Entertain Me!

Entertain Me…

The Pursuit of Happyness – I know Happiness is spelled wrong. Being the complete grammar and accuracy freak that I am, I hate it when words are spelled wrong. But in this case, I’m just correctly spelling the name of the movie; so I'll let it slide this time.

I was pleasantly surprised that I absolutely loved this movie. I’m not a big fan of sappy movies, but for some reason I thought this was a wonderful film on my first viewing of it. Even my wife was surprised when I got upset during the movie regarding the dismal life of Will Smith’s character.

In the movie, which is based on a true story, the character is a failing salesmen whose wife leaves him. Smith’s character dreams of one day becoming a Wall Street broker, so he takes an unpaid internship and as a result, he is forced to scrape through life by sleeping at homeless shelters with his young son. It’s a really sad story. In the end....Well, I won’t give away the ending.

Rainbow Six Vegas (Xbox 360) – I made the horrible mistake of buying Spiderman 3 from EBGames a few weeks ago. I knew that I wanted the game since I first heard about it because I loved Spiderman 2 on the original Xbox. So, the day that Spiderman 3 was released, I rushed out to the store to buy it. I'll admit, at first the game was a lot of fun....simply because of the fact that you get to swing around New York City as Spiderman. After awhile when you are tired of swinging around the City and actually decide to go on some of the main and side missions that are in the game, the game really devolves. So after swallowing my pride and $20, I cut my losses and sold it on eBay for $40 and purchased Rainbow Six Vegas for the same amount of money.

Even though Rainbow Six came out last November and Spiderman 3 just a week before I sold it they were going for the same amount of money on eBay. No doubt due to the fact that there were many other people like me who bought the game solely based on hype and then played it and hated it like I did.

As soon as I got Vegas, I knew I would like the tactical shooter. I’m currently on the second level of the game and am really impressed by it. It’s a tactical third person shooter where you go through Vegas casinos and the Vegas strip to stop a bunch of terrorists. Unfortunately, terrorists rampaging through Vegas strip clubs didn't make it in this version of Rainbow Six....at least I don't think so.

The graphics are amazing. The gameplay is fun. It’s a tough game, but I am thoroughly enjoying the single player experience. The multiplayer experience: not so much….Yesterday, some teenager I was playing multiplayer with told me that I sucked….I’m old.

Tune in tomorrow for another edition of Bore Me!...which details the recent movies/TV shows I've seen that have done just that.

A-Rod Gives Blonde Bimbo His Rod

I normally don't involve myself with the U.S. Weekly type of tabloid garbage, but I had to laugh at today's headline in the New York Post; although it's definitely not as comical as my headline.

Who gives a crap about this story. It's his personal business. It's not the public's business. I hear the argument all of the time that because he makes loads of money that he should open up his entire life for scruntiny. I do not agree with that. I spend money to watch A-Rod play baseball, so that is the only thing that I consider up for grabs to criticize.

Not only was the story in NY Post today, but it was also on Mike and Mike ESPN Radio this morning. While I hated listening to them talk about this garbage, I definitely made a beeline for my computer when I got into work to see how hot the blond was.

I mean, if A-Rod can't get a smoking hot blond making $25 million a year, well then all hope is lost for us mortal men. Apparently I wasn't the only one interested in seeing the pictures in the New York Post this morning as it literally took me 5 minutes to load up the newspaper's website - I'm talking about old school AOL dial-up here; no doubt due to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people like myself were clogging up the Post bandwidth in their quest to see A-Rod stray....from his hideous looking wife. You be the judge....(see a picture of his wife to the right).

After reading the article that accompanied the photo of A-Rod with this blond bombshell, I was completely disgusted. The article details the places they went, the things they did, how A-Rod looked when he came into the hotel with the woman, how he "scratched his nose"...supposedly to cover his face. It was truly bushleague, half-truth, yellow journalism.

The only thing that the article left out was the fact that after he took the blonde up to his penthouse suite, he gave her his Rod and then snorted lines off her stomach. What a trashy tabloid the NY Post is.

Did the NY Post ever stop to think for an instance that maybe this young girl had lost two of her puppies in A-Rod's hotel room and he was simply offering to help her look for them...?

Congrats NY Post, you're Star Magazine and U.S. Weekly rolled into one....You dumb sensationalistic bastards.

The New Yankee Stadium

I went to the Yankees-Angels game with my wife, Smelmooo and his wife this weekend. We had a fun time, because our company was awesome, but the Yankees lost - again - and there were no port-a-johns in the parking lot. ... A necessity if you are going to be drinking beer while tailgating. My bladder had more leaks in it than the Yankees bullpen.

Here's a picture of the construction on the new Yankees Stadium which will open for baseball in 2009 - when the Yankees are a good team again. As Forrest Gump once said: I have nothing more to say about that.

The Great XBox 360 Caper

I have about 10 things that I wanted to blog about, but I really felt the need to write about something amazing that happened to me today. Okay, it wasn't amazing, but it was pretty cool.

My XBox 360 died today. ....that's not the amazing part though. I nearly had a seizure when it happened. After the XBox 360 showed me the deadly 3 rings of death that means that it's suffering from a hardware malfunction of epic proportions, I called up Microsoft and after fighting with Max, the friendly computerized phone service there for 5 minutes - I finally reached a human being. I was then told by a nice foreign lady at MS that my XBox was a month over the corporate 1-year warranty - of course it was! - and I would need to send it in for repair and pay $139 for it, I was pretty pissed off.

I didn't even think about calling EB Games which I bought an XBox package from in April 2006 because I already knew the warranty had expired. The package that I purchased from the store just over a year ago included a XBox 360 console and a bunch of other stuff thrown in to fleece people to spend in the upwards in $600 on the package, including a 1-year EBGames warranty. I usually never get warranties for ANYTHING, because I consider them to be dumb add-ons proposed by retailers to get you to give them more of your money. But I was pretty much forced to get this one back in April, so I obliged. Turns out, I was lucky to have been forced to buy that warranty.

After I got off the phone with Microsoft today, I figured I would give it a shot to call EBGames. I played dumb when I got on the phone with them - usually the best way to get people to feel for you - and the guy told me that even though my 1-year warranty with them had run out, they would be happy to replace my broken XBox with a brand, spanking new one. Now that's Customer Service for you!! Needless to say, I will buy every future game at my that EBGames because of what they did for me today.

Now, I just have to get Microsoft to refund the $139 that they already charged to my credit card. Hopefully that's not too tough. But you never know.

Yankee Fan Fest 1996

Back by popular demand, I'm going to write more than 1 blog today, but it deals with the Yankees - which isn't a topic that some of my loyal readers like ChosenOne loves. Sorry ChosenOne, I hope you still idolize me. I'll keep it brief. I promise.

In early 1996, I attended the Yankee FanFest with my cousin. The FanFest was held before the season - which turned out to be the Yankees first championship in the 1990s dynasty years - and for a small fee you could stand in line for hours waiting for the signature of your favorite Yankee.

I managed to get some pretty sweet signatures that day, including one: from the new manager - who no one believed in -- Joe Torre; from Jim Leyritz - who had not yet hit the defining Game 3 1996 World Series home run of his career; Andy Pettitte - a young pup at the time; Don Zimmer - who hadn't pissed off George Steinbrenner yet; and Michael Kay - then of WABC Radio broadcaster and long before the YES Network was a twinkle in the Boss's eye.

This story though is about the biggest autograph I got and biggest line I stood in that day. The line wrapped around the FanFest facility where scores of people waited for the signature of an up and coming Yankee Rookie.

I still remember fans saying that day how he was going to become the next Yankee great. The Yankees sure believed it, as they gave the kid #2, a single digit number reserved only for such greats as Ruth, Gehrig, Berra, DiMaggio, etc. News camera crews believed it too. Fox was there and caught a glimpse of a young Paperboy, standing on the long line, who also believed that Derek Jeter was going to be something big.

After a long wait and a cameo on Fox News, I reached the front of the line and Jeter. I looked right at the young Jeter - he who was not yet soiled by Mariah Carey - and will never forget what happened next. ....He was wearing the exact same Aeropostle sweater that I was wearing at the time. I mentioned it to him. He said nonchalantly: "oh yeah, cool." He signed my ball and I went on my merry way.

Eleven Years Later that Derek Jeter autographed ball still sits on the bookshelf in my house. And last night, Derek Jeter hit a single in the 2nd inning for his 2,215th career hit as a Yankee. The hit vaulted him into fifth place on the all-time Yankees hit list in front of the great Joe DiMaggio. Guess Jeter turned out to be a great one, huh?

Lost Season 3 Finale One to Remember

All I can say is Wow! I thought that the 2-hour Season 3 Finale of Lost was PHENOMENAL last night. It might have been one of the best episodes of Lost ever before and could be one of the best season finales of any show that I've ever seen.

I also think that the awesome season finale also definitely made up for an overall season that was fraught with confusing storylines, horrible flashbacks and mediocre character development.

There was just so much action in last night's episode, from Hurley driving in to save the day, to Charlie turning off the jamming signal in the Looking Glass, to the great flashbacks of Jack, to when Jack beat the hell out of Ben.

Short of a baseball or football game, I can't remember the last time, I was actually up on my feet yelling at the screen while watching TV. The scene where Ben ordersthe Others to kill Sayid, Jin and Bernard was so emotionally charged for me that from the second that Jack jumped on top of Ben and started punching him, I was literally yelling out loud, "Kill him. Kill him." I'm usually not a violent person, short of shooting people in Grand Theft Auto and throwing around the remote every so often, but at that moment, I was screaming for Jack to beat Ben to death.

Of course, last night as always, Lost raised more new questions than it answered old ones, like:

1) What the hell happened in the closing scene were a makeup-wearing Kate visits Jack at the airport? I'm assuming that they have gotten off of the island, but the time period really isn't explained.

2) Why was Jack continually referring to his father like he was still alive in the flashbacks? In the last scene we are clearly shown that the flashbacks are actually flashforwards into the future after Jack's dad had died.

3) Who is Naomi and who are the people on her boat that is 80 miles off the island?

4) Why did Ben keep saying that everyone on the island would die if they were rescued?

5) Has the old Internet rumor of the castaways being in purgatory really breathed its last breath?

6) What will happen in Season 4 with the castaways? Will they be rescued? Or they really in purgatory and does Ben's proclamation of everyone "dying" and the Jack flashbacks really occur in Hell where the good Jack is a strung old drug addict who tries to commit suicide.

Even though some many questions were raised during the Season Finale last night, I really didn't care. There was so much action from start to finish that I saved the episode on my DVR and definitely am planning to watch it again. I can't wait for Season 4.

The Jonathan Papelbon Face

Sure, I'm pissed that the Yankees dropped last night's game to the Red Sox making tonight's rubber game at the Sox all that much more important. But I wanted to blog about one thing that particularly pisses me off more than that: Red Sox Closer Jonathan Papelbon's "mean" face when he is staring down batters.

I literally searched the Internet for the past two days looking for that exact picture, but couldn't find it. So, instead of posting it on this blog, I'll explain it in words.

During my search, I heard it called the "Anus Face", but I won't be that mean. In my opinion, the face that Jonathan Papelbon gives an opposing batter prior to each pitch is the same exact "mean" face that 3rd graders give to their teachers when they are told that someone else drank their chocolate milk. Is that a good enough description for you?

I hate that guy.

A Different Yankees Team

It was an excellent team effort by the Yankees last night against the Red Sox. Sure, the Yankees entered last night's game 10 1/2 games behind the Red Sox, a team that had absolutely no pressure whatsoever on them. It just looked like a different Yankee team out there.

For one of the first times all season, the Yankees have their top 3 starters lined up in a row. The return of Roger Clemens is on the horizon. And with last night's 6-2 win against the Red Sox, the Yankees have put together a winning streak. Yes, it's too game, but I'm a glass half full type of guy.

Last night, Johnny Damon had 3 hits and made stuff happen on the basepaths by stealing second in the first inning before Alex Rodriguez deposited a gargantuan shot into the left center stands. Bobby Abreu started to get on base again. The Yankees as a whole were more aggressive than they have at any point in the season on the basepaths. They stole bases. They took an extra base on base hits. They slid hard into bases. They played good defense. A majority of the calls didn't go the Red Sox's way. Chien-Ming Wang got out of tough jams when the Red Sox had runners in scoring position. The worst didn't end up happening.

It was nothing like the Yankees who have played the first 40+ games in a lackadaiscal and stoned fashion. And I loved it. 9 1/2 games back and hopefully the Bombers can pick up another game tonight nad tomorrow against the tobacco chewing, donkey banging Red Sox.

An Underwhelming Season of 24

I can't express how truly disappointed I was with Season Six of 24. For anyone who reads my blog knows, you know that 24 is probably my favorite show on TV. I love Jack Bauer. I own all 5 seasons on DVD and have watched all of them 2 times a piece. That's 240 hours of TV for those of you counting at home.

Needless to say, I was completely excited for Season 6 to start. I blogged about it. I gushed about it. I held my 2nd annual 24 Bad Guy Draft with my buddy and put money on it. The first few hours were decent. Some of the plotlines were interesting. I wondered where the season would go.

But after the 12 hour mark or so of Season 6, I found my "must watch TV" feeling of 24 waning a bit. By the 18th hour, I was truly slogging through episodes, just to keep up with my 24 Bad Guy pool and simply out of my undying love and dedication for the show. Something happened to change that though this season. The plotlines became stale. The cliffhanger commercial breaks too predictable. The characters too shallow.

In past seasons, I'd be on the edge of my seat and a 4 minute commercial break would literally last a hour. Now that I have a Tivo, that 4 minute commercial break has evaporated to something like 1o seconds between the action. That might be the reason, but I really think it's the fact that the producers are working with stale storylines, stale characters and the loss of Elisha Cuthbert - as Jack's smoking hot daughter - which hurt the show more than anyone else could possibly imagine.

Tonight's 2 hour season finale was completely underwhelming right up until the last scene where Jack looks over a cliff and you're wondering is he going to jump? Is he going to blow his brains out? The answers to both were a resounding no. All that Jack did was look out into the distance and look like he was going to cry while the screen faded to black. I could have swore that I saw a jumping shark in the distance.

The Yankee Clippard

Well, NY Daily News went with the headline that I knew they were going to use after last night's strong performance by rookie pitcher Tyler Clippard . If they hadn't, another paper would have and if they didn't, I surely would have used it. For those who don't get the reference, Yankee great Joe DiMaggio was known as the Yankee Clipper back in the 50s. No, I have no idea what a Yankee Clipper means.

Tyler Clippard pitched very well in his major league debut last night against the Mets. Clippard gave up 1 run and 3 hits through 6 innings. He struck out 6 batters and kept the Mets off balance all night. When he left after the 6th inning, he had retired 17 batters in a row. Of course, Joe Torre didn't keep him in though and continued to show a ridiculous belief in our crappy bullpen. Thankfully they didn't blow it for Clippard.

Lost in the fact that the Yankees are 10+ games behind the Red Sox and four games under .500 is the fact that many of our young arms (Karstens, Clippard, Hughes) have pitched really well in pressure situations this season. Hey, ya gotta look on the bright side when your team stinks.

Congrats to my Brother-in-Law

Congrats to my brother-in-law for his graduation from Rutgers University today. Way to go man. My boy raised his GPA from a 1.x in his first semester in college to graduating with honors as a Communications/Sociology double major. Way to go!

Today's graduation, while it was all 5 hours long did have another huge highlight to it. Former Rutgers grad James Gandolfini - otherwise known as the great Tony Soprano - was there and he walked right by me. It was pretty cool. Bada Bing!

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 sure is interesting. Forget the jargon though. If you prefer Interweb or the Internets then you stick with those. I wanted to blog about this today because a few things happened today that made me think about how far the Internet has come in just a few short years.

For the first few years after graduation, I worked for a public relations company that worked for small technology companies. Many of these companies were dabbling with business Instant Messages, global trade management and the first iterations of customer relationship management software. The Internet was in its infancy. Before the bubble burst, companies threw tons out tons of money for lunches, happy hours and foosball tables....People wondered if printed newspapers would be extinct in a few short years ... Things like blogs, 24 hour sports coverage, YouTube, myspace or personalized websites didn't exist.

It seems like just in a few short years everything has changed and now the world is full of self made authors, artists, videographers and message board posters who actually can make a difference. Now the line between newspapers reporters and web bloggers really has been blurred. Time named "You" the person of the year - whatever that means. But if one thing is clear is that Web 2.0 will continue to evolve in whatever way the public takes it.

In the past, one of my writing outlets used to be writing of personal poems to my wife. Now, I'm writing blogs that are read by the world!!! (if the world was only 3 posers named Smelmooo, Chosen One and my brother-in-law.)

The Real Italian Stallion

No, it's not me. ...

First off, let me say that Rocky IV stands as one of my Top 5 favorite movies of all time right behind Back to the Future, Die Hard, The Big Lebowski, Dumb and Dumber. Before you think that I am biased toward the whole Rocky series, I'll give you that disclaimer and also tell you that I loved Rocky's 1 and 2 and hated Rocky's 3 and 5.

Last night, after I watched the next to last episode of the completely underwhelming Season 6 of 24, I decided to rent a movie through Patriot Media. After scrolling through an endless list of drab movies and not wanting to waste $5 of real money on Beer Fest, I decided to go with Rocky Balboa. I never saw the movie in the theater and had absolutely no expectations for it despite my past love/hate relationship with Rocky films. I had heard from a few people in the past that it had its good and bad moments. Other than that though, I knew nothing about the movie....Maybe that was a good thing as from the moment I turned it on, I was enthralled.

It was just a great overall movie with a ton of flashbacks from Rocky's career. It had very few unwatchable parts other than some of the scenes where Rocky was at Adrian's gravesite. The whole movie surrounds the death of Adrian Balboa from cancer and how Rocky is coping with a life without his two loves - Adrian and Boxing. He now owns a restaurant in South Philly where he serves as a host of sorts who goes around telling old stories of his fighting days and taking pictures with the customers. The story really made you feel sorry for how far Rocky had fallen and how pathetic he had become.

Later in the movie, the promoters of the heavyweight champion Mason Dixon decide to hold an exhibition between Dixon and Rocky and that's where the movie really took it up a notch. I went from feeling sorry for Rocky to all of a sudden finding myself up on my feet - okay, not literally -- rooting for Rocky . Maybe it was the old Rocky music that got me so inspired and completely skewed my usual propensity to knock down every movie that I see. But I loved this movie. Loved it!

I highly recommend Rocky Balboa for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Question

Could you live 6 weeks of your life without everything you own?

I generally try not to talk about work on this blog, but I felt the need to do so today. I was outside of the office today filling in for a company that we are partners with. This company represents a moving company who was trucking the life belongings of two gentlemen moving across the country. My job today was to be at the new home of these two guys when their belonging were delivered, just in case any media showed up. Well, turns out their belonging took longer than expected to be delivered to them because of an unfortunate accident.

To make a long story short, the moving company was trucking the belonging of these two guys across the country and the truck stalled on train tracks. Minutes later a train came down the tracks and tore the train in half, damaging some of the belonging of these two guys. Some of the stuff wasn't damaged, but a Lexus SUV in the truck was completely totaled. Also on the 18-wheeler was two plasma TVs that the guy owned. He was wondering today if either of them still worked. Since then the guy's have slept on air mattresses and weren't able to access a lot of their things until they were delivered today. That's rough.

It made me wonder if I could live 6 weeks of my life without some of my worldly possessions. I know I couldn't live without my Eli Manning figurines for too long...

Entertain Me with Spiderman 3

Going in to see Spiderman 3, I definitely had some high expectations. I loved the first two movies and was hoping that the third wrapped up the trilogy nicely. One of the reasons that I probably liked the movies was that everytime Spiderman movies came out, the number of questions of "Do you know who you look like?" went exponentially up...The answer is Tobey Maguire, by the way, but I'm much prettier...

After 2+ hours of Spiderman 3, I left mostly happy and somewhat sad at the movie overall. There definitely were some excellent scenes between Peter/Spiderman and Harry/New Goblin. Other than that though, I didn't think that the other villians - Sandman and Venom - were necessary at all. Some scenes with those villians were interesting, but others just added plot lines that weren't necessary.

And I really believe that overall the movie was hurt by having too many plot lines for the audience to follow. Let's count shall we?

1. Peter and Mary Jane's relationship
2. Peter/Spiderman and Harry's/New Goblin relationship
3. Peter's revenge trip against Sandman for killing Uncle Ben
4. Spiderman turning into Black Spiderman
5. Spiderman vs. Venom

I think that's just way too many storylines for a movie. There probably were a few additional ones that I can't remember as I write this tonight, but I think you get the point.

Overall, I'll give Spiderman 3 a grade of a C, while I would give Spiderman 1 a grade of an A and Spiderman 2 a grade of a B.

Hello Again Rocket

I meant to blog yesterday about Chien-Ming Wang's near perfect game on Saturday night, but then I got wrapped up in watching Sunday's game against the Mariners, and didn't end up writing that blog...And then the 7th inning stretch on Sunday happened.

My wife and I were planning our vacation to Arizona while the game was on and out of nowhere, the commercials between the 7th inning stretch cut off suddently and there on the TV appeared Roger Clemens in a blue pinstriped suit saying: "Well, they got me out of Texas. I'll be talking to you soon." For a second, I had no idea what was going on. Then I realized that the Rocket announcing that he was coming back to pitch for the Yankees. What great news....

As pitcher after pitcher was injured this season and the Yankees found themselves having to round out their starting rotation with minor league pitchers, I was hoping that Clemens would come back to the Pinstripes. And now that it's a reality, I couldn't be happier to see how the old man pitches again in Pinstripes.

I don't care at all about the unbelievable $28 million pro-rated salary that he's getting. I don't care that he doesn't have to be with the team on a day he's not pitching. All I care about is that we are getting a proven pitcher who has won with the Yankees before.

I really believe that it's not only going to be a big psychological boost for the Bombers, but also a big boost to their starting pitching staff..

Good luck Rocket!

I Jinxed Phil Hughes

I watched most of Tuesday's Yankee game on my 27" meager Sony TV. Phil Hughes, Yankees Future Star starting pitcher was becoming the Yankees Present Star starting pitching. In his second major league start, he was DOMINATING. His fastball was blistering. His curveball was ridiculous! And he threw 3 straight changeups to strike out All-Star Mark Texeira. He was making one of the best hitting teams in the best hitting ballparks look horrible.

Did I mention he was tossing a no-hitter?

When he took that no-hitter into the sixth inning, I started calling and IM'ing my friends to tell them to turn on the game. You could just tell that something special was happening. He was getting ahead of hitters. He was striking out people by the bunches. He was getting people to ground into double plays. No one hit a flyball out of the infield until the 5th inning. He was on his way to becoming the youngest pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter.

Then, I jinxed Phil Hughes...

My wife came downstairs to tell me that House on Fox was over and I could watch the Yankees game upstairs on our fabulous 46" Sony Projection HDTV. I knew before the final word left her mouth that Hughes' no-hitter would be lost if I went upstairs. I'm that type of superstitious person.

Yet I denied what my inner monologue was saying and I went upstairs to watch the game. One out later, Hughes didn't give up a hit, but instead he pulled up lame and was forced to leave the game after he heard his groin pop. Just like that he lost his chance at becoming the youngest pitcher ever to toss a no-hitter. And now he's out 4-6 or 6-8 weeks depending on who you talk to. And the Yankees injuries woes continue. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

Sorry for jinxing you Phil.

Moon Over New England

I first heard it on Mike and Mike this morning on ESPN Radio. Then it was repeated by my boy Smelmooo...Is there something in the water? What makes anyone at all think that New England Patriots coach Bill Belichek will be able to talk any sense at all into often in trouble, always lazy Wide Receiver Randy Moss?

Everyone says that "if anyone can talk some sense into Moss" - so says Mike and Mike and Smelmooo - it's Bill Belichek. Isn't that EXACTLY the same thing that people said last year when Terrell Owens came to the Dallas Cowboys and was set to be coached by Bill Parcells - the ultimate tough coach? Well, after one year, Owens' nutty antics and me-first personality drove Parcells out of Dallas. I'm not saying that Moss is going to drive Belichek away from coaching. All that I'm saying is that it's not as small of a risk as everyone has been saying.

Sure, the Pats only gave up a 4th round pick for Moss, so it's not a big risk in that respect. But the risk definitely is there when Moss tries to blow up the offense when he's not getting the ball passed to him as much as he wants. He's bound to be obscene again like he was in Green Bay when his fake mooned the Packer fans (pictured above) after scoring a TD - okay that was funny. And he's definitely going to alienate his teammates with his laziness. So, it's actually much more of a risk then everyone is saying.

It's bound to happen. He's done it before and he'll do it again. Mark my words...