Category: Commentary

Movies I Saw in 2008

I saw the following movies in the theater in 2008:

  • 27 Dresses
  • Rambo
  • 21
  • Leatherheads
  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall
  • Iron Man
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • Get Smart
  • The Dark Knight
  • The Pineapple Express
  • Tropic Thunder
  • Vicky Christina Barcelona
  • Burn After Reading
  • Eagle Eye
  • Religulous
  • Flash of Genius
  • How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
  • W.
  • Quantum of Solace
  • Twilight
  • Four Christmases
  • Kenny
  • Gonzo

I saw the following movies that were released in theaters in 2008 on DVD:

  • A Lawyer Walks into a Bar
  • The Bank Job
  • Made of Honor
  • Sex and the City
  • Recount

Michigan Basketball

I need to jump in now and become a fan of Michigan basketball, which I never have been. Ever. Even when I attended Michigan, I went to one game when my family was in town. I sat way up in the nose bleed section and probably spent more time talking, snacking and texting that actually watching Michigan win or lose.

But the tide seems to be turning and, while I am not a huge college basketball fan, except during March Madness when everyone is, I think I can get into the games. We’ve got a new coach and, from what I saw last night, a lot of solid new players. Plus, I need a crutch with the impending close of a dismal football season and no possibility of a bowl game this year.

I fully expected to get trounced by #4 ranked UCLA last night. I was going to play the punching bag at my UCLA friend’s house. Figured it would be a chance to hang out, drink a beer, and watch a game I was sure to lose. Then, we clawed back from a poor start. Down 9 to 1 I was laughing and writing the game of. Ten minutes later, there was a crumb of hope on my otherwise empty plate. Very empty plate.

So, off to a 3-0 start. Not much, but far better than the last decade. Perhaps we’re finally shrugging off the Chris Webber fab-five curse.

Now, #2 Duke tonight. Yeesh. Maybe I spoke too soon!

GO BLUE!

How Coffee Works

More like how caffeine works. And you’ll find a much more thorough explanation here, where I read about this. But here is the gist:

  • If you have never consumed caffeine before, it will initially increase your focus.
  • Saturation of this increase occurs after just two to three weeks of consumption.
  • At that point, the caffeine no longer increases your focus. Instead, you need it to reach your normal level of thinking.
  • Drinking more coffee will not further increase your focus once you’ve reached the saturation point.
  • Merely abstaining for five to ten days will return you to normal levels form saturation levels.

Movie: Quantum of Solace

I saw the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace last night in a packed theater. I was thoroughly entertained from the opening scene to the credits. However, the movie was odd to me. It was one of the most subtle Bond movies I can remember seeing. There were no gadgets. The typical “Bond girl” flesh quota wasn’t met. I don’t recall the line, “Bond. James Bond.” Even the “Shaken. Not stirred” line was delivered differently.

The movie was darker — sad almost. Simple. Almost entirely believable.

Undecided? Really?

I’d like to echo the sentiments expressed by David Sedaris in a recent New Yorker article, “Undecided.” I am as astonished as he that people can still be undecided between John McCain and Barack Obama. Beyond the fact that they’re both politicians, they are very dissimilar. If you can’t find something by now that pushes you towards one candidate or the other — even if it’s a primal gut feeling you get by looking at them or maybe you’ve gotten close enough to smell them — that should be enough to go on.

I was thinking about what I would call “progressive Catholics” yesterday. How do you reconcile a political conflict with your religion? (Even if you have seen Bill Mahar’s Religulous?!) That is, if you believe in Obama how do you reconcile that he’s pro-choice? Or if you believe in McCain because of a specific issue, how do you reconcile that he may simply continue the mediocrity of the past eight years?

That is just a limited example that could play out a thousand different ways if you change the player and the inputs. My point is that you have the right to vote. You are allowed to have an opinion. Don’t waste either on being undecided. Make a decision and live with it. If it turns out to be wrong, you’ll probably get another chance. Or at least you can complain about something for the next four years and know that you actually partook in the process.

Or, as David Sedaris writes:

To put [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?

Law Art Show Idea

I have this idea for an art show based on the law. I would display in clearly legible printed text various clauses of the United States Constitution, statutes, and case law. The laws displayed would vary in their difficulty of interpretation. It gets tricky at this point. My initial thought was to have a pad of paper underneath each “law,” but I’ve since wanted the idea to be more dynamic. Merely obtaining the observers’ interpretations would be interesting, but implementing their take on the law would bring the event to life. Perhaps their interpretations could be entered into a computer program with an algorithm that would weight them and change the original law accordingly. Then, at the end of the event (if it were to have an end), a new constitution, set of statutes and case law opinions would be released. In a way, it would be a microcosm of what happens in the legal system everyday. (Except the interpretation would be left to the people and not to highly trained judges and lawyers.)

Two things inspired this idea. First is the method of approaching problems taught in law school. Seek the issue. Find relevant law if it exists. Apply the law. At times, the process is a routine application of pattern. I.e., does my problem fit within the grid of a problem that has previously been heard? Second is the fine line between “the absurd” and “the clearly logical” in many cases — and the application of logic to the absurd.

Thus two of the things I would hope to learn from the law-art interactive show would be what methods of interpretation did the viewers use and how did they apply logic to the absurd. Or, if they didn’t use logic, what drove their decision.

Lions and Tiger(s) and Wolverines, Oh My!

Forgive the title, I couldn’t resist.

The Lions won. The Tigers won. U of M won (finally). Tiger Woods won (easily), which meant the most exciting thing about the final tournament of the FedEx cup was finding out about the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. Go ahead, look and see.

The Sylvania 300 was raced (Is that the lingo racing fans?) at the New Hampshire Int’l Speedway, which is fifteen minutes from where I live. The fans that didn’t (couldn’t? Do these things sell out?) get to see the race set up folding chairs on highway overpasses and watched the traffic driving south on I-93. They were watching me drive! I tried to give them a good show – a good clean lane switch. I overtook a Ford Focus in masterly fashion.

O.J. Simpson was arrested on a self-directed “sting-operation.”

The guy who bought Barry Bonds’ 756th home run baseball is asking the public what to do with it at vote756.com. There are three options: (1) send the ball to the hall of fame, (2) iron an asterisk onto the ball and send it to the hall of fame, or (3) banish the ball to outer space.

I don’t care about anything else that happened.