The State of the Union

I apologize for not posting my commentary on the State of the Union earlier, but  I didn’t watch it.   I watched an episode or two of ‘Greek’ instead.

I did watch President Obama’s lunch with the GOP though and that was actually pretty entertaining.  They should just drop the State of the Union from the schedule and do one of those every 6 months.  It’s far more entertaining and I think people would be much more inclined to watch if they held the event regularly.  I think people would enjoy the back and forth much more than the campaign speech that the State of the Union has turned into.

More movies….

Since my last entry I managed to watch a few films so I’ll continue my movie updates AFTER I respond to a reader’s question.
Question: What do you think of Hot Tub Time Machine?

Answer: I love a good 80’s style nonsensical comedy as much as the next guy, but I have to say I’m not all that excited for this one. I was actually watching ‘Dude Where’s My Car’ the other day and I started thinking that it’s been awhile since I saw a good 80’s style comedy.  This one seems to fit the criteria, but the preview lost me when Rob Corddry started talking about all the ways they could make money.

The premise is phenomenal and  I’m okay with stupid, in fact I encourage it, but there is good stupid and bad stupid.  Filling a house with popcorn in ‘Real Genious’  is GOOD STUPID.  Rob Corddry sitting at a bar saying they should invent the iPod, the Prius, or Twitter is BAD STUPID.  There is no way your first idea for making money in 1986 is developing Viagara……If I went back in time I would invent one of those super-soakers, kids love those things and they’re probably really easy to make.

7.  Iron Man – I had seen Iron Man previously, but as a favor to a friend of mine I decided to watch it again.  It’s really held up well over time.  Robert Downey gave a strong performance – he’s funny, charismatic – and he’s working with a fairly good script unlike that disaster Sherlock Holmes.  It has some weak points, like the giant Iron Man that he battles at the end, but overall it’s good.

8.  Paranormal Activity – It was actually pretty good.  I’m usually pretty skeptical about these movies, and I feared it would be another ‘Blair Witch Project’, but it was enjoyable.  The actors were believable, and the story was strong except for one small problem I had with the boyfriend.  I just never understood what made him think he was a ghost hunter or something.  I was with him when he thought it was all funny, but once he knew there were actually scary ghosts in the house why did he keep insisting that he could take care of the problem???

9.  Wind Chill – Great movie!  I always check out the horror section for any new zombie movies and this one caught my glance because it said it was produced by George Clooney (it’s not a zombie movie).  It’s not all that often you come across a horror movie with a name like that attached to it so I figured I should give it a shot.  It was worth it.  I had pretty low expectations, but it’s solid.  It’s more like a ghost movie than a horror movie, so if even if you hate horror films you could easily tolerate this one.

10.  12 Rounds – Awful.  I knew it was going to be awful though so I’m okay with it.  It stars some wrestler and Councilman Thomas ‘Tommy’ Carcetti from ‘The Wire.’  The latter was the reason why I watched it.  The premise is that some guy decides he’s going to go to way too much trouble to make some cop do 12 death-defying stunts because the cop arrested him a year earlier (and killed his girlfriend, but he didn’t kill his girlfriend so I didn’t really follow that point).

Note:  12 Rounds was on HBO – I did not pay to see this movie.

11.  Dude Where’s My Car – It’s stupid, but I like it.

Super Sunday

The Super Bowl was pretty interesting since I picked 50% of the teams participating correctly.  I picked the Chargers or Jets to be the AFC representative and they probably should have been because Peyton Manning is just awful, and I knew sooner or later he would choke the game away.  More importantly Drew Brees was the QB for the Chargers once so it was more like I was 75% correct picking the participants and it was a win/win since Drew Brees is still my favorite player.

The game itself was actually mildly entertaining for once, but sadly the commercials just couldn’t keep up.  They were all pretty terrible.  From what I’ve read today it seems like those commercials with E-Trade with the babies are a pretty big hit, but I’ll never understand that one.  I absolutely loathe those commercials.  I’d rather watch that Spaghetti Jimmy kid than the talking babies.

The only other commercials that really stood out were the GoDaddy ones, but I’m not sure they were very effective.  I would guess the only people that actually cared enough to see more online were probably male children between the ages of 8-12.

Movies…….

I forgot that I was going to try to list all the movies I’ve seen this year……This weekend I was able to view three more.  One I had seen before, and two new ones.  I’m not going to do review or anything interesting like that, this is more for me than for you.  I almost watched “Pregnancy Pact” on Lifetime last night, but I was tired and with any luck it will be on again soon.

4.  Pitch Black – Vin Diesel’s best film.  It’s a pretty good sci-fi film that spawned a pretty bad sequel.  It’s tough to pick a favorite Vin Diesel film since he has so many great ones out there, but this one is probably it for me.

5. Pandorum – I went into this movie thinking it was going to be pretty bad since it was made by the same people that made the ‘Resident Evil’ films, and I was pretty much spot on.  The cast was actually fairly decent, Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, etc.., but it was still below average for a sci-fi film.

6. White Out – It certainly sounded good.  It was about a US Marshall that went to the South Pole to escape her past, and instead of just wasting a couple years frolicking in the snow she ends up stuck in the middle of a huge murder investigation.  It was okay as a rental, but would have been great on Lifetime.

San Diego Supercharged!

Well, not so much today.  The Chargers managed yet again to lose a game they had no business losing.  Although there is plenty of blame to go around I’m going to throw this one squarely on the very not-so-broad shoulders of Nate Kaeding.  Kaeding, my least favorite graduate of the University of Iowa, managed to lose another playoff game for the Chargers.

It’s almost mind blowing how good Kaeding has become at choking.  At a certain point you think you would succeed in doing your job by accident, but not Nate Kaeding, he can screw up virtually any kick, from any distance, in the playoffs.  He’s already cost one coach his job, and is doing his best to force yet another coach into early retirement.  The best part about Kaeding is that he’s the most accurate kicker in the history of the NFL during the regular season.

The other key components in this loss were Norv Turner, the incompetent leader of my Chargers, and Ladainian Tomlinson who is without a doubt the worst starting player at a skill position in the NFL.  Now, it’s not LT’s fault he falls down after virtually any contact, it’s Norv’s fault for consistently calling his number.

Norv proved his worth today by constantly calling ridiculous run plays for LT (which is essentially forfeiting a down), mismanaging the clock consistently (why would you not call a timeout with 2:07 left in the game???), and trying to trick the Jets (the NFL’s best defense) with the most vanilla play calling I’ve seen since Marty Schottenheimer was fired.

There were others who deserved blame for today’s debacle, but most of my wrath is pointed in their collective direction.

I will say my Super Bowl picks for this year are looking pretty good right now though.  I picked the Saints to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, and after initially picking the Chargers to represent the AFC I switched my pick to the Jets after Week 1.  I probably should throw some blame in my direction for jinxing the Chargers, but I won’t.

In other sports related news Mark McGwire decided to come clean about steroids this week by lying and trying to say he barely touched the stuff……he also said he apologized to the Maris family, but also said he didn’t think steroids helped him ONE BIT.  If they didn’t help him one bit why in the world would he apologize to the Maris family?

She’s back…

Sarah Palin is back – well she didn’t really go anywhere with her book tour and all, but she’s going to be beamed back into our living rooms soon thanks to Fox News.  I was really unsure what her next step would be, but I was quite sure it was going to involve Fox News, so this isn’t much of a shock.

I can’t quite decide why she would do this though.  The Christian Science Monitor seems to think it’s all about building the “Palin brand,” but I doubt she’s going to convert anyone that wouldn’t already have been viewing Fox’s regularly scheduled programming.

With this horrible news it officially sealed this week as one of the worst in television history.  First we find out that Jay Leno is returning to late night television and pushing Conan out the door, next I hear that American Idol is losing yet another judge (kidding – this is probably good news since it might get the show off the air sooner), and now this!!!

I have to say I’m pretty excited to once again here Palin speaking so very eloquently on all sorts of topics like her family, and…ummm….Main Street???

Click here to read more.

Wal-Mart throws out perfectly good clothing

Well, it’s probably not good clothing, but it’s certainly clothing.  Apparently instead of donating clothing that nobody wants Wal-Mart takes it upon themselves to destroy it so that nobody else can wear it underneath better clothing to stay warm.  It seems like a lot of trouble for clothing nobody wants anyway, but that’s Wal-Mart for you – they’re always ready to go the extra mile!

Have you ever wondered what happens to clothes that large chain retailers don’t sell? Not boutiques like Oak or stores like Barneys or other designers that can send things to sample sales, but huge stores full of stuff that’s too cheap to resell, like H&M or Wal-Mart. The New York Times reports that both H&M and Wal-Mart throw out unused clothing people don’t buy. But they want to make sure that, after they throw stuff out, people can’t wear or resell the clothes. So they destroy the items by cutting holes in them with machines.

Click here here for the full story.

I’m rather impressed that Wal-Mart was able to cut costs by actually having a machine do the cutting for them.  When I first read the article I was imagining some poor young man or woman sitting around cutting up the clothes all day for minimum wage, and some free clothing, but thankfully the machines can do it for them!

Leno returning to 11:30

I have some good news, and I’ve got some bad news.  I’ll start with the good news:

Jay Leno is no longer going to have his show on at 10:00 (EST) on NBC.  As bad as all the Law & Order spin-offs have been lately, they are still 100 times better than anything Jay Leno brought to the table.  They’re even funnier thanks to the increasingly bad writing the past few years. 

The bad news:

NBC has decided to put Leno back on at 11:30 and will be trying to force Conan O’Brien to move back at least 30 minutes.

Comedian Conan O’Brien is mulling his options, including moving to a rival television network, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday in its online edition, citing people familiar with the matter. A person familiar with O’Brien’s camp said other networks had approached the comedian since reports emerged that NBC may return Jay Leno to his old timeslot of 11:35 p.m., which would displace O’Brien.

For the entire article, click here.

Letterman remains an option at 11:30 once Leno returns to that timeslot, but having Conan bumped up an hour was a nice change.  Obviouslythe best part of the change was merely knowing that Jay Leno was off the air, but it was nice to have Conan on earlier in the night.

I never really understood the appeal of Leno, but I figured there was some hidden population of elderly insomniacs that kept his ratings high.  I guess that group includes the people that head up NBC’s production schedule.  Hopefully there is a decent amount of backlash and Jay just decided to fade into oblivion and retire, but I doubt that happens.

I suppose Conan could move to Fox, but nobody ever seems to last long there so I’m guessing Conan takes the bump back and moves to 12:00.  We’ll see……

The ugliest cars in history

I stumbled across a list of the 10 ugliest cars in the history of the automobile industry and I have to say I’m rather disappointed.  I’ll never quite grasp how some of these cars make the list.  I’ve seen quite a few Top 10’s along these lines and it’s generally the same 10 cars over and over again.  Amazingly I find almost all of them to be great looking cars.

The Pacer, Gremlin, Pinto, Edsel, etc. are all fantastic and belong nowhere near a list of the ten ugliest cars ever – especially once you see Pontiac’s most recent entry.

The Pontiac Aztec is without a doubt the ugliest car in history.  It is so horrendous that they should just stop doing top 10 lists dealing with this subject until something comes along that can rival the Aztec.

I’m always pretty happy when I see a Yugo or a Pacer on the road, but I cringe as soon as I see the Aztec rolling down the street.  Sadly the Aztec was built recently enough where you still see them every once in awhile – it’s a painful experience and they should have recalled them for defective design.

If you want to see Business Week’s Top 10 (with pictures), click here.

Doing Heroin for Dummies

The DEA is a tad disappointed that New York state is funding a guide on how to properly inject heroin.

A New York City-funded guidebook for heroin users offers information on how to prepare drugs carefully and care for veins to avoid infection.

However, the state’s top official with the Drug Enforcement Administration said the “Take Charge Take Care” guide was disturbing.

DEA special agent-in-charge John Gilbride said the handout was a “step-by-step instruction on how to inject a poison.”

For the entire article click here.

I am all for people with an addiction like heroin doing so in a healthy manner, but I’m not sure that anyone doing heroin is going to be consulting a guide.  I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like heroin is a drug you start doing after conducting a lot of individual research into how to safely inject yourself.  I could be wrong though…..

I will say that in my opinion the best place to put this money would be into a manual for meth users.  Those people are constantly blowing themselves up and a manual that could clearly explain how to safely cook your meth would be a great idea.