2008 February « mistercellaneous

Archive for February, 2008

ketchup

February 29, 2008 at 4:44 pm · Filed under cars, life, music, news

it was my birthday this past week. got a lot of good stuff. my girlfriend and i went to foxwoods casino and spent the night in one of their suites. sweet it was. i lost about $40 gambling, which considering my two previous jaunts to casinos, is penny change. after we arrived, i quickly went down about $200 only to totally redeem myself the next morning, turning $20 into $220, which quickly turned itself into $160. i don’t play slots and i’m not overly comfortable playing blackjack in a casino but, what i do play is roulette. and i like to think i play it well, if it’s possible to guess with skill. anyway, it’s always good to get out and do something different, take a little adventure somewhere new. it was refreshing and i had a great time.

a few days before my birthday, i got a new (used) car. my previous car had begun to piss me off. the power windows would freeze shut, it started to sputter in 1st and 2nd gears, probably due to a noxious blend of 10% ethanol-gasoline. i filled the tank with cheaper gasoline only to later see the sign on the pump about the gas being laden with ethanol. some time ago the sunroof crapped out. no biggie. until i noticed in these winter months, that upon entering my car in the morning, it appeared to be colder inside my car than outside. i would tuck my hands inside my jacket, clutching to the steering wheel with my jacket fabric, while watching my breath billow out of my mouth like a bad chemistry experiment. i decided i had had just about enough so i purchased a 2003 subaru impreza wrx. a vastly significant improvement to say the least.

my girlfriend introduced me to a band i had never heard of before. she had heard one of their songs and thought that i might like their sound. the band is ‘vampire weekend.’ an indie, paul simon-esque, bubbly little band out of columbia university. i purchased their cd yesterday and was more than pleasantly surprised. the songs are extremely catchy and upbeat and their sound is refreshing in that it doesn’t remind me of 5 other bands that sound the same. upon inspection, they don’t play anywhere on the east coast for quite some time. they just played in philly on february 7. blast!

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cap it

February 22, 2008 at 4:10 pm · Filed under baseball, sports

(ap)

cano: “muhfugga said pettitte ‘misremembered’”

jeter: lol, oh man, that’s rich … clemens’ has got some balls … wait… buahahahhaa

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you be the judge

February 21, 2008 at 3:46 pm · Filed under basketball, entertainment, football, life, sports, work

a conversation started between some sports people this afternoon about lookalikes in sports and entertainment. i thought it was pretty interesting. the conversation started with talk about the recent shaq to phoenix suns trade. a sports person asked who the miami heat got in exchange for the big-man, to which he replied shawn marion. the other sports person then commented that she always thought shawn marion and ray lewis looked alike. i concurred. after that, a few more examples were given and without looking at actual pictures of the athletes and celebrities, i thought i had some interesting, blog-worthy material to work with. i set out on an all-points google image search and once i started putting pictures together i realized what i had … shit.

exhibit a) ray lewis and shawn marion

… somewhat

exhibit b) drew gooden and rapper common, as mentioned on thebiglead

… meh, not so much

exhibit c) hugh grant and phil mickelson

… yes and no

exhibit d) nick faldo and harrison ford

… dead ringers

i don’t know if any of these have been done before, quite frankly i do not care. all this brief exercise in photomerging taught me was that i have too much time on my hands on thursdays.

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a real slobberknocker?

February 16, 2008 at 9:08 pm · Filed under entertainment, fighting, sports, tv

Pro Elite photo

sometimes when i’m working on saturdays, i peruse yahoo news. when it’s a slow saturday i’ll read a couple stories here and there and browse their different sections. they have a superb mixed martial arts section over there at yahoo. while still in college, i was pretty interested in mma. i didn’t watch the pay-per-views because i was poor and in college but i followed the weekly spike tv shows pretty religiously. which brings me here.

while checking out the yahoo sports section, i found out that tank abbott and kimbo slice are apparently fighting tonight.

if you’re familiar with mma, you might remember tank abbott, the epitome of a haymaker-throwin, all-or-nothin’, bruiser. kimbo slice aka kevin ferguson is akin to a newer, buffer version of the old tank abbott. slice’s status as a fighter can completely be attributed to youtube videos of him knocking the complete tar out of his untrained and unskilled opponents. according to the linked column, he’s fought one or two opponents professionally for a total of approximately 30 seconds of ring time.

i don’t really follow mma anymore. too many people think it’s cool and too many meatheads think they’re the second-coming of chuck liddel. whenever something that was cool and somewhat unknown or unappreciated gets publicity and blows up, i generally abandon ship in a hurry. i set the trends, i don’t follow them. ha!

although this fight will probably be horribly unentertaining and end with tank abbott dry heaving his guts out in an effort to stay upright, i’d still like to see it. would i pay for it? absolutely not. that’s what the internet is for. click that youtube link above for some footage of ~~orange~~ kimbo slice. i seem to have forgotten my 18 or older youtube password. blast. nevermind that, i remembered it.

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who will police the police?

February 14, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under entertainment, life, news

here’s an interesting video. it made its way around the internets earlier this week, but i only actually viewed it today. my first emotion was anger towards the police officer. i immediately put myself in the shoes of the kids when i first saw it. draw your own conclusions.

big donut-boy pulls up in his little rollerskate smart car and just goes off … because of some skateboarding kids? this guy has got issues coming out of his ears.

i then tried to put myself in the officer’s shoes by which i entered a paradoxical universe that made my head nearly explode. clearly, this guy leads quite a sad life.

skateboarder calls reaction over the top (baltimore sun)

david simon would be proud: cop vs. skateboarder (thebiglead)

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don’t own ‘the night’

February 14, 2008 at 11:21 am · Filed under entertainment, life, movies

we_own_the_night_movie_image_mark_wahlberg_and_joaquin_phoenix__2_.jpg

joaquin: i totally think we should both pull out of this movie. it’s really boring.

marky mark: yea … i know dude.

as you might be able to tell from the title of the post, i watched the newly released movie “we own the night” last night. came out on dvd this past tuesday. it stars joaquin phoenix, marky mark, eva mendes and robert duvall. yaaaaawwwn. this movie was so incredibly predictable. off the top of my head, i can’t think of another movie with the same plot, yet there was never a doubt in my mind what was going to happen next. cop family with a son who manages a brooklyn nightclub. drug dealer hangs out at nightclub. cop family wants son to put the squeeze on drug dealer. son resists. violence ensues. i won’t ruin the rest.

i couldn’t get excited about this movie. it’s very straight-forward with little in the way of surprises or twists and turns. the acting is mediocre at best, no one really shines. joaquin phoenix and marky mark both seem to ghostwalk and mumble throughout most of the movie. maybe what i perceived as bad acting was really just the result of an insipid, unimaginative script. it was like xanax: the movie.

i noticed the use of a few corny cliches. eva mendes says during a scene that: “it feels like the walls are closing in.” i’ll never understand how a lame line like that makes it into a major motion picture. how long did it take to write this script? there are probably a thousand better ways to express that emotion rather than singing that same old song. ok, maybe it was her delivery that was lacking. i can’t say anything bad about eva mendes. sorry.

again, this movie just seems to settle. it had a pretty good cast and with a few added plot twists, this movie could have been memorable. however, everything falls into place just as expected. we own the night? damn, wish i would have just rented this ‘night.’

74%

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a reading rainbow

February 8, 2008 at 1:06 pm · Filed under basketball, books, entertainment, life, video games

makes me wanna go home and lay on a pile of hard cover books

i thought a post about books might be a nice change of pace. that, and i was looking for a reason to put that picture of lavar burton up. remember that show? of course you do.

the past week or two i’ve put the video games on pause and blew the dust off of the current book i had been reading, “runaway jury” by john grisham. previously, i had read about 60 or 70 pages before i put it down. it sat on my bedside table for maybe a month or so before i picked it up again. the book is about a huge tobacco lawsuit and the early chapters just weren’t enough to keep it glued to my hands. for some reason, i picked it back up sometime last week and flew through the last 300 odd pages with ease. great book, though rather predictable.

after i finished runaway jury, i took a night off of reading to watch the north carolina vs. duke college basketball game. i didn’t watch much actually. duke was up the entire game. the score got close at times, but just from watching, you could tell north carolina was not going to muster up a rally to overtake duke. the heels looked flat without point guard ty lawson. how you come out flat at your own place against rival duke, is beyond me.

getting back to books, i started reading “no country for old men” by cormac mccarthy last night. i bought the book before christmas and originally wanted to see the movie before reading the book. i like seeing movies first, i think, because it helps me visualize what i’m reading and it helps me be able to put the book down occasionally, because i already know what’s going to happen next. a suspense killer for sure, but sometimes i gotta get things done. ha, that’s such a lie.

anyway, i read 120 pages last night and if the movie is anything like the book (i’ve heard that they’re identical) i cannot wait to see this movie. i love this book. i’ve never read any cormac mccarthy before so i’m not aware of his writing style, but i find it very intriguing. it is definitely a stark contrast to john grisham’s writing style. the opening chapters pick up pace like an avalanche. at times the writing is so subtle, i’ve had to go back and reread many a paragraph. wait, was that important? wait, what did he say? wait, shit! i have a poor attention span and the chihuahua sitting on my lap didn’t help. i’ll probably finish this book late tonight or saturday night. i’m definitely going to go out and pick up cormac mccarthy’s “the road,” for which he won a pulitzer prize. if it’s better than no country, my head will probably explode with amazement.

yo, tinwa. you interested in swapping “i am legend for “no country for old men” for a spell when i’m done?

now, if i could only set my mind to finish and start my resident evil video games for wii like i have my books, then i’d be making progress.

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giants lovefest

February 7, 2008 at 10:17 am · Filed under football, life, sports, tv

it’s thursday and i’m still loving the giants super bowl win over the patriots. even if you’re not a giants fan, you’ve gotta like the lesser of two evils winning that game. truly a super bowl that i will remember for the rest of my life. here are two videos that made their rounds earlier this week, but are just too precious not to post.