Atmosphere of Winning

There's really nothing I can say about Hubie Brown's sudden retirement that hasn't already been said in the Commercial Appeal. And I'm not surprised at the outcome of the last two Grizzlies games. Lionel Hollins was clearly out-coached by Don Nelson in the second half of the Dallas game, which is why Hollins looks to be quickly replaced as head coach by Mike Fratello. If there's a better candidate out there, I can't imagine who it is, and that includes Phil Jackson. Fratello assisted Brown for years in Atlanta and had equivocal success. He was knocked out of the playoffs with the Cavaliers repeatedly by Michael Jordan's Bulls, understandable defeats. What sucks is that there's going to be a long adjustment period after the new coach takes over, and the extra losses are going to be hard to deal with when the playoff race starts.

I guess we've just become used to winning in Memphis. For two years we endured losing seasons easily, enjoying Pau Gasol's development, J-Will's flashes of brilliance, and The Stro Show. Now we've tasted fifty wins and domination over conference rivals like the Rockets, Warriors, and Blazers, so struggling to beat the Mavericks at home leaves people looking for answers. Clearly, injuries are playing a part. As Hubie pointed out in yesterday's press conference, last year we had no major injuries to deal with until the end of March. This year, Gasol, Posey, Swift, and Cardinal have all missed a significant amount of court time due to injuries, and it's not even December.

Personally, I've taken a step back and thought about how bad this team was when it came to Memphis in 2001. I've seen every televised Grizzlies game since, including the numerous losses, so I can endure more. It's about basketball, people. Winning is the goal, but enjoy the game.

Cripple Fight!

I was watching the Pacers at Pistons game tonight on ESPN when The Fight broke out. And even though I was impatiently awaiting the start of the Memphis at Sacramento game, I was riveted. And ESPN immediately cashed in by continually showing slow-motion replays of guys getting punched in the face and hit in the head with exploding beer bottles, which is what we all wanted to see. There's never been a more ferocious fight at a pro basketball game. The only ironic thing was watching professional broadcasters get their panties all wadded up about it, despite the fact that there have been fights at international soccer matches that put this little melee to shame.

Anyway. I finally saw Elf on DVD last night. The movie was pretty good, Will Ferrell's slapstick genious saving it from obscurity. At times it was so cutesy I felt faintly nauseous, but the double-disc home edition has enough special features, including alternate/deleted scenes with optional director commentary, that I was too distracted to throw it away and put in Bad Santa, the sort of Christmas movie you'd actually enjoy watching with your grandparents.

Substandard Movie Reviews

This week I saw three newish movies for the first time; School of Rock, The Italian Job, and The Day After Tomorrow. My recommendations for watching them would go in that order. School of Rock if you want to see a good film, The Italian Job if you're bored and want to be entertained for a couple of hours, and The Day After Tomorrow if you're absolutely desperate for something to do. Ian Holm gets third billing during the opening credits of this one, which is a little pathetic, since he spends only slightly more time on screen than I do.

I suppose the good news is that the third Harry Potter movie will be out on DVD next Tuesday. I still haven't seen this one, but I'll be buying it anyway. That, and the extended edition of the third Lord of the Rings film, shortly after it comes out next month. I just like dork movies, what can I say.

I don't feel the same way about video games, however. I watched some of TechTV's coverage of the Halo 2 release, and I feel way less geeky than I did before. Honestly, is it really worth standing around for 36 hours and missing work just to play a game 12 hours before a bunch of people you'll never meet will? "Microsoft's inconceivably expensive ad campaign told me this was the game of the millenium, so I'm going to play it almost a whole day before anyone else!" Hey, that's great, dude. Let me know how you feel about this in three years, and whether you could have saved yourself a ton of hassle and waited a few days to buy it.

Clean Slate

There's just something refreshing about getting back to business after you've fdisk'ed and formated a hard drive. I tried to get a clean Win98SE install on this system, but after six hours and a dozen error messages, I gave up and ran the system restore CD after another format. Now OS and ISP and all my software are working in harmony again, aside from those random DUN freezes. I installed newer versions of Firefox, Ad-Aware, and ZDoom. Now I'm just fighting the problems you get with 64MB of RAM.

I actually managed to re-play the first few episodes of Half Life and Blue Shift at a slightly higher resolution than 400x300 and with Direct3D turned on. As much as I love Half Life's two add-on episodes, I'm pissed that the first, Blue Shift, is so much shorter than Opposing Force, the follow-up, also by Gearbox. Blue Shift is much better. OpFor's more detailed architecture more than halved my Blue Shift FPS. Couple that with new enemies (which I did enjoy) that can hit you twice as quickly, and you have some frustrating gameplay. Still, it's fun whomping a useless private in the face with a monkey wrench so you can take his M-60.

Oh yeah, the Griz beat the hell out of the Lakers tonight. It's satisfying watching your team beat someone senseless the night after being robbed of a divisional road win in a fixed game.

You Deserve It

Remeber when people would walk outside because they wanted to get some "fresh air?" Well, forget about that. Even if you don't live in a major city, which something like 80% of us do, there's just no fresh air to be breathed. It's unfortunate, as several recent studies have shown that polluted air is doubling and trebling respiratory diseases worldwide, some of them fatal. But President Bush has re-declared his resolve to ignore any new initiatives to hold corporations accountable for the amount of carbon dioxide their plants pump out, in addition to his "whatever you want to spew out, go for it, as long as you've got a lobby" platform. CO2 is the most devastating contributer to global warming, a theory no longer realistically deniable. Bush's other policies are allowing industrial plants to fling enough toxic aerobic particles into our skies to turn us all into zombie media whores who'll gladly watch Ashlee Simpson riverdance her way into our collective subconscious. I suppose having three-fourths of the world's published scientists set against you is no obstacle as long as almighty god is telling you to ignore those thoroughly researched reports and bow low in subservience to your political contributers. After all, Gee Dub has been making national policy decisions based on political priorites for three years, so why stop just because you've been reelected? He could always run for Senate. And there are the political futures of his siblings and offspring to worry about.

Athens

Yes, Athens, Georgia, will soon become the focal point of the world, as the R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)" will soon be the most popular song in the history of Earth. Not only does it appear that George "I Rule You" Bush has been, to the horror of all right-thinking people, reelected, but we seem to be, as of 1:15AM Central, in for a recount and god knows what else in the state of Ohio. John Edwards is telling us this, as I type. But then, as big a pain in the ass as this is, I couldn't care less. I've said it before, and I'll type it now, if the Democratic party nominated a bowl of oatmeal, I'd fucking vote for it, if it stood a chance of unseating Bush from the Master of the Universe throne that Skeletor and God loaned him.

After dropping the proverbial ballot into the proverbial ballot-box this morning, I thought I could sit back tonight and watch this proverbial democracy correct its horrible mistake from four years ago. Of course, I quickly realized I was wrong, so I started slamming through the proverbial 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best Ice and watching Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2. As masterful as Vol. 2 is at completing the story, I can't help but agree with every professional critic I've read. Vol. 1 is the movie I'd rather own. Sure, the story isn't complete until you've seen the second film, and sure the dialog in Vol. 2 is spot-on perfect. But something like 200 people get creatively slaughtered in Vol. 1, and that's what I'd rather watch in slow-motion, zoomed in 2X.

Oh, and by the way, all you brainless, conservative, god-fearing citizens who think Dubya will protect you from all the bogeymen in the world? All I can say is, check your facts. Everything you accept as gospel that Bush's administration has told you, look into it. Look deep. You've been lied to, again and again and again. And as of now, there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it for years and years, short of an impeachment. Fortunately for you, we'll probably suffer another devastating terrorist attack long before it comes to that. God bless America.