Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder (***)

Ben Stiller can be very funny, but more often than not recently he's been forced into a lot of asinine crap like Along Came Polly and Night at the Museum (see the Family Guy joke: "So, by this point in the movie we know that Ben Stiller's character doesn't like spicy food. Well, guess what's for dinner!!" "NO. WAY."). As such, Tropic Thunder, a movie that Stiller directed and co-wrote himself, is pretty refreshing to see. It's a tremendously funny movie that has a ton of star power in it, yet doesn't feel derivative and "Hollywooded-up" like the aforementioned movies Stiller has been in as of late.

The movie introduces us to its four main characters through fake commercials and trailers before the movie proper begins. We're first reminded that rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino's new beverage,"Booty Sweat," is available at the concession stand in the lobby. We then see the preview for Tugg Speedman's (Ben Siller) new movie "Scorched VI," the latest installment of Speedman's action movie franchise in which he has to continuously prevent the apocalypse, which, nearest we can tell, he does by standing stoically on the edge of a canyon holding an assault rifle. "Scorched VI," we learn, will be completely different than the other five "Scorched" movies, because this time Speedman has to prevent the world from going into a deep freeze instead of being destroyed in a hellish inferno. Next, we see the latest vehicle for Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), called "The Fatties," in which Portnoy plays every role. It consists mostly of fart jokes and is eerily similar, and no doubt intentionally so, to the very much real Nutty Professor movies. Lastly, we're introduced to the Australian-born Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), who is heavily into method acting and who tends to gravitate more towards art-house, Oscar-bait roles, as we see from his role in "Satan's Alley," which is basically Brokeback Mountain except in an abbey.

This segues into "main" part of Tropic Thunder begins, where we see that all of the above actors have been cast in a movie-within-a-movie of the same name. It's a big-budget Vietnam war film, with all the explosions, random wanton violence, and action movie cliches of a movie like Rambo, in spite of the fact that its supposed to be adapted from a (purportedly) true story written as a book by an actual Vietnam veteran. They're joined by Kevin Sandusky, a dorky looking kid who looks like Joker from Full Metal Jacket when he's in costume and talks mostly about stuff like the merits of Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD when not in character. We learn that the movie is already behind schedule a week into filming, at that there are questions as to how well the movie's young, upstart director, Damian Cockburn, can keep the massive undertaking under control. After a massive pyrotechnics scene goes awry, Damian seems at the end of his rope, which is when Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the veteran who's on the set to see how his story is being brought to the big screen, suggests that he take the actors out in the wilderness to really "get 'em in the shit!" Damian then concocts a plan to film the movie in an avant-garde style by actually having the actors trek through the Vietnamese jungle, while they're filmed on hidden cameras mounted amongst the trees. For reasons that I won't spoil, the plan goes horribly awry very early on, leaving the actors to debate whether or not they're still being filmed and trying out figure out where the hell they're going.

The entire movie is pretty funny, but Robert Downey Jr. completely stands out head and shoulders above everybody else. His character, despite being Australian, is cast as an African-American Sargent, and he undergoes a controversial "pigmentation procedure" to better recreate his likeness. This doesn't sit well with Alpa Chino, who points out that, "They gave the only good role for a black man in this movie to Crocodile Dundee!" Kirk Lazarus tries to plead his case with him, but mostly makes things worse as he refuses to break character (not before doing the DVD commentary, he says) the entire time and constantly talks like an overexaggerated Ving Raymes. Robert Downey is nearly unrecognizable in whatever make up they put him in to look black (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it wasn't actually a pigmintation procedure in real life), and holds nothing back in creating a character that's completely over the top in the best way.

Ben Stiller's character is funny as well. I think he channels a little bit of Zoolander as he moves haplessly through the jungle, at one point making a disguise out of a panda skin. Jack Black's character spends most of the movie going through withdrawl after he loses his stash of heroin early on in the filming. He has a couple of very funny scenes as he attempts, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep himself from freaking out, although his character's not quite as consistently hilarious as Robert Downey's. Back in Hollywood, there's a subplot with Matthew McConaughey as Tugg Speedman's agent, which isn't quite as funny, until he shows up in the big climax, and I think detracts from the main plot in the jungle more than complements it. There is another very funny appearance by a well known actor which I won't spoil, because for once the commercials actually did a good job of keeping it under wraps. I'll just say that its probably the next funniest thing behind Robert Downey Jr's performance. As I've described, some bits work more than others, but as a whole its a very enjoyable movie.

---

I remember there being a big controversy when the movie came out regarding its use of the word "retard." Having seen it now, I can tell you what I pretty much suspected to begin with, in that the controversy is mostly complete nonsense. There's a bunch of references in the movie to a character Tugg Speedman played earlier in his career called "Simple Jack," which was meant to be a character that would be endearing to audiences in the way Forrest Gump was, but which failed miserably. Kirk Lazarus's theory is that Speedman's problem was that he went "full retard," point out, for example, that Rain Man wasn't "full retard" but just autistic. There's a whole conversation where they speak about playing "retards" in cruel terms like this, but that's the whole point really. All they really care about is whether or not depicting these characters will get them critical acclaim. They don't actually care about shedding light on the hardships of actually being mentally challenged or anything of the sort. That the two are so nakedly insensitive is the whole reason why the scene is funny. If I may say so, this was a retarded controversy.

Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace (***)



Two years ago, I saw Casino Royale and loved it, as did most critics. After the Pierce Brosnan films descended into a downward spiral of silliness-- culminating in stuff like Bond outrunning a laser from space across an ice shelf in his Aston Martin in Die Another Day--the stark, gritty realism of Casino Royale was a welcome breath of fresh air. Furthermore, Daniel Craig seemed to bring a new depth to the character that hadn't existed in a long time. I was therefore somewhat surprised to see the very mixed reaction to Quantum of Solace, despite the movie once again starring Craig and, by all appearances in the trailers, having much the same tone and style as its immediate predecessor. Having now seen the movie, I'll agree that the movie probably represents a half-step backwards from what Casino Royale, and that there's room for some negativity towards it, though not quite the level of negativity coming from some critics.

Quantum's most jarring change from the standard Bond formula is that its a direct continuation of the story from Casino Royale. Other Bonds have had recurring villains, like Blofeld, and his criminal organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E., but even still, they're essentially self-contained stories. Conversely, anyone who hasn't seen Casino wouldn't really have the full picture of what's going on in Quantum. After Casino ended with Bond tracking down the mysterious "Mr. White," the man Vesper contacted when she betrayed Bond and MI-6, Quantum opens with Bond racing his way to meet with M (as played by Judi Dench for... I guess this is the sixth time?), with Mr. White in his trunk. Bond is still pissed off that Vesper was killed, he still has a problem with killing people that really need to be questioned first, he's still seen as the rogue agent of MI-6, and the plot still finds Bond trying to infiltrate the same organization, though we discover its now much now much larger in scale and it has a name, Quantum, hence the title. That so many of the themes from the last installment are continued here is perhaps the movie's biggest downfall, even though they're themes that worked well in Casino Royale. It feels a little bit stuck in the mud, not willing to push this latest iteration of Bond much further than what the last movie showed us. The movie does give us a new villain from elsewhere within Quantum with a devious plan of his own to try and spark some new interest and give the movie at least some sense of being self-contained, but the villain is only mildly interesting and mostly forgettable.

The aforementioned villain is Dominic Green, the CEO of an energy company looking to install a new, business-friendly regime in Bolivia. The Americans in the CIA get the gist of what's going on, but don't care to intervene, except for Bond movie staple Felix Lighter, whose crisis of conscience about the whole thing gives him a role to play in the movie. The whole scheme leads to some decent pot-shots at U.S. foreign policy and big corporations who claim to be big on the environment but are actually pretty ruthless in destroying it. The villain himself, however, is rather uninteresting. He has the same sort of smartest-guy-in-the-room, "hey everybody, look at how ingenious of a business man I am" thing going on that Le Chiffre did in Casino Royale, but doesn't have much of a personality, and is only mildly threatening, really. He certainly doesn't have any interaction with Bond or with any other character long enough for him to have any truly endearing moments on the level of say, an Auric Goldfinger ("Do you expect me to talk?" "Oh no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!").

The action sequences are great, but there's not really enough going on in between them at times. Casino Royale was described by many as sort of the "Jason Bourne-ification" of Bond. I think this one has even more in common with the Bourne movies, but isn't quite as well executed. Part of what kept Casino Royale so interesting was Bond's very humanizing relationship with Vesper. In Quantum, Bond's lust for revenge and detached nature after Vesper's death was already reflected somewhat in Bond's conversation with M at the end of Casino, and wasn't really enough to play out over an entire second movie. In Quantum, the biggest female role is that of a woman whose family was killed when she was a little girl by the dude who's about to be reinstalled as President of Bolivia and is basically out to get even. The filmmakers try and create a whole juxtaposition between her and Bond as they both try and cope with a painful loss and a desire for vengeance, but it ends up feeling pretty shallow and buddy-cop-ish.

The continued move away from the cheesiness and cliches of the most forgettable of the Bond movies is much appreciated, but I want these movies to start incorporating at least some of the classic Bond wit, which right now we're only treated to brief moments of. This movie, while enjoyable to watch, felt far too nihilistic for a Bond movie. I'm not saying I want to see Q following Bond around at every moment in a goofy-ass fake beard dispensing exploding staplers or something, but I think the movie needs to gravitate a bit more back towards Bond as being the embodiment of cool, instead of a tortured soul.

The iconic gun barrel, "oh crap, Bond just shot me in the face," opening that once upon a time began each movie--but appeared only in a somewhat revised form in Casino Royale after its grainy black-and-white opening--appears at the end of Quantum of Solace. It's possible that this is sort of the symbol of the "prequel" story formed by Casino and Quantum coming to an end, and that the next movie will be more of a traditional Bond movie. In other words, that it signifies that this Bond has made the complete transformation into what we all know as 007. Or maybe I'm just reading way too much into it, I dunno.

Typealyzer

I stumbled upon this "Typealyzer" thing, which claims to be able to determine what type of person someone is based on the writing on their blog. This is what it gave me:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

The site makes sure to point out that its still in Beta. Either it knows me better than I know myself, or they need to tweak this thing some before they take Beta tag off of it. I don't really anticipate starting an exciting new career in firefighting any time soon.

Futurama: Bender's Game

Futurama: Bender's Game (***)

Bender's Game is the third of the straight-to-DVD Futurama movies, and I'd say its in the middle of the three in terms of how much I enjoyed it. It certainly goes pound-for-pound with Bender's Big Score and The Beast with a Billion Backs in terms of its laugh-out-loud moments, but it seems to lack some of the heart that I've come to expect from Futurama. It feels a little bit more like a Family Guy episode in that there's a lot more tangential little bits here and there that are really good for a punch line or two but don't really further the story along. Furthermore, we don't get any real development between characters, like Fry and Leela, which is disappointing after it how well it was done in both the series finale of the show and then again in Bender's Big Score.

There is a lot of undeniably funny stuff packed into less than an hour and a half's worth of movie and there are a lot of individual bits that hold up to the best bits from any point of the series. For the most part, though, they're confined to the first half. Mom is back, along with her Three Stooges-esque sons (at one point they basically break the forth wall and point out that they're basically like the Three Stooges, with Leela and Amy pointing out that they're not as funny to them as, say, Sex and the City). Another personal favorite of mine, the surly trucker guy ("We're all scared, its the human condition. Why do yous think I put on this tough-guy facade!") has an excellent cameo. The second half descends into a Lord of the Rings/Dungeons & Dragons parody, which at times feels like its straining for laughs and seems like its something out of something like Epic Movie. At one point, Fry essentially turns in to Gollum from obsessing over a 12-sided die with mythical powers which he calls something like the "doeca-delicious," and looks into a reflection to see the evil half of himself trying to sell him a knife in the style of a late-night home shopping show. It kind of made me laugh, but at the same time felt pretty hammy and very un-Futurama.

Thus far, the Futurama DVD movies have certainly been worthy successors to the TV series, and haven't felt as though they've jumped the shark at all, but haven't felt as though they're the best-of-the-best. Hopefully, they're saving the best for last (or at least what's planned to be the last), but if the fourth is on the same level as they've been so far, I won't really feel slighted.

RocknRolla

RocknRolla (***)

Nine and eight years respectively since Guy Ritchie put himself on the map as a director with his British crime flicks Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch, Ritchie tries to again make himself known as something other than the dude that was married to Madonna with his latest offering, RocknRolla. The movie is a lot like its spiritual predecessor Snatch in that it continuously jumps back and forth between different characters in different parts of the London crime world, whose stories eventually converge as the movie reaches its climax. In Snatch, the movie dealt with an unlicensed bare-knuckle boxing ring, certain elements of which eventually converged with a diamond heist gone wrong. In RocknRolla, the crime that is the centerpiece of the movie is a little more white collar, dealing with back-channel real estate deals, but as the story develops it eventually begins to involve all manner of degenerates, from junkies who sell stolen clothes, to sports bookies, to sadistic Russian mobsters.

Early on in the movie we meet Lenny Cole, played by the always excellent Tom Wilkinson, who doesn't fancy himself a gangster, but is quick to point out proudly that he "owns London". Despite being an angry old bastard who's suspicious of "the immigrants" he finds himself making a deal with a Russian businessman who wants to build a huge arena but doesn't have the permits for it. He even lets Lenny borrow his lucky painting to solidify their partnership. The shit hits the fan, however, when the painting is stolen from Lenny's office and Lenny quickly deploys his right-hand man, Archie, to scour the area for whoever stole it. Archie is in some ways reminiscent unnamed main character of Layer Cake, which I coincidentally just watched pretty recently. He seems devoted to his job, but also seems sort of detached and a bit weary of it. Beyond that we never really learn much about him until we get a big revelation about Lenny at the end that affects Archie quite personally.

Elsewhere, we meet a trio of guys named One-Two, Mumbles, and Handsome Bob (probably not their birth names, gonna go out on a limb there), who are still low on the London crime totem-pole, and so to get money they accept "a bit of work" whenever they can get it. For one job in particular, One-Two--played by Gerald Butler, who doesn't yell constantly like he did in 300, but often times still has that same goofy grin on his face as when he played Leonidas--meets up with Stella, who wants them to secure a bit of money, of which they'd get a cut. Stella (played by Thandie Newton, who I barely recognized in this role, but played Condi Rice in W and the woman who gets felt up by Matt Dillon in Crash) is an icy-cold vixen sort of character, and has a sort of alluring aura of mystery about her. She's one of the more interesting characters in the movie. At it turns out, Stella is working for the Russians as an accountant (the kind that can be "creative" with numbers), and the money they're stealing is the Russians' money. This leads to all kinds of finger pointing, and then all manner of violence between Lenny's group and the Russians.

At the same time all of this is going on, Johnny Quid--rock star and estranged step-son of Lenny--has sequestered himself on a drug binge after faking his own death. When its revealed that his presence will be necessary to make everyone involved in the real-estate deal not want to kill each other, his two record producers, played by Ludcaris and Jeremy Piven, have to go looking for him. Their characters aren't without their charms, but their sections of the film are probably the least interesting.

Even though everything comes together at the end of RocknRolla in much the same way that everything comes together at the last boxing match at the end of Snatch, the whole product wasn't quite as satisfying to me. There are certainly a lot of similar examples of sharp writing and ingenious one-off bits--like when One-Two goes out of his way to taunt a slightly pudgy Russian mobster as he outruns him down a set of train tracks--that make you realize why you like this sort of genre in the first place. At the same time, however, Lenny's character, while well-devised and well-played by Tom Wilkinson, doesn't project the same sort of evil and dread that the boxing promoter did in Snatch (I'll never forget the scene where he helps himself to some of Jason Statham's coffee and announces chillingly: "No sugar for me. I'm sweet enough!"), and the quick jump cuts between characters seem somewhat more muddled and don't give you quite the same sense of the plot headed towards an explosive climax. At any rate, if you're a fan of Guy Ritchie's previous stuff, or British crime dramas in general, you'll certainly enjoy this movie. Until next time, keep being a real rocknrolla.

Tim McCarver \ World Series Weirdness

Is there any conceivable reason for Tim McCarver being allowed to announce baseball, let alone have announced the World Series for... I don't even know how long? It's just brutal listening to him. I'm not a huge fan of Joe Buck either, but Buck is at least tolerable. I don't really like his announcing style, but he's certainly a very playable play-by-play man. The problem is when McCarver tries to interject something playing off of what Buck had just said and it comes out not making any sense whatsoever.

The thing is, McCarver is one of serveral announcers covering major televised sports whose continued employment is simply confounding to me. Before he finally retired, (a couple of years after he said he was going to retire initially) Fox would trot out Pat Summerall, who for all I knew was asleep during half of the games. There would be times going into or coming out of a commercial break in which you would expect the play-by-play guy to give a summary of the current situtation in the game, where Summerall would just sort of meekly say "The Bears.... lead......" and sort of trail off while you just sat watching a shot of the field in complete silence before the producer finally figured out, "Oh shit, he's not gonna say anything else." Hawk Harrelson does this a lot announcing White Sox games, but he does it because he's pissed that the White Sox are losing. Summerall just seemed completely disinterested in anything going on around him. Aliens could attack the stadium and Sumerall would just sort of say, "Well... we've got some... aliens."

Dick Stockton, who just announced the Cubs/Dodgers NLDS (making it that much more painful for me) sounds equally disinterested in what he's doing except he talks more. So instead of 3-hours of mostly silence you sort of get 3 hours of a long stream of monotone like HAL-9000 or something. The thing uniquely bad about Dick Stockton is that he can't seem to be bothered to learn how to pronounce anyone's names. In 2007 in the Cubs\Diamondbacks NLDS he consistently pronounced Mike Quade's name "Kwade", rather than "Kwah-dee." This year, every time he tried to pronounce Kosuke Fukudome it was a struggle. I've seen clips of old NBA Finals games with Dick Stockton announcing, and while I still don't really like him as an announcer in any era, back in the day he wasn't nearly as monotonus and sleepy sounding as he is now. How do these old crumugeons keep getting work in the biggest of sporting events? Is it just loyalty for the seniormost guys? TV executives are always thought of as being obsessed with ratings to an extraordinary degree. I've never once heard anyone say, either online or face-to-face, "You know who I love is that Tim McCarver!"

*******************************

Speaking of the World Series, Game 5 was just suspended in a 2-2 tie in a brutal cold rain in Philadelphia. After it was delayed in the bottom of the 6th, with the Rays having tied the game in the top half of the inning, Chris Meyers interviewed the Chief of Operations (I think that was his title) and he said that the tying run being scored had nothing to do wtih the decision. Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that. He described conditions as having "deteriorated," but they were pretty brutal when the game was still 2-1. There was noticable water pooling on the corners of the infield. Had the game been delayed at 2-1 and not restarted, the game would've ended since 5+ innings had been played, and the Phillies would've won the World Series. From what I've heard, ratings have already been bad for these playoffs. Baseball isn't going to end the season on a rain delay. I wouldn't be surprised if the rules for calling World Series games were changed in the offseason. Its not like they have other games to schedule around. I guess there's TV to consider, but FOX is going to televise the conclusion of Game 5 tomorrow despite the fact that they were supposed to have new episodes of stuff on. At any rate, with Game 3 having ended at about 12:45 Central because of a rain delay and now this, this has been a pretty messed up World Series.

W

W (**1/2)

Oliver Stone's Bush biopic W had a ton of hype when it was announced for a whole bunch of reasons. It would be the first movie to be made about a President still holding office and Stone's previous films Nixon and JFK have garnered huge notoriety for their controversial portrays of two of the most infamous events in American Presidential history. But, after seeing Stone's latest film about a man who will go down as perhaps the most infamous of Presidents, I came away with a feeling of mostly apathy. There are certainly moments in the movie that are enjoyable, but given that George W. Bush's presidency will most certainly go down as eight of the most important years in modern American history (and mostly for the wrong reasons), you would certainly expect a movie about the man to add up to more than what W is.

W jumps around in time constantly throughout its 2 hour and 10 minute runtime, starting with a cabinet meeting in 2002, going back to his days in a Harvard fraternity, and then continuing from there with two separate storylines: the story of his presidency and the story of how his presidency came to be. Both of these stories are incomplete, and really feel more like snapshots instead of complete storylines with beginnings, middles, and ends. In Bush's past he's shown as a guy who's sort of aloof and can't focus on the same job for more than a month, and seems most interested in perpetually hanging out and drinking. At the same time, he's constantly bothered by being in the shadow of his father, and his father's percieved slights against him in favor of his older brother Jeb. In the present, Bush is shown as a man who truly believes in his cause, but loses his way trying to achieve it, depending too much on Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and not enough on the more cautionary views of the rest of his advisers. Josh Brolin plays Dubya, both young and old, and his performance is incredibly accurate, aided by the make-up or whatever the hell they did to make him look uncannily like Bush throughout the decades. Brolin has all of his phraseology and mannerisms down to a science, and he manages to bring a certain humanity to Bush with a script that seems to accentuate all of his most cartoonish moments.

My main problem with the movie is that its tone jumps around just as much as its timeline. All of the nuances of the principal players are mocked to the fullest extent they can be. In particular, the portrayal of Condolesa Rice is totally ridiculous. She's almost like the female equivalent of Donnie from The Big Lebowski, as she once in a while offers a meek interjection in the middle of a heated conversation, but never seems to have anything to say that anyone else is particularly interested in hearing. As for Bush himself, all of his confounding Bush-isms make it into the film, their context often being changed so they can fit in to the scenes that make it on screen (Bush's butchering of the "fool me once, shame on you..." saying happens during a closed-door meeting instead of at a press conference). We see Bush on the Crawford ranch playing with his dogs as everyone else stands around him with a "how much longer do we have to be here?" on their faces. When a drunken Bush comes home in the middle of the night and tries to fight a fight with his father ("Let's go! Mono-a-mono!") its like the scene from the Seinfeld episode where Frank Costanza fights Elaine after she calls George dumb.

At the same time, though, we get scenes like one in which Bush attends an A.A. meeting and stays afterwards to talk to the reverend about the "tremendous weight" he feels constantly, as we get a bunch of soft-focus shots of the Jesus mural in the background. Later, we see Bush visiting wounded troops in the hospital and he speaks Spanish to a distraught mother of a Latino soldier. I have no doubt that these more sympathetic scenes are as real as the myriad of Bush's well-documented press conference flubs. But, after seeing what amounts to a montage of Bush acting cartoonishly empty-headed, its hard to take these scenes seriously or to have them have any real resonance. Watching the movie, it almost seems like Oliver Stone and writer Stanley Weiser set out to show Bush in a sympathetic light, but then which watching footage of old Bush press conferences kept getting sidetracked and saying, "Wow, look how stupid he looks in this one! How could we not put that one in?"

The half of the movie that focuses on Bush as president from 2002 to now isn't bad, but its sort of like a 101 course in the last eight years of history, not going much in-depth into anything. Dick Cheney explains his idea for the one-percent doctrine to Bush as he's eating a sandwich, mentions in passing the warrantless wiretapping programs they've put in place, and then hands him a sign-off to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques which Bush enthusiastically says he'll read through since its only three pages (again, cartoony). All of those things mentioned in one scene are huge reasons why a hell of a lot of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be an abject disaster and a national embarrassment. Exploring how presumably well-intentioned men came to put these things in place would make for an excellent movie; mentioning them in passing does nothing. Elsewhere in the movie, we see Bush Jr. screening the infamous Willie Horton ad for his father, explaining that it was made by a group led by Roger Ailes so as to distance the campaign from it. When the movie jumps to the junior Bush's presidency, it doesn't go back and explore what impact Roger Ailes has on the politics of today now that he has an entire network in the form of Fox News. Sure, bringing this up would've ruffled some feathers, but isn't that what Oliver Stone is known for doing? Isn't that kind of why he's so well-known as a director?

The points that the movie does try to make and not just gloss over are often too transparently obvious. In the opening scene, we see Bush being briefed in regards to Iraq and whether a legitimate case can be made for war, when Cheney (played pretty convincingly by Richard Dreyfuss) enters, sort of lurks by the door, and the entire mood of the meeting seems to change. Later on, we see Karl Rove literally lurking in the shadows as he points out to Bush that not going into Iraq might hurt his re-election chances. The best supporting performance is probably Jeffery Wright as Colin Powell, who in real life just endorsed Obama as he continues to distance himself from the new neoconservative movement in the Republican party. In the movie, Wright is really more of the voice of the whole anti-war part of the nation. He dissents more often and more strongly than he likely did in real life, as he constantly questions the need for preemptive
war and an abandonment of the country's entire post-World War II foreign policy strategy. Like a lot of the other characters, Powell's portrayal is pretty simplistic, but I think his part in the film resonates more than does anyone else's. Not to digress too much, but I also want to say that appreciate that Stone went out of his way to show the massive protests against the war that cropped up all across the country and all across the world before the war actually began, and not just when things turned south after the occupation. This initial outcry is something that seems to have been lost in the media after the big question about Iraq became, "is the surge working"?

I bitched a lot about the movie's flaws here, but I did give it two and a half stars at the top of the post, and I do have to say that Josh Brolin's uncanny rendition of Bush's folksy, "damned if I know what I'm doing, I'm going to do it" personality is undeniably entertaining. Some of the movie's lighter points are genuinely funny. But the movie isn't trying to be the Naked Gun of presidential politics, and it does try to give a real account of George W. Bush's presidency. Ultimately, W seems to come to no significant conclusions about why his presidency happens as it did and what it means, and I think Bush's presidency is too significant a point in history for a movie to fail to say anything important about it.

CUBS: The Autopsy

We're now more than a week removed from the Dodgers' 3-0 sweep of the Cubs in the NLDS, and I think I'm not in a healthy enough mental state to try and write about what the hell happened. Firstly, in spite of what I've heard from the more short-tempered fans out there, the Cubs getting swept is in no way a sign that the team has to get "blown up" or rebuilt from scratch. Over in the AL this year, the Angels were baseball's only 100 win team, and they got beat 3-1 in their series with the BoSox, and they had to go to extras to get their only win. That's not to say that people should be happy with the result of the season. The team's goal was to win the World Series and they came up well short of that. As such they underachieved this year and will have to play better come playoff time next year. But these knee jerk "oh woe is us, this team will never win anything, blow it up and start from scratch!" reactions are just silly. Over the three games in the playoffs they played significantly worse than in just about any three game stretch during the regular season, worse enough to make me think that the team does have some issues (not involving goats) regarding the pressure of the postseason and the tremendous weight of trying to overcome 100 years of futility. This is simply not enough reason to get rid of a team that has gone 182-141 over the past two seasons. There are however, sensible changes to the team that should be made.

Firstly, its important to keep in mind what happened. The Cubs only scored 6 runs for the series, and the conventional wisdom is that they simply didn't hit the ball as with the Arizona series in 2007. That's not really entirely true. They hit .240, which is pretty meager compared to their batting average during the regular season, but sizeably better than the .194 that they managed against the Diamondbacks. They actually outhit the Dodgers in game 1, despite losing 7-2. What did happen is, after leading the NL in walks in the regular season, the managed to draw only 6 walks for the entirety of the series against the Dodgers. A lot of credit needs to be given to Dodger pitching, and I don't think they've gotten much of it, at least not from Cubs fans who have been too busy opining about their own team choking. The Cubs bailed them out out by swinging at a lot of bad pitches (I noticed pitching tailing away down and outside seemed to kill them every time for some reason), but the Dodgers also simply threw a lot of strikes. There weren't a lot of 3-0, 3-1 strikes at all during the series, and when they were, they weren't in key situations. The Cubs also seemed to have trouble getting the lead off man on in each inning. The Cubs did get some hits as I said, but they were often times scattered instead of chained together and often with two outs.

As for what the Cubs should do next season, first and foremost they should take Soriano out of the lead off spot. Unlike a lot of Cubs fans who are quick to scapegoat Soriano and a lot of the cockiness and nonchalantness that he shows when things go bad, I still think Soriano is a top-tier hitter and a huge reason for this team's success the past two years. I simply don't think he should be leading off though. As much as he says he's a leadoff hitter, he strikes out a lot, doesn't walk a lot, and hits for a lot of power. He'd be much better in, say, the #5 spot behind people like Lee, Ramirez, and Theriot who, in theory, can get on base at a better clip than can Soriano. Fukudome is obvoiusly a significant problem, ending up the year with an average under .260. That simply can't happen for a starting corner outfielder on a 1st place team. Since Jim Edmonds is probably gone from the team they could move Kosuke to center, where his offensive struggles would be a little more tolerable. There are questions as to how well he can play center though. He could also be platooned with someone like Reed Jonhson and face only righties, against which he consistently looked more comfortable at the plate, but who knows if the Cubs would be filling to have such a high-priced player in a platoon role. Ideally, Kosuke simply gets better in 2009. He'll have a year of major-league experience under his belt, but he's also over 30 years old right now. It's hard to imagine him getting that much better.

The Cubs have already exercised Rich Harden's option, and statistically he certainly deserves to come back. His health remains a huge question mark though. Another question mark is Ryan Dempster. He had a fantastic year on the mound in his first year as a starter since joining the Cubs, but this year was certainly the exception and not the rule for his career thus far. Was the Ryan Dempster who couldn't seem to find the strike zone in the NLDS closer to the Ryan Dempster we'd see in '09 than the Ryan Dempster which looked unhittable at times during the regular season? Good starting pitching is always a preciously rare commodity, but if the Cubs can find a move to make that makes sense they should pull the trigger on it. Its probably time for the Cubs to figure out what Sean Marshall's role is going to be going forward, since he's bounced around all over the place, from the rotation to the bullpen to AAA. Bob Howry's also probably going to be gone from the 'pen. If Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio can't step up and be effective middle relievers, the Cubs may have to go out and get somewhere there as well. There's been some discussion of the Cubs going out and getting a shortstop and then moving Theriot to 2nd, which is actually his natural postion. It wouldn't be a bad idea. What then happens to DeRosa, though? Would he end up playing right?

Here's to a 2009 season that's as good as 2008's, with a better postseason tacked onto it.

Layer Cake

Layer Cake (***)

It's a few years old now, but I saw Layer Cake this for the first time over the weekend. I remember it getting a fair amount of buzz when it came out in the states, and while I don't think it's a work of absolute genius, its definitely a very fun British crime drama. There's been a whole slew of movies in much the same vein as Layer Cake made in Britain and elsewhere. What the movie is able to do best to set itself apart is establish a compelling and different main character. Said character, who we're never given a name for, is played by Dainel Craig, and you can see a lot of what he would go on to do as Bond in what he does in this movie. Craig's character is involved in the drug trade, and the risks that go along with it, but he's smart enough to know when to hedge his bets. He's put his money with a legitimate accountant, he has a front as a real-estate agent, and he's set a date for his retirement from the drug business that he plans on sticking to.

Like most gangster movies though, retiring is never as easy as it seems ("Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!"), and we follow the main character as he gets entangled in a deal of ecstasy pills that were stolen from some super-creepy Serbian guys. Craig plays his character with a certain wit and charisma that makes him endearing but--as he did with Bond in Casino Royale--also gives his character more weakness and humanity than we normally expect from protagonists in movies like this. Though he's surrounded by violence, Craig's character (at least initially) deplores guns, and when his life is threatened we're actually allowed to see him worry instead of seeing him simply tossing around a one-liner like "This shit just got real!" and leave to go flip out and kill people.

There are some great supporting characters as well, with some other well-known British actors like Colm Meaney (aka O'Brien from Star Trek) and Michael Gambon. They sort of represent the last generation of criminals, back before drugs were the "in" thing, and bank robbery was the preferred method of obtaining ill-gotten money. Their quips about how it was like in the old days ("when life was as simple as a game of cops and robbers") are funny and strangely poignant at the same time. The movie is kind of frantically directed--it reminds me a lot of Snatch in that way--and initially the quick cuts between scenes can be somewhat distracting, but it mostly works. The surprise ending is, well, genuinely surprising, though I'm not sure how much I like it as an ending, especially after a resolution to the conflict to that point that seems to work maybe a little too perfectly. At any rate, as I said, its a fun British gangster movie and it has more than enough endearing characters and funny exchanges to make up for some of the story's imperfections.

Quick Pre-Playoff Rant

In spite of the fact that this year's Cubs are a team that would probably stand to benefit from it,
I feel the need to point out about how much I hate what they did to the playoff schedule when they redid the TV contracts before last season. Specifically, they added off days to the first two rounds of the playoffs. The LCS round has always been 7 games with a 2-3-2 format, and it used to be that there were only two off days for travel after game 2 and after game 5. Now, the schedule looks like this, with an extra off-day during the middle home stand. The difference this makes is that a team can now pitch their ace in games 1, 4, and 6 with three-days rest in between each start. It doesn't seem right for a team to be able to win a series in 6 games having thrown the same guy out there in half of the games. If you want to pitch a guy in games 1, 4, and 7, then he'll actually get normal rest for game 7. Similarly, all of a team's back-end relievers, who often times will go longer--sometimes much longer--than an inning in the playoffs will have an extra day of rest.

One more off-day in a series wouldn't seem as though it would be a huge deal, but it absolutely does change a team's strategy for managing the pitching staff. The Brewers clinched a playoff spot on Sunday with C. C. Sabathia--who has been far and away their best pitcher (actually he's been the best pitcher in the N.L.) since he was acquired in July--pitching a complete game and allowing only a run. He threw well over 100 pitches and showed no ill effects of doing it on short rest. Think about how much better the Brewers are in a 7 game series knowing that Sabathia could potentially pitch three times in the first six games of the series, especially since Ben Sheets, their ace at the start of the season, is now probably done for the year. I dunno. It's something that bothers me, but possibly only me.

Anyway, Cubs/Dodgers Game 1 tomorrow. Ryan Dempster vs. Derrek Lowe.

While I Was Sleeping (or at least not posting here)

A helluva lot has happened since the last time I posted here. A day after the Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter in an Astros home game in Milwaukee (something that the Astros are still pissed about, never mind the fact that their owner approved playing there), Ted Lilly took a no-hitter of his own into the 6th. On Thursday, the Cubs came from behind to beat the Brewers 7-6 in 12 innings after rallying from down 4 in the 9th inning, capped off by a 3-run Geovany Soto home run (it's hard to imagine him not winning NL Rookie of the Year now). Then, on Saturday, the Cubs beat the Cardinals 5-4 to clinch the NL Central, marking the first time since the league went to divisional play that the Cubs have won their division in back-to-back years, and giving the Cubs back-to-back playoff births since (nearest I can tell) 1907 & 1908.

The Cubs have actually gone 3-1 since clinching the division, despite not playing some of the starters, showing the depth they have as a team. As of right now they stand at 95-60, and have clinched home field advantage in both the NLDS and NLCS (the AL will have home field advantage in the World Series since it won the All-Star game). They managed to win last night against the Mets--who are now even with the Brewers in the Wild Card and behind in the division-- 9-6 in 10 innings, despite the Mets having a man on third with no outs in the 9th against Bob Howry. Zambrano pitched just 4 2/3 innings last night allowing 5 runs in his 2nd bad start in a row since his no-hitter against the Brewers. This is perhaps the only big unnerving thing about the team going into the playoffs, although that was most assuredly his last start of the season and he'll now have about a week to get ready for his first NLDS start against whoever they're playing. Chad Gaudin has recently come off the DL and has gotten rocked around a little bit as well. Hopefully he can come around, as he was a great middle reliever early in his Cubs tenure when the Cubs were absoltuely on fire as a team.

As I type this, Micah Hoffpauir is 3-for-3 with a homer (the first in his career) against Pedro Martinez in the last game of the four game set with the Mets. His average is currently sitting at .367. Meanwhile, though he's had a couple of very clutch hits, Daryle Ward's average at the moments stands at .219. Would Hoffpauir make the playoff roster over Ward? Might be an interesting question going into the weekend. The Cubs have 3 games Friday to Sunday against the Brewers to close out the year.

In more depressing news, the Bears are now 1-2, following up their great season opener win in Indinapolis with back-to-back losses, blowing 2nd half leads in both of them. After the initial optimism that followed the Colts win, fans are ready to jump off a bridge again and are throwing out the ususal rotation of complaints: the playcalling is too conservative, the Bears don't throw downfield enough, the Cover-2 sucks and the Bears need to blitz more, the Bears don't have the "killing instinct" that other teams do... Personally, I think the Bears have just made mistakes in key situations (last week against the Bucs, Peanut Tillman got called for unsportsmanlike conduct for thowing a punch on what ended up being the game-winning drive in OT), and I don't think their overall philosophy, which hasn't changed much since 2006 when they went to the Superbowl, has much to do with it. Despite consisting of Kyle Orton and a hodge-podge of journeyman recievers, the offense has actually been decently consistent. A bright spot has been Matt Forte, who might have a shot at Offensive Rookie of the Year.

No-hitter Alert

More complete Cubs thoughts in the near future, but for now congratulations to Carlos Zambrano for throwing the team's first no-hitter since Milt Pappas in 1972. Zambrano no-hit the Astros, and faced one over the minimum, allowing a hit by pitch and a walk that was negated by a double play. The game was played in Milwaukee after Hurricane Ike hit Houston this weekend, making this quite possibly the first "neutral site" no-hitter ever*.

*In truth, the crowd was mostly Cubs fans as you might expect.

BEARS: Week 1 - Bears (0-0) at Colts (0-0)

I'm not as huge on the NFL as I am baseball (its not that I completely dislike it, but I prefer college for football) but hey, it's the Bears and I have nothing better to do, so let's talk about the Bears. It's been extremely hard for me to get excited for the season given their 7-9 record last year, the apparent lack of any semblance of a an offense, and a pretty mediocre preseason, but if there's a league where team's can suddenly make huge improvements out of nowhere its the NFL. So, let's see what happens.

7:26 CT: Lance Briggs already shaken up. Inauspicious start.

7:28: Manning throws one just out of the hands of whoever he was throwing to on 3rd & 13. Colts punt from their own territory, which I'm pretty sure makes that defensive series for the Bears better than any of the series the first team defense had in the preseason. Hester had a return of like 25-30 yards. Nice.

7:34: In absolutely shocking news the Bears went 3 and out on their first drive.

7:41: Urlacher just got flagged for breathing on Peyton Manning. Colts driving. Briggs seems to be fine.

7:56: 3-0 Colts as the Bears held them to a field goal.

7:57: MATT FORTE! 7-3 Bears after a touchdown run from Matt Forte from near midfield. Did Cedric Benson even have 50 yards in a game last season?

8:03: A minute ago they showed a graphic showing that Walter Payton had 8 carries for 0 yards in his first game prompting Al Michaels to say, "So Forte has already had a better beginning than Walter, good luck having a better ending." I know what he meant, but probably not the best way to phrase that given that, you know, he's dead. Madden hasn't said anything dumb yet almost 12 minutes into the first quarter which has to be some kind of a record.

8:09: Matt Forte looks really good.

END OF 1ST QUARTER
BEARS 7, COLTS 3

8:12: Madden says the whole NFL is devastated that Brady's out for the year. Watching the coverage of this is probably going to be brutal. ESPN will probably have a mock funeral for him.

8:14: Kyle Orton flying high with 2.4 yards per pass attempt so far.

8:16: I wonder if Sarah Palin is qualified to be commissioner of the More Taste League, apparently she's qualified to be vice president.

8:22: Colts get another field goal. 7-6 Bears. Defense doesn't look spectacular, but they're keeping them out of the endzone to this point.

8:27: The new Spike Lee joint Miracle at St. Anna looks really good.

8:33: Orton finds Dallas Clark on a 3 step drop for 19 yards on a passing play that looked, dare I say, good.

8:36: Robbie Gould hits a field goal to make it 10-6 Bears. Bears have 143 yards of offense thus far which is a downright huge output by Bears standards.

8:39: 1st Bears sack of the year is by rookie Marcus Harrison. And a safety on the next play! 12-6 Bears. Maybe the Bears got all the mistakes out in the preseason, as they say.

8:50: Inside 2 minutes in the first half Orton finds Marty Booker down the field. Into Colts territory again. I'm starting to dare to dream of a W in this one. Matt Forte is up to 97 yards.

8:52: There's 100 yards for Forte. Bears on the edge of field goal range right now. Orton got sacked which hurt them.

8:53: Orton finds Greg Olsen down the sideline! Arg, almost managed to get in for the score, btu the Bears have to spike it with 4 seconds left. Gould comes on and kicks another FG.

HALFTIME
BEARS 15, COLTS 6

9:09: Okay, Devin Hester is great at what he does, but he's not too bright. He tried to act as if he was going to take a knee, stand around in the endzone for a couple seconds, and then run out. Didn't work. Got tripped up at the 3.

9:16: Orton update: 7-14, 91 yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs, 1 sack. Not horrible.

9:17: The ref just called "Prior to the snap, illegal contact." Uhh... what? Colts driving again.

9:20: TD Manning to Wayne. D: I must reiterate that Hester is dumb. Switched over to Jeff Joniack and Tom Thayer on the radio and they're just ripping him for it. 15-13 Bears.

9:26: Forte gets his 2nd reception and makes a guy miss after the catch. He's really fast. 1st Bear with 100+ yards in his debut, sez NBC. Bears outgaining the Colts by some 50 yards at the moment.

9:33: Argh, Bears have to punt it away after Orton has the ball stripped out of his hands and he has to fall on it. Probably a step up from what would've happened had Grossman been in there though.

9:36: PEANUT! BRIGGS! After a Marvin Harrison catch, Peanut Tillman strips the ball from him, Briggs picks it up and takes it in for 6. They're reviewing the play now. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be upheld. In the meantime I'm gonna watch Spiderman on Toon Disney. I don't remember this arc with Captain America.

9:40: UPHELD. 22-13 Bears. First big play from the Bears D this year. Getting big turnovers have been their MO since 2001, really. Too many commericals. Back to Spiderman.

9:45: Tom Thayer says the Colts are getting away with holding on Dusty Dvorchek.

9:47: Colts have used 2 timeouts in the 3rd. Could come back to bite them if the Bears can hold the lead until late.

END OF 3RD QUARTER
BEARS 22, COLTS 13

9:49: Nick Fury's in this Spiderman episode. This is pretty badass. Captain America just decked the Red Skull. I don't think I've heard Spiderman have a line of dialog let. This is like a Marvel crossover event in the guise of a Spiderman episode. Crap, Bears are back on. Reggie Wayne almost had a huge catch. Fortunately incomplete.

9:54: Colts going for it on 4th and 1 from midfield... STOPPED. Ogunleye destroyed Rhodes.

9:57: On 3rd and 2 with pressure coming, Orton finds Forte for a little dump off in the flat for the first down. Forte's doen everything he's had to. Nearly had another first down on the next play. Up near 120 yards now. 11:20 left to play...

10:01: 1st & Goal at the 2 after Orton finds Desmond Clark! Bears just ran a play out of the wishbone... that didn't work but.... next play Jason McKie finds the endzone. 29-13 Bears! If the Bears can do like 50% of what they've done tonight they'll actually have a pretty damn good season. I think the offense has actually outplayed the defense, though the defense certainly hasn't been bad at all. 8:56 to go.

10:13: Alex Brown sacks Manning, backing the Colts up after they meandered their way into Bears territory. Using a lot of flock though. About 5 minutes left.

10:14: Another 4th down attempt for the Colts, this is pretty much the game for them. No good! Manning's pass is low to some guy named Robinson who came in for Dallas Clark who got hurt. Bears ball with 4:19 to play.

10:17: Orton update: 13-21, 150 yards. Not gonna get anyone a huge fantasy performance (why would they start Orton anyway?), but certainly more than good enough on a night when Matt Forte was excellent.

10:22: Kevin Jones has 11 carries for 38 yards. Not bad.

10:29: Bears win!!

BEARS 29, COLTS 13

Batman Redux

The Dark Knight review that I started a long-ass time ago is finally completed. I don't know if I touched on everything there was to be touched on, but I touched on a lot. I haven't watched a new movie in a while now. I want to see Burn After Reading but that's still 10 days away. I'll see what I can fill up this blog with in the meantime. I never did review the end of Venture Brothers Season 2...

Mama Said There'd be Days Like These

The Cubs lost their 4th straight last night in 11 innings by a 9-7 score at home to the Astros. The 4 game losing streak ties their longest for the season. I haven't been paying much attention to sports radio as of late, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that a lot of Cubs fans are having Platoon style flashbacks of 1969 and are ready to jump off of a bridge. Meanwhile, however, the Brewers-- also losers in extra innings to the Mets last night--haven't really taken advantage of the Cubs' skid and still sit 4 1/2 back in the division. The Brewers themselves are maintaining a 4.5 game lead in the wild card. As much as people are going to play up the CUBS: Completely Useless by September and billy goat curse stuff, it really is nigh impossible for the Cubs to miss the playoffs. For the rest of the regular season there's no cause for alarm. Quote that. Bookmark that. Whatever. I'm quite confident in that.

Of actual cause for concern may be the health of Carlos Zambrano, who left after 5 innings and 86 pitches last night. Z had already been pushed back two days on what was initially just called a tired arm, but now it appears that a real physical problem is there. Zambrano was to see the doctor today, and to my knowledge there hasn't been any news yet on his prognosis. Lou, as you might expect, has been pretty matter-of-fact about it, but that's likely to do little to ease the worry of neurotic Cubs fans everywhere. As amazing as their offense has been, the prospect of a playoff rotation of Zambrano/Harden/Dempster or some combination thereof is perhaps the best thing the Cubs have going for them heading into the postseason. If Zambrano's injury is serious, it would certainly make the road to the World Series significantly tougher.

Bob Howry was awful last night, facing five batters and retiring none of them. He left several pitches out over the plate that got absolutely smoked into the outfield. The outing ballooned his ERA to 5.63, and its an even worse 8.50 after the All-Star break. Michael Wuertz, who was demoted earlier in the year, is back up with the September call-ups and has already pitched twice. I would personally much rather see Wuertz on the playoff roster than Howry, who just doesn't seem to have it this year.

Amidst the doom and gloom (at least relative to how the rest of the Cubs' best season since at least 1984 has gone to this point) there are still some individual guys performing well. Mark DeRosa homered again and got his 80th RBI on the year, and Geovany Soto homered as part of a 3-hit game as he continues to solidify his Rookie of the Year resume.

DeRo

The Cubs have won their last 8 series, and are now 30 games over .500 for what I'm pretty sure is the first time in my lifetime. Rich Harden won the rubber match against the Nationals yesterday, going 7 IP, allowing only 2 hits and picking up 11 Ks. Over his past 3 starts, Harden's allowed six hits TOTAL for a fairly ridiculous BAA (batting avg. against) of .097. Mark DeRosa has all of a sudden shown some power, homering in each of his last 4 games to give him 18 on the year. He now has 77 RBIs on the year, which is already over his career high and he might have a very outside shot at 100+ by year's end. DeRosa's 77 puts him 2nd in team leaders for RBI behind Aramis Ramirez's (91), and he's sort of become the, if not unsung, then "least-sung" hero of the team, especially with the continued struggles of Kosuke Fukudome. DeRosa's done what he has at the plate while playing 5 different positions in the field at least once during the season. I imagine the list of 100+ RBI players having played 5 different positions is pretty short. Also key to the team's recent success has been Jeff Samardzija, who continues to be used as a middle-to-late-innings guy with tremendous success. In fact, as I just discovered while messing around, as of right now the lowest ERA amongst Cubs first-year players with at least 15 IP is one Jeff Samardzija at 1.06 (source: Baseball Reference PI) There's probably going to be a lot of team history set this year.

Deep Thoughts Concerning Fantasy Football & D&D

Since its creation, Dungeons & Dragons has always sort of been perceived as something that has to be contained within its own little niche of acne-ridden, socially awkward guys playing in their parents' basement. Meanwhile, as it deals with the toughest and smash-mouthyest of all sports, fantasy football has always been a perfectly acceptable "everyman" activity. A bunch of guys sitting around drinking beer glued to ESPN News to see if the running back on their bench has been upgraded from Questionable to Probable yet doesn't really seem out of place at all. A fantasy football pool is almost a requisite for any guy with an office job to better bond with his fellow co-workers, whereas the idea of an inter-office D&D session is a preposterous notion.

I've actually dabbled in both D&D and fantasy football, and I think I'm in a tiny minority in that, for the most part, I enjoy doing both. Last night I stayed after work along with the 9 other guys in our office league for our live fantasy draft. I'm not sure exactly when it hit me. Perhaps it was upon the commissioner firing up the $30 draft software on his laptop--complete with a countdown clock for each pick--and projecting it on the screen in the meeting room we were in, or perhaps it was when I was watching a guy frantically switch between his complete 32-team depth chart sheet and his stat projections sheet, but at some point I realized that, once you reach a certain level of devotion, D&D players and fantasy football players are really pretty much indistinguishable. The only difference is that fantasy football is inherently tied to football. Never mind the fact that no actual football gets played amongst the participants.

I think I'm kicked out of the Man-law Council now, or whatever it was called in those Bud Light commercials with Burt Reynolds and HHH.

---------------------------------

Also, apparently in recent weeks Michael Goldfarb, a McCain campaign surrogate, has been making references to the "pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd" for reasons unbeknown to me. Since when is the die-hard D&D player demographic like a key part of Obama's constituency?

When You're Hot, You're Hot

When I last blogged about the Cubs they were in the midst of a 4 game series with the Brewers which they entered holding a 1 game lead in the division. As such, something of a mini-panic had seemed to be brewing amongst the more pessimistic portions of the fan base. All that has changed completely since the, as the Cubs swept the Brewers, won 2 of 3 in each of three series against the Pirates, Astros, and Cardinals, swept the Braves, and just tonight took game 1 against the Marlins on a Daryle Ward 3-run home run in the 9th. The hit was Ward's first in his last 14 at bats, one of many things that seems to have fallen in place in just the right way for the Cubs lately. Tonight's win was the 75th for the Cubs on the year. To put that in perspective, last year the Cubs won their 75th game on September 13th, in their 146th game of the year (this game aginst the Marlins was the 122nd for this year's Cubs).

Jeff Samardzija has allowed just 2 runs in his first 13 2/3 IP in the bigs, and will set up an interesting decision when Jon Lieber comes back from off of the DL (he's begun rehabbing in the minors). Lou has shown no hesitation in using Samardzija in close and late situations, and certainly seems to be set on using him for the duration of the season, and maybe even into the playoffs. Right now the weak link in the bullpen would probably be Bob Howry, whose ERA has risen to 5.53, and really has not seemed to have good stuff all year (he's allowed 12 HRs, which is one more than Ryan Dempster has in three times the amount of innings). I'm not sure if they'ed designate Howry for assignment having already DFA'd Scott Eyre, who they signed for big money the same year Howry joined the team. It's possible that they'll hold Lieber out until September 1st when the rosters expand, thus avoiding the entire headache. There's really no reason to rush Lieber back anyway, as outside of Howry the bullpen has been tremendous. At any rate, if these decisions are the most painful the Cubs are going to have to make down the stretch run, it's going to be a very fun end to the season. 100 wins is looking more and more like a real possibility and not a pipe dream.

[Venture Brothers] The Last Three Episodes

Yeah, I'm really behind on this. Let's try and fix that. Because I'm really late in writing these, this is going to make heavy use of the capsules from Mantis Eye Experiment, which is a fantastic site you should check out for all things Venture Bros.

Season 3, Episode 8: Tears of a Seacow

Once again, this episode wasn't very Venture-centric--and really the whole season has turned out to be relatively lacking in Rusty, the boys, and Brock in comparison to seasons 1 & 2--but "Tears of a Sea Cow" pretty much matches "What Comes Down, Must Come Up" just in terms of purely how funny it is. The beginning with Dr. Duodong was just inspired.

Episode rating: Like killing clean, not letting dames get in the way

Favorite Bits\Random Thoughts:

-The Monarch not at all impressed by Dr. Duodong's secret lair. "I'm absolutely terrified of your prop from an old Styx video!"

-"Give us the... cuddlefish... I can't do this."

-The Monarch, 21, and 24 reading Dean's newspaper. "This D. Viceroy guy is probably fictitious, or... one of you guys."

-The Murderous Moppets now going around as "The Pupae Twins" to fit in with the butterfly theme.

-21's whole "Highlander" exchange with Hank. "I've personally seen you die TWICE. I'm talking like, shotgun to the face!"

Season 3, Episode 9: Now Museum, Now You Don't

Firstly, amazing episode title. This episode took place entirely on Spider Skull Island, which Jonas Jr. is turning into a museum dedicated to his father. It took care of a whole bunch of story, including what's become of Richard Impossible (he's an alcoholic deadbeat), what the former ghost pirates are up to (wishing they were ghost pirates again), and how Rusty feels about Jonas Jr (still hates him). Even though it takes place entirely in one spot there's a lot going on and it feels pretty rushed. They still managed to fit some funny material in though.

Episode rating: Like when the Monarch Mobile looks like someone took it to Magic Mountain and did that Spin Art thing on it.

-The old Bond movie style opening with Jonas Venture infiltrating the Fraternity of Torment in an absoutlely awful Chinese guy disguise.

-I love the idea of the old heroes and villains signing autographs next to each other.

-Colonel Gentlemen's alive! I love his story of eating mallomars with a "Yoohoo chaser" until he goes into a coma.

-The pirate captain asking Richard "Fess up, you were just tryin' to kill yourself weren't ya?" Great ending.

Season 3, Episode 10: The Lepidopterists

For what its worth, from Wikipedia:

A lepidopterist is a person who catches and collects, studies, or simply observes (see butterfly watching) lepidopterans

Anyway, this was a great episode, a nice change of pace from "Now Museum, Now You Don't" not that it wasn't funny, but I thought it got a little too hung up in all the different character development stuff it was trying to tackle at once. This felt a little more like an episode that held up on its own.

Episode rating: Like having a Tekken 3 machine in the lounge

Favorite Bits/Random Thoughts:

-The whole sequence with Jonas Jr. and team forming the Voltron-type robot was brilliant. Reminded me a lot of the Mecha-Shiva scene from season 1. "It looks like a robot with an ice cream cone for one of its arms!" I loved Ned's constant interruptions as The Monarch tries to get into a dramatic exchange with Jonas. "Butterflies! Pretty!"

-"Poor Ned has three inches of skin. How do you think that makes him feel?"
"I dunno, itchy?"

-"Me and my associates here are amateur lepidopterists."
"You... wanna see my stamp collection?"

-Gotta love 21 and 24 referencing Tomb Raider

I'm still wating for one big Brock ass-kicking scene this season. Season 3 has given me a lot, but I need to see Brock flipping out and killing people.

Playoff preview?

I've neglected to make a Cubs post for almost three weeks now, and they've been a pretty eventful three weeks, so let's try and recap some of what's been happening. Firstly, the Cubs sit at 62-44, having struggled out of the gate after the All-Star break (they're 5-6 since then). Really, I don't think the slump quite warranted the panic that was ensuing from some fans, but it didn't help that the Brewers had gotten read hot during the same period of time, and actually spent a day tied with the Cubs for first. While the Cubs are still 1st in the NL in runs, BA and OBP, their bats--most notably Derrek Lee (.245 avg, 2 HR), and Aramis Ramirez (.156 avg., 1 HR)--have been relatively quiet since the break. That trend may now be turning around in a big way, however, as the Cubs have won their last two in the form of a come from behind 9-6 win over the Marlins, and a 6-4 victory at Milwaukee, the latter being the first loss for C.C. Sabathia as a Brewer.

Kerry Wood has been on the DL with a lingering blister issue. The fact that its not one of his recurring structural issues in his arm is obviously very good news, although, in a way, the fact that its a rather mundane injury makes me as a fan even more anxious for him to get back on the field. Roughly at the same time of Wood's injury, Carlos Marmol started a stretch in which he got absolutely rocked, and is currently looking at a 6.35 ERA for July (it was bad in June as well, after his ERA was under 2.00 in both April and May). Pinella's use of Marmol has been truly baffling at times, and is one of the few things I feel can be raised as a major complaint in regards to his managing. Marmol's on pace for almost 90 innings on the year. Yes, it's a fact that sometimes when you're in a pennant race and your team has a chance to win in just about every game, you have to keep running your best guys out there. There have been times, however, when Pinella has used Marmol in a game on no days rest when the Cubs have a lead of at least 4 or 5 runs and when there are other, more rested pitchers in the bullpen. Not everyone in the bullpen is lights out, but overall its good enough such that Lou should be able to feel that he can go to someone else in that situation. Lou does seem to put a lot of trust in Chad Gaudin, and his ERA is an excellent 1.69 since joining the Cubs, so its possible that his presence in the 'pen will give Marmol a break as we come down the stretch.

Jeff Samardzija made his major league debut last Friday against the Marlins, and then went two more innings on Sunday--a game that followed a 12 inning loss that wore down the bullpen--to get his first major league save. He already has 5 strikeouts in 4 innings and looks as if he has absolutely filthy stuff. He was throwing at 97 right out of the gate on Friday. Down the road he could have all the makings of a great back-end bullpen guy, although he may eventually be a starter as was his role in the minors.

As I mentioned earlier, the Cubs beat the Brewers last night 6-4, and in doing so took the first of four games at Miller Park in what is a crucial series. The Cubs currently hold a two game lead and therefore can guarantee that they'll remain first after this series is over with one more win. Tonight is going to be one of the best pitching matchups of the year: Carlos Zambrano vs. Ben Sheets.

Tale of the tape:

	W	L	ERA	WHIP	K
Carlos Zambrano	11	4	2.96	1.24	87
Ben Sheets	10	3	2.87	1.13	115

As per normal, all stats come from Baseball Reference.