Somewhat Manly Nerd

When I watched the first trailer for Tropic Thunder, I thought it looked pretty good, but I’ve never been quite as hyped as much of the internets. Seeing and hearing Robert Downey Jr. act in blackface was what mostly got me excited. That probably makes me racist, but he’s ridiculously awesome and I’m not afraid to say it.

Unfortunately, seeing a different (non red-band) trailer this past weekend made the movie look a bit worse. Pineapple Express was starting to look like the surefire comedy winner of the summer, especially after how horrifically mediocre Stepbrothers was.

This clip has changed everything:

August 13th, bitches.

(And enjoying that clip makes me hate mentally challenged people, right?)

The Most Hilarious Collection of Sports Related Videos Ever.

I don’t even have anything to say. The site provides its own commentary. There’s nothing I could possibly add to make the videos any more entertaining, anyway. They have already reached transcendent status.

Just a taste:

However you may feel about him, you have to admit that’s pretty awesome.

That is how much this blog is worth according to this site. It also apparently makes $4.18 ad revenue each day. Quite the accomplishment without any ads. Or maybe that’s just an estimate of how much I *could* make. If so, I really need to get back to hosting the blog myself. It’s just a shame that the first hosting service I tried was TOTALLY FUCKING WORTHLESS and soured me on the whole thing. Small companies FTL. I welcome our Google overlords — especially if they agree to host my blog.

Also makes me think about a possible name change. I already bought a domain for this title, but I’m thinking “Backspace My Life” would be better. Yea, definitely is. I hope no one steals it. I didn’t even come up with it. So I guess I would be stealing it. But we’ve talked it over.

This title is just too unwieldly. I wish I just went with cajolejuice.wordpress.com for the URL. Oh well. I have to wait until I finally move to my own hosting to change the title, I feel. Otherwise the hundreds of bots that visit my site will be confused.

Edit: HOLY SHIT! The tags and categories of each post are showing up. Now I have to go back to making witty tags!

I’m kinda pissed right now because I have a bunch of candidates for posts, but i’m too intoxicated to truly get them off the ground at this point. Plus I was out during the time I would’ve used to form the posts. Instead, you will get this stream of consciousness post that will verge on total shit. Speaking of total shit, Transformers was on my bar tonight. You know, I actually enjoyed the movie in theaters, but it has to be the first movie where being intoxicated actually LOWERED the enjoyment level of the movie. Or maybe I just had a spat of retardedness last summer.

But I’m not as dumb as Shia LaBeouf. I WALKED home tonight. I didn’t drive. Unfortunately for Shia, he drank and drove. And then crashed into another car. NONONONONONONONOONONONO. All celebrities have to do is NOT drink and drive, NOT get caught doing drugs, NOT beat up their mom and wife. Yet somehow, so many of them fall to the forbidden pleasures of life. Did I just say beating up your mom was a pleasure of life? I’m taking my man-crush on Christian Bale a bit too far.

ohhhh Christian Bale. I’m going to write a spoiler-filled post about The Dark Knight. I really liked the movie, but there’s definitely stuff to rip on, and I will.

LEAVE THE BOY ALONE, HARVEY.

No, I won’t. I will find stuff to criticize in The Dark Knight. IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED 45 MINUTES EARLIER.

Anyway, the Mets bullpen is more worthless than Reichsmarks at the end of World War II. YEA, I JUST WROTE THAT. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!? I’m apparently not drunk enough if I’m referencing foreign currency. Foreign currency that doesn’t even exist anymore. Whatever, I visited there before the whole EURO craze. Damn Euro, making our US dollar look bad.

Man, I love walking out of a bar to see two people making out. And then going back inside to finish my beer by myself. With Transformers playing on the TV. That shit is AWESOME.

I really hope I don’t have much to do at work tomorrow.

What?

A month ago, I was all but ready to give up on this team. Carlos Delgado was a lazy, washed-up piece of Caribbean garbage. Oliver Perez was his usual 5th/6th inning imploding self. Jose Reyes was doing OK, but wasn’t exactly impressing anyone. Jose Castillo’s swing continued to be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. The outfield was a disaster of concussions, old men, and underperforming stars and subs alike. The entire bullpen was worthless. Well, that last thing is still true.

But the Mets can actually beat the Phillies this year. After a devastating loss on Tuesday — a game I feel Johan Santana should’ve finished — the Mets answered with two huge wins to grab hold of first place all by their lonesome. Willie Randolph am cry.

I feel like the rest of the season is going to play out with the Phillies and Mets both alternating between mediocre and good-for-the-NL like they have so far. While the Mets have been on a tear in July, the bullpen is capable of blowing up at any time, Delgado isn’t going to keep this up, and Mike Pelfrey isn’t going to either. I’d love to believe that Moises Alou and Ryan Church are going to come back and contribute, but unfortunately Barry Bonds probably has a good chance of playing more games than either of them the rest of the season.

It’s going to be a ball-tingling race, especially with the Mets-Phillies rivalry now being one of the best in baseball. No matter what happens the rest of the way, at least the Braves suck.

I’m a lazy, procrastinating guy — working full-time has only excerbated that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me for taking so long to get around to my viewing of The Dark Knight in IMAX three nights ago. I know you were waiting to see the movie until you read my thoughts. You weren’t one of the 25 million people to see it this weekend. Definitely not.

But I’m not going to review the movie in-depth at all. You’ve either seen the movie, or heard about it from all your friends. What would be the point of another person saying how unbelievably awesome Heath Ledger was? Although, I would like to say that IMAX was just a bit too much. Maybe it was our seats, maybe it was the specific theater — I just know it was a somewhat painful experience. One that I waited in line for over an hour for. I probably deserved it, since I’m apparently an uncaring asshole, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. By the end of the movie, I was totally exhausted, sweating, and had a backache. I was seeing a movie, not banging a girl up against a wall.

The night basically went downhill after my friends and I witnessed a total bitch refusing to give up her seat right in front of us. A seat which her and her boyfriend had all but stolen from some teenage girls. The most pathetic part of the story is that the boyfriend picked up the girls’ sweaters and moved them off the seats, but when legions of IMAX employees came to argue, it was only the girlfriend that spoke up and took down nemesis after nemesis. As my friend Chris said, if real-life were an RPG, she would’ve been a level 30 by the end of the debacle — which is probably why the Arrow Security dudes wanted no piece of her. They walked in one entrance, talked for a second to some IMAX people, looked up and realized she was an unstoppable foe, and then walked right out again. And then the defeated IMAX legion announced the movie would start, 10 minutes after schedule showtime. Not only had she delayed the start of the movie — leading to two trailers getting skipped — but she won.

At least we got to make fun of her the entire time, with her no doubt hearing us laughing and joking. Much of the theater at one point was cheering to “kick her out.” Unfortunately, her “dad is a cop.” What a fucking bitch. Even Batman would’ve had no shot. Her dad would’ve been the guy to arrest him today, after he beat up his mom and sister. (He really didn’t though, Christian Bale > all)

Getting back to the actual movie, when that first frame of the movie projected on the dome, the theater shit its collective pants. I know I wasn’t ready for it to take up MORE THAN my entire field of view, stretching to almost directly above me. It was insane, and I had to slouch in my seat as a result. By the end of the bank heist scene, I knew it was way too much. The tipping point was when my brain couldn’t even process the Joker’s face as an actual human face because it was so goddamn huge.

Let me just sum up the movie and my IMAX experience in a few examples of good, bad, and ugly.

Good: The city shots looking absolutely INCREDIBLE in IMAX.
Bad: Almost every action scene being indecipherable.
Ugly: The 35 mm parts of the film compared to the scenes shot in IMAX.

Good: The lines for Joker and Harvey Dent.
Bad: Alfred’s jokes
Ugly: Anything that comes out of one of the generic cops’ mouths.

Good: Heath Ledger’s Joker performance
Bad: Christian Bale’s Batman voice
Ugly: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s face

Good: The massive chase scene.
Bad: The sort-of-nightvision scene giving me seizures.
Ugly: I’ve got nothing else to put here.

So yeah, I’m out of bad things to say. I could get more specific, but I think that would be more suitable to a spoiler-laden review/discussion. I had an extra example to put in there, but since one of the my friends didn’t realize a certain plot point until it actually happened, I’d feel bad alluding to it here. I mean, if those are the only big complaints I can come up with — half of them having to do with IMAX — I obviously think it’s a great movie.

GO SEE THE DARK KNIGHT

This is the Nintendo E3 2008 Conference in a Nutshell, as created by a fellow forum denizen by the name of jarosh. Pretty much sums up why Nintendo is embarrassing.

I am so glad I didn’t give a shit about E3 this year. Although, Final Fantasy XIII coming to Xbox 360 is fairly hilarious.

As if the results of interleague play this season weren’t embarrassing enough (AL 149 – NL 103), the NL just lost a 15 inning All-Star Game. They should be used to it by now, considering they haven’t won one in TWELVE YEARS. I was rooting for a tie once it went extras, since I knew that was the best the NL could muster.

I’m pretty sure the AL should’ve won the game about 11 different times, but they managed to play down to the level of the NL — which was pretty fucking bad. Dan Uggla looked like a Little Leaguer in the field. I’m dead serious here: I watched my 10-year-old cousin play baseball last week and the second basemen on his team was more reliable in the field. And the kid was like 4 feet tall. I’m not even trying to be funny here, I swear. Oh, and Uggla completely sucked at the plate too. In his most important at-bat of the night, he got totally clowned by 3 pitches in a row, the last one being a disgusting knee-buckling curve.

But Uggla doesn’t deserve all the blame, as the rest of the NL East decided to totally suck as well. Any team that has both Billy Wagner and Brad Lidge on their team is doomed to fail, especially when they have to be used in the same game. Wagner blew the All-Star Game for the NL AGAIN, even though he only had to get one out. He came in with 2 outs and bases empty in the 8th, knowing he wouldn’t even have to pitch in the 9th, and managed to give up a run. He is beyond worthless. And then no one scored again until Brad Lidge came in 7 innings later. What a surprise.

WITH OUR POWERS COMBINED…WE ARE

CAPTAIN BLOWN-GAME

(I’m sorry)

I really don’t have much else to say on the matter. Nate McClouth managed to make an amazing throw in the 11th to prolong the game, but Corey Hart wasn’t able to repeat the performance in the 15th. Probably since he shouldn’t have been an All-Star in the first place. Pat Burrell > him, and that’s not easy for a Mets fan to say.

I realize I didn’t even mention anything about the AL, but I wanted to focus on the suck.

Oh, and Bud Selig probably shit his pants on three different occasions tonight.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear I am mocking a comment from former S.I. writer, new ESPN writer/commenter Rick Reilly at the Home Run Derby. And I like making attention-grabbing headlines. I look forward to comments from people that didn’t even read any of the actual post.

After Josh Hamilton crushed 28 home runs in the first round of the contest, and thanked Jesus afterward, Reilly actually said “It’s a lousy night to be an atheist.” He had earlier commented on the whiteness of the participants. I’m pretty sure ESPN lowered his mic at this point. If ESPN didn’t need to honor the massive contract they just gave him, Chris Berman might have been given the word to eat him right on the spot.

It’s pretty ludicrous for Reilly to make such a comment — as if Hamilton being religious would sour atheists’ enjoyment of the show he put on. Unless it’s a bitter, pathetic atheist, I don’t think Hamilton thanking God after his spectacular display made unbelievers want to cry or get pissed at what Hamilton chooses to believe. Plenty of athletes thank God or Jesus on national television. Although, what made Hamilton stand out was the fact that he thanked Jesus even after he lost to Justin Morneau (who no one will remember winning).

I find it hard to believe that God or Jesus would care about a Home Run Derby, but maybe they wanted to give him a glorious moment, and at the same time keep him humble enough to not start doing heroin again. (Didn’t you hear? He used to take drugs, apparently.) Or maybe he is just a beast that ran out of gas because the Home Run Derby is a painfully long process that no one cares about once a dude has one ridiculous round of 500 foot bombs. Whichever one you care to believe in, I’m sure we can agree that Joe Morgan is a moron.

He picked Chase Utley to win “because he’s a good line-drive hitter.” What. WHAT.