While the Bucs won their Monday Night football game against the Giants, there were signs that there are still problems--problems that Keyshawn has nothing to do with. The offense was sloppy, the defense was sloppy, and their only salvation was that the Giants were even sloppier. Furthermore, there was at least one boneheaded coaching decision by John Gruden. With 2:19 left in the game, the Bucs were leading by 4 points and had 4th and 1 inside the 20. They could have let the clock run down to the two minute warning and then talked about whether to go for it or to kick a field goal. If they had let it run down to the two minute warning, even if they had failed to convert, the Giants would have gotten the ball back inside the 20 and would have had to go 80+ yards to win the game, with only one timeout. Instead, Gruden calls a timeout, the Bucs go out and run twinkle-toes Pittman who, predictably, gets stuffed and the Giants get the ball back with the chance to run a play before they get a free timeout at the warning. Fortunately for the Bucs, the Giants were even more inept and were not able to do anything with the gift that they were handed by the Buccaneer coaching staff.
The reason I called Michael Pittman "twinkle-toes" is because when he runs, he looks like he's dancing up the field, and not in a good way like Lynn Swann who actually took ballet, but in a sissy wussy I'm-so-easy-to-hit kind of way. Not only that, he also has an inexplicable nack for running into the only defender within 20 feet and getting tackled. If there is a tackler, he's going to find him. Thomas Jones is a better pounding running back, but Gruden likes Pittman and his biceps and puts him in whether the situation warrants it or not. That's what happened on the 4th and 1 play--Gruden put in Pittman who got nowhere, but he should have put in Jones, who is the type of back who could have pounded his way through.
As for the Keyshawn Johnson situation, I think that he's getting a bad wrap in the media. A lot of media people don't like Keyshawn, which doesn't make sense to me because they love Warren Sapp who has a bigger ego, a bigger mouth, is a jerk to the fans, and a jerk to much of the local media. Keyshawn does have a big mouth, but he hasn't said anything during is tenure in Tampa Bay that didn't prove to be accurate. Keyshawn wasn't happy this year, but he still played hard in the games--he did everything they asked him to do, but the only time he got the ball was when Brad Johnson decided to throw to him--he just wasn't part of Gruden's game plan, and he didn't fit into Gruden's system. Gruden made it clear from the time that he came to the Bucs that he didn't really like Keyshawn. However, despite all of that, I don't think that Keyshawn's attitude was the real reason that he's out of there. I think that he's the scape-goat for their losses and that they deactivated him to send a message to some of the other egos on the team. Sapp hasn't been speaking publically about any unhappiness, but it's well known that he didn't want Dungy to be fired, and it's questionable whether he will be back next season due to salary-cap issues. He's been dogging it on the field to some extent, and I wouldn't be suprised if at least part of the reason that they took such drastic steps with Keyshawn was to say to Sapp and some of the other players that they better behave or they're gone too.
Another factor is that there appears to be a power play going on within Buccaneer management, between GM Rich McKay and Gruden, in particular. Gruden is a big ego himself, and I think that it eats him up that although he won a Super Bowl, he did it with what was essentially Tony Dungy's team, and I think it particularly bugged him when Dungy got a standing ovation when he returned with the Colts on MNF. In any case, he wants more control over the personel decisions than he's getting, and there isn't room for both him and McKay. I wouldn't be surprised if Gruden ends up as coach and GM next year. It was Gruden who wanted Keyshawn out, and it was Gruden who pushed that decision. McKay and the Glazers ended up going along with it, at least according to Keyshawn, who I tend to believe, since he's made statements before which were denied by the Bucs organization only to be proven accurate later.
Keyshawn has gotten a bad rap, and what the Bucs did to him is a shame. Under Gruden, they didn't give him the ball, and they especially didn't give it to him within the 20, even though he did everything they wanted him to on the field. He's one of the few high paid wide recievers who is willing to make blocks and get hammered so that other players can get open. You don't see Terrell Owens blocking, you don't see Randy Moss blocking, you don't see Jerry Rice blocking. He had at least some cause for complaint because they bring him in, pay him mega-bucks, and then won't let him do what they're paying him to do. His stock in the league has fallen because people now think that all he can do is what the Bucs were having him do, when that's not the case. Sports writers are dissing his abilities, based on his numbers for the last two years--the two years that Gruden was in charge and Keyshawn was unhappy because Gruden wasn't making him part of the game plan. The fact that his numbers are average instead of great should be proof that what Keyshawn is complaining about is true.
There is an AP story on various suggestions that the public has e-mailed to NASA about ways to make the Space Shuttle safer. One of those suggestions was shrink-wrapping the fuel tank so that chunks of foam won't come off. Maybe other people have thought of that as well, but that was my dad's suggestion that he e-mailed to NASA. I don't know whether shrink-wrap would work, but it would probably be something worth testing.
If you have an idea for a way to make the shuttle safer, e-mail rtfsuggestions@nasa.gov (wonder what the "rtf" stands for. hmm...).
A while back, I was looking through Seventeen Magazine when I was somewhere, and came across an article about picking a college. The article suggested checking out MIT, not because of their academic excellence in mathematics and the sciences, but because the male/female ratio created a better chance at getting a date and finding a boyfriend! (all those poor nerds starved for female companionship and all).
What that has to do with me is that I'm looking into going to graduate school in the fall. Because I'm wanting to get my degree in computer science, I'm looking at schools that have a more technical bent--in other words, schools that tend to have a lot more males than females. When people ask what schools I'm looking at, more than one person has brought up the "ooh, there's going to be a lot more men than women there (hint, hint)," comments with the implication being that if I go to that school, I can find me a man. To me, that seems like such a shallow way to pick something as important as the place where you will be shelling out thousands of dollars to get an education. I'm going to pick a school based on the academic quality and the professional connections that I can get from going there, and not on the number of guys I can try to pick up in the process. Taking the male/female ratio into account like that seems all too Seventeen Magazine for my liking.
Ok, I'm done with my rant. Nothing left to see here... move on...
Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column has found a permant home over on NFL.com. Today's column can be found here.
Today's column has such choice bits as mocking the Dolphins orange shirt white pants combo as being like the nasty old creamsicle Bucs uniforms, plenty of haiku, and of course the Obscure College Score of the Week.
It's good to have TMQ back.
I've had more hits today than I've ever had, and all of them came from people searching for info about alleged Lee Harvey Oswald mistress Judyth Vary Baker. If that's why you're here, welcome, and look around to see if there's anything else of interest.
I knew that JFK assasination conspiracy theories abound, but I didn't realize what a big deal it was until I blogged about it the other day.
When the Bucs vs. Giants Monday Night Football game is over, I've got some things to blog about the whole Keyshawn Johnson situation. Unlike andy's opinion, I'm pretty ticked at what happened, for reasons that I'll mention in more detail later. For now, back to the game.
So, tonight I watched this thing on the history channel about a woman, Judyth Vary Baker who claims to have been Lee Harvey Oswald's lover and who has this nice neat story that ties the whole cast of conspiracy theorists favorite character together. I only watched it because my mom had read an article in the paper about the show and realized that she had gone to highschool with said woman, Judyth Vary Baker. My mom never actually knew her, just who she was, so she's unable to comment on Baker's character.
Either the woman is telling the truth, or else she's really really looney. I think that she believes her story to be true, but there is so much that doesn't add up. For one, she claims to have been involved in cancer research to try to kill Castro, but this despite having only finished one year of college, and having won some science fair prize in highschool for doing some kind of research about cancer.
One version of her story can be found here (scroll down to find it).
Here is a very long article debunking her claims.
I tend to lean toward her being at least somewhat a looney publicity seeker. She also has a site advertising her "new breed" of dog, the American Cream Dog, which isn't a new breed at all, and the pet guy in my paper has on several occasions written about this woman who keeps writing him insisting that she's created a new "American Cream" breed when it's really just a mutt. The pet guy has been warning people not to be snookered into paying big bucks for the dogs. Putting two and two together, that woman must be Baker. She also has a website for an organization that calls itself "The American Genome Society," which claims to be "A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION SITUATED IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA," (despite a mailing address in Louisiana) and which is soliciting donations of $25 and $100. I'm going to investigate that organization more fully, because I don't know of any legitimate organization that would solicit funds and have an angelfire.com web page. A cursory search of Florida businesses did not show any such corporation, though I need to look further to see if there is a different site for non-profits. I did find a for-profit "Living History Corporation" that was disolved in 1991, which is listed under what appears to be her home address at that time.
There are a lot of things that seem fishy about Baker. What does anybody else think?
Update 11-1-04: I am closing comments on this entry because I'm sick of it all, and sick of half a dozen different people claiming to be the "real" Judyth Vary Baker posting, and I'm tired of my blog being a site for people to argue about crackpot conspiracy theories.
There is something wrong when the biggest story on TV is not that there were two car bombs killing 27 people in Turkey, or that there were riots in Miami in association with the free-trade meetings, but instead is an all Michael, all the time media circus. There are all sorts of stories tha have international implications, but the media, apparently because that's what the public wants, has all their resources surrounding first an airport and then a jail all in hopes of getting a few grainy shots of the gloved one.
Turning down offers from major international soccer clubs, 14 yr. old Freddy Adusigned a deal with the American Major League Soccer team D.C. United, in a deal that will reportedly make him the highest paid player in the league. Apparently, he will be the youngest professional athlete in more than a century.
Now, the only question is whether he will end up as the superstar that will turn Americans on to soccer, or whether he'll end up a spectacular burnout. The ESPN story said that his family turned down a deal to play for an Italian team when he was 11, because they wanted him to have a childhood. Playing professionally at 14 doesn't seem like much of a childhood either, but I guess when you are as good as he is, there isn't really any other direction to go to get the challenge to improve.
What I do want to know is why the people who have fits about highschoolers going to the NBA aren't having a fit about Adu playing professionally. Sure, MLS isn't nearly the profile of the NBA, but putting a 14 year old, even one who will have finished highschool, into the world of professional sports can't be that different than Lebron going into the NBA. Actually, Adu has the potential to be even bigger than Lebron, because even though soccer isn't that big here, it's the biggest sport everywhere else on the planet. To have teams like Manchester United interested in you is even bigger than Kobe going to the Lakers, and my guess is that as soon as Adu is old enough to sign with a European club, he will.
According to reports on ESPN.com, the Bucs deactivated Keyshawn Johnson for season. There will be a news conference held by the Bucs at 4:00.
I wonder what happened. It's been known that Keyshawn and Gruden aren't exactly best of friends (and according to the ESPN story, Keyshawn threatened to retire rather than play in Tampa in 2004), but to can him at this point in the season, something dramatic had to have happened. Maybe he had the mother of all tirades after the loss to Green Bay.
The other day, my mom went to a "Homemade Gourmet" party (think Tupperware party, but selling food mixes instead). Besides the obvious misnomer--it's neither homemade or gourmet, it's just extremely expensive mixes and seasonings, I got to thinking about how it's not really food that they're selling, it's a lifestyle. People are too busy (lazy?) to make their own food, but feel guilty that they are serving their family fast food or frozen dinners, or else they have no clue how to cook anything, and feel bad about it. As a result, they're is apparently a big market for products that let people feel like they are providing good homecooked meals for their families, without having to put up the time or effort required to actually produce a real homemade dinner. Products like Homemade Gourmet's line of mixes aren't about selling food--you can buy mixes at any grocery store for a lot less, but mixes don't claim to be homemade, with all the positive connotations that come along with that. If you buy their products, you can feel good about yourself and that you are providing your family with wholesome food, conjuring up images of the 1950s and June Cleaver and mom's apple pie and all that good stuff.
The popularity of Martha Stewart (well, before it turned out that she was a money grubbing hack just like everyone else), is also about selling a lifestyle. She got rich selling the idea of perfection in decorating, gardening, cooking, and all around good taste. Of course no one could actually do all the things that she did on her shows and in her magazine since none of us have a huge staff to do everything for us or a farmhouse/mansion in New England. Most importantly, the average person doesn't have the mega bucks that Martha has. That's not important though, because all she had to do was to sell people on the idea of living a lifestyle like hers. Is there any surprise that she named her magazine "Martha Stewart Living"? Since the average person cannot actually do all the things that Martha does, they're ripe for the picking when merchandise is introduced with her name on it. When people buy Martha Stewart products at KMart, they aren't really buying sheets or towels or bathroom accessories, they're buying the idea that they can be part of Martha's world.
To further add to the selling a lifestyle and not a product theme, the other day I went to a large craft store to look for some art supplies. A lot of the things that they sell there are designed so that even those with no artistic talent can look artsy craftsy. If you not only have no artistic talent but also have no creativity, there are tons of books, conveniently located right next to the product, that have tons of pictures so that you can just copy what other folks have thought up.
We live in a society where people want the appearance of authenticity but are unwilling to put in the effort to get it for themselves. You can come home and eat dinner at a table set with perfectly coordinated Martha Stewart(TM) dishware, tablecloth and placemats, eating your Homemade Gourmet(TM) meal with your children who were raised following Growing Kids God's Way(TM), and after dinner, clear off the table and work on your cute craft project using stencils and plans purchased at the craft store, and then go to bed between your perfectly matched Martha Stewart(TM) sheets, proud of yourself for all the wonderful things you did, when in reality you didn't do anything other than rely on what someone else did for you. Our culture is being manufactured for us and fed to us by people who tell us that if we do things their way, it will be like it was in that (non-existant) idyllic past. There is a backlash against mass consumerism, but it's running to an alternative mass consumerism masquerading as a something totally different. The lifestyle that they are trying to sell to us is just as inauthentic and manufactured as anything else.
Judging from the search result data, I've had quite a few hits on my blog from people looking for pirated copies of Matrix Revolutions. If that's why you're here, shame on you. Go pay the seven bucks for a ticket and go see it at a theater. Or, if you're too cheap for that, then wait till it makes it to a cheap theater or till it comes out on video or DVD.
...that Budweiser beer is watery nasty crap. I was at Busch Gardens today, and after riding the inverted coaster twice in a row and the other big coaster four times back to back, that was enough, so my dad and I decided to go to the beer school while my brother and his friend watched the 3-d movie. I'd already thought that Bud was nasty, but the samples of Bud, Bud Lite, Low Carb Michelob, and whatever that dark Michelob is called, convinced me that there is nothing good in the Anheuiser-Busch beer department (a small sip of each was a small sip too much). Low carb Michelob is particularly nasty. What was good though was the sample of the new rasberry flavored Bacardi Silver.
In case anybody's wondering, the above title is a reference to Josiah's comment about the art crowd in Atlanta.
The greater Sarasota Bradenton area in Florida, which is where I live, has about the same population as the greater Chattanooga area, but we have, among other things, a respected art school, and not one, but two film festivals. Tonight, I went to see one of the movies that was showing at the Cine-World Film Festival. The movie I saw was Crimson Gold(Talaye Sorgh, in Farsi). I'd never seen any Iranian movies before, so this was an interesting experience. The story is about this average guy, trying to make ends meet, and all he wants to do is marry his fiance, but he can't even afford wedding jewelry. Through following him for several days, we get a glimpse of what it's like to live in what is basically a police state--we see him deliver pizza to one apartment building, but not be allowed in or to leave, because the police are waiting for people at a party to leave the building and then arresting them. From what I've read, it's not uncommon for the religious police to come in and enforce strict religious law, assuming that young people at parties are up to no good. The film was shown at Cannes and was awarded the Prix du Un Certain Regard.
Reading CNN.com, I came across this article about the list that some men's magazine did of the 50 Best Guy Movies Of All Time. They only list the top ten online, but the CNN article mentions some others that made the list. I haven't seen most of the films in the top ten, but I don't think that it has anything to do with me not being a guy, but more because they came out either before I was born or when I was really little, and they always manage to get rented when I'm not around (meaning that no one wants to rent them twice). Well that, and the fact that my brother insists that the first Terminator movie isn't very good and refuses to watch it when it comes on cable.
According to the criteria, "We believe that a true guy movie is a movie only a guy can love. A crucial distinction. Pop one into the DVD player and your wife or girlfriend should run screaming from the room. We frown upon films that are too serious or sensitive." However, by that standard, The Matrix shouldn't be weighing in at #8 on their list, because not only do I know plenty of women who like it, it's also kind of on the serious side. Also, despite all the fighting and stuff in Rocky that movie is waaay to sappy to end up on a list of movies only a guy could love.
If you've been wondering what happened to Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, you can find it, at least temporarily, at FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS
I saw Revolutions opening night, and I think that I've finally sorted out my opinions of the movie enough to write a review.
As usual, no review that I read seems to have gotten anything right--one review even complained about "why do people in the future always have to wear such drab clothes?" Hello, it's a post-apocalyptic dystopia, what exactly do you expect people to wear? The latest from Versace's new fall line?
The following review contains spoilers, so be forewarned
Stylistically, the filmmaking was excellent, and as Holton pointed out it is very much inspired by anime. Because of what I think that they were trying to do visually, I'm not going to complain about the extended mech battle sequence, though I do want to know why exactly it was that they didn't have any protection for the people operating the things. Though, judging from the military decisions that the commanders made, the guess is that they weren't the most comptenent individuals. They could have totally defended Zion if they had hundreds of EMP devices in the dock, which they could have activated one at a time to stop each wave of sentinals. Again, bad strategic military decision. My one complaint about the filmmaking is that it seems to have lost the attention to little details that we saw in the first film. The first film, despite all the special effects, had a kind of elegant sparseness to it, which wasn't there in this movie.
The final battle between Neo and Smith was a beautifully choreographed fight sequence, an epic fight for the ages. There was one shot in that fight that was totally worth the price of admission, just to see that one punch. My brother complained that the fight was too much like the train station fight in the first one, only longer, which is a sentiment that I partly agree with. It did seem to parallel the train station fight, but I think that was an important parallelism, because of the way that it showed how both Neo and Smith had grown in power since the first movie, and it fit in with the theme that everything that has a beginning has an end.
What I didn't like so much was the story in Revolutions. True to the other movies, the brothers mixed religions together, but in a way that was much less satisfying than in the first movie. For one thing, in the first movie, Neo, as the Christ figure, dies and is resurrected, and is then showed ascending into the sky, so one would think that following the whole Neo as Christ thing, you would have the second coming of Neo and have him triumphantly running everything, but instead it ended up with a bunch of Hindu religious themes. Combining this with what we learn in Reloaded, Neo was the seventh avatar of 'The One,' which fits in with Hindu beliefs about their god Vishnu, who appeared as various avatars (some Hindus have said that Jesus was really one of Vishnu's avatars, Krishni, I think). So, in the end, the movie turns out to be a strange mix of Christian crucifixion imagery with Hindu reincarnation. And, we also discover that while love may be a driving force, it's not what separates man from the machine, the ability to chose does. Neo freely chose to give up his life to save everybody (another big-time example of Neo as Christ figure), and that's what separated him from Smith, and the Architect, and the Oracle, and of course the Merovignian who kept talking about how there are no real choices--for a program, there aren't real choices, it's all an intricate construct, but for a human, there is the possiblity of choice. Now, the question is, since all of that happened within the construct of the Matrix, are the Wachowskys saying anything at all about real life, except for the choice separating man from machine part?
Finally, on a lighter note, it would have been a hilarious ending if it ended with Keanu Reeves stepping out of a phone booth (as in the end of the first film), at which point the camera cuts to Bill S. Preston Esquire in San Dimas, California, and we find out that all of this was an alternate future that would have happened if Bill and Ted hadn't time travelled to save the planet once again.
The last few movies I've gone to have had MPAA anti-piracy guilt trip spots running before the movie, which really bugs me that they are treating their paying patrons as pirates who download movies over the internet instead of buying movie tickets. I don't pirate movies off the internet, and don't intend to do so for several reasons. First, if a movie is any good, I'm going to want to see it on a bigger screen than my computer (watched tv and dvds on my computer while I was in college, but that was long enough), especially if it's a big budget action movie that really needs to be seen on a large screen. Second, there's no way of telling until you spend the time to download it whether it's a decent copy or a camera-in-the-theater crappy bootleg copy, and in the time it takes to download, I can go to Blockbuster and rent the DVD (it's a question of opportunity cost).
But, all that aside, the thing that really bugs me is that they are acting like all their lost money from piracy comes from internet downloading, when it really comes from pirated copies in countries like India, and especially China, which don't have strong copyright enforcement. China is a country of over a billion people, most of whom watch movies, but most of those movies are not legitimate copies. The MPAA's problem isn't internet downloads, it's China, but the American movie loving public is the ones that get the brunt of the blame and attack for the poor set painters and stuntmen getting hurt because of piracy. Not that they are actually getting hurt, because as long as movies are being made, they are going to get paid.
Oh yeah, tonight I watched two pirated DVDs that the family I was babysitting for owned. They didn't pirate them off the internet. They got them from China.
I bought my advance tickets for Revolutions today, and I can't wait till Wednesday--it should be pretty cool.
Speaking of the Matrix movies, if someone had said ten years ago that Keanu Reeves would end up as the star of the some of biggest action movies of a generation, how many of us would have laughed our heads off at the idea of Keanu as an action movie star? Just something to think about.
That reminds me, in all the reviews for the movie The Human Stain, which centers around a man who is black but spent his life passing as white, all the reviewers can't get over is that Anthony Hopkins plays that man, and they can't see Hopkins playing a black guy (even one who looks white). I don't see what the big deal is though--after all, Vin Diesel has made a career out of playing white people. (That aside, I think that premise of the movie is an interesting one).
What the heck was Howard Dean thinking when he said that he wants the support of southerners with Confederate flags on their trucks? If a Republican candidate had said such a thing, everybody from Jesse Jackson, to Al Sharpton, to the NAACP to every Democratic politician would be calling for that candidate to drop out of the race. Howard Dean, on the other hand, does get criticism from his fellow candidates, but not the sort of firestorm that it would have generated if a Republican had said it.
The way it appears to me, either Howard Dean is stupid and made a major misstep, or else it was a strategic move because he already knows that black voters aren't going to support him, because they sure as heck aren't going to support a guy who panders to people who they see as racist. Either that, or this is a clear example of how much the Democrats have taken black voters for granted and Dean thinks that he's still going to be able to get black votes even after playing to the confederate flag wavers.