Somewhat Manly Nerd

Let’s see. The Mets had a 4-2 lead going into the 9th inning against the Braves. The Jets were facing a Tom Brady-less Patriots team. And the Phillies had two games versus the Brewers. All of these things turned out as badly as possible. The Mets bullpen imploded for I believe the 462th time this year. I didn’t think that was possible — considering there’s only 162 games in a season — but they’ve done it. I should’ve figured it would happen 12 hours after I said the Mets shouldn’t pay K-Rod $15 million a year. The worst part about it is that Oliver Perez had a good game and I left him on my fantasy bench. I was going to set my Sunday roster the previous afternoon, but I told myself I’d do it that night. BUT I NEVER DID. I’m not sure if he would’ve lowered my ERA and WHIP enough to win either category, but I blew my only shot at winning the week.

Meanwhile, I didn’t get to watch much of the Jets game, but I know they lost, and that’s enough. And the Phillies swept their doubleheader against the seemingly permanently hungover Brewers. So now the Mets have only a 1 game lead in the NL East with the Phillies seemingly beginning to surge and the Jets look like they don’t have an open road to the division title after all. Maybe the Brewers will collapse so sharply that the Mets could grab the wild-card. But on the bright side, if they don’t make the playoffs I’ll have more time to study.

Francisco Rodriguez a.k.a. K-Rod broke the single-season record for saves tonight with his 58th save. Too bad the save has been pretty much proven at this point to be a pointless, dumb stat that should stabbed repeatedly and left in the desert to bleed out. But I’m sure K-Rod loves it, as he will ride this feat to a massive contract this offseason. I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t love to have him on the Mets, but if it comes at the price of $15 million/year, it’s not worth it. Not even Mariano Rivera is worth that much, and K-Rod is not — and never will be — Mariano Rivera.

So here’s to you, K-Rod. I hope Hank Steinbrenner is dumb enough to throw a metric shitton of cash your way. And I hope the Mets are smart enough to spend the money on two or three good relievers instead of one overrated closer. I did appreciate all the saves you gave my fantasy team this year, though.

I wanted to post that poster as large as possible, since it’s totally awesome. A throwback to when movie posters were great. I was hoping that I would enjoy this movie, if only so I could justify hanging it up in my room. After the first 10-15 minutes, I was fairly bummed, as it looked like the movie was not going to be good enough for a spot on my wall.

Then Brad Pitt’s character showed up. 

I remember when I was a dumb kid and hated Brad Pitt because I thought he was some pretty boy. Now he’s easily one of my favorite actors, impressing me more and more every time I see him. Granted, I actually went back in time for a lot of those performances (Fight Club –> 12 Monkeys –> Se7en –> True Romance), but he was pretty great in The Assassination of Jesse James, even if Casey Affleck was better.

Pitt’s performance here is inarguably the best in the film, as almost everything he does is hilarious. John Malkovich is great too, but he seems relegated to a choice phrase which I’m sure you will pick up on. Other than them, I’m going to say that the perfomances were nothing special, but that may be due to me not being a huge George Clooney fan. Oh wait, J.K. Simmons is downright AMAZING in the short screentime he has. You would know him as the newspaper boss in the Spiderman movies. So you should already know he’s awesome.

I was going to attempt a fairly long review, since the last few posts have had scant few words, but I’m really not sure if this is a movie that commands a long review — as opposed to The Dark Knight, whose review I STILL haven’t gotten around to finishing — so I’m going to wrap this up.

The movie is a bit uneven, with the truly funny scenes and lines too far apart and the characters aren’t as memorable as many in other Coen Brothers films. But there are flashes of brillance, and the movie builds up well, ending before it has the chance to fall apart. Some people might argue that it ends too early, but I think the way the Coen Brothers wrap it up is nothing short of perfect. 

I’m still on the fence about whether the poster deserves to be tacked up in my wall, but Burn After Reading is most definitely worth a watch, as is the case with just about any Coen Brothers film.

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Texas Flood

That would be each and every person that bought a Wii in August. STOP BUYING IT. It should be AT MOST $150 at this point. And it still wouldn’t be worth it. But because all of you won’t stop, this embarrassment to humanity continues to roll over the competition at it’s original $250 price point. There are going to be SHORTAGES TWO YEARS AFTER IT WAS RELEASED!!

I hate every single one of you. I hope someone throws a Wiimore into your television and shatters it. I hope you pull out your back playing Wii Fit. I hope your kid never plays the Wii, and says he really wanted an Xbox 360. I hope your TV revolts and refuses to display a signal coming from the Wii.

And don’t give me “Oh, but it’s the cheapest console!” crap. Because if that’s the reason, I better see progress on the 360 front next month, or you people are dead. $199 for the Arcade pack. Yeah, it doesn’t have a hard drive, but neither does the Wii. So shut up and buy it.

I wasn’t posting much before and during the U.S. Open, so I never bothered to dedicate a lot of words to it. And maybe because I didn’t know where to go with a post. I thought the tournament was more open than any slutty Hollywood starlet I could’ve used to finish that predictable joke. Nadal was the best player this year and my personal favorite, but this Grand Slam showed he still has work to do to catch up with the other top players on hard courts. His style of play is obviously not suited to hard surfaces, and after seeing Andy Murray beat him at his own game — so soundly that Nadal was visibly exhausted by the end of the match – I’m not sure if he’ll ever win an Australian or U.S. Open, quite honestly. Maybe the shock of seeing Nadal completely spent has gotten to me. Murray was just hitting the ball SO HARD, while moving around almost as well as Nadal. The capri-pants superman just didn’t have an answer.

Anyway, the real story was Roger Federer dismantling the field and shutting everyone the hell up in the process — including myself. I still think that the total, absolute dominance he displayed for quite a few years is over, but I guess he still has it in him to shatter Sampras’ Grand Slam record. Maybe the effects of mono have been lingering the entire season up til now. Maybe the fast surface of the U.S. Open is actually better for him at this point than Wimbledon, which has apparently slowed down in recent years. Either way, he looked like himself this tournament.

I just felt like I needed to make this post, since I’ve been posting about most of his disappointments this year. You can sleep well tonight, Roger. Your victory is now documented in my blog.

Now, I quite enjoyed Casino Royale, but I felt the love story and poker scene stop it from being as awesome as the Bourne films. Daniel Craig was fuck awesome as Bond, and it most definitely shot better, but the pacing and overall intensity just did not match up to Bourne’s. But I’m pretty sure they weren’t quite going for the same thing.

Quantum of Solace, on the other hand, looks to be pretty damn balls-out, and heavily influenced by the Bourne films. The plot (at least in the original teaser) appeared to be ripped straight from the Bourne series, and the action choreographer is from the Bourne films. If you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em.

Pic courtesy of forum denizen Crushed.

Alright, here’s the trailer:

Quantum of Solace – Theatrical Trailer 

I figured that the Large Hadron Collider would get as little mainstream publicity as just about every other advancement in science. Because honestly, who really cares about particle physics? But apparently many people do, since I’ve seen countless online articles, some newspaper articles, TV pieces, and even a radio commercial about the revving up of the LHC. There’s a chance that the world ends tomorrow, according to these people. There’s also a chance that I’ll have sex with Adriana Lima. 

Collisions with energy comparable to that of ones that will be created in the LHC (actually not even tomorrow, but in a week or so) take place in the upper atmosphere all the time, without black holes forming and swallowing the earth. Well, miniature black holes can and will form – if I remember what I’ve read and learned correctly — but their energy dissipates quicker than a lead handed over to the Mets bullpen.

It just blows my mind the manner in which this whole notion of the world possibly ending due to the LHC has picked up steam. I’m pretty sure this has happened with each progressively bigger particle collider, but never to this extent. Maybe the internet really has been able to influence the thinking of the unwashed masses. People actually have heard of “string theory” now. On the other hand, I’m sure most people couldn’t tell you that scientists at CERN (where the LHC is located) are looking for the Higgs boson a.k.a. the God Particle. Or supersymmetric particles that could help solidfy string theory.

Most people are inherently scared of stuff they don’t fully understand, so when they hear this LHC has even a tiny possibility of ending the world, they freak the fuck out. You know, there’s a probability of your TV spontaneously jumping on its own, but I’m pretty sure no one — out of the billions that have owned a TV — have ever seen a TV jump. Maybe probability isn’t even the point I should be making here. If the LHC amazingly manages to create a stable black hole that can suck up matter, it’ll all be over before anyone even knows it. So take solace in that.

But you won’t be able to call me a moron back. Muahaha.

P.S. I haven’t looked into the LHC enough to find out if a Half-Life scenario is possible. But that would be awesome, so whatever.

Edit: As if right on command, I checked my Google Reader after posting and this article came up:

Large Hadron Collider: Best and Worst Case Scenarios

Out for the season. Probably.

It seems that Brady’s soul was only good for a couple of years of success. The deal ran out just a bit before Super Bowl XLII was over. Brady probably should’ve gotten a refund. Instead, he got a torn ACL or whatever the hell happened to his knee at the moment captured above. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Giselle dumps his immobile ass. 

A few months ago if you told me Brett Favre would be a Jet and Tom Brady would be out for the season, I would’ve broken a bottle over your head for teasing me like that. That’s something a Jets fan only dreams of. 

But this is really happening. Next week, the Jets will face the Patriots, with a matchup of Favre vs. Cassel. Tied for first place after Week 1! And Favre didn’t throw an INT! The only thing that could make this better is Curtis Martin entering a time machine and getting back on the Jets.

Hopefully the Jets will be able to keep this up, to at least keep me entertained and somewhat happy while I watch the Mets once again choke in September.

While all the Obama-sheep, hardcore Evangelicals, old war dudes who love McCain (like my grandpa), people who think they’re intelligent — and maybe some actual smart people — pay attention to politicians giving empty speeches and false promises, I eagerly await the return of arguably the greatest organization in America – the NFL. Yes, I’m a bigger baseball fan, but no can argue that the NFL is even more ingrained in American culture than our “national pastime”.

The new national pastime is sitting on your ass for an entire Sunday watching huge dudes who would otherwise have longer lifespans smash into each other trying to reach opposite end zones. And also making your Monday somewhat palatable by allowing you to watch the same thing once again after that awful beginning to the work week.

But to start off the season, there’s a Redskins-Giants game on a Thursday. Football on ladies night? Worlds are colliding. I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. I’ll just want to sit there eating my popcorn, drinking my beer, but I’ll have chicks all up in my shit. Oh wait, that’s not right, they won’t be bothering me at all.

But while tonight’s game is the opener, Sunday’s Jets-Dolphins game is the season opener for myself. Favre vs. Pennington. I’m not really a betting man, but I’ll set some over/unders.

Favre INTs – 2
Pennington passes over 10 yards – 2.5
Amount of beers I drink – 3.5
Times Favre’s age is mentioned – 4.5
Pennington screen passes – 10
Times I pretend to have insight into football – 5.5

So Football is back. Baseball is reaching its final stretch. The U.S. Open is ongoing. While summer may be over, I have more than enough sports to keep me entertained.