expense of other entertainment.

I’m not above considering this trade-off, as I tried to allude to with my fantasy sports joke. I play video games, browse internet forums, IM people, and generally do a ton of shit other than read. An iPad device does appeal to me — just not at its current price point or level of functionality. At the moment, the Kindle is still much more enticing because it’s almost quarter of the price of Steve Jobs’ God tablet.

And, as I’ve said on here and on Twitter, I’m starting to hate all the crap I’m gathering. Books have been eating up my shelf space this year much quicker than Blu-rays, DVDs, and video games combined. I’ve really cut back on that latter group, but I’ve compensated with $25 or above mini shopping sprees on Amazon. An e-reader would eliminate a lot of future clutter, but I wouldn’t be able to lend my books to friends and, more importantly, I wouldn’t be able to exhibit them on a shelf in a vain attempt to make myself look intellectual, an impression unlikely to last if anyone looks down at my Judge Dredd or Family Guy DVDs.

For now, I think I can resist purchasing a Kindle. But once they’re selling for $99 and I’ve finished reading all of my physical books, I might just take the plunge. It’s the price point that got me to finally buy a PS2, and I remember feeling like an idiot for waiting so long.

Watching this video was the first noteworthy thing I did this month of September. Can I just fast-forward to October now? This month isn’t going to get any better. Unless the Braves collapse and don’t make the playoffs somehow.

It’s amazing that even with an underpowered, two-and-a-half-year-old laptop, my two gaming companions of the past few months have both been PC titles. I have returned to my ongoing love affair with Team Fortress 2 and started a new and dedicated relationship with Starcraft II. Not only do I play both games a few times a week (ok, I actually haven’t played TF2 in a while), but I will continue to do so for years to come thanks to the frequent updates the games will receive.

And it’s not as if I fall in love with games easily; for example, I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption shortly after its release, quickly becoming bored of riding horses around a barren Western landscape while trying to aim and shoot with a shitty control scheme. I don’t want to digress into a Rockstar-bashfest or an argument about console and PC gaming; I’m just using my experience with Red Dead Redemption to contrast my experience with TF2 and SC2. Maybe I just enjoy games that end in “2″ this year (Mass Effect 2 was the fucking shit).

Although I love both TF2 and SC2, they are polar opposites. Two multiplayer games couldn’t be any more different from each other (perhaps UNO and Street Fighter 4 or Counter-Strike and Carcassonne). One game is a cartoonish and ever-evolving first-person shooter featuring at least one huge element of luck; the other is a science-fiction (although not exactly gritty-looking) real-time strategy game requiring multitasking, flawless execution, and a thorough knowledge of a game that is similar to its predecessor. read more…

I have to think this will be my last Inception-related post. The movie isn’t going to pass $300 million domestic and probably not $700 million worldwide, so I won’t have any reasons to make a stupid box office post.  I’m not even sure why I would post about those numbers other than the fact that they’re nice and round and big. Mmmm, round and big. But this is a good way to wrap up the Inception obsession, as I don’t think there are going to be any a better-made spoofs than this.

There are people that read this blog that have known me for almost 20 years. A few of them (and also people that have only known me since middle school) might remember when I use to do an impression of a meteor hitting the earth. I pretty much stole it straight out of Deep Impact — the music, the angle, the sound of the shockwave tearing across the earth’s surface, all of it.

This video, which is actually months old, reminds me of when I used to do that. Colbert also happens to be about 100x more talented at portraying death and destruction.

This edition of REAL TALK is brought to you this adorable video of a Corgi. It’s amazing how quickly a popular YouTube video’s views explode at a certain saturation level.

- Somehow I managed to NOT make a post about Anderson Silva’s miracle triangle armbar a week ago. The dude is fucking amazing. Just like seemingly everyone else, when Silva was taken down in the 5th round I thought the match was over, but he had enough strength left after getting punched more than in his entire UFC career to pull that shit off. Wow. GSP-Silva needs to happen ASAP.

- It’s amazing how It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is now AT BEST the third-best half-hour of television on FX. Archer and Louie have had amazing first seasons, while Sunny is in decline. Shit, The League had a fantastic first season, too.

- My ability to not buy shit has increased tenfold. The Bourne Trilogy on Blu-ray for 35 bucks? Months ago, I would’ve jumped on that like Tiger on a blonde cocktail waitress, but now I just want to sell more things. I apologize for the Rick Reilly/Jay Leno-esque joke.

- It always feels good watching guys who make a living playing golf miss 5-foot putts. Then I remember they make hundred of thousands, if not millions, of dollars playing golf.

- I need to play a roto fantasy league for money next year. And a keeper league. Maybe combine the two for ultimate fantasy baseball action.

- I don’t touch upon controversial subjects on here much, especially not legitimately important controversial subjects, but the Ground Zero Mosque bullshit is ridiculous. I won’t dedicate a full post to it because it’s too fucking simple. It’s a goddamn community center two blocks away, not even within view of Ground Zero; it’s not the 100-foot-tall minaret-topped building most people envision when they think of mosques. I understand the outrage of some relatives of victims, but some people in that group didn’t want any reconstruction at the WTC site at all. Sorry, but fuck them. I totally empathize with their grief, but life needs to go on. Republicans meanwhile, politicize a building that SHOULDN’T BE A FUCKING ISSUE, but vote against a bill that would actually help people directly affected by 9/11.

- Girls grow up way too soon. I’m going to stop checking out hot girls in the mall, because I’m sure they are all 16 years old.

- I’m not surprised at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World totally bombing, losing to Inception‘s 5th weekend. If it weren’t for Edgar Wright’s involvement, I would think the movie looks incredibly awful. Since I doubt most people care about that fact — if they were even aware in the first place — $10 million sounds about right. But I’ll still go see it; I don’t want to risk Speed Racer-like regret.

- David Wright is now officially having the worst offensive season of his career. It’s cool how Wright and Jose Reyes have declined right when most players hit their prime. Really. Fucking. Cool.

Fangraphs — namely Dave Cameron — ranked the Seattle Mariners as the 6th best organization in MLB during this past offseason. In hilariously inept fashion, the Mariners have gone 45-71, spawning the Twitter hashtag “#6org” along the way.

Although this has been a running joke for weeks, if not months, I bring attention to it now because of an increasing focus on defensive metrics and their apparent limitations (moreover, I recently attended the Fangraphs NYC event this past Saturday). Just yesterday, I came across three blog posts attacking the methodology behind defensive statistics. It’s as if bloggers were waiting to see whether the Red Sox would make a late-season push and the Mariners would do ANYTHING before totally jumping on UZR and Plus/Minus and Total Zone.

But before I delve into that, I’ll say that the Fangraphs event and its subsequent afterparty was a damn good time. Almost nothing is better than intelligent baseball discussion while drinking awesome, albeit overpriced, beer. The official Fangraphs event might have had quite a few interesting speakers and some amusing moments, but it was naturally nothing I couldn’t get from just listening to the recording of it — outside of the Bloomberg Sports presentation, which was probably the coolest part of the event. It was also responsible the best #6org moment: as the presenters pulled up video of Justin Smoak’s one HR (Dave Cameron made sure to yell out that he actually had two), someone else yelled out, “Do you have video of him getting sent to the minors?” Sadly, I doubt anyone reading this blog post will comprehend the full scope of this #6org burn. The rest of the event is covered about as comprehensively as possible by this…chick?

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I recently learned of the existence of a human being who hadn’t seen Die Hard until recently when forced to watch it by someone who loves the movie almost as much as I do.

In this person’s defense, this obviously uncultured human being happens to be a female. Granted, she’s a female who’s in her mid-20s — which makes the situation less understandable than if she were still a teenager — but a female nonetheless. Women simply don’t sit around and watch Die Hard just because they came across it on Fox Movie Channel, or have discussions about Die Hard that end up with someone — I’m not naming names — smashing a beer can on the ground in anger, or make appreciation threads about the original trilogy.

But even cured of this deficiency, she still hasn’t seen Robocop, Lethal Weapon, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Her not seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark is particularly shocking since it’s such a classic, mainstream film. She might as well have told me she hasn’t seen Star Wars. It’s not even about the quality of Raiders of the Lost Ark (or any similar movie), but about its pervasiveness in popular culture. In some way this person AVOIDED seeing this movie.

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