John Paxson to economy: RECESSION MY ASS

Apparently John Paxson has completely lost any contact with reality, because, according to Brian Hanley of the Sun Times, Luol Deng is going to sign a deal that will pay him $71,000,000 guaranteed over the course of 6 years.

This comes after Deng rejected their pre-last-seaon offer of $57,500,000 over 5 years, had a completely banal season (in which he shunned a lot of his media responsibilities), and has somehow managed to get MORE MONEY AND YEARS out of it.

Deng was a restricted free agent, meaning the Bulls had the right to match any offer sheet from another team.

This whole thing…just…confuses me. Thank God I have baseball and hockey to distract me.

How to make an Old Fashioned

This is geared to my people out there. You know who you are. Those of you too good for cocktails that involve Red Bull and/or vodka. Those of you who would prefer a $30 bottle of whiskey for the house than $30 worth of bottom shelf Long Islands at the local dive bar. Those of you who don’t want to bury the flavor of a good liquor under sugar water.

This is for you. The Old Fashioned. Balanced. Complex. Classic. Perfect.

Here is where I write a post about nothing on a slight bourbon buzz

Pizza bagels = Good

Amy Adams = ???

Swollen knee = Painful

Dogs = Still fucking annoying me

Caesar/Cesar salad with anchovies = Yummy

Orange juice = Giveds me heartburn

Cary Elwes = GENUINE LOLLERCOASTERS

Freshly shorn scrotal sack = Sticks to legs

Chipped tooth = Sucks

Chipping tooth while eating ribs = Worth it

Heavy Metal in Baghdad

I picked this up at Hollywood Video for two reasons.

1) I thought I remembered Nathan Lee giving it a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes
2) The cover is awesome and features an Iron Maiden-esque font.

I must say, it surprised me. I was expecting something a lot more music oriented, as the documentary centers on Acrassicauda (the only Iraqi heavy metal band), but the immediate focus of the picture is clearly the current state of life Iraq, and to that end, the presenters paint a very vivid picture. From the complicated and roundabout means by which they have to make their way into Iraq and then into Baghdad, to the security detail of 12 armed men in 3 cars to protect the two filmmakers, to the curfews and bombed out buildings, to the insane military and police presence and to the nonchalance of interviewees as guns are being fired in the background, daily life in the capital of Iraq proves to be far more bleak than anyone who relies on Fox News for information would ever believe.

Speaking English on the street can get you shot. Wearing an American band t-shirt on the street can get you shot. Growing your hair long can get you shot. Having a video camera on the street all but guarantees that you will be stopped by the police and asked to erase footage, and, like just about anything else, can get you shot. At one point it is revealed that the bass player and singer of the band are best friends who live approximately 15 minutes away from each other, but had not seen each other in almost 6 months because leaving your house in Iraq always comes with the risk of – you guessed it – getting yourself shot.

The band had to practice in a basement and run their amps on generators. Their first show was during the reign of Saddam Hussein, and they had to write and preform a song praising Saddam and his regime in order to play the show. Had they not done a song praising Saddam, they would have been arrested. Apparently, during the Hussein years, it was not unbelievable that someone would get arrested for headbanging because it too closely resembled Jewish people praying at the Wailing Wall.

In addition to the difficulty of making it from sunrise to sunset alive in Baghdad every day, it is even harder to live your life as a metal head in Baghdad and hardest of all is do play in a metal band in Baghdad. In the groups 5 years, they managed to only play 6 shows. The building that housed their practice spaced was bombed and they lost all of their instruments and their only place to rehearse. In time, all the members of the band eventually flee to Syria as refugees where they reunite to play another show and record a demo, but their troubles did not end there either.

This film is a real eye-opener for those of us who can’t stomach watching the 10 o’clock news, as well as those of us who played in bands and thought it was a struggle to arrange a practice and write songs and book shows. All-in-all, I came away from this film feeling completely ashamed of my country, yet thanking my lucky stars that my family and I live here, which I tend to feel at least once or twice every day.

There Will Be Bore

So I finally got around to renting and watching the critically acclaimed, award winning opus of oilman (well, he likes to think of himself as an oilman) Daniel Plainview. I was excited. I thought the movie looked excellent, and I heard good things from people that I trust. I never got a chance to see it in theaters, so the wifey and I rented it on Blu-Ray and devoted our night to it.

You definitely have to devote a night to it. Maybe a few nights, to be honest. We watched a couple hours or more of it. In the time it took us to watch it, it felt like I could have watched the director’s edition of Das Boot.

Twice.

Simply put, this movi…err…film, spins it’s wheels for about 150 minutes. Nothing…ever…happens. The dialogue is banal and the characters delivering those lines inspire absolutely no emotions from the viewer. It is awful hard for me to find a movie in which there is not a single character that I can cheer for or against. This is one of them. Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day Lewis who won an Oscar for his performance) is an oilman (well, he likes to think of himself as an oilman). At the start, he is just a regular old oilman (well, he likes to think of himself as an oilman), and at the end, he is just a drunk oilman. His son and partner, H.W. Plainview, starts off as a young boy. Then he goes deaf. At the end, he is still deaf. There was really no reason for his character to exist. In all honesty, I don’t know why any of the characters were in this movie, because they all are existing in separate realities. Whatever character intersections there are prove to be moribund and completely uninteresting, and the different sections of the film feel like independent vignettes that, at no point, are leading us to a larger point or climax. There Will Be Blood assfucks you with anticlimax from the first scene on, and it does it quite ineffectively because at no point in it’s runtime do you feel anything but complete and unmitigated apathy for the characters.

The film also won an Oscar for best photography, which is fine, although any schmuck with a working eyeball and a viewfinder could reproduce the stunning visuals in this film, as it is set in gorgeous scenery that appeared to be blessed by unbelievable natural lighting. A film’s photographer cannot control the clouds or the sun. All he can do is capture, and this guy did a fine job of that.

The only bright point of this movie I can think of is the score/soundtrack/whatever. It was really the only thing that stuck out or piqued my interest at all. Had I know the “story” and the picture itself were going to be so completely and utterly disinteresting, I would have just downloaded the score and listened to it through headphones and saved 90 minutes of my life.

For those of you fortunate enough to have not watched this, do yourself a favor and don’t. If you want to watch a contemporary film that actually has something to say and does anticlimax correctly, rent No Country For Old Men.

There Will Be Blood is a turd.

Carlos Marmol wants me dead.

There is no reason for Carlos Marmol to be pitching this way unless he, in fact, wants me to die of ulcers and heart attacks and choking on my own vomit. He just gave up 5 in the top of the 9th to the wretched San Francisco Giants to tie up the game. The Cubs had a 7-0 lead when Rich Harden left the game and the bullpen has given up 7 runs in 2 innings.

Not only is Rich Harden unable to win his first game as a Cub after pitching brilliantly…IT’S THE SAN FRANCISCO FUCKING GIANTS. They have one player who is not either 1) too young to buy his own alcohol or 2) a member of AARP…and that player is Aaron Rowand…when Aaron Rowand is the best player on your team, it generally means your team is really really bad.

If there wasn’t a recent pattern of bullpen suckage, today’s futility would be little more than a footnote. Unfortunately, though, the bullpen has been on a steady slide for at least a few weeks now and if they don’t get their collective head out of their collective ass over the All Star Break, it is going to make the 2nd half of the season a total fucking Pepto-Bismol nightmare for me.

Dirty Work (1998)

Before the likes of Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell and Mike Meyers were busy making low brow movies that weren’t even approaching the general vicinitude of funny, there was Norm MacDonald and Artie Lang…and there was Dirty Work.

Dirty Work is a non-stop ride on the LOLLERCOASTER. The premise: Norm & Artie are friends (who later learn they are brothers) that start a revenge for hire business in order to raise money to get their Dad a heart transplant.

Hilarity ensues.

If you have not seen this movie yet, please, do yourself a favor and rent it or watch it on cable ASAP.

DIRECTOR: Bob Saget (no…seriously)

CAST:
Norm MacDonald
Artie Lang
Don Rickles
Christopher McDonald
Chevy Chase
Chris Farley

CAMEOS:
John Goodman
Adam Sandler
Rebecca Romijn
GARY COLEMAN

QUOTABLES:

“I bet you didn’t count on my loyal army of prostitues.”

“Who put all these dead hookers in the trunks of these cars?!?”

“Note to self – remember to get ass wart cream for giant wart on my ass.”

“Hey fat lady…you ok?”

Cubs make a big trade

This afternoon, Cubs GM Jim Hendry sent Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton, Eric Patterson and a minor league catcher to the Oakland Athletics for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin.

Although no player involved has even so much as put on their new team uniform, this deal looks to be a steal for the Cubs. Harden is a bona fide top of the rotation pitcher and Gaudin should serve well to solidify the back end of the Cubs bullpen, where Bobby Howry and Carlos Marmol have been a tad shaky of late.

Hendry seems to have shored up a couple of the Cubs weaknessess without depleting the roster. Murton and Patterson were both mixed up in logjams and did not appear to be in the Cubs future plans and while Gallagher has been solid and projects to be a good pitcher, their opportunity to win the World Series this year is far more important and to that end, Rich Harden suits the Cubs’ needs far better.

I cannot hold it in much longer. I am pretty fucking excited.

We watched 7 movies this weekend

I will review them briefly, in order of awesomeness.

Live Free of Die Hard (HD movie channel)

Cyber terror. Explosions. Bruce Willis. All the charm and wit of the first first two. Excellent action. Good villain (not as good as Hans Gruber) and good sidekick (not as good as Samuel L Jackson).

Alien vs. Predator (Blu-Ray)

Antarctic archaelogy. Alien. Predator. Team of rich people and scientists discover tomb a billion feet below the ice and want to explore it. The discover their own demise at the hands of Aliens and Predators.

The Simpsons Movie (HD movie channel)

Four-fingered yellow people. Homer. Pig. Springfield gets quarantined in a huge plastic bubble. Homer has to save the day. Funny.

Resident Evil: Extinction (HD movie channel)

Planet overrun by zombies. Guns. Milla Jovovich. I am a sucker for Milla Jovovich scantily clad and weilding guns. This movie is pretty good, although the end is completely retarded.

3:10 to Yuma (Blu-Ray)

Good guys and bad guys. Horses. Whiskey. This remake takes a lot of liberties from the original and it detracts from the story.  Photography is great. Dialogue is pretty weak. Too much Luke Wilson.

No Resrevations (Blu-Ray)

Anal retentive chef meets free spirit chef. Cooking. Eye candy. Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart look attractive and battle in the kitchen before falling in love. Better than I expected. Still not very good, though.

27 Dresses (Blu-Ray)

There is no reason to ever watch this movie either.

LIVE BLOGGING COVERAGE OF MY WIFE WATCHING 27 DRESSES!!!

Gee whiz…I wonder if Katherine Heigl’s sister is going to fall in love Edward Burns (whom Katherine Heigl is also in love with)? Then I wonder if Katherine Heigl’s sister is going to get married to Edward Burns and Katherine Heigl is going to have to be her sister’s Maid of Honor while she gets married to Edward Burns (whom Katherine Heigl is still also in love with) and then in the end Katherine Heigl is going to fall in love with and get married to the schmuck who works at the newspaper who hates weddings?

Hollywood!!!

UPDATE ONE

Edward Burns has asked Katherine Heigl’s sister to marry him. (NOTE: Katherine Heigl is still in love with him)

UPDATE TWO

Katherine Heigl and newspaper schmuck just had sex.

UPDATE THREE

Katherine Heigl sabotaged the wedding between Edward Burns (whom she is still in love with) and her sister. Guess I missed on that one, but I can pretty much gaurantee that Heigl and schmuck are going to end up together.

UPDATE FOUR

I think there is a big kiss scene coming up set to Elton John’s “Benny & the Jets.”

UPDATE FIVE

They get married.

Now you don’t have to watch this movie.