Somewhat Manly Nerd

My Sunday night this week was spent hunched over my laptop drafting a fantasy baseball team for three and a half hours; I wouldn’t have spent it any other way. I don’t know why I never tried it earlier. I also don’t know how I can ever go back to a regular draft after experiencing the strategy, exposed homerism, and hilarity of an auction draft.

I got invited into a league at the eleventh hour, and once I heard that there were seven Yankee fans among the twelve managers, I knew I had to fuck with them. Having the first nomination of the draft fall into my lap provided the perfect opportunity to kick off the festivities perfectly. But before I go into a short narrative of the draft, I guess I’ll do some explaining. read more…

Today, in a few hours, the STIMULUS PACKAGE for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be released. This Stimulus Package is a map pack consisting of five maps — only three of which are new. And Infinity Ward is charging $15 for it. Fuck that.

I know they’re giving me EXACTLY what I want by including two of the best maps from COD4 (Overgrown and Crash), but I just refuse to shell out that much for DLC. I bought the Variety Map Pack for COD4 and regretted it pretty quickly. I thought it would get me back into the game, but I found the maps mediocre and I probably played them a couple of hours. And those four new maps cost a total of $10. Why am I going to pay more for less new maps? Getting two maps I’ve already played to death doesn’t scream additional value to me, even if I appreciate the thought.

I would just not get the amount of playtime from these extra maps that would allow me to justify to myself spending 15 bucks. I haven’t played MW2 in months. I think I only beat a handful of the single-player campaign missions; I think I played even Spec-Ops more than it, since that had online co-op functionality. Maybe I’ll get around to finishing the campaign sometime, but I don’t see any way I’ll have the patience to beat it on Veteran like I did with COD4. I’d say I burnt myself out getting 1000/1000 on COD4, but my total playtime for MW2 is somewhere between two and three days, which is a significant amount of time. But I’m done. I haven’t had the urge to kill hooded terrorists on my 360 in a long while now.

It’s not even that I’m not buying this map pack, it’s that I’m not buying it DAY ONE. I was in the COD4 beta and played that for a couple of days total. I bought COD4 day one and completed it in its entirety while playing an additional few days of multiplayer. I went to the midnight launch of MW2, even after half-seriously contemplating a boycott only to stand with my former PC brethren who were screwed over by the removal of dedicated servers. But it wasn’t even a boycott in my head — I legitimately wasn’t interested until the day before it came out when I realized I could not live without playing a new Infinity Ward game as soon as possible. But I don’t see such a turnaround happening again; the Stimulus Package isn’t a new game — it’s an overpriced add-on.

I don’t regret buying MW2, but I know I’d regret buying this map pack. I’ll save my 1200 MS points for an awesome Xbox Live Arcade game or two. And so ends the love affair of a non-dudebro with his — and seemingly everyone else’s — favorite FPS series of the past few years. I’m sure Infinity Ward will care after a million people buy the Stimulus Package today.

Someone suggested to me to just make an animated GIF of the entire movie, since there’s no part that isn’t awesome. I’d so do it, if I weren’t sure my laptop would explode during the attempt. This Arnold vehicle is easily the most perfectly distilled form of 80s action, with unbelievably corny one-liners, hilarious gore, and one man killing an entire private army.

I can’t even bring myself to type much about the movie, as I feel that the following GIFs will say more than I ever could. Hit the jump to enjoy fourteen GIFs of a combined 35 MB or so to totally destroy your browser.

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I am all but obligated to post the newly-released trailer to this comic book adaptation; the “Nerd” in my blog title would be totally inaccurate if I didn’t.

I’ll say this first off: I am going to see this movie solely because it’s directed by Edgar Wright, the director of — as the trailer says — Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Those are two of my favorite movies of the past decade, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt here. And the visual style of the movie does look pretty damn fun. If I can appreciate the totally ridiculous, eye-melting, seizure-inducing visuals of Speed Racer, I can enjoy a full-blown attempt to create a live-action comic book.

What I cannot take is Michael Cera’s face and voice. Hey, it was perfectly amusing in Arrested Development when he was 15 years old, but he’s now 21 and it doesn’t seem like he’s even hit puberty yet. Between his ugly baby face (refer below) and squeaking voice, a pristine ID wouldn’t be enough to convince me he was of legal drinking age. Maybe he’s meant to be a teenager in this movie, yet again. But then this chick would be kind of a slut with seven evil ex-boyfriends already.

Also, from everything I’ve heard, the original comic book is apparently making fun of hipsters. But at the same time many of the people that are most interested seem to hipsters. I don’t know what to make of this. Perhaps they are self-aware hipsters capable of laughing at themselves? Does that qualify as ironic?

What I cannot abide is making Mary Elizabeth Winstead look this bad. She was totally hot in both Live Free or Die Hard and Death Proof, but in this movie she’s got the whole kinda goth/hipster with no makeup thing going on and it’s just disappointing. She doesn’t even look that good when Scott Pilgrim falls in love with her at first site! Does he just have a purple hair fetish? I imagine this is the face I’d see if I asked him this question.

A closing thought: someone whose opinion I trust saw an advance screening and said the trailer is shit and the movie is awesome. So that’s encouraging. I trust Edgar Wright like I trust Christopher Nolan.

Now I don’t need to hear Yankee fans talking about getting Mauer on WFAN anymore.

ESPN.com

All-Star catcher Joe Mauer and Minnesota completed an eight-year, $184 million deal, a contract which will inevitably be hailed within baseball as an example that teams like the Twins do have a chance to keep their homegrown talent.

The deal, which includes a full no-trade clause, ranks in scope with only Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $275 million contract and Derek Jeter’s 10-year, $189 million contract.

They don’t mention Mark Teixeira’s contract, which is the same length and only $4 million less. It’s the closest comparison, not only due to having almost exactly the same amount of years and money, but also due to being signed only last year. And I think it’s obvious in that matchup that the Mauer contract is the better deal. Mauer is the best player in the American League. Mark Teixeira — while being a great hitter who also fields his 1B position well — is not even the best player on his team. And think of how many other 1B there are who compare offensively. Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera, and Adrian Gonzalez are all in his league. This is ignoring the man in St. Louis who is arguably better than Teixeira at every aspect of the game.

Meanwhile, Joe Mauer not only stands alone at the catching position right now, he might stand alone when it comes to the entire history of baseball. The only catcher to hit like he did last season was Mike Piazza, and he was no Joe Mauer behind the plate. Mauer is one of the best athletes to ever squat behind the plate; he was the best quarterback in America in high school and also an All-State point guard. He was a legend in Minnesota before he was even drafted.

And this is why the Twins NEEDED to resign him. He is the franchise; he is Minnesota. Mauer leaving to go to the Red Sox or Yankees or any big-budget team would have been devastating. But the Twins aren’t exactly a small-budget team anymore. Their payroll is scratching the surface of $100 million. What if they were truly a low-budget team? I don’t see any scenario, for example, in which the Royals would have kept him. So I’m really not sure how much this says — if anything — about the ability of small-market teams to lock up the face of their franchise. Especially when you consider that Mauer absolutely could have gotten more if he waited for free agency. But I won’t downplay the fact that it’s good for baseball nonetheless.

Just remember if Mauer was a total douchebag, e.g., Alex Rodriguez, this wouldn’t have been possible.

I’ve been a Firefox man for a long time now. I’d guess I started using very shortly after version 1.0 was released in November of 2004. Everyone hated Internet Explorer. Most prolific web-surfers still do. This is about giving up on the alternative to IE that I had been using for years, after finally getting fed up with its relative unresponsiveness.

Chrome came out about a year and a half ago. I was all over it immediately, as it was made by Google and I’m all about new free stuff on the internet. While it was fast, there were too many bugs and no extensions. It definitely seemed like a good framework to build upon, but it wasn’t a finished project (this might have been due to me using the beta) and it was not nearly enough to pull me away from Firefox. I did like the quasi-ability to turn websites like Gmail into applications that have shortcuts on your desktop, but that was just a cool novelty.

So over the past year I stuck with Firefox, checking out Chrome one more half-assed time when extensions were added, but I yet again wasn’t impressed enough to switch my loyalties. I had my Firefox add-ons and all animated GIFs worked the way I wanted them to and I didn’t see a real reason to change. I don’t like change for change’s sake. That may be a problem in real-life for me in some respects, but I feel that when it comes to personal computing it’s not a bad personality trait.

But recently I had been getting a bit annoyed with the long wait for Firefox to load, and some freezing issues, and just general sluggishness. I took the opportunity with a fresh install of the retail version of Windows 7 to give Chrome a real shot. I imported my Firefox bookmarks, and when the ones I had on my bar in Firefox weren’t added to the bar in Chrome I actually bothered to drag all of them onto the bar in Chrome. And then I went as far to add some extensions. The result is that I don’t see myself going back to Firefox, even though some GIFs animate too slowly due to a minimum frame time hold (I’m failing to think of a better/more technical phase for it). I can live with more epic and suspenseful GIFs, just like I suffered the horrific framerate drops in Shadow of the Colossus. And then there’s some weird pop-up and full-screen streaming video issues on…certain sites — but once again, I’m able to deal. I’m only there to take care of business and back out of private browsing mode. Which does remind me that being able to have a private window open while having a regular window open is invaluable.

And now it’s time for me to mention some awesome Chrome extensions. I had plenty of Firefox add-ons, but I felt like I had some of them just to feel like I was getting as much as possible out of the browsers and barely actually utilized them. Meanwhile, I have a select few Chrome extensions and they are all awesome.

Adblock – I think we all realize this is necessary for internet browsing nowadays. I went as far to add the Adblock Browsing Button, though, for the few sites I wouldn’t mind seeing ads to support (yes, I realize they are based on click-throughs, but whatever).

Chromey Calculator – This extension is FUCKING AWESOME. It’s basically a miniature version of Wolfram Alpha, which means in addition to regular mathematical calculations, it can shoot back to you the circumference of the earth or the height of the London Eye or how many dollars equal one euro. So, so sweet.

goo.gl URL Shortener – This is really for anyone who posts on Twitter. By far the best URL shortener out there, only a click away. It even copies the URL for you automatically.

Google Dictionary – For those times when you’re reading an high-brow article or blog post by a particularly erudite internet denizen and need to know what the fuck they just said. Double-click and BAM — the word’s definition. God, I love Google.

Baseball Player Search – I love baseball more than Google though. While I had Fangraphs as a search engine in Firefox, the fact that I can choose which sites I want to search — and that it simultaneously opens up a tab for each one — makes this extension so much cooler.

Slideshow – You can get your Facebook stalker on more efficiently with this extension, by turning people’s albums into an easy to scroll through slideshow. It also works with Google Image Search, Flickr and Picasa.

I highly recommend everyone, PC and Mac users alike, to give Chrome a good hard look if you haven’t already. It’s much better than it was when it first was revealed, while Firefox seems to get worse.

I doubt this even qualifies as an Irish jig, really. I only know this is where I was on St. Patrick’s Day and people were dancing and there’s video of it and I wanted a catchy title. It all adds up to this blog post.

I went into the city for the parade and ended up not even watching it — unless you count looking at the TV a bit in a random bar. $7 cups of Guinness. Goddamn it, the city is expensive, especially on St. Patrick’s Day. And then I ate too much at some burger/BBQ place, so when I had a shot of Jameson not too long after I almost threw up a half-pound burger and fries. Somehow I managed to hold it all down, even while dancing to the band that is playing in the video above (I am not featured in the video, just to make it clear). The band goes by the name of Scythian and they are a pretty damn fun road band. So I had a decent day, even if my wallet and liver didn’t. I hope you had a nice St. Patrick’s Day as well. I know that sentiment comes a bit late, but I hope you appreciate it.

I try not to spoil stuff usually, but I’m just going to pretend anyone actually caring to read this post watches Breaking Bad, and if you don’t, you haven’t listened to me enough.

While the House voted on health care reform, the best show on television came back with a bang — more like an explosion really. You’ve seen it in every promo. The twins calmly walking away from an exploding van was just the cherry on top of an episode which featured them being total badasses without saying a word. (Apparently, that was a real explosion.) I think badassery has an inverse relationship with loquaciousness.

The episode was both wrap-up and set-up, dealing with the consequences of the crash of last season, but also dropping the bomb of Skylar knowing where Walt got all that money, and Walt revealing the exact nature of his business — he’s a manufacturer! He also declines a 3-million-dollar offer– but I feel like he’ll come crawling back to that in a few episodes.

Meh, you know what, screw this; I can’t bring myself to write about a 43-minute episode of television. Sure, I can conjure up a blog post about a film that’s three times as long, but I don’t think anyone is coming to this blog for a mediocre-to-bad analysis of a Breaking Bad episode. Am I wrong here? I’ll direct you to a couple of reviews if that’s what you really want.

A.V. Club
Alan Sepinwall

The more important thing today is health care reform. It passed. But that I can’t write about at all because I know nothing and I don’t like to pretend I know something when I really don’t — unlike 90% of people out there. And approximately 99% of the protesters. This is why I write about baseball a lot — because I know it better than you. My fantasy results prove it! But yeah, I’m happy the Democrats at least showed some semblance of balls pushing this through. So the blog post title is a lie, ok? So sue me. Hell, Glenn Beck tomorrow might be better than tonight’s season premiere episode of Breaking Bad.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the cold open for tonight’s episode had to be the most bizarre I’ve ever seen.

My excuse is that I don’t own HBO myself. Maybe subconsciously I don’t want you to enjoy something I can’t.

Yes, this post is so damn pointless after the fact, but I felt the need to dedicate a post to what is guaranteed to be the new television series of the year. Or at least even with Archer.

In case you don’t know, The Pacific is the spiritual successor to Band of Brothers, what with the same guys behind it, and it also being set in World War II. You might have guessed that it does not cover the European theater, though. No, this is about Marines killing lots of Japs –three Marine badasses in particular. I thought about paying for HBO for however long it was necessary to watch the series, but then I saw the package was 26 bucks a month; perhaps there are cheaper packages, but that sight alone was enough to make me wait until the Blu-ray. To watch it legally, at least.

The National – Terrible Love (live)

If it sounds this good on Jimmy Fallon’s stage, the studio version will be pretty damn incredible, especially since Matt Berninger’s voice is much more suited to the studio from what I’ve heard. He really does sound great here, though. High Violet hits on May 11 (if you didn’t catch that) — be sure to check it out.