Havasimy

This week went by fast. I was supposed to have my monthly poker game this past tuesday, but I had to cancel it at the last minute when two of the guys both thought the 25th was on thursday and not tuesday. The rest of the week I actually made it out of the apartment a couple times. So after two years, I'm actually starting to get a social life in NJ.

Bill and Terri are coming tomorrow. I'm taking Tuesday off and I decided that I'm goint to try and get Wednesday off, too. So tomorrow and Tuesday night I spend with Bill and Terri. Wednesday night, it's looking like I'll head out to a bar with some of the guys and saturday night, one of the guys is having his big annual party. So, at this rate, my summer is going to end on a busy note.

Another plus in my life is my mom as agreed to not give me a birthday present this year. Now if I can get her to do the same for Christmas.

And one non-personal observation. If you haven't seen the movie For the Love of the Game, don't read ahead cause there's something of a spoiler. Of course, the movie's been out long enough that a spoiler warning should not be needed and it's pretty much something you can see coming from near the beginning of the movie. Anyway, here's my observation/thought/question: if you were the manager of a baseball team that is on the losing end of a perfect game and it's the bottom of the ninth inning and there's two outs, do you send a rookie who has never had a major league at-bat up to the plate to get the last chance to spoil the perfect game? This is a possible 'yes' because, as even one of the announcers point out, he might be too young to realize the weight of the situation. But here's the thing, do you tell the kid to swing away? Also, it's only a 1-0 ballgame and the game has playoff implications. I would think that in that situation you wouldn't want the guy to go for a home run. It just makes him more likely to strike out. It was an American League game, where a different style is generally played, but I would think that the manager would want to try and simply get a runner on base. But the manager tells the rookie to knock it out of the park (I honestly don't remember the exact phrase). The only reason I would think a manager would do that would be if he actually wanted the guy to get out and for the perfect game to be completed. Of course, the manager and the player are for the team the audience is supposed to be rooting against so it's quite possible that the manager said it because he thought it might be the right thing to tell that particular rookie and we just never got that info.

I saw Clerks II yesterday. It is by far the funniest movie I've seen in the theatre in a long time.

I read that Kevin Smith was surprised that they got a R-rating without making any cuts. I can understand why. It could have easily gotten a NC-17.

With that I warn, you need a certain type of sense of humor to enjoy this movie. It's a love-it-or-hate-it movie. You don't need to have seen Clerks to follow or enjoy Clerks II, but if you're the type that would enjoy Clerks II's humor, you would have already seen Clerks. So, if you haven't seen Clerks yet, rent it before seeing Clerks II, otherwise you could be in for a shock.

To sum it up, if you've seen Kevin Smith's movies and laughed, go see Clerks II. Otherwise, avoid it.

I'm making headway on my list of things I want to do this summer. I had already went to a baseball game at Citizens bank park. Last night, I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They have special events on Friday evenings. It was great. I'll probably end up going again.
Also, this morning, I bought tickets for this. Now granted, it doesn't really take place this summer, but it's close enough for me to knock seeing a concert at the Tweeter center off my list. I'll likely end up going to see a different concert before summer is up anyway.

Had a weird coincidence yesterday. During the afternoon, I pointed out to Bill that the 10th anniversary edition of Road House contains a commentary by Kevin Smith. Then in evening, I happen to put on the 10th anniversary edition of Clerks and in the new introduction, Kevin Smith talks about Road House and actually requests to do a commentary track for the tenth anniversary edition of the movie. I guess someone listened.

Just a few quick links:
- This article rings true for me. I have a habit of letting certain Netflix movies sit around because I wanted to watch them but am never in the right mood to watch them. They are usually serious dramas. This has happened to all three of the recent best picture nominees I've seen: Crash, Brokeback Mountain and Capote. On the other hand, comedies tend to get watch quickly because I'm always in the mood for a comedy. I've actually returned movies I never got around to watching because I've had them out so long.
- As far as I'm concerned, everybody can learn from Hef.
- This is a shame. These are the guys I grew up watching. I tend to follow linemen more than the average fan and linemen seems to be particularly vulnerable to the problem. I joke that my nephew, who is well above average-sized, will play in the NFL some day, but stuff like this have me hoping he goes into another line of work. Of course, alot of the stuff that seem to be the cause of these things (head slaps and steroids to name two) have been banned and there seems to be more concern for long term health than in the past.

I watched the movie Match Point the other night. It's a Woody Allen movie that doesn't have Woody Allen in it. It's also not set in New York like many of his movies. I think by setting the movie in London, he can make most of the main characters English with dark hair which causes the one who isn't, the Scarlett Johansson-played blonde American, to really stand out. At least, that was the case in the beginning of the movie. It also distances her from the rest of the main cast.

The movie started off slow. At one point, I was thinking the movie should be at a point where it's wrapping up and then I look at the dvd player's timer and realize that it was less than an hour into its two-hour-plus running time. I spent some of the beginning of the movie trying to figure out which movies I had seen the two male leads in. Turns out I had seen Jonathan Rhys Meyers in this and Matthew Goode in this.

Anyway, there are twists in the plot and one character starts to go a little bit nuts, which was realistic considering her situation, but overall, this movie is one to watch if it's on cable and nothing else is on.

On another note, this evening I've watched the latest episode of Psych and the pilot episode of Numb3rs. It's interesting how many stars of old tv shows are on theses shows. Psych has Dulé Hill and Corbin Bernsen, who are veterans of the long running shows The West Wing and L.A. Law respectively. And Maggie Lawson was looking to turn into the new Leah Remini who was the female George Clooney in the sense that they all seemed to always be in a new tv show that never succeed. Of course, the latter two found tv success. Maggie looks to have found success with Psych, only her character is far from non-expendable. I like her character, but if she was taken off the show, nobody would notice.

Now Numb3rs is made up entirely of tv veterans with the tv shows Northern Exposure, Taxi, Dear John, Dark Angel, Sports Night, Sliders, Ally McBeal, and Boston Public all represented. Also, David Krumholtz has had his share of tv experience on unsuccessful shows and they added Rescue Me, Roswell, Drew Carey show, and Loveline experience in the second season.

Getting back to Psych, there's just been two episodes so far. For those that don't know, the plot is the guy is a slacker who was raised by his father to be a detective. He has a Sherlock Holmes level of observation. He uses this skill to fake being a psychic and solve cases for the police department. During the second episode, it seems at least some of the cops are not stupid and are aware that he's faking. On one hand, it would seem to weaken the premise of the show. On the other hand, it strengthens the show because they're not stretching to show off the premise. Overall, so far, it's a great show.

The game show I was in the audience for the taping of back in april finally started airing yesterday. It's a tournament format, and I saw eight out of the sixteen first round matches. I figured that matches would be edited into half-hour shows. I didn't expect them to put two matches together and air them as one-hour shows. The two matches that aired yesterday were not ones I saw taped. It's interesting to see not only how it's edited down, but also the on-screen graphics they put in. Also, since I was sitting behind the place where the host sits, I never really saw what the host looks like. He might have been on the stage before the whole thing started, but at that point it was almost like sensory overload. So watching the show, I recognized the voice, but didn't recognize the face of the host.

I just realize that the Steelers' Willie Parker wears the same number as the former Pirate star Dave Parker. I wonder if that's a coincidence. Considering Willie was a undrafted free agent, he probably wouldn't choose his own number. Also, the guy who gives out uniform numbers probably was around when Dave played in Pittsburgh, so it's possible that it's not a coincidence.

I went back over the weekend to read some of the first posts I wrote on this blog a little over three years ago. It's weird. I don't remember writing most of it. It was like I was reading someone else's writing. Also, some of what I did remember were comments which, unfortunately, were lost when the comment program I had been using went from free to pay without warning or a chance to archive the comments.

Okay, this week was interesting. A three day week since I didn't work Monday or Tuesday. I did work on Friday through Sunday of last weekend, though.

Last night (Friday) I went to the Pirates-Phillies game with a friend who is a Phillies fan. We had seats high up in Citizens Bank park. We ended up standing the whole game near the bottom of the stairs to go up to our sections. There was a table thing we could lean on and we had a bird's eye view of home plate. The Pirates won, thankfully, so I didn't have to hear about it afterwards.

Tonight (Saturday), I went to the Pirates-Phillies game with a friend from college who lives in NYC. He's more a Yankees fan than a Phillies fan so I didn't have to put up with too much crap when the Pirates lost. Our seats were second row from the field. Same level as the field in left field just before where the ballgirl sits. So if you watched the game on tv, there was a decent chance that you could have seen me. There was only one or two balls hit over by us so we didn't get as much potential camera time as we could have.



This afternoon, before the Pirates game, I took my car to a charity car wash. Afterwards, I took a picture of the mustang with a couple of the volunteers who had helped to wash it.

What can I say? It was for charity. Anything for a good cause.

Okay, here are my thoughts on the first four episodes of season three of Entourage. I won't call this a review cause it's not really a review. Just thoughts.
Season Three, Episode 1:
- Mercedes Ruehl is great as Vince's mom.
- Appearance of mom means no "woman of the week" for Vince.
- The two girls that Turtle and Drama want to take at the end might have been attractive, but were in no way "best in show".
- If you do the math, the two tickets Turtle and Drama which were to be used on the two girls ended up being used for the moms. Since Turtle probably used his for his mom and Drama's mom presumably went on a ticket Vince held, that means the ticket Drama wanted to use on the girl ended up being used by E's mom.
- Sloane, whom E is still dating, only makes a minor appearance.
- No Mandy Moore. Not entirely unrealistic since it could be explained that she's out of town doing another film. With the actor playing the title character of the movie able to make the premiere, along with the director and the main bad guy actor whom are both big names, I'd say it wouldn't be too important to have the love interest at the premiere.
- I love that they're giving more depth to the relationship between Ari and Ari's wife.
Episode 2:
- Still no "woman of the week" for Vince.
- No sloane appearance.
- The whole samurai statue thing with Lloyd was great. They need to keep giving him small scenes for him to steal, although I'm not sure if it would work if they ever try to build a full episode around him.
- I wished they showed more of the Aquaman movie. The scene they showed looked great. Definitely big-screen worthy, and possibly James Cameron worthy.
- Two kids on a Vespa following a car in gridlock traffic. The car does a u-turn and the people inside don't notice the vespa?
- At a high-school party that is for the graduating high school class would have plenty of "legal" girls. You have to figure that most kids turn 18 either during their senior year or during the summer after.
- I found it a great little detail that when the host of the party shouted for everyone get in the pool that the first one in was Drama.
- When Vince is on the roof, I honestly was wondering whether or not he would jump into the pool. This was his Almost Famous moment and in the movie the guy jumped. That made me think Vince would jump. On the other hand, unlike in the movie, that wasn't an easy jump. The house wasn't exactly up against the pool. That made me think that he couldn't jump.
- Still more great scenes between Ari and Mrs. Ari. Are we ever going to learn her name?
Episode 3:
- Has Vince given up his one night stand ways? The closest thing he's had to a hookup this season is when he talked about meeting the jewelry store clerk in the first episode.
- Still no more sloane.
- I, like probably most people, didn't like the Dom character, but you got to think that when someone who grew up in a poor, or even middle class, neighborhood becomes rich, especially rich and famous, there will be people that hadn't made contact in decades popping up.
- E mentioned how Dom shows up as soon as Vince's movie opens to be a major hit. Techinically, if it took Dom 4 days on a bus to get there, plus time to get permission to travel from his parole offer, then Dom was coming out even if the movie bombed.
- You'd think they'd time the press event opening the Aquaman ride to be the weekend before the movie so that coverage of the opening would help with the opening. Having the press event happen during the opening weekend doesn't really help as much.
- More Ari family stuff. Still love the scenes with Mrs. Ari. The plotline about keeping the kid away from his daughter has potential to become cliched'.
Episode 4:
- Dom is gone. Good to see him go, but the resolution of his storyline was kinda quick. One episode he's there and one he's gone. Three or four would have been the best, if you ask me.
- Still no "woman of the week" for vince and no Sloane for E.
- I'd like to make a suggestion. For vince, brink back Justine Chapin. Unlike most of Vince's previous girlfriends, their relationship was never brought to resolution. Also, I like the actress from not just this show, but also this show and this movie.
- More great Ari/Mrs. Ari's scene, especially how she repeated his phrase "cuntmuscle".
- Did anyone else notice that, except for skin color, Dom actually looks like Shrek?

Well, these last five days have not been as productive as I had hoped. I didn't get up and move any of the days before noon. I'm going to have to change the way I set my alarm clocks to make sure I don't fall back asleep.

Anyway, I saw Superman Returns on monday afternoon. I knew going in that it was over two and a half hours long. So I decided to get there right before the trailers ended. I figured, it was a weekday afternoon, it wouldn't be too crowded. I forgot that it was essentially a holiday since alot of people either got or took monday off to make a long weekend. I also forgot the kid factor. I ended up with a seat in the third row, a little closer than I usually want. I also got stuck near two kids who talked alot during the film, but not as bad as it could have been. The father seemed good at getting the kids to be quiet again.

Also, since I knew the movie was going to be long, I didn't hit the concession stand beforehand, which turned out to be a smart move. Not only did I not have to hit the restroom, it saved me money. One last note on the film's length, it didn't seem long. I never got the feeling that "wow, this film is still going?". On the other hand, it just didn't seem like any more action happened than in a normal length movie.

The movie was very good, but I wouldn't call it great. It's funny that although the action takes place after superman has been away for five years, but both superman and Lois Lane look younger than any version of the character except those from Smallville. It's like they are five years younger, not older, than in Superman II. Other than that, Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth did a good job. The only acting job I didn't care for was, unfortunately, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. It wasn't that he acted bad, but more the acting decision. Spacey's Lex is grumpy, dour, and spiteful. There's no sense of humor to him. Lex, and other classic supervillians, are best when they seem to enjoy taking over or destroying the world and it's also fun to watch them try. Frankly, I started pitying Lex because you hate to see anybody be that miserable.

In the hype to this movie, I read various angles to the Superman story, most notably "Superman is gay" and "Superman is Jesus". The former I didn't see at all. Yeah, Clark Kent has a hidden identity that involves wearing tight brightly-colored clothes, but that's about as far as that goes. Heck, you could even make the claim that everybody has split-personality, one way they act when they're with some people (say people from work) and another when they're with others (say friends). The "Superman is Jesus" angle is something I could definitely see in this film. You have Marlon Brando doing the voice of Superman's father. At one point he talks about how the people of earth are basically good and also talks about sending his only sun. Plus, except for one case where you could see his face in crystal, his voice was pretty much voiceover, which gave it even more of a God quality.

Speaking of Brando, it simply seemed wrong to have his name and Kal Penn's name adjacent in the credits. Nothing against Kal, but Brando is known for The Godfather, A Streetcar named Desire, and On the Waterfront. Kal is known for Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

Also, I was surprised about one plot point which can be seen coming well before it is confirmed onscreen. The surprise to me was that I hadn't heard about it before I went to see it. Actually, one review I read made a reference to it. But I found it to be the type of big plot twist that columnists and reviewers like to talk about, or atleast hint about, and in all the columns I read, it wasn't even mentioned. Of course, maybe the people writing the columns about Superman hadn't seen the movie

Okay, my rating for my movie is that it's worth paying full price to see in the theatre, but not worth it to pay to see it more than once in the theatre.

I was hoping to also write up comments on the first four episodes of the third season of Entourage, but I'll have to save that for my next post.

This was supposed to be a five-day weekend for me, but I worked half a day on friday to make up for half a day I took off the previous friday. I also worked half a day yesterday and today. I get more work done when no one is around. I was planning on working full days, but I ended up sleeping in. I got my work done anyway.

I've been planning on going to see Superman Returns but haven't gotten a chance yet. I was heading out today, but decided to call my mom first and ended up talking longer than expected. I didn't want to rush into the theatre and end up with a front row seat. Alot of movies, I tend to get there at the end of the trailers, but for popular movies, you end up getting lousy seats and for this one I didn't want that. I might go see it tomorrow.

Besides seeing a movie, my other plans, or possible plans, are to head into Philly one of the days. I saw a news item on tv that said this year had the most tourists come into Philly for the 4th of July since the bicentennial. My other plan is a complete (or pretty complete) cleaning of my apartment. Right now, the only planned visitors are Bill and Terri next month and the guys from my monthly poker games (pretty much the only people I'd want to see my place is its current shape), but I have a feeling my parents might try a last-minute trip out. And, me being so close to a big concert venue, I might have friends stopping by before one of the concerts.

Speaking of trips, I found this on the ESPN website. All the baseball road trips sound cool, but this one in particular because I already have tickets to two games at one of the parks (Citizens bank park), will almost definitely attend at least one game at another (Campbell's field), and hope to attend a game at a third (PNC Park). It's a shame they couldn't have added a game at Falconi Field to see the Wild Things but I guess you'd want to end the trip at a ballpark like PNC Park. Besides, Falconi Field isn't exact a scenic place.

When I saw the baseball road trip page, it also struck me because the two images at the top of the page are the only two places I've seen a baseball game the last couple of years.

Bydaway, I saw the movie Elizabethtown. It wasn't Cameron Crowe's best work, but it wasn't too bad. It definitely wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. And the ending really made me want to go on a road trip.