Movie I Should Have Seen Years Ago: Kingpin



For some reason I continue to end up watching Farrelly brothers that I'm almost guaranteed to not like, because they represent everything I don't like about movies. Well, not everything. Just some things. Anyway, as harsh as this starts out, and as much as I thought Kingpin was pretty mediocre it was certainly better than There's Something About Mary for several reasons.

Most importantly, there was no "Ben Stiller character" - Woody Harrelson as clumsy and kind of stupid as he plays, sure beats the hell out of any lack-of-common-sense-puts-his-foot-in-his-mouth-hates-everything-adventerous Ben Stiller character. Honestly, that single-handedly made the movie tolerable. Also, Bill Murray is definitely good as the villain and the really silly gross-out stuff doesn't take as long and isn't as stretched out although it definitely comes up here and there - I required no more sights of Woody's landlord flipping her tongue around, and yes, Randy Quaid's amish background led to plenty of scenes with him doing ridiculous things, but thankfully most of them were over quickly and didn't take the five minutes of the scene in There's Something About Mary where Ben Stiller gets his zipper caught. Also, I have to say, I kept expecting the movie to be really cruel to the Amish, such an easy target, but for the most part, though there of course were jokes, they were largely not particularly harsh - I almost feel like a Farrelly Brothers movie is like a South Park episode if you left the plot but made it sweet and light hearted instead of cutting and self-righteous.

That said, do I still think it was a very good movie? No, not really - I didn't really laugh, and though maybe one day I'll find out, it doesn't seem like it would gain too much on repeat viewings. But it was okay, I suppose. And honestly, considering my feelings about the Farrelly Brothers in general, that's a compliment.

A couple of notes:

I don't get the deal with Chris Elliot's character - he appears twice in the movie (so far as I remember anyway) once as paid by Woody to fake rob his landlord, but then again at the end as a rich gambler at the craps table, yet Woody doesn't recognize him at all. If there is a reason he is in that casino that is not just completely random, I would love to know.

Again, more Farrelly Brothers with their random use of cult artists in soundtracking - Freedy Johnston's minor hit Bad Reputation finds its place, and Johnston himself is listed as the composer of the movie's soundtrack. Jonathan Richman also makes an apperance, as well as (of the less cult variety) John Popper as the Amish singer at the end and Urge Overkill performing the national anthem at the bowling tournament. Also, an excellent use of ELO's Showdown during the match up between Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson at the end.

With the whole recent controversy about the runner with prosthetic legs trying to be allowed to try out for the Olympics, it made me question the legality of using a rubber hand at a bowling tournament - couldn't this easily have given him an unfair advantage - maybe no sweating, easier to be consistent? Or maybe I just don't know enough about bowling or prosthetic hands.

I also always love the use of real-life sportscasters broadcasting fictional events, including here Chris Schenkel and Jon Dennis, who I didn't know, and of course Chris Berman, and the Farrelly Brothers continued use of casting random athletes such as Roger Clemens role as the redneck with whose girl Randy Quaid is dancing.

It's just bad luck as well for Kingpin that The Big Lebowski came out two years later and will always leave Kingpin in the dust as far as bowling movies go.

One of the cornerstones of this blog has been predictions, and what event calls for predictions more than tonight's NBA draft. Sure I'm not an "expert" but I follow sports, so let's give it a shot.

1. Chicago Bulls - Derrick Rose - this is what most people seem to think, and what I think makes the most sense for the Bulls as well - perhaps a slightly less developed player than Beasley, but oh so much potential, and the type of potential franchise-changing point guard the Bulls (or how many other teams) could really use, even more than someone up front like Beasley. Smart call (or so I say now, before he drops out of the league in three years).

2. Miami Heat - Michael Beasley - now I've heard rumors they like Mayo, but there's no way that if they're still in the #2 spot they can not take Beasley - they may investigate a trade, but whoever's trading up will be taking Beasley. There's a lot of young talent in this draft, but there's a general consensus two guys at the top Rose, and Beasley - then it gets all murky.

3. Minnesota Timberwolves - OJ Mayo - he's still the best fit here, and the third most talented player in the draft, even if he didn't end up being the consensus number one that everyone thought he would be a couple of years ago. He's a scorer which the wolves can use to complement Al Jefferson, and really, it would be folly to draft anyone else at the third pick who simply won't be as talented.

4. Seattle Supersonics - Russell Westbrook - okay, now here it gets hard. There's all sorts of choices here for them - Brook Lopez probably the most tempting (and of course if Mayo falls), but Westbrook whose stock rose dramatically as UCLA soared to the Final Four (while his teammate Darren Collison's dropped) and he fits a hole at PG.

5. Memphis Grizzlies - Brook Lopez - Lopez's stock has just been rising, rising, rising over the last couple of weeks, and most of the teams, Grizzlies included would love a big man like Brook with a solid offensive arsenal and the tools to be a good big defender, though may not a great one. Still, big men are at a premium, and what Lopez lacks in pure athleticism, he makes up for in size.

6. New York Knicks - Jerryd Bayless - For weeks, it seemed the Knicks would have no chance at this guy as he would go earlier but as Westbrook and Lopez has risen, Bayless is likely to go sometime in the 6-10 range. From what I've seen/read, he seems like a Gilbert Arenas type of point guard - one whose scoring, not passing is his forte, and while Mike D'antoni would love a Steve Nash-type point guard to install into his system, he needs players to score as well, and I think Bayless is better than Eric Gordon, and more of a safe bet than Danilo Gallinari, both of whom the Knicks may also consider here.

7. LA Clippers - Eric Gordon - the Clippers could also use a scorer and will be elated that Gordon falls to them - I'm not as high on Gordon after watching him in college as many scouts seem to be, but they're the scouts, so what do I know. Anyway, the Clippers would love a scoring guard here and might jump on Bayless or Westbrook if they're avaiable as well. Could Gordon and Bayless swapping.

8. Milwaukee Bucks - Joe Alexander - no one, and I mean, no one's stock has risen like this guy, who was not too far from a nobody before absolutely dominating Duke in the NCAA tournament for West Virginia, and then impressed everyone and their brothers in workouts, as a guy who has a ton of strength to bump around inside on defense and rebounding, while possessing ability to finish at the rim. He goes from hanging around another year to top 10 pick.

9. Charlotte Bobcats - Kevin Love - I don't love him as an NBA player - he seems like a classic college star-turns-into-useful-bench-player-but-not-star, but Charlotte would love him if he drops this far. Another guy who was initially this high, seemed to drop, but whose stock has picked up again, Larry Brown would love this very solid/fundamental type of post up player.

10. New Jersey Nets - Danilo Gallinari - The player I know the least about as an Italian, but from what I hear/read, he's an excellent scorer, has range, and is essentially a huge risk - he could prove himself worthy of a higher pick, or a much lower one - no one has quite figured out how the property translate skills in Europe to skills in the NBA yet.

11. Indiana Pacers - Anthony Randolph - man, if the first 10 were tough, now, it's just a shot in the dark entirely. I could see Indiana taking another big man here - I've seen Robin Lopez and Darrell Arthur tossed around too. I'll guess with the LSU project, another big risk-reward guy.

12. Sacramento Kings - DJ Augustin - I'll have less comments as we go forward, particularly as these are all kind of up in the air - they could use Augustin and hope his true point guard passing abilities make up for his lack of size and general athleticism.

13. Portland Trailblazers - Alexis Ajinca - the one team that has no need for more young players can take a European and wait for them to develop while they watch their young players mature back home. Or, there's a good chance they trade this pick.

14. Golden State Warriors - Kosta Koufus - they could use his size and post skills as a scorer from inside the paint.

15. Phoenix Suns - Brandon Rush

16. Philadelphi 76ers - DeAndre Jordan - classic risk-reward - for much of the past few weeks he was projected to go way higher but didn't impress - still if he develops, watch out, he could be the steal of the draft.

17. Indiana Pacers - Darrell Arthur - let the filling in of Jermaine O'Neal's shoes begin. Though they have so many needs, they could go anywhere.

18. Washington Wizards - Robin Lopez

19. Cleveland Cavaliers - Donte Greene

20. Charlotte Bobcats - Roy Hibbert

21. New Jersey Nets - JJ Hickson

22. Orlando Magic - Marreese Speights

23. Utah Jazz - Alexis Ajinca

24. Seattle Supersonics - Nicolas Batum

25. Houston Rockets - JaVale McGee

26. San Antonio Spurs - Ryan Anderson

27. Portland Trailblazers - Omer Asik

28. Memphis Grizzlies - Chris Douglas-Roberts

29. Detroit Pistons - Jason Thompson

30. Boston Celtics - Courtney Lee

A visit to the dentist the other day got me thinking: general sentiment and pop culture both seem to be unfair towards dentists - a "trip to the dentist" is to painful experiences what "brain surgery" is to activity requiring a high level of knowledge and skill. As someone who fears going to the doctor, and hated the orthodontist with a fiery passion, I've never had bad experiences with dentists. I go in, the technician cleans my teeth with delicious minty toothpaste while I sit in a cushy comfortable chair, and then the actual dentist comes in for about 2 minutes and makes sure there's nothing too far amiss. Even getting my cavity filled wasn't that bad, and the couple of times I've had to get teeth pulled, they've been with the oral surgeon, and not the dentist, so I don't associate those bad memories with the dentist. Another great thing about the dentist is the level of bad news they can give you - it can't be that bad - cavity? root canal is the worst, and it's still not as bad as what most doctors could say.

I wanted to try to help fight the negative image, so I wanted to see what wikipedia could offer to broaden people's horizons about dentists and it was able to help me out with a list of famous dentists, both real and fictional.

The two fictional dentists I've always thought of first were recurring Seinfeld character Tim Whatley (portrayed of course by Malcolm in the Middle dad Bryan Cranston) best known for his conversion for Judaism for the jokes and his regifting to Jerry a label maker which Elaine gave to him (on a sidenote, reading about Whatley on wikipedia, I was stunned and impressed to find out that "Crazy" Joe Davola has his own entry), and Orin Scrivello, the sadistic dentist from Little Shop of Horrors portrayed by Steve Marin in the movie, a role playing up the unfortunate image of the evil dentist.

Though the list was not as long as, say, wikipedia's list of fictional ducks, there were some other good finds. Glen Jacobs, better known as WWE's Kane, initially portrayed Jerry the King Lawler's private dentists Dr. Issac Yankem, DDS. Useless character Bernard from Lost, the only survivor remaining from the tail section, is a card carrying dentist, along Capt. Walter Koskiusko Waldowski, a character from MASH who is in the book and movie but not the TV series, Kyle McLaughlin's character Orson Hodge from Desperate Housewives and Laurence Olivier's villain in Marathon Man.

Several of the real life dentists are interesting too. Thomas Bramwell Welch, the founder of Welch's of grape juice fame was a dentist, as was Miles Davis's dad. German dentist Richard Muller was apparently the protagonist in one of the great German murder scandals of the 1950s, killing his wife by blowing up the car with her in it, and attempting to make it look like an accident. Jack Miller, apparently known as the "racing dentist" was a dentist, who, as his name suggests raced in the Indy Racing League for a couple of years in the late 90s. OK Corral gunfight participant Doc Holliday (and I thought it was just honorary) was a dentist, and career 34-game winning pitcher Steve Arlin, who must have been so confident in the shortness of his MLB career, since he actually started practicing while playing.

The message here is clear - dentists are many and varied, and have contributed to our society in many useful ways, from gun fights, to baseball, to jewish culture, to murder.

Fight the anti-dentite attitude. Save it for orthodontists.

Okay, since this is a big week of football ("soccer"), I have a couple thoughts about following a team in the English Premier League for a couple of years, especially compared to American sports (again, if I say something really dumb about football forgive me, I'm still a relative newbie).

In a lot of ways, the EPL is more like college sports, particularly college football than it is like American professional sports. The most obvious surface way this is true is that the EPL (and European domestic leagues in general) have no playoffs - the regular season winner wins the league - even starker than college football now, which at least has a championship game. The difference which makes EPL more fair than college football even without the playoff is that in EPL, every side plays every other side exactly twice, once home and once away, so the difficulty of schedule problems are far less. Sure, one squad may be lucky and face another one when a key player is injured or suspended, but for the most part it's fairer, and there's nothing really that can be done about that.

Now, the nice thing about the regular season championship being the league championship is that it's simply the fairest way - taking the team who has prevailed over a long season, rather than in the one-match randomness of playoffs. However, as TV ratings in the US always show, fans love playoffs, exactly for that random anything-can-happen do-or-die feeling that playoffs give off, even if it often does lead to the best team not winning. European football makes up for that by having "cups" - trophies that are won entirely independent of play in the regular season by way of giant tournaments amongst clubs. England has two of these, the FA Cup, which has been around for over 130 years, and basically allows any team to enter - any team in a sanctioned league or who has won certain entry competitions - to the tune of 731 entrants for the 2007-08 cup. Teams in the premiership and other higher levels get byes to avoid the first few rounds of the tournament. Despite this openness, a non-higher level team has not won since 1980 (and that was West Ham, who were in the next division down), and aside from this past year when Portsmouth won, a non "Big Four" (to be explained later) team had won it in 13 years. Remarkably though, aside from Portsmouth the other three semi-finalists were from outside the top flight, a rare occurrence. The second cup in England is the League Cup, also known by the name of its ever-changing sponsor (currently Carling, has in recent times been known as Worthington, Coca-Cola, and Rumbelows (which one of those names doesn't seem to belong?)). This cup only involves the 72 clubs in the football league. The advantage of having these cups separate from the regular season is it gives different goals for teams to achieve - despite already falling too far in the league standings, sides can still aim for a cup (more "silverware" as it seems to be known), and they achieve the randomness of playoffs.

The less superficial way in which the EPL is like college football has to do with the structure of the league. English football is absolutely and nearly completely dominated by the "Big Four" of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. Since the EPL started in 1992 (it was formerly simply known as Division One and broke away for television money), it has only been won by four teams (remarkably Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal but not Liverpool - my beloved Blackburn Rovers snuck in 13 years ago for one of the great freak titles of our time). Part of this has to do with the lack of playoffs - the best team will win more often without that randomness. But the reason the same teams are consistently the best has to do more with a vicious cycle of prestige and money. Like in college football, over time, though a team may go into a bad period, the best teams stay the same for the most part, unless there's that great once in a while cosmic shift in which a team either rises a rung or falls one. For example, teams like USC, Notre Dame, Florida, Florida State, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan and Ohio State are all big enough, have the money and the prestige that, first, they'll generally be around the national championship picture, and second, that they can suffer through a time of bad management without falling out of the picture - no one thinks the currently down Notre Dame and Michigan will be down for too long, or certainly lose their status as juggernauts. Thus although a team like West Virginia may be temporarily better than Michigan, Coach Rich Rodriguez chooses to leave because Michigan's simply a bigger program, on the whole, even in spite of its current struggles. Similarly, if Manchester United struggled for a while, Now, good management is important - generally (not always) it's hard no matter how much talent is poured in to win without good management (and Sir Alex Ferguson has provided excellent management for Man U), but bad management just puts a team like this temporarily out, unless they find someone who works.

In say the NBA, or MLB, a team as lowly as the Atlanta Hawks can become good, and there's very little set in place, because the difference in talent is so much less than between college teams, or EPL sides. Sure, there are some premier teams in every league - the Yankees and Red Sox, the Cowboys, the Lakers - but chances are just as well as not that coaches and players from smaller teams that are temporarily successful will look to continue that success on their own team rather than bolt for a bigger spotlight at the more prestigious team. With college programs or EPL, coaches (in both) and players (in European football) outgrow their teams, and want to jump to bigger programs routinely. The difference in money between teams is so much greater than in American professional sports.

First example, my side, Blackburn Rovers, just lost their manager, Mark "Sparky" Hughes, who was a star player for many years for Manchester United, and whose only previous managing experience had been the Welsh national team. Hughes was a young, inexperienced, ambitious manager whose appointment had been a gamble, but once he was a success, which he was, most realistic Rovers fans knew it would only be a matter of time to move on. Many thought he would be a top choice for the Chelsea job that opened up earlier this summer (and ended up going to current Portugal national team manager "Big Phil" Luiz Felipe Scolari), but he ended up signing with Manchester City, a team which finished below us in the table (standings), but is simply, regardless of that a bigger program. Blackburn supporters are worried that after experiencing a few years playing above our heads by having the luck to have picked a young manager on his way up, depending on our next choice in manager, we may be in for a stern dose of realism at the best, and a race to avoid relegation at the least. There is much debate amongst supporters whether we should try to pluck up the next Hughes, an inexperienced manager who could be a huge success or a huge disappointment, and if a success would nearly inevitably leave us in a few years himself (Paul Ince) or a veteran manager who has experience managing successful mid-level squads, and might stay with the team for years, but who doesn't give fans any optimism of playing exciting football, or moving up in the world (Sam Allardyce), certainly a choice many college programs make all the time. The board is due to name Hughes' replacement any day now, and we'll see how it comes down, but this is just one of the many frustrations of rooting for a mid-tier side.

Anyway, I realize I have enough to say about football for another post or two later on, so we'll see, and I'll probably comment when the managing choice does come down.

Goodbye Willie



Though perhaps a more detailed entry will follow, I just wanted to comment on how shittily the Willie Randolph situation was handled. Firing him after the first game on the west coast trip, which the Mets won at 3:15 in the morning eastern time? What a joke. I have never been the biggest fan of Willie Randolph, but to be treated like he has been treated is just an insult to a guy who whether you like him or not, has certain done what he thought was best to help the Mets win.

I know I already said this, but the combination of these three factors is shocking. The front office makes him fly all the way to the west coast with the team (rather than firing him before he goes), then fires him after the Mets WIN (showing there was essentially nothing he could have done by the time he left for California to save his job, making them cruelly just send him out there for a day) and then firing him at 3:15 (numbers are already caps so I'll just add some now) EASTERN TIME A.M. - which is simply not an appropriate time for anything, let alone firing someone. Simply embarrassing for the organization. Oh yeah, I suppose that goes for pitching coach Rick Peterson and First base coach Tom Nieto too. Nothing like changing the first base coach to shake up a team...couldn't just be the players, right?

So I've been following Euro '08 this year in my continuing attempt to prove that Americans can enjoy football, and hopefully, one day truly understand it.

I watched a ton during the World Cup, being home a lot in the afternoon that summer, and started following a Premier League team regularly, the Blackburn Rovers. Anyway, I'll post what lessons I've learned from the EPL later, but for now, here's what I've gotten out of the first week or so of Euro 2008 (hardcore football fans forgive me if I say anything incredibly stupid)

- Dutch football is exciting. I've been pulling for the Dutch all tourney, and all the way dating back to when I can remember watching a little of World Cups past. But man, even if I wasn't then, I would now - they attack, attack, attack - whether it's a scoreless match, or they're up 2-nil. They generate enough scoring chances to make some hockey teams jealous (okay, very bad hockey teams)

- Greek football is boring. One of the storylines coming into this tournament was how would the Greeks do coming in to defend their incredibly unlikely Euro 2004 crown, one of the biggest upsets in the nearly 50 year history of the tourney. In their six games in 2004, the Greeks managed to win it all, despite scoring only 7 goals, and hitting the only shot they took in the final against hometown Portugal to win it. The victory made the Greeks the leading proponent of negative football, which seems to be a catch all for everything most people hate about football, from fans to commentators, slow, plodding, conservative, lack of not only scoring, but opportunities or free flowing ball movement. In what seems to be a reversal, the Greeks went out this year without a point to their name (well, unless until they play their meaningless match against Spain), and exciting "positive" football espousers like Holland, Portugal, and Spain seem to be triumphing so far.

- I love that half the people on the Dutch team seem to be named "Van" something, half the people on the Croatian team seem to have names ending with "Ic", half the sides in the tournament seem to have naturalized Brazilians, and the Germans have a player named Mario Gomez.

- How much different a good keeper makes. I know this sounds self-explanatory, but I always thought watching matches sometimes not a single shot goes on goal that was not either an easy save, or an unsavable ball. However, we've seen both mistakes this tournament - from Greek keeper Antonis Nikopolidis, who made a boneheaded decision to come out of net to get a ball, only to not get it, and see a shot which should been stopped hit right into an empty next, as well as great performances from Italy's Gigi Buffon, saving the day for the Italians against a fierce Romanian side, and the Dutch Edwin Van Der Sar, playing his part in keeping the scores against the Dutch down, while they were attacking the opposing net.

- How valuable it is to have a guy who can finish. Again, this should go without saying. But how many times have fans been kicking themselves watching this tournament, seeing how many through balls, and corner kicks come up to a striker or winger around net, only to see them either kick it way off goal, or lamely knock it on the ground right into the keeper's waiting arms. A striker who makes the most of the opportunities he gets is a priceless commodity in football.

Creating a sport is an extremely difficult enterprise. You need rules that are fair, activities that are challenging, but not so challenging that absolutely no one can do it, while at the same time separating the very best, from the merely-good-enough-to-play. A good sport is both fun and interesting to play, and fun and interesting to watch. Of course, if you really want to see how difficult it is to create one, try it yourself, or watch TV, books and movies attempt it. Fresh from wiki's always amazing list of fictions things ("games" in this case), here are some interesting attempts.

Quidditch:

Okay, one of, if not the most famous fictional sport, from everyone's favorite world of wizards, JK Rowling makes a fatal mistake in the creation of a fictional sport: explaining the rules. Why is this a mistake? Well, mainly because they invariably don't make sense, and make the sport look even stupider than it already sounded. Without giving rules, the game may actually look cool. Now, of course, though I have not verified this, I think I can safely say it's the only fictional sport whose wikipedia page lists a number of ancient sports from which the modern version of Quidditch was developed.

Playability Test: Unless you can fly, plus have one "golden snitch" (a small golden ball the size of a walnut), two "bludgers" 10 inches of spherical iron, and a "quaffle," a 12 inch sphere (quidditch must to my knowledge also be the only wiki page for fictional sports with dimensions for all of its balls), all of which you can bewitch to fly as well, you're not playing this one.

Is it a good sport?: Well, the main problem with Quidditch is similar to the main problem with Family Feud - the end is worth so much, that it renders most of the game meaningless. Whoever captures the golden snitch gets the equivalent to 15 regular goals, which are normally scored one and a time by (please forgive me Harry Potter nuts if I am screwing this up) throwing the quaffle through some sort of hoop. Imagine if whoever scored the last touchdown in a football game got 105 points. That's what it's like.

Blitzball:

Oh, video games have fictional sports often. Anyone who played Final Fantasy X knows the frustrations of being required to play one game of blitzball (and anyone who doesn't is now being introduced to it), essentially a type of underwater water polo. Basically, there are six players on a team, and the goal is through a combination of kicking and hand passing to get the title ball into the opponent's teams goal. To hinder one's opponent, you may tackle, much as you would in football (either kind, I suppose), though these tackles, if executed correctly can poison, cripple, or knock your opponent unconscious (though I guess two of the three can happen on football, also).

Playability: Well, you'd need to be able to breathe underwater. However, with some scuba technology, this game would not be totally infeasible - maybe particularly flexibility suits could be made, since less oxygen would be needed, and pressure is not so much of an issue. So maybe.

Is it a good sport?: Certainly not if you're playing the video game. Could it be? In theory, I suppose, it's kind of like a revved up version of water polo. So, that's cool - it's certainly a real sport, and people play it sometimes, so there's credit to be given for that. However, if you're like me the only thing you know about water polo is the blood in the water match, so I'm not sure it's going to pull the ratings it does in the FFX world.

Blernsball:
Ahh, finally a sport with absolutely no rules. From Futurama, Blernsball, some distant cousin of our 20th (and 19th and 21st) century sport baseball, first appears in the episode "Fear of a Bot Planet" in which Fry first sees the sport, and the rules pretty much make no sense, which I suppose is kind of the point; Bender describes it as a "jazzed up" version of baseball. The Futurama Encyclopedia seems to explain it best, nothing that "Players hit a ball on an elastic tether that is thrown, or "pitched," to the batter. Fielders try to prevent the ball from entering small holes in the field, which score blerns. Basic rules such as the strike zone and outs seem to remain the same as their ancient counterparts. " Interesting

Playability: Hard to say, as the rules are unclear, but I think we need to invest blerns first. I suppose in theory though, we have the technology - we have elastic, and we can create small holes in a field.

Is it a good sport? Well, again, hard to say as the rules are very unclear, but I find it hard to believe it could improve upon baseball. That said, I'm at the least intrigued, so we'll leave this one undefined, waiting upon either the actual invention of blernsball, or another futurama episode containing it.

Pyramid/Triad:

The two sports played in different eras of Battlestar Galactica, I'll focus on Pyramid, the name of the sport in the new version, which is pretty much a jazzed up version of Triad at the old one. There are three triangular walls with baskets kind of put sideways into holes in the walls, and players must throw the pyramid ball into these holes to score. In addition, the newer version " includes triangular fields located symmetrically on the ground, their sides approximately one meter long. These are the 'safe' fields. Whenever a player touches such field with a ball, no attempts to take it away from him can be made." Apparently it is like basketball in that it can be played either 1 on 1 or 3 on 3 (maybe 5 on 5 as well?).

Playability: Totally playable - no reason I couldn't buy some items from Home Depot today and start working on my own pyramid court. Maybe I should.

Is it a good sport? Hard to say - I really need to see it in use. Again, this seems like a situation where a show takes an existing sport, basketball, and tries to change it just enough to be a new sport, though I suppose it's really just as close to any sport with goals, and there's no dribbling. In theory, it could be entertaining, it's just hard to tell if it would pass the tests of fairness, and the right amount of challenge. I'll wait to judge 'til my court is assembled.

I think firefighters are great. They're super brave, daring, courageous, and do something I can't even dream about doing.

Okay, that should immunize me for a couple of paragraphs.

Basically, this commercial for Sprint, just shows a bunch of firefighters turned legislators making legislation seems oh so very easy, just naming things that need to get done (clean water? why not? better roads? let's do that), and then passing them unanimously (of course with the help of their sprint phones).

This is highly impractical. Perhaps it is not clear to the firefighters, but you can't just pass everything you want - there's a question of funding these things. Once you just say you want clean water, it doesn't just make it happen. First, of all you have to decide what "clean" means, in terms of how few of what chemicals are allowed to be in water. Second, you have to figure out the best way to make the water clean - whether by command and control, or by setting up a type of permit system. Third, you need to figure out how to implement the plan - if it's command and control - what technology to use to clean the water, if it's permit based - how to issue permits, and where this is enforced, at sewage plants or at companies that discharge water. Fourth, you need to figure out how to enforce these standards and make sure people aren't cheating them. I know that was long and boring but it was an incredibly long and boring short version of what needs to be done to make a bill effective. Not simply - "sure, clean water." So, sorry firefighters - maybe here, you need a little more experience. And let's give legislators a small hand. Sure, lots of them are corrupt, and irritating, and publicity hounds, but it's not that easy.

Now, for the other commercial in which it shows the firefighters running the DMV a lot smoother, I can't speak.

Perhaps I'll write more later, but I just saw Pan's Labyrinth today, and here are a few words on it. Some may not make sense unless you've seen the movie, and even if you won't love it, it's worth seeing.

First of all, very good movie, one of several movies that cleverly weaves together two ongoing storylines, here, the story of a girl dealing with living with some evil fascists during the tail end of the Spanish Civil War and the same girl dealing with some magical creatures in some magical underworld. Visually beautiful, and a very solid film. Anyway.

CGI is great, and an essential component to today's movies. However, whenever filmmakers can possibly use humans they ought to. Pan's Labyrinth shows this as well as anything else with the fawn and the "pale man", AKA the evil dude with eyes on his hands, portrayed by a guy with prosthetics being far superior than anything that could have been concocted, at this level of technology, with CGI.

Now, about the movie itself. Okay, so the girl overall was a likable character, and she shouldn't be faulted for every mistake she makes; she's just a small girl. But the fawn specifically told her not to eat or drink anything at all! How hard an order is that! She has to be there for fifteen minutes and she's so fucking greedy she has to taste a couple of grapes - she definitely deserves no pity for this.

Spanish fascists are an underused source of villainry. Sure, Nazis get all the credit for fascism, but they surely weren't the only ones. And maybe Spanish fascism didn't have the same sting of complete and total evil that Nazidom had, but they were certainly evil enough to earn a couple of villian roles in film. It's nice to see them vindicated here a bit.

The villain, the captain, particularly, while being certainly fairly evil enough - shooting some civilians without any evidence, and the, kind of big thing, shooting and killing the main character, also deserves some of our respect. First of all, he leads his troops into battle a couple of times - clearly unlike some pathetic villains, he is not afraid of combat; rather he embraces it - that is to be respected. Second, sewing himself up with stitches in the mouth without painkillers - that takes balls. Also, although obviously there's no way to make not killing a 10 year old (or so) evil, she did kind of kidnap his son, which no matter how evil he is, is not cool. One has to really respect as well how well him and his troops wore the pretty sweet Spanish fascist uniform. Sure, the rebels may have been on the right side of things, but their outfits looked like shit compared to the captain's uniform.

It's kind of sad also to think that lack of believing in magic is what seemed to kill the main character's mother. Who knew not believing in something without absolutely no evidence whatsoever had such consequences? Who knew mandrake root was so potent?