Aligning of the stars
What do you get when you cross arguably the most influential leading man in 20th century cinema, a versatile character actor who could very easily be the successor to the first man's throne, my #1 geeky pre-adolescent silver screen crush, and a diamond in the rough young thespian looking to escape the stigma of serialized science fiction with a breakout performance?
Answer: A movie that I am going to watch the SHIT out of.
Seriously. I love movies but it takes a lot to rouse me from my cynicism and get me excited about a new project. Mostly because there's very little "new" to go around in Hollywood these days. I can't take three steps inside of a Loews lobby without tripping over the cardboard placard for some tawdry remake of a classic (or not so classic) old movie. What's not an outright homage/ripoff is usually a hastily crafted, formulaic genre-piece that falls into the same traps and follows the same predictable conflicts from beginning to end.
I'm not so vain to believe that I bear witness to the fall of cinema as we know it - lord knows folks in every generation love to declare the inexorable decline of SOMETHING in their lifetime. Still, the entertainment dollar is shifting focus towards interactivity and audiovisual mastery over the same old rehashed storytelling. Maybe "Stone" will be different, and maybe it won't. With the star power its got behind it, I hope for the former.
Now any film with De Niro and Norton in the lead roles will have to try pretty hard to suck, and while Milla Jovovich has made some questionable script choices in the past, she'll always have a place in my little fanboy heart thanks to "The Fifth Element". The actor I'm most excited for has to be the newcomer, Enver Gjokaj - a.k.a. the best part of Dollhouse. As mentioned in a previous post, I am an unapologetic Whedonista of the highest order. Not so far gone that I can't admit that some of his own big screen endeavors have been less than successful, but a big fan nonetheless. "Dollhouse" is his latest cerebral, canceled-too-soon science fiction series currently wrapping up its second and final season on the Fox network. To pithily scratch the show's surface, it's based around a technology called "imprinting", where persons of different brain architecture called "dolls" are able to assume entire personalities on a temporary basis for business, pleasure, or any host of nefarious reasons. Enver plays one of these dolls, which means he has to believably pull off multiple characters week in and week out. To say he's knocked the majority of his roles out of the park would be an understatement - his versatility is awe-inspiring in a "what the hell are you doing on network television?" type of way. He even pulls off pitch-perfect imitation of several other major characters when the plot warrants.
He'll be playing "Young Jack", Robert's character presumably by way of flashbacks, in "Stone". I cannot wait to see this kid's De Niro impression, and I truly hope it's the springboard out of the normally inescapable "TV sci-fi actor" black hole and to a long and fruitful career.
The real world's going well for me too, since you asked. Reconnected with some old friends and made some wonderful new ones. More on that another night.
I am the Snow Miser
People of Orlando, Florida! I bring you plague, pestilence, and the coldest temperatures you've seen in years with some areas receiving their first officially recorded snowfall since the 1970s! Tremble before my might!
So my trip to Orlando this weekend was slightly marred by the northern arctic chill following me down south. Kind of like in Day After Tomorrow when the protagonists are at one point chased by the very cold itself, only less hackneyed and intellectually bankrupt. I still had a blast seeing some old family friends and watching the Jets run over the Cincinatti Bengals a second time, and nothing is more smugly humorous than seeing a community unaccustomed to the cold and snow absolutely freak out as it bears down on them. The local news channel even gave a wind chill advisory for a 48 degree day with 15mph winds. Cover that exposed skin or it might start to sting in, oh, two hours or so?
Thus begins the first step on the long road that is accepting that my parents will eventually retire and move to Florida like so many New Yorkers before them. They've got an admittedly awesome condo down there which is occupied by tenants for most of the winter, but we managed to slip in and I have to say it's a pretty nice place to live. I'm not sold on the state in general, but that'll come with time. Or it won't.
Speaking of my various amusing hangups, I flew for the first time in about 4 years and...enjoyed..it? Hm. Apparently tiny televisions embedded in the seat in front of you go a long way. Bless you, JetBlue. Even the hour and a half delay getting out of MCO was bearable thanks to playoff football. The gate next to ours was for a flight back to Logan Int'l in Boston, and it was a rare treat sitting amongst dozens of anguished Bostonians as the New England Patriots were picked apart by the Ravens' defense. It was all I could do to keep my poker face and not break out in a sarcastic J-E-T-S chant. The delay to my flight was no doubt cosmic penance for my schadenfreude, and I pay it gladly.
So now it's back to the world. Work already made its presence felt this evening, but I was chomping at the bit to return to my routine anyway. Next order of business is to buy a car. These past few weeks I've been flirting with various listings and dealership websites with the guidance of a trusted, car-obsessed friend. Endgame approaches, however, and its beyond time to get back on the road.
Obsolescence
After weeks of nagging I finally upgraded Wordpress to v2.9.1, only to be informed well after the fact that to complete the upgrade, MySQL 4.1.2 or higher was now necessary on my webserver. Seriously, if I had a nickel...
To my credit I backed up the database beforehand, but I still very nearly broke the blog. I decided, prior to running and hiding behind the apron strings of my longtime and very accommodating web host, that I would at least peruse the manual to see if there was anything to be done by little ol' End User me. Reading the MySQL documentation was generational shock to say the least. I was a self-styled computer whiz-kid in my youth and I still know my way around a Northbridge, but this "help file" may as well have been written in Sanskrit. I found myself in the same cross-eyed daze that my parents no doubt experienced when I'd explain to them the intricacies of MS-DOS while begging them for a PC younger than three generations removed from the cutting edge. Basic knowledge and tech support prowess is still intact, but I am so otherwise out of my depth I'm going to be crushed by the overpressure. Thank god I'm pretty.
My beautiful and talented actress of a sister did another one of her hope-to-be-viral videos. All I know is this one was shot with a bitchin' mp4 camera that a certain someone may have brought her for Christmas. And that certain someone has neither a jolly fat belly for a white beard. A big red nose at times, but that's neither here nor there. Check it:
Florida in a few days (I know! I'm leaving the house! More on that later.) and I really, really need to fix my sleep again. Too bad I do my best thinking at 4am.
Alcohol refractory period
When push comes to shove I can still drink like an early-20 year old the night of, but by god is it getting harder to bounce back. Much like journeyman athletes in the twilight of their careers must do insane amounts of cardio to hang with their more youthful counterparts, so must I start to learn to drink water early, have aspirin at the ready and apportion myself as much restful sleep as possible. To my affable host: the grumbling, immobile lump of agony on your futon trying not to regurgitate the toaster strudel you so generously offered apologizes for not pulling his weight in the apartment cleanup procedures.
Fun was had though. Oh boy was it had.
As it happens I returned home and slipped into a mini-coma about five minutes into the 2nd period of the Winter Classic. Missed all the late-game excitement and woke up to a Brian Boitano special just in time as Brian mournfully advised us home viewers that a knee injury was keeping him sidelined and unable to dazzle and amaze. I would love to meet the empty suit(s) at NBC that decided hockey between two rabid sports towns (Boston and Philly) should be the lead-in to a post-holiday figure skating exhibition because... they both involve ice? The line-graphical drop of the ratings as millions of homes fresh from the blood, sweat, and tears of a grade-A hockey match clicked away from your ballet demonstration is so steep I bet you could bungee jump from it.
Speaking of line graphs and at times wanting to jump from high places, day one of Poker Grind 2010 went swimmingly. 1012 hands, +3 buyins. Sustainable? Not at all, but nothing says loving like beating the tar out of holiday weekend fishies.
It's going to take me awhile to get used to this whole 2010 thing in context. Not in a "I'm going to fuck up the next time I write a check" sort of way (though I already had to crumple my first attempt at paying my rent today) - just wrapping my head around kicking off my thirtieth year on this earth. Seeing how far we've come as a species in some areas and acknowledging just how far we need to come in others. Flying cars, gay marriage, total informational and technological singularity to name a few. Let's get it done, people. I mean the Day of Lavos was supposed to be 11 years ago, so we're clearly playing with house money. (brief aside to Youtube uploaders: Your Windows Movie Maker title card lead-ins on clips you did not create are tacky and unnecessary. Please stop.)
UFC 108 tomorrow. Shit card on paper thanks to a slew of injuries which by the Hype:Quality inverse parable means it'll probably be an awesome show. Now to see just how jarring last night's revelry + today's cryosleep was to my circadian clock.
Fantasy Football post mortem
I've been a Fantasy Football player for the last four seasons of the NFL. I used to make fun of it. In fact, I still make fun of it. It's basically stock and futures trading for those of us too broke or too intimidated by numbers with multiple decimal places to get into the financial racket. It feeds my borderline-unhealthy competitive streak though, and it gives you a reason to learn the league outside of the local teams, so why not? I had some overall good fortune but over-coached in spots and definitely leveled myself out of serious money. Though there's a definite luck aspect attached to all Fantasy sports - the strength of your opponent that week, your ability to dodge the myriad of injuries that pop up during the football season, etc. - every year is a learning experience.
1. There's Always Next Year. This was my first league filled with mostly friends and acquaintances. 12 teams (was previously 14) with a modest buy-in. I had yet to have a winning season in my first three, my best record being 5 and 9. This is also where I cheated on this blog and wrote recaps on Tuesday morning every week until I got bored of it, which to my credit took a lot longer than anticipated!
What I did right: I had first pick in this year's draft which is sort of a double-edged sword. It guarantees you the best RB in the league in Adrian Peterson, but then you go hungry while the draft serpentines away from you for 23 more picks. I did draft well though, ending up with two of the league's best WRs in Marques Colston and Wes Welker (an absolute god in leagues where receptions get you a point each). I even snagged a few late sleepers like Beanie Wells, though it took him a very long time to awaken.
What I did wrong: Despite my hot 6 and 1 start, I stressed my lack of a competent 2nd RB - again a byproduct of having first overall pick and deferring to strong wide-outs early in the draft. I ended up making a 3x3 trade with a floundering team, selling high on a red-hot Steve Smith (NYG) and throwing in two other also-rans for Leon Washington (went down for the year a few weeks later), Correll Buckhalter (plagued by injuries week to week and behind a hot rookie on the depth chart), and Steve Breaston (competent WR3 who faded when I needed him the most). One of the pieces of flotsam I threw into this trade as an afterthought? An utter nobody by the name of Miles Austin. Fuck.
How it ended: This league was a parity circus with no team losing less than 4 games, so the playoffs were up for grabs until the very last snap of week 14. I ended up in a "win and you're in" scenario but ended up losing by 3 points when the aforementioned Mr. Breaston caught 2 passes out of 7 total targets to him on Monday Night. If he'd caught any two of those 5 misses I'd have been home. Furthermore, had I stayed away from that trade earlier in the season I'd have had the sickest WR tandem in Fantasy history of Colston-Welker-Austin with Smith as a punishing bye week replacement. Of course no one in their right mind saw Austin coming - no one - and sadly this wouldn't prove to be my worst gaffe of the season.
2. Burpelson: This is a league two of my friends teamed up on having known the Commissioner but no one else. Myself and another friend came in as our own team last year and just missed out on a division win and top scorer honors, which in this bonus-laden league would have gotten us some cash. This league also employs IDP (individual defensive players) with their own set of stats and corresponding points for an added dimension of strategy.
What we did right: My friend and I had a very strong draft at 8th overall, snagging Chris Johnson who at the time of this writing is about 127 yards away from rushing for 2,000 on the year. He'll be a top-2 pick next year so this was an absolute coup for us. We followed up with the WR duo of Randy Moss and Anquan Boldin, who both had slow starts but caught fire mid-season to give us some big wins. Knowing that defense wins games both in real football as well as Fantasy, we snagged tackling machines like Jon Beason and Eric Weddle late in the draft, who at times outscored most of the offensive players on our squad. We finished 9 and 4, won our division and had the best record, while just narrowly missing the Most Points award. The playoffs hadn't even begun yet and we already earned double our buyin.
What we I did wrong: What followed that was an absolute blowup that I'll probably regret for a long while. We drafted Carson Palmer as really our only serviceable QB, and though he wasn't costing us games anyone who played Fantasy this year can attest to how mediocre he was almost every week. Afraid of an early exit and knowing we needed all cylinders flying, I convinced my co-owner to bench him this week in favor of Brady Quinn - a future lackluster journeyman in his own right, but one who scored big when facing crap defenses. Going against Kansas City, I figured he was a lock to outscore Palmer. I couldn't have been more wrong. Quinn netted us a ZERO (a few yards but no touchdowns, and two interceptions which carry -3 penalties for each) while Palmer, no doubt playing in the memory of his fallen teammate, scored 24 Fantasy Points in his second-best performance of the year. To summarize the rest of the horror, our Sunday Night Football duo of Percy Harvin (another hot rookie that my co-owner rightly believed in) and Beason failed to appear as advertised, and our slender lead going into Monday Night turned into a 7 point loss.
How it ended:Because there's nothing quite like insult added to injury, the very next week we scored huge and would have obliterated the eventual Super Bowl winners. So we profited, but we could have utterly annihilated. My co-owner, wonderful friend that he is, has done nothing but reassure me, but there's no balm to ease the sting of leaving hundreds of dollars on the table after squandering months of work. And you'd think I'd know, after years of poker, not to take these crazy home run gambles.
3. Work league: Ah, the ubiquitous work league. Gateway to pointless but entertaining trash talk. No money, just pride (and fun!).
What I did right:I was able to snag the aforementioned (Jesus) Chris(t) Johnson 10th in this draft, followed by Special Agent Andre Johnson (no relation) on the comeback. That one-two punch would win me game after game, while the rest of my supporting cast was fair-to-middling, leading me to make over 30 waiver wire moves during the regular season. Most of those were winners, however, and I was able to make it into the playoffs as 4th seed despite some late season sputtering.
What I did wrong:Though not my fault at all, losing powerhouse TE Owen Daniels almost spelled my doom as it would almost all Fantasy squads around the country. I ended up playing matchups with the two New York TEs - Dustin Keller and Kevin Boss. Starting the wrong one at the wrong time cost me no less than two games, including losing to the league's juggernaut team (and eventual winner of it all) by TWO TENTHS OF A F%!@^!@ POINT late in the season. I was also one of the unlucky many to have Jerome Harrison languishing on my bench the day he broke the single-game rushing record for 286 yards and 3 scores.
How it ended: I lost the aforementioned Harrison game by a wide margin. Not holding that one against myself at all, as that was clearly a case of a stopped clock (on a team full of broken, waterlogged clocks that had just been through a septic tank) being right. Then I lost the meaningless 3rd place game when Adrian Peterson (et tu, AP?) pushed my opponent to a 3 point victory over my beleaguered team.
4. Taproot: Another free league that a friend tried to set up amongst the members of his perennial Fantasy Baseball league (a hobby in which I do not partake). He failed to drum up enough interest, only drawing 6 teams in total which meant that I didn't give the league so much as a glance all year. That is until I was informed that I was in the title match.
What I did right: The auto-draft in such a shallow league is going to give everyone a stacked squad, and my team was no exception. I made a single waiver wire pickup on the final week of the season - snapping up the 49ers DST as they would no doubt wallop the hapless Detroit Lions - and did they ever!
What I did wrong: Nothing! Apparently ignoring my team for the first 15 weeks of the season is the key to my success.
How it ended: A decisive victory and, if Yahoo is true to its word when you sign up for the league, a bitchin t-shirt. Yeah!
So that's how I spent my Sundays this winter - staring at multiple gametrackers during work and cursing out individual football players on my television screen in earnest. Maybe I'd have been better off in church.
Oh yeah - Happy New Year!