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Baseball Season! The Indians are off to a 3-3 start. Losing two-of-three on the road on the West coast doesn’t really bother me. C.C. Sabathia hasn’t looked great so far though. That’s concerning. However, Cliff Lee, Jake Westbrook and Fausto Carmona have all looked great in their starts. They gave up a combined four runs.So, as we had hoped, pitching is the strong point. Hitting was a sure thing the first two games, the Tribe scored 17 runs. But the next four games, they scored just seven. It’s all good though. Victor Martinez was hurt opening day, but he’ll be back soon and the offense will probably return to form. Further on down the rust belt, our friends in Detroit still haven’t tasted a win yet. In fact they’re the only team in baseball that can say that. Brutal. The Tigers’ bullpen, starters, fielders and even hitters have contributed to the early-season slump. For a team that many were calling the second-coming of Murderer’s Row, it’s a pretty disappointing start. What’s worse is they have to head to Boston for three and then Chicago.Even though Joe Morgan thinks they would have won some games if they’d started on the road, This could be the beginning of a 2-10 start or maybe worse. Until next time.

Today at around 11am, I arrived outside Savage Hall at The University of Toledo (my college) and jumped into line ignoring the freezing temperatures with plans of waiting a few hours to hear the next President of The United States, Senator Barack Obama, speak. The rally was set to start at 4:30 PM with the doors opening at 2. We were lucky, and the thousands who had gathered outside were let in early, around 1:15. The event was open to the public, with a small number of VIP tickets being sparsely distributed earlier in the week. We entered the general admission line only to find out that we couldn’t sit in the VIP seats on the side of the stage, but had the choice of either sitting in upper deck, or standing directly in front of the podium. We choose the latter, and found ourselves roughly 10 feet from the stage. Around this time we, and everyone else, decided it was better to sit on the floor then to stand for the next 3 hours, so we did so.

The time passed quick, and before we knew it, some guy was introducing the first of what felt like 5 different gospel-church-choir-clap-sing and chant groups from the greater Toledo area. This became rather tiring as it burned out the last hour. The president of the university, Lloyd Jacobs, took the stage and spoke for about 5 minutes discussing the greatness of democracy, freedom, the election process, and all the rest. Next, Ohio’s State Treasurer, Richard Cordray, gave an enthusiastic speech highlighting all the fine points of Sen. Obama, while mentioning his family and children’s future under the two terms Obama will serve in The White House. The privileged task of introducing Sen. Obama went to a local volunteer who became emotional as she showed her excitement for the candidate.

Obama took the stage in front of 10,000+ Ohioans in what was “the largest gathering for a politician other than a current president in the city of Toledo.” The place went wild, cameras flashing, people cheering, feet stomping in the bleachers like the final seconds of a college basketball ball game.  Barack said his thanks to those who made the event possible before lunging into his material. First on the agenda was to make the point for Ohio Primary voters to cast their ballots early, before the March 4th election day. He ran through his stance on the issues, focusing on Education, Trade, Veteran Affairs, The War in Iraq, and a bit on Health Care. He threw some usual flack at President Bush regarding The No Child Left Behind Act and The War in Iraq, as well as promoting his promise for change on the issue of NAFTA and Sen. Clinton’s role in it’s origin, among other things.  He made his case against the issue of his short career in mentioning the need for an untarnished beltway outsider.

Sen. Obama delivered a great speech for over an hour and a half, just before leaving the stage signing autographs, shaking hands, and kissing babies. It was a great day for many, and I look forward to Barack Obama winning my state of Ohio in the March 4th, 2008 Primary Election.

Huge trade for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Cavs get:

Ben Wallace- Product of the Pistons system of cheap bullshit stout defense. Started the brawl at the Palace in the Arabian Hills in 2003 by shoving Ron Artest. Has proven to be able to block shots, rebound and dunk.

Delonte West- One of the most gangster-looking players in the league. Puts Allen Iverson to shame when it comes to thuggish tattoos. Can slash, shoot and has some defensive ability.

Wally Sczerbiak- MAC guy, enough said. Traded for fellow RedskinHawk Ira Newble. Can shoot the lights out of the gym.

Joe Smith- One of the last players in the NBA to be able to say he was in the Sega version of NBA Jam. He was also a No. 1 overall pick.

Cavs shit out:

Drew Gooden- Good player. More worried about his folicular makeup than his post-up game. Wallace will add energy and toughness and will be a bigger factor down the stretch, where Gooden often disappeared.

Larry Hughes- Bricklayers envy this man’s ability.

Shannon Brown- Threw it down at Michigan State. Never quite cracked the roto in Cleveland. In Chicago he’ll get a great chance to play.

Donyell Marshall- Nice tits.

Ira Newble- Great 12th man. Had no business starting in the NBA.

Cedric Simmons- The jury is out on this guy. He played a whopping 68 minutes this season. With all of the injuries the Cavs had, that fact may speak volumes about his ability.

I like this trade. The Cavs cut some fat, not a lot of salary, but it’s still good. Then when you look at the depth, it looks a lot better.

C- Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Dwayne Jones

F- Ben Wallace, Andy V, Joe Smith

F- LeBron James, Sasha Pavlovic

G- Wally Sczerbiak, Daniel Gibson, Devin Brown

G- Delonte West, Damon Jones, Eric Snow

That’s a pretty deep team once all the injuries return.

Trailer.

Click.

I had no hope for this movie.  And now…

Well, things change.

Enjoy.

Most of you know the result of Super Bowl XLII. You also probably know that the city of Boston has five world championships since 2001. Three Super Bowls and two World Series wins.

None of that does justice to this! The fans of the Patriots are seriously petitioning the NFL to play the final 1:40 of the Super Bowl. The looked up a bunch of rules and think they have a strong case.

As it stands, the petition has almost 15,000 signatures. But if you read through it, a lot of those signatures are funny, fake ones from people who hate them. At Kissing Suzy Kolber, they have hand-picked a few favorites.

38. Dave Rosenthal I can’t believe this isn’t a big story. I mean, we should be 19-0, but the NFL hates that Pats, so instead we have to go through this the rest of our lives knowing we got gypped.

Okay. This guy is pretty stupid. He thinks the NFL hates the Pats, when really the NFL gave the Patriots favor all season long. See the Baltimore game, the Philadelphia game and basically any close game they played. If the NFL wanted the Pats to lose, they would have done it a lot sooner.

194. Erik Frenz I don’t know much about the rules of the NFL but as a Patriots fan if this is true I feel cheated. If this is true there should seriously be a replay of the last 1:40 of the Super Bowl. I didn’t bet on it myself, but a lot of people lost or gained a lot of money on this game and the real outcome deserves to be known.

This guy “doesn’t know much about the rules.” He also cites gambling as a reason to replay the game. Isn’t gambling illegal? And does he expect officials to replay the game because of gamblers? Now for the humor.

1186. Tommy This is fackin’ bull shit! That dahhhkie Mike Carey rawbbed our man Welkahhhhh of the MVP! AS FAAAAAHHHH AS I’M CONCERNED, WE’AH UNBEATEN!!!!

1196. Retard Ed McDouche Not only should the NFL investigate this game, but they should review every game from the last 25 years and award every Super Bowl to the Pats. Tom Brady is the one true Messiah and Coach Bellichik should be elected president. This is all the fault of black people. Now I have to go drink whiskey and beat my wife.

Hilarious.

I rooted for the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Even though Boston thinks they’re God’s gift to sports, I wanted to witness history and I wouldn’t have minded the distinction of “best QB ever” going to a Michigan guy.

But I’m disgusted. What a bunch of stupid idiot fans. Hey, Boston, you might need some of these after you get a response for your petition.

This is how I feel about a certain music festival that I have much love for and much experience with, but I suppose I should preface this post with the the fact that it is not meant to come across cocky or pretentious.

On a Wednesday in 2004, I found myself and a few carloads of friends driving to southern Tennessee for what would be our first Bonnaroo. It was a blast to say the least, we saw a lot of great sets and got to experience a lot of what was The Great American Summer Music Festival for 4 days under the Tennessee sun. 2005 brought another good time, with much of the same of the previous year. (I won’t go into too much detail about what shows we saw, that would take away from the point of this post.)

The basic idea was that the first two years were amazing, and I’m sure any other attendees will agree with me. Bonnaroo had a majority of strictly jam band acts, and a crowd and campground vibe that resembled that of yesteryear’s free-spirited “hippie” festival. (2 points here, the fact that the lineup was only jambands is of course debatable, and second, I have never been to a “real” Dead show, or even a real Phish show, but I’ve read and heard enough about them to make the assumption that the early Bonnaroo shows were abundantly similar.) We all had an awesome time in 2006, more mainstream acts such as Tom Petty, Radiohead, and Death Cab appeared on the lineup. The term “mainstream” is not meant to be negative, I love all three acts I just mentioned, and thought all three played awesome sets. Radiohead performed for what would be their longest live show to date and Tom Petty played a solid set featuring Stevie Nicks for a number of songs. Again, many mainstream acts at Bonnaroo play steller performances, and are definatley worth watching.

2006 saw the change from a happy hippie festival with a good campground and crowd to a more main-steam-in-the-spot-light, generic high-grossing MTV news festival. (simple argument: Bonnaroo was never out of the spot-light, early shows saw attendence at > 80,000 and obviously has always been high grossing.) My point is Bonnaroo changed, or dare I say: Sold Out. Fine. I’m sure that’s just my poor opinion. I still had fun. So it wasn’t what it used to be, so what? Okay, I’ll give it another chance. 2007, we drive to Bonnaroo, $250 tickets in hand. We know the 9 hour route by hand, and go into the show a bit nervous about what would be. I’ll burn through last year’s Bonnaroo pretty quick: it sucked, The Police sucked, they played a 50 minute show, set for a 3 hour block. Tool, one of my favorite bands of all time, sucked, playing a set that sounded like shit, and was by far the worst late-night main stage show I’ve seen at Bonnaroo, short of Steve Winwood’s 2004 Willie Nelson fill-in performance. The Flaming Lips set made me literally fall asleep, and The White Stripes on Sunday drew everyone on the grounds to the smaller main stage making it rather less enjoyable. Bonnaroo changed from a happy music hippie fest to a “Woodstock ‘99″ appeal (read: wallet chains, tribal tattoos, Clutch.)

The 2008 lineup is comical. I listened to Metallica growing up, and enjoyed it, but sorry - why the fuck are they at Bonnaroo? I can dig Pearl Jam, this is a bit strange, but they’ve been known play much like a jamband when performing live. Kayne West? Are you serious? At Bonnaroo? I can’t even stand Jack Johnson, he is the current DMB derivative that’s easy-to listen-to-while-playing-beer-pong, and he’s listed on the top line in the lineup. Still though, Bonnaroo shows some hope: Phil Lesh, The Allman Bros, Willie, Unphrey’s, B.B. King, Iron & Wine, Yonder, Robert Randolph, !!!, Death Cab, My Morning Jacket, David Cross all look promising, and somewhat resemble that of an older Bonnaroo.

The fact is, the mentioned acts are merely “great” in my opinion, and though theres more “good” bands then there are potential “shitty” ones, Metallica, O.A.R., Kanye, Jack Johnson, etc will draw some of the biggest douchiest ticket holders in all of mid-west America.

I don’t know what happened to you Bonnaroo, you’re just not the same. Who’s next Limp Bizkit? Or perhaps we’ll see Nickleback headlining the 2009 show. In any event, props to attempting to be the likes of Coachella and kudos to Superfly. 2008 should bring in record numbers in terms of profit and attendance. It is, after all, a business.

I don’t know exactly how to write this review.  I went into this movie with literally zero expectations.  I saw the trailer before the enormously good time that was Transformers back in the summer and thought it was pretty bold and cool.  Since then, more images, speculation, and Ain’t It Cool talkback nausiation has steadily come forth and I found myself less and less eager to see this.  Becasue of course, this is a big studio action moive - no matter how they dress it up it won’t be bold, it won’t be different, and it won’t be original.  That’s just the way of the world.

Well, I’ve seen it and I’m going to say that it’s a pretty cool movie - for those pining for a rating or score that’s like a B or three stars out of four.  There’s a lot of cool stuff going on here: first, shaky-cam is utilized to probably the best of its ability.  I am predicting now there will never be a truly great movie shot this way.  It’s too constricting and too frustrating to watch.   Much of the time I was wishing for the camera man to look at the fucking monster!!  Eventually he gets to that, and as such, so will I.  This movie was the grand experiment in faux-amateur movie-making.  Blair Witch was a novelty and, while this is a good movie, I don’t expect to see a lot of copy-cat movies in the coming months.  But I could be wrong.

I’ll move on to my main gripe in the movie: the characters.  This may be the most unintentionally unlikable set of characters I’ve ever seen.  They’re rich, they’re young, they’re good looking, and they are exceedingly stupid.  Nothing about these people feels real.  Their dialogue is so blatently scripted it’s painful.  And sadly, they give the duty of camera-man to the most annoying person alive.  If I have to go through one more scene of terror with this guy yelling, “Rob!  Rob!  Oh, my god!  Rob, did you see that!  Rob, holy shit,” I will kill myself.  Besides the MacGuffin Beth being super hot, these characters are useless and you feel nothing for them. 

THE MONSTER.  Now let me tell you, I have seen this movie.  I’m telling the truth.  So, by default, I’ve seen the infamous “Cloverfield Monster.”  What is it?  I don’t have a clue.  You never get a good look at it.  Ever.  It may have twelve legs.  It may have two - I don’t know.  For much of the first half, it’s seen only in glimpses and parts.  That’s when it works best.  At the very end you get a full-on close-up of its face and then later a broad day-light view of its entire body.  And it settles nothing.  It may be the coolest monster design ever, but I really don’t know.  All I took from it is that it has a tail, it can possibly can swim, and it has big inflatable red bubbles where its ears should be that expand and contract as it breathes.  It’s simultaneously an awesome monster and a complete let down.  It is a badass though, and looks to be completely invulnerable.  And the little parasites it drops and what they do to people they bite are pretty awesome too.

To say the least the movie is an experience.  You should see it, if nothing else because it deviates a little from the norm.  There are genuine moments of excitement and the movie keeps you interested and, dare I say, on the edge of your seat - and at 86 minutes, it’s not quite the time-suck that a lot of movies are this time of year.  It’s not a great movie, but then again, what movie that has a giant monster attacking a city tries to be?  Really, the film works because of all of the 9/11 imagery it preys upon.  I believed this panic.  I believed that this could happen as ridiculous as the premise was.

The ending, to me, is kind of a let down.  It did what I expected the whole way, so it’s not  necessarily a surprise, but it happens on a much smaller scale.  I wanted a mushroom cloud.  But if that happened, you have to ask, how would the camera have survived?

This week pissed me off. I can’t turn on ESPN without seeing three things: Jessica Simpson (aka Yoko Romo), Bud Selig’s Bill Gates haircut, and TO crying.

I know that TO is a big team guy and all, and the QB’s girlfriend is always at fault when his team loses, but can we please enjoy the more awesome things about the NFL Playoffs? Like the teams that haven’t lost yet?

•  Eli Manning is still in the playoffs and his brother isn’t. That’s kind of like the time Stephen Baldwin got laid and Alec didn’t.
• The Patriots are still undefeated. That’s pretty impressive.
• Brett Favre is the Clint Eastwood of football. If he were to win the Super Bowl it would be the Million Dollar Baby of NFL seasons. Success-wise. If he loses, it would kind of be like the end of that movie. In that sense, I compare 2005 (4-12) to Space Cowboys and 2006 (8-8) to True Crime.
• Phillip Rivers is the man. Fans talk smack to him, he talks back. I’ve never been opposed to that. This comes from a guy who once flicked off a kid’s mom after she yelled at me for laying out of her son in a hockey game. Nonetheless, whatever happened to running your mouth?

If I wrote a letter to Congress, it’d go something like this:

Hey Congress,

Thanks a lot for pissing away my tax dollars on forcing Major League Baseball to figure out who did steroids. I know there aren’t imporant things like hunger, poverty, a bad economy, a seemingly endless war, gay politicians voting against gay marraige, and a national debt as deep as Rosie O’Donnell is fat.

Yours Truly,

Colin Wilson

In closing, if you think Lebron James is a jerk for driving 101 on the highway, tell me that you’ve never driven 100 miles per hour before. The guy has kept his nose clean his whole career and in a matter of three months people are all over him for wearing a Yankees hat and excessive speeding. Get off the guy’s nuts, Shawn Kemp got much less heat from people and he was a serial seminator and constantly overweight.

/exiting soapbox

I just saw There Will Be Blood.  As you know from past posts, I’ve been waiting for this movie forever.  And I must say that….it…..is…..awesome.  I’ll give a few quick thoughts instead of giving into my instincts to write 10 pages and talk about every detail on a second to second basis.

- Daniel Day-Lewis predictably owns this movie.  His character is  slow burner for most of the first half of the film, but once his safety net is taken away his sanity quickly disintigrates.  This s a movie about a man who is so consumed by his work and ambitions that it drives him completely nuts.  He hates everyone and takes pleasure in nothing execpt the complete domination and demoralization of his opponents.  Only when all his competition is destroyed is he finished.  I could talk about this character for days - there’s just so much there and that’s a credit to Day-Lewis and PTA’s writing.  He is relentless, he is evil, and he is a complete joy to watch.

-Paul Dano surprisingly holds his own next to Day-Lewis as the local pastor Eli Sunday.  Sunday and Plainview butt heads a few times in the movie and in each instance both characters true colors come to light.  As frightening as Planview is at times, the scene at the dinner table with Sunday covered with mud is just as frightening when you find out what Eli is capable of and how he regards others.  Plainview and Sunday are evil in equal measure with the only difference being that Plainview knows he is and doesn’t care, giving into his barbaric and murderous instincts, while Sunday uses God as an excuse and believes he is doing good.  Both are fake and are frauds.  Watching these two try to one-up and out-do the other is endlessly exciting.

- PTA has created a film that I would have never expected.  There is very little Terrence Malick influence here.  This is a mean film that charges forward relentlessly.  PTA supplies us with virtually no character to relate to.  No one shows even a hint of compassion in the film except maybe for Plainview’s son, HW, who is silent for virtually 90% of the movie.  Other than this all characters are reprehensible, ugly people and will leave you feeling a little uneasy.  This is new ground for PTA and I cannot wait for what comes next.  This is not his best film, but it is certainly one that is extremely interesting and will be talked about for years to come.

- The score deserves as much credit as the direction.  Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood has crafted a blistering, simmering debut score.  It is really difficult to explain unless you see the movie - listending to the music before I saw the movie and then afterwards are two completely different experiences.  It is strange and untraditional and manages to set the tone at every step and never feels out of place.  This music is basically playing in Plainview’s head throughout the entire movie.

- The bowling alley scene.  Everything comes out here.  This scene will become iconic in its violence and hilarity.  Plainview’s monolgue is deadly funny up until the last seconds when all the wind is sucked out of the theater.  Also, if you’re chossing to watch it on an internet stream, the rips leave out the last line of dialogue that people laughed out loud at in my screening - and not in a bad way.  I cannot tell you how funny the last 20 minutes are.  Everyone is working at the height of their game and no one is asked to pull back there performances.  They go for broke and the results are incredible.

I’ve gone too long.  Go see the movie and leave your thoughts.  I excpect it will divide audiences with its sheer meanness along with its drawnout scenes of silence.  But I strongly urge you to see it in a theater with a big crowd just to see how most audiences will be confused and unsure as to how to react to what they’re seeing.

If I get out to see No Country For Old Men, Atonement, and Sweeny Todd in a timely fashion (which I most likely won’t) I may end up doing a best of/worst of list.  But dont expect it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drink a milkshake.