1 - For the first time in a while I've got new music to digest.
AFI - Crash Love
Paramore - Brand New Eyes
Breaking Benjamin - Dear Agony
Three Days Grace - Life Starts Now
Early returns make me think they're all winners. I'll say more once I get through my 4th and 5th listens.
2 - I shouldn't have even come to work today. I've been totally useless to SP. My accomplishments have been:
• Got the guest list in order for tonight
• Debated the Milwaukee Bucks at RealGM.com for a good two hours
• Picked up the latest AFI and TDG.
• Figured out what food I'd be providing later
• wrote most of this blog
3 - OGT's.
At what point do you sort of start to feel guilty about who you're dating? In high school it'd happen if you were a senior dating the super hot freshman or sophomore. In college it was calling your layup at bar-time and getting her out of your place before your boys woke up the next morning. Is there an equivalent now when you become a young professional?
3b - If this goes bad what'll hurt most is probably the notion that I'll have to get my coffee somewhere else in the morning.
3c - I should have thought this through long ago.
4 - Crash Love is the surprise of the year. Like I keep looking at the iPod to make sure I'm actually listening to AFI. It's remarkable.
5 - My mom is funny. Year in and year out she straight dominates an NFL pick 'em pool myself, her and about 120 other family and friends are in. She might win $600 over the course of a year.
So when I got a phone call at 9:30 last night I knew it was gonna be her. I had just nailed 14/15 games on the day, only losing my lowest pick. I was in 4th place on the week and depending on tonight's game I could either be 2nd or 4th on the week.
If the Vikes win I'm in the money.
If the Pack wins I'm happy as shit for the week and likely longer.
6 - Another question was posed this weekend. What do you think is better: a great TV show or a great movie.
I didn't even think it was a question. Great TV easily.
Look, I love Casablanca. But if it's Bogie for 90 minutes or President Josiah Bartlett for 100 hours, I'm going with The West Wing.
I loved Se7en, but give me four seasons of Battlestar Galactica.
Here is what someone else had to say on the subject:
Anyway, both have their own strengths. I would personally prefer comedy, and since I think it is generally more effectively designed for a TV format, I would say I prefer TV--I definitely spend a lot more time watching shows than movies simply because there is a lot more entertainment out there. And in the last decade general movie quality has been relatively weak, while TV quality has been outstanding. TV is kicking the crap out of film right now.
I think the general rule with lots of things--but with TV in particular--is that over time, things go to greater extremes. There isn't as much on now that's just kind of "meh". Like things like Friends, or That 70's Show where you're like "this isn't terrible, but ultimately...meh". Most things now are either total dogs**t, or really damn good. And if you avoid the dogs**t, you'll see what's so great about a lot of TV now. It's diverse (not stupid diverse--I mean real diversity--formats, styles, approaches), it's smart, and it's more boundless than ever. We are in a golden age of television. So as an over all question, it's debatable. Right now, I think it's definitely TV.
Good call. I love my TV dramas. Not CSI or ER or Law & Order. I'm talking long arches, the ones that take years to wrap up. The ones with twists out of left field, characters being killed off, stories that make you think and trigger emotion. The best movies can do that, but not all. The best dramas can invoke those thoughts dozens of times over the course their runs.
7 - Speaking of good drama, last night before I fell asleep I watched what is one of the greatest episodes of TV in the last ten years.
It's the second to last episode of season 4 of The West Wing. It's called Commencement.
Let me set the scene:
- The President's daughter just graduated from Georgetown and she's set to tour Europe with her lame French boyfriend for the summer
- They're celebrating at a DC night club before they fly away
- The President, the NSA and the Joint Chiefs had a middle-eastern diplomat killed a year earlier because he had ties to a terrorist cell
- A reporter has figured it out and is now questioning the Press Secretary. Not wanting to call it, "That time we killed the brown dude", they refer to it as the "Mudross Research Project".
- Everything else isn't exactly important for the sake of the following video (though it is fucking awesome when Mary Louise Parker asks, "Donna, are you in love with Josh"...all the more reason to watch the show!)
How it was done is something I don't know if I'll ever see on TV again. Everything about it was perfect. The soundtrack, the camera work, the dialogue, the shifting between characters...it was all awesome. When you see the reaction and then the closing credits, no joke, you'll get chills.
I cut it up and dropped it on youtube:
8 - 12:18 am...
This one hurts. It isn't the loss. It isn't because I thought this one could have necessarily been ours. It's not even because we stopped AD cold. It's because Favre won it and he didn't even have to work for it.
I would have to watch the game again, but it appeared as if the Packers were able to stop Peterson with their front seven, sometimes six. Give the line and the linebackers credit, they stayed true to their gaps and didn't make many mistakes tackling.
But my god...the defensive playcalling on obvious passing downs. How, in the name of everything holy, can you only rush three against a guy that's been in the league for nearly two decades. Give this guy time to throw and of course he's going to pick you apart.
Yes, the DBs had some mental errors. But any defense is gonna give up big passing plays when the QB has time to bake a cake in the pocket. Favre never once in looked uncomfortable. It was rare that he was forced to give up the ball early. For fuck's sake, if he's picking you apart when you're dropping eight, could it really hurt to rush five or six? Whatever happened to the exotic schemes we saw against Cutler? What we saw tonight was the Bob Sanders defense all over again, and it just leaves me feeling disgusted.
Second, not all the sacks were on the offensive line. That unit on the left side obviously didn't play well, but Rodgers has got to learn to GET RID OF THE FUCKING BALL. The safety is entirely on him. So were at least three of the other sacks. Against line like that, he's got to have that clock in his head ticking. 1, 2, 3, get rid of the ball or fucking run with it. Again, without watching it a second time I don't know how much the play calling had to do with this. But if Rodgers doesn't have an easy checkdown on every throw, namely to the TE, something is seriously wrong.
The Packers offense is obviously at its best when Rodgers can take a couple steps and deliver a quick strike. Make him roll out, maybe. But if he's gotta take a 5 or 7 step drop he's gonna get killed. The line can't block that long and Rodgers holds the ball too often.
This game could have been different. Lee drops a TD that turns out to be a death sentence. Rodgers throws a terrible INT deep in their territory. The fumble.
This is a game that I think looks worse than it really was and it was for the eye popping plays. The sacks, the big strikes by Favre. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that the Packers ran the ball when they attempted it. Rodgers had a good completion percentage and yards per attempt. They stopped AD cold.
Despite the defensive scheme and the sacks, this game was still relatively close.
9 - Good turnout here, though.
I'm surprised we didn't get complaints from the neighbors but it was a good time.
Getting the food and making it was a pain in the ass. Only now is it dawning on me that I paid $91 for food and drinks tonight. There are a lot of leftovers but unless I want to live at the gym this week I'm not sure how much I want to indulge on cream cheese, Mayo, beef, sour cream and Velveeta.
9b - I liked the compliments on got on my place. Everyone that came through mentioned how great it looked. Glad to know the hard work didn't go unnoticed.
9c - Neither did the food. "Fucking amazing" was the term I most often heard.
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