Memo to Rudy Giulliani

F*** off.

- signed, RSN

Memo to Gregg Easterbrook

We get it, you hate the Patriots and think Coltliness is next to godliness or something. Now shut up and post more cheerleader photos.

Signed,
NFL fans.

I Was Worried...

Until:

(img via BDD)

After Beckett was nails in game 5, I was still considered, because no way Carmona could suck twice in a row, right? I of course failed to contend with the positive Mojo of one Jonathan David Drew:

Of course, if you say "Come on J.D., one Fnking TIME!" often enough, it will be ONETIME sometime. This time just happened to be the right time. Good times.

But that just got us to Game Seven. Three years ago, the thought process was "it would be just like them to get us to 7 and then..." But, with clearer eyes, I noticed something: Indians fans felt like they were cursed. I didn't consider it "in the bag" especially after we scored 3 instead of 13 in innings 1-3. But being a part of the second most negative fan base in a given game is far more pleasant.

So, on to Colorado, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't ridiculously confident. Don't get me wrong, the Rockies have a nice team, and I'll watch the replays of Tulowitski turning that 360 doubleplay as long as they want to keep showing it. But this is a team that has played over it's head, and now has had a couple of days to come back to earth. I think it's unavoidable that we're just bigger, badder and meaner. The closest parallel is last spring's Golden State Warriors. Inspired run to get past Dallas, but Utah just beat the crap out of them, and despite Baron Davis's Beard doing this (any excuse, imo) Utah was just too much.

And much like that series, I think Sox in 5.

By Request

Sasquatch Blogging

Yes that is a hideous piece of "art" he is vamping in front of. Yes my father is squandering my inheritance on such things.

Josh ******* Beckett

Not to go all Tom Friedman, but JB says "Suck on this, Cleveland."

You want to bring in my (smoking-hot, FWIW) ex to sing the anthem? Glad she got free tickets. You want to have Kenny Lofton try to get in my head? Watch me tell Kenny, in the words of Billy Batts, "now, go get your f*****g shinebox!"

You want to trot out McCarver and the increasingly pompous and moronic Joe Buck? Actually, at this point, I'm ready to surrender. Or call in reinforcements:

And final thoughts, for Game Six, please to be showing me more of this

and far less of this

Thanks in advance, Tito.

The Kingdom

I'm somewhat conflicted as to how I feel about this one. On one hand it's a very competent action film. Michael Mann, as producer, always delivers. Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, film and series) knows what he's doing.

There's some pretty good performances and only one notably "off" one. (Jeremy Piven, with a pretty terrible hairpiece, must be said, playing Ari Gold as diplomat. He wouldn't have been more distracting had he been wearing groucho glasses and smoking an exploding cigar.) Jamie Foxx doesn't do much aside from act badass. But that's pretty much what the roll requires. Jennifer Garner is nice to look at as always. That said, it seems slightly odd, in fact unrealistic, that she would be allowed to be included in the team, given the, ah, cultural issues involved with a female (wearing a tank top no less!) doing police work in Saudi Arabia. Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper gleefully take turns stealing scenes. The real find is Israeli-Arab actor Ashraf Barhom, who takes what would be the "Wise, dark-skinned guide" role and turns it into a Saudi version of the straight-man in a buddy-cop movie (think Murtaugh, to Foxx's Riggs).

The performances, however, aren't the issue. The problem is the subject matter. First of all, is realistic terrorism (as opposed to the cartoon version found in say "True Lies") a proper backdrop for what is essentially a popcorn movie? I'm all for realism, and "Black Hawk Down" and "United 93" are fine films touching on similar subjects. However, those two movies are based on actual events - the director didn't make up a horrific attack. This is another reason why a movie like "The Siege" is much more jarring today than it was when released.

The second problem is message. It's simply impossible to make a film on this topic without expressing some viewpoint. And given that the motivating force is the desire of Foxx to get some FBI "boots on the ground" and kick ass, jingoism was entirely possible. But Berg makes a fairly odd choice which intends to subvert this "hu-rah" attitude, and instead is just confusing. Yglesias:

This was, despite being terrible in certain predictable ways (like how all of a sudden an FBI evidence response team is able to conduct awesome commando operations in unfamiliar terrain against a numerically superior force) also definitely had its artfully-done-thriller qualities. But politically . . . wtf was happening? For the vast majority of the movie, it seemed as if at last conservatives had gotten the right-wing war on terror movie they've been craving -- the one where awesome go-getter, ass-kicking agents of American hard power need to take down some terrorists and, even worse, pansy bureaucrats and state department types.

Then at the end it takes an ideological swerve so sharp only a professional driver on a closed course would dare attempt it all the way into the domain of outright moral equivalence. Baffling.

.

Pooh's view: Well done but unsettling thriller. 3.5/5.

Note: At the old place I think it stopped being fun blogging, because I got to wound up about politics, which is a subject which aggravates me for many reasons. I hope that the sum total of my 'political' discussion on this one will be limited to things like reviews of obviously politically tinged films and/or my own personal political activities. In general, I'll outsource my thoughts on matters to political to the professionals such as Yglesias and Klein. Unbeknownst to them of course

Hyachachachachacha

Amazing how that one little thing just comes up a bites you in the arse. The whole second half of the season, all of RSN has been living in holy terror of being forced to pitch Eric Gagne in a big spot...and den?

And den, as the fembots in DWMC? would say, "And den no more and then!" (Except there were still six more runs of and den, including Franklin Guttieriez's "look, I really am a major league hitter" A-rod special.) Just like that, all the optimism has been sucked out of the room, so when Kenny Lofton (who I'm fairly certain has more years than pounds on his body) jacks one and Jake Westbrook dominates, we say "of f*&#^*G course they did."

Let me just say that if we don't get off to a lead tomorrow, I will not be loving life.

Manny Being Manny

In honor of game one tomorrow:

Back In the Saddle?

Instead of re-starting the old place, decided to start from scratch to see if I can avoid some of the mistakes I made last time. I going to try to avoid 'heavy' content this time around, because I don't necessarily have anything to add that other people haven't said better. So we're going to be sticking to the fun stuff like Sports, Movies, and TeeVee as much as possible.