wildyams

FYI, the smilies are back, or as Matt would say:

:angry:yawn:wink:angry:sad:nono:uhoh:lol:blush:yawn:angry:wink:evil:sad:roll:nono:eek:frown:smile:nono:lol:blush:eek:roll:thumbsdown:thumbsup:yawn:blush:yawn:angry:angry:angry:angry:angry:angry:wink:yawn:nono:eek:frown:smile:wink:evil:thumbsup:uhoh:nono:eek:smile:sad:lol:blush:angry:wink:yawn:thumbsdown:roll:frown:eek:nono:uhoh:thumbsup:evil:roll:thumbsdown:lol:sad:smile:wink:evil:angry:blush:lol:sad:smile:frown:roll:thumbsdown:yawn:roll:yawn:wink:evil:uhoh:nono:roll:sad:frown:eek:smile:blush:uhoh:nono:eek:smile:sad:roll:yawn:blush:angry:wink:angry:yawn:blush:lol:sad:nono:uhoh:uhoh

Just a quick Laker update because there are some interesting developments to discuss concerning the Lakers. First off, the Sacramento Queens lost again tonight, this time to the Dallas Mavericks, and it was quite an implosion by the Queens. First off, the Mavs are one of the absolute worst defensive teams in the league, but they usually keep in the playoff race by being one of the best offensive teams in the league, and this year is no different. However, the Mavs have been fairly disappointing this year and are currently the 6th seeded team in the West after tying for the league's best record last year. Anyway, Sacramento was down by as many as 27 points late in the 3rd quarter tonight before Dallas's awful defense let them back in the game a bit (Dallas ended up winning by 10). With that loss by the Queens, that opened the door to the Lakers, meaning that the Lakers now controlled their own destiny, and if they won the rest of their games would own the #1 seed in the West this year come playoff time.

Speaking of that, the Lakers hosted the Houston Rockets tonight, and ended up winning an ugly game, running their win streak to 10 games. Most impressive was the play of both Karl Malone and Gary Payton who combined for 32 points, 8 assists and 27 rebounds :eek That is really impressive considering the two positions that those two play have traditionally been by far the weakest two positions for the Lakers since even before Phil Jackson was the coach. LA looks really primed for the playoffs this year, and if they can keep up their winning ways they'll get the top seed in the West for sure. Tomorrow they've got their first road game in weeks as they go up to Seattle to play the Sonics, and then Sunday they have a huge game against last year's champs, the San Antonio Spurs. That will be a great game not just because it's arguably the league's two best teams battling for playoff positioning, but also because I'm going to the game! :grin That's right, Liz came through again (thanks to her friend not being able to attend), and she offered to sell me the extra ticket for face value (which is probably a third or fourth of what it would go for on eBay). Ok, I'm all juiced up about the Lakers, I'm sorry. I'm gonna shut up now.

I missed most of the Laker game tonight, but that was ok because I was meeting with Steve-o, Juliette, Bob and Becky for dinner at Yang Chow's (or as Steve-o calls it "Wang Chung"). I hadn't seen any of them since Dave and Steve's party, so it was good to get together with everyone, and the food was quite good. Since Cookie will want to know what we ate, we started with wonton soup and fried wontons (lots of wontons I guess), then we had slippery shrimp, sweet-n-sour pork and brocoli and beef. We finished with fortune cookies which were predictably lacking fortunes, and instead said stuff like "you are a very special person" and shit like that. Oh well, at least there weren't lottery numbers on the fortunes; I hate that. Anyway, there isn't much to tell really, we met, had dinner, then all went our separate ways, and I came back here to watch the end of the game. That's pretty much it. What else do you want?

After work yesterday I went over to Dave and Jen's place to get dinner with them and watch the Laker game. We decided to go to Crown City for dinner, which was nice because they had the game on there so we could keep an eye on it while we ate. The food was tasty as always (for Cookie, I had a tuna melt with a baked potato on the side, Dave had carne asada tacos and Jen had a chicken salad, I think), as was the company :grin After we ate, we went back to their place and Dave and I watched the rest of the game while Jen fell asleep on the couch. Eventually Jen went to bed and the Lakers got their 11th straight win over the Sonics to take sole possession of the top spot in the West. After the game I began prodding Dave to go see Hellboy because we are both huge Ron Perlman fans, and you don't often see Ron Perlman headlining a big budget movie, so we wanted to check it out and show our support for the big lug. Well, the movie was by no means great, but it was fairly entertaining. It was a pretty dark movie, which doesn't really fit Ron Perlman's style too well . We were both hoping it would be a lot funnier with some classic Perlman-esque lines like the ones he had in both Alien Resurrection and Blade II; and even though there were some good funny scenes and Perlman definitely had his usual badass attitude, the filmmakers just seemed like they were confused about whether to make it real dark and gloomy or to make it more like a Ghostbusters-type movie (clearly you're not trying to be too serious with your movie if you cast Jeffrey Tambor to play the head of the FBI, right? :lol). Anyway, overall it was an entertaining movie; I just wish that Ron Perlman had gotten the chance to be more of a ham, but that's probably just me.

I saw something on TV last night that I found really confusing and upsetting. Well, I guess if you include the Lakers embarrassing loss to the Blazers I saw two things which upset and confused me, but that's not what I'm referring to. Last night as I went to get in bed, I saw that Spun was on cable, and having seen it already and finding it to be entertaining, I thought I'd watch it for a while. Now Spun was an unrated movie because there was a scene or two which were apparently too sexually suggestive for the MPAA (and interestingly enough, these sexually suggestive scenes were mainly done in the form of really abstract animation). The movie is about speed freaks, and there's some sex here and there in the movie, but it is one of the most un-sexy movies you'll ever see (people with horrible acne and rotting teeth aren't too attractive to begin with; but in one scene Mena Suvari abruptly stops having sex with John Leguizamo because she is so excited that she's finally able to shit after having not been able to for days because she's been so tweaked out on speed, so you can imagine that the movie is not really "arousing"). Anyway, I was a little confused at first to see while watching it that even though they were allowing shots of bare breasts in the movie, they were blurring out a woman who was bottomless and they were blurring out the cartoons (?). I couldn't really remember exactly what happened in the cartoons, but I figured it was probably just really racy and didn't really think about it too much at first; but then at one point there was a scene where Mickey Rourke makes a speech about how much he loves pussy, and they bleeped out the word 'pussy' every time he said it! I couldn't believe they were bleeping out swear words on a pay cable channel, so I checked what channel it was just to be sure, and sure enough it was Showtime. I couldn't believe it. With all the stuff that gets shown on pay channels like that, they were bleeping out the word 'pussy'? Anyway, it was late and I turned off the TV and went to bed and basically forgot about it till I read this article about how after literally more than a decade the US government is spending millions of dollars to try to bring anti-obscenity cases to trial in an effort to stomp out porn completely. Check out this quote from the article:

I came across this article today, and immediately thought of John Titor's predictions, which as you may recall I discussed here about a month ago. For anyone who may have forgotten about John Titor, he was the supposed time traveler from the future who said that in 2004 a civil war would break out in the US, leading to a nuclear war in the middle east in 2005, and eventually a world wide nuclear war (World War III) in 2015. As crazy as that probably sounds, if you read the stuff about him out there, it sounds eerily plausible, especially in light of some of the things that have happened since he made his "predictions" in 2000. Anyway, believe it if you want, as I said in my entry about him, at the very least it's an entertaining read. Unless, of course, you put any stock in it, then it is downright frightening. Anyway, seeing stuff like the following really makes you wonder when you compare it to what Titor said would happen this year:

In Nov. 2003, you might recall, Gen. Tommy Franks told Cigar Aficionado magazine that a major terrorist attack (even one that occurred elsewhere in the Western world), would likely result in a suspension of the U.S. Constitution and the installation of a military form of government. "[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the United States of America -- [would cause] our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event," he said.

And then later in the article there is this quote:

Sean Hannity twisted things further. "If we are attacked before our election like Spain was, I am not so sure that we should go ahead with the election," he reportedly said. "We had better make plans now because it’s going to happen."

It definitely makes you worry, really even if you remove John Titor from the whole thing. Would the presidential election this year be suspended if we suffered another terrorist attack? What would the US citizenry think of that if it happened?

I just wanted to give a recap of the last couple days, cause quite a bit of interest has happened, and it mainly has to do with the return of John and Kate, who are out here on vacation from their home in Buffalo. They both got in on Wednesday night, but I didn't see them until Thursday because Wednesday night Paola, Steven and myself all went to The Ice House in Pasadena to see Carlos perform some more standup comedy. This time Carlos's standup was part of a competition where they had 7 comedians perform, and the one that got the most votes won $101 and a chance to come back and perform for their Superbowl of Comedy in May on the main stage where the winner gets like $500 or something. Anyway, Carlos was hilarious just like the last time I went, and he ended up winning, so he'll be back there in May for the Superbowl thing.

Thursday John and Kate showed up at work, along with Dave and Jen, and about 15 of us all went over to Zach's for lunch. It was really great to see John and Kate, and to hear all about everything they've been up to in Buffalo. After lunch we all went back to work and John and Kate went off with Dave and Jen. Thursday night I didn't do much, at least I don't think I did cause to be honest I can't really remember.

Friday was a half day at work, and after I got off at 1 I came home and had lunch and then went to bed at around 3 or so cause I was really wiped out. I didn't wake up till about 9 at night, just in time to see the second half of the Lakers-Grizzlies game. I ended up staying up till about 6 am and watched The Hobbit at some point in there. I hadn't watched that since September 11th, 2001, and before that I hadn't seen it since I was probably 10 years old (on that day I just wanted something to take my mind off the insanity, so I bought that DVD). Anyway, I had recently felt like watching The Hobbit again because I have just begun re-reading The Lord of the Rings. The first time I read The Lord of the Rings, I remember thinking the first 200 or so pages were pretty slow, but I'm finding that the second time around it's pretty good. I think it's because I now know what is going to happen, so the things in the beginning which probably seemed unimportant the first time around are now quite interesting to read.

Anyway, Saturday I didn't wake up till 4:30 in the afternoon, which didn't give me much time to get ready as I was meeting Dave and Jen and then John and Kate, Steven, Cookie, Kelly, Miki and Chris for dinner over at Domenico's. Dinner was nice, we naturally got too much food, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. Afterwards we went over to the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena for drinks because it was one of the only places we could think of to go hang out that probably wouldn't be too crowded. We hung out there for probably a couple hours, had some drinks and some good conversation then we called it a night.

Today I got up at about 12:30 to watch the Lakers-Queens game, but I should have stayed in bed, cause LA got hammered. I don't really know what to think about the Lakers right now, with the playoffs only two games away. I guess I'll find out soon enough though. Anyway, after the game, John called to see if I wanted to join he, Kate and Cookie for dinner and a movie. I agreed and cruised over to the Paseo in Pasadena to meet them at PF Changs. Dinner was good, then afterwards we went to go see Hellboy, even though I'd already seen it, because John was a fan of the comic books. We all seemed to have about the same reaction to it I guess. Afterwards we went to the Cold Stone Creamery (or as Cella and Nate have called it, the "Cold Slab Stabbery" :lol), then we sat around and talked movies and ate ice cream. After that, it was time for us all to go, and even though John and Kate don't leave till Tuesday, I probably won't see them again as they have other people to see and other things to take care of. All in all it was a great weekend with them here though, and I am looking forward to seeing them again, whenever that may be. John did hint that he's interested in coming back out here in a year for the opening of Episode III, but we'll see about that :lol

Just a couple quick notes:

I recently added a chatroom feature to my website, for anyone who might be interested. I'm guessing nobody is interested, because even I'm not, but it was so simple to add, I figured what the hell? It's located in the lower right corner of this page, scroll down and you'll see it :grin

Last week I found that one of the biggest benefits of using Firefox to surf the web is the cool extensions that you can add to the browser to increase functionality and decrease annoyances by large degrees. It's awesome to not only be able to block all popup ads (which Firefox does automatically), but to also be able to just click on any ad on a webpage and click "Remove this object" and have it vanish from the page; or to be able to click any word or words and either have it attempt to find a webpage for them, or to search Amazon, Dictionary.com or IMDB for them.

My only other big news is that I recently ordered (and even more recently received) Edith Piaf's 10 CD 30th Anniversary Anthology, and added that to my collection last night. I've had a few people comment that this seems like a rather out of character addition to my music collection, which I suppose is true because I don't have much other music from the 30's or 40's and don't have much music by French singers, but I consider my musical tastes to be pretty eclectic, and as such think that Edith Piaf fits right in with everything else I have. I did buy this collection totally on a whim though, as I don't own anything else by her. I have mainly heard her songs here and there in movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Dreamers, but I have really liked what I've heard, so I decided to check out her albums and get one. Well, in reading reviews of her different albums and greatest hits-type collections, there seemed to be a lot of differring opinions about which recordings were the best ones, and most people seemed to say that the 10 disc collection was the best, so I checked it out, and when I saw it was for sale used for $45, I figured "why not?" So now I've probably got all the Edith Piaf I'll ever need, and that's fine with me :grin

I'm now gonna eat dinner and watch the Laker game and possibly Kill Bill: Vol 1 and then go to bed, as I am pretty behind on my sleep right now.

Am I the only one who thinks that David Duchovny is from the Jonathan Frakes school of acting? Before I went to bed last night I caught about 5 minutes of Playing God (which I see is going for a whopping $3.99 used), and something occured to me as I was watching it: this movie would be great if Duchovny wasn't mugging for the camera the whole movie. Ok, maybe it wouldn't have been great, but it definitely would have been better. I remember seeing it in theaters when it came out and thinking it was pretty unimpressive, but for whatever reason it kinda stuck with me; and having seen it in bits and pieces on cable here and there over the last month or two it's kind of a fun little film (or as fun as a movie about psychopathic mob-type guys can be, anyway). Timothy Hutton did a good job as a charismatic bad guy, and Angelina Jolie was pretty good (as she tended to be in her early days before she was an A-list star) as the beautiful and mysterious sort of femme fatale. The story is mildly interesting at least: a former doctor who had his doctor's license taken away for being hooked on drugs and accidentally killing a patient while high (just like Charles Dance's character in Alien 3) catches the eye of an up-and-coming criminal that he gets entangled with while the FBI is on his case, and the case of the criminal he's entangled with. There's some fun characters in the movie, and there is an interesting climax with a somewhat interesting car chase, and all in all the movie is... well like I said it's kinda fun. But man, David Duchovny just can not seem to be serious at any point during the movie. He's not helped much by the fact that his character keeps doing voice overs about how uninterested he is by everything that is going on around him (like the FBI threatening to throw him in jail for more than a decade and guys with guns trying to kill him), but he's even goofing around as he's going through withdrawls from whatever drug he's hooked on. As I said earlier, it's eerily reminiscent of Jonathan Frakes' performance in Star Trek: First Contact, where the whole threat of being annihilated and/or having the entirety of human history unravel doesn't stop him from yucking it up and giggling at every opportunity (note: I never saw much of the show, and have heard that Frakes was always like this; but First Contact is really the only Trek thing with that crew that I ever really paid much attention to, so forgive me if pointing out this one performance is akin to a drop in a bucket). Anyway, the whole Playing God thing got me wondering if Duchovny had ever been good in anything. I know that X-Philes would almost surely said that Duchovny was great in that show, so I'll give them that; and I kinda liked him in Full Frontal (for the 2 minutes or so he was in it), but other than that I haven't seen really any performances by him that were all that impressive; and certainly none where he played anyone serious at all (that probably goes for X-Files as well). Maybe I'm just stating the obvious here, and am the last person to figure this out (like I was in finding out that the reason Mr. Deeds and The Hudsucker Proxy are so similar in storyline is because they were both sort-of remakes of the movie Mr. Deeds Goes to Town). Oh well, I can't figure it all out, I'm going to bed.

Yesterday was a pretty long day. In addition to us having some important goings-on here at work, it was also the day taxes were due. Me being me, I filed my taxes yesterday, and found out I'll be getting a pretty decent refund this year. Tonight I'm going over to Dave and Jen's and we're gonna go get dinner, then possibly watch Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Tomorrow I have plans to go see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with Matt, Kelly and Cookie, and possibly Josh and Kurt.

Tomorrow also the NBA playoffs start, and the Lakers open at home against the Rockets at 7:30 PST. The Rockets are going to be a tough matchup for the Lakers, and they will also be a rather marquee one because it features Shaq vs. Yao Ming for the first time ever in the playoffs. For those who don't know (or care) Shaq has been unquestionably the greatest center in the game for the last 10 years or so, and Yao Ming seems to finally be someone who may be able to take that title away from him (although not yet, I'm hoping). If the Lakers get past the Rockets, they'll most likely end up playing the San Antonio Spurs (unless they get eliminated by the Grizzlies, which is unlikely), and that Lakers-Spurs series may very well be the de facto NBA Championship, since both of those teams have won every NBA title since Michael Jordan left the Bulls (that was his second of three retirements, for those keeping score). The Lakers' other big nemesis, the Sacramento Queens, really fell apart towards the end of the year, and open the playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks, who eliminated the Queens from the playoffs last year. There is rampant speculation that Sacramento may not make it out of the first round, which would be fantastic for me and Laker fans everywhere, and would also no doubt signal a firesale of the team up there in Cowtown. Well anyway, that's my brief preview of the NBA playoffs. If you want more, use the internet: that's what it's there for :grin

Did anyone else see this (other than Steve-o, who I know saw it)?

UCLA Geophysicist Warns 6.4 Quake To Hit LA By Sept 5

A US geophysicist has set the scientific world ablaze by claiming to have cracked a holy grail: accurate earthquake prediction, and warning that a big one will hit southern California by Sept 5.

The team at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics accurately predicted a 6.5-magnitude quake in central California last December as well as an 8.1-magnitude temblor that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September.

I haven't made an entry in a while cause I've been pretty busy, so I'll give a quick recap of the last few days. Saturday I got together with Matt, Kelly, Cookie, Kurt, Josh and Josh's friend Jen and we all went to the Arclight to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 I found to be ok, but overall pretty disappointing in comparison to Vol. 1. While Vol. 1 was action packed, over-the-top and just in general roustingly entertaining, Vol. 2 seemed almost to have little to do with the first one. There was almost no action at all, in general it was very toned-down, and it really moved pretty slowly. In the first one, one of the things I liked was that you didn't know who these characters were or really what made them the way they were; all you really knew was that they were all ass-kickers and they hated each other. While that made them more caricatures than characters, it didn't matter because it fit with the movie being over-the-top that way. In Vol. 2, to my displeasure, there was all kinds of backstory on who these people were, how they became the people they were, why they hated each other, etc... While that was kind of interesting, with the exception of the character Budd, it wasn't satisfying in the end, and was really superfluous (Budd might have been the exception because in Vol. 1 he is almost not referenced at all, ever). Anyway, the film was still enjoyable, but really needed some tightening through editing, and it just didn't live up to the promise of the first one.

After the movie Matt, Kelly and myself stuck around at the Arclight and had dinner at the restaurant there. Matt knew one of the bartenders, and that ended up getting us a ridiculously good deal on dinner (the three of us got dinner and drinks and the bill was only $14, so we left $40 and figured it was better off going to the server than to the :evil evil corporation :evil :lol). Since the Lakers opened the playoffs against the Rockets on Saturday at the same time the movie started, I taped the game and watched it when I got home. I didn't find out what had happened beforehand, so watching it on tape was like watching it live for me (except I got to fast forward through the commercials :grin). It was one of the ugliest playoff games I'd ever seen, but the Lakers pulled out a one point win, so I was happy for that.

On Sunday I went over to my Dad's house to watch some of the other basketball games and to have dinner (and conversation, of course). We watched the Heat-Hornets game (which was surprisingly good), and then had filet mignon for dinner, which my Dad cooked himself (and which was very tasty). After dinner we watched the second half of the Timberwolves-Nuggets game (which was also pretty good), and then I went home and got ready for work the next day. Yesterday was very busy at work, as is today, and after work I rushed home to watch Game 2 of the Lakers-Rockets series. Game 2 was awesome, even though Shaq recorded his playoff career low in points. LA won easily, although it was a close game for the first 30 minutes or so. In the second half the Lakers really broke it open and ran away with it, so now LA is up 2-0 and don't play again till Friday. That's a long enough entry for now, maybe I'll write some more later.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy in Colorado. It's hard to believe it's been five years since that happened, at least, for me it is. I could give you my thoughts on that whole thing, but I doubt I'd be injecting anything new into that whole discussion, so I won't bother. Go see Elephant (or Whale, as Dave calls it :lol) if you want some insight into that. Anyway, I'm on the verge of buying some new glasses for myself. Steve-o gets a great deal on glasses through the Rudy Project, so I'm probably gonna be buying them through him. If you were curious, here were the two sets I was looking at getting: regular glasses, sunglasses. I've had my current glasses and prescription sunglasses for about 8 years now, so I figure it's time for a switch.

Here's a great article about the new way that cars are becoming more of a waste to everyone than before. It seems that with all the new technologies and safety features in cars, new cars are quite simply becoming too expensive to fix. As a result, with some newer cars, if they get into a minor accident, the car will be considered "totalled" simply because to replace all the airbags, high tech equipment and seatbelts (yes seatbelts, check this out: 'Seat belts, too, have "once-and-done" pretensioners that have to be replaced - even on unoccupied seats - after an accident.'). Because these new parts and gadgets are so high-tech and specific, they usually can only be replaced by the manufacturer; or if a regular shop wants to outfit itself to handle stuff like this is it prohibitively expensive. Also, the cost of "mechanics" these days is through the roof because they have to know more than Mr. Wizard to work on a car these days, so that also adds into the expense (and also requires more money in technical schooling for these guys to get to have those jobs).

The end result is that in our society, which is already hopelessly addicted to buying bigger and more expensive cars (even if we can't afford them), and which is prone to quickly dispose of them in pursuit of whatever the newest car fad is; is now going to be throwing away brand new cars and buying new ones faster than ever before. Not only is this a huge waste of resources (you'd be amazed to know how much scrap steel and rubber there is sitting in junkyards from thrown away cars), but this is also going to be a huge moneymaker for car companies and for insurance companies; and as we all should know, anything that is a big moneymaker for insurance companies means the rest of us are all gonna take it right in the ass with their raised rates.

Picture this: some guy leases a car that's realistically out of his price range because he scrapes by in all other areas of his life to be able to afford his new flash ride (which probably costs upwards of $30,000 or $40,000), and then he gets in an accident that sets off all his airbags. Since it's leased, he is required to have full coverage, so the insurance company comes out to look at it and decides that even with minor structural damage the amount needed to repair will cost more than it would to scrap it, so they consider it totalled and cut the guy a check so he can go start the cycle all over again. Ok, now think about that but multiply it by just about everyone, since our society is so obsessed with big, flashy, expensive cars. This kind of stuff just sickens me. Where is Seth Brundle with his telepods when you need him?

I'm meeting up with Keith tonight over at Hollywood Billiards to watch the Lakers-Rockets Game 3 there, if anyone wants to meet us there as well. Tip off is at 6:30 tonight, and I plan to be there by then. LA has a 2-0 lead over the Rockets right now, and if they win tonight then they'll not only basically put the Rockets away, but will more than likely end up sweeping them. If the Lakers do advance to the next round, they will almost surely play the San Antonio Spurs, who are up 3-0 against Memphis right now after they won Game 3 last night. The Spurs are looking really tough right now, with something like a 14 game winning streak, but I feel pretty good about the Lakers chances against them after the last 2 games. The Lakers finally seem to be playing some defense (which has been their problem the last two years), and I think if they can keep that up then nobody will be able to beat them. Well, back to work, but I'm excited for tonight's game :grin

Another Laker entry, but it's the playoffs, what do you expect? Friday after work I met up with Keith at Hollywood Billiards to watch the game, and it was pretty embarrassing. LA fell behind by double digits in the first half and only managed to seriously threaten at the very end for a possession or two. The Rockets won and celebrated like they'd just won the championship. This set up Game 4 today, which the Lakers ended up winning (thankfully) to take a 3 games to 1 series lead, with Game 5 in LA on Wednesday. The big stories in the game today were Karl Malone scoring 30 points (becoming the oldest player in NBA history to score 30 points in a playoff game) to go with 13 rebounds; as well as Kobe Bryant coming up huge in the overtime to give LA the win.

The Lakers are really struggling against this Rockets team right now, in spite of the 3-1 series lead, and since the Spurs swept the Grizzlies in their series, that is who the Lakers have to face next. In other words, LA may have only one game left to get ready for the defending NBA champions who have a 15 game winning streak going right now and who will have home-court advantage in the next round and about a week off between now and their next game. LA is looking shaky to say the least. I've still got hope though because of the talent that is on the Lakers, but it will be an uphill battle to say the least. Anyway, I was glad to see them get the win today and I'm looking forward to them closing out the Rockets on Wednesday. The big concern there is whether Kobe will be able to make the game, and if so, will he end up missing any of it. Kobe has to be in Eagle, Colorado for the next three days in court for his rape case, and will have to fly straight from court to the game on Wednesday (something he did twice this year). Hopefully that won't affect the game too much cause LA really could use that victory.

It's that time of year again.

Summer.

At least, that's what it feels like. It's that time of year where I start frequently commenting on how fucking hot it is. Thankfully I had my freon replaced in my apartment's air-conditioning recently, so I'm pretty much impervious to it both at work and at home, but I need to get it replaced in my car, and of course anytime I'm outside it sucks. I just looked outside to see what the temperature was and it's at 85 or 86 degrees, and it's almost 8 pm :angry Work is heating up as well, with a lot of projects in the office after a brief period of down-time. I'd love to take a day or two off, but I'm too busy to do it. I'm gonna try to take some time off in another couple weeks though, even if it's only to extend a weekend or two. I was thinking about going up north to visit Grover, who should be all set up in a new place by now. Ok, I don't have much else to say right now so I'm gonna go eat some dinner and maybe go to bed cause I'm pretty beat.

The hot streak continues! According to weather.com yesterday was 99° F, which means it was 8° F hotter than the record for that date (which had been set back in 1972). Today it seemed like it was even hotter. Anyway, as I said yesterday, thank god for A/C.

Today Jon got me on the phone with his co-workers as they tried to figure out how many actors had been in at least three movies for two different film series. It was a lot of fun, so I asked people at work to help out and we got a pretty good list going (I won't list everything we came up with, so people who want to figure it out for themselves can without it being spoiled for them). Anyway, doing some movie trivia made me wanna put some stuff up here. One of my favorite movie-related "games" was to give an actor and ask people what they thought their best and worst performances were. Anyway, I thought I'd start off with a tough one and see if anyone else wanted to join in: Robert Duvall, what was his best performance and what was his worst. I think he's tough because like a lot of older big-name actors, most of his performances are pretty much the same (at least for the last 20 years or so they have been).

Finally, if that's not enough to chew over, here's another question for you: which actor or actors were in all the Hannibal Lecter movies?

There's a little over 5 minutes to go in the Lakers-Rockets Game 5 right now with LA ahead 3-1 in the series, but since LA is up by about 25 points, it is safe to say that the Rockets are gonna lose this game and thus be eliminated from the playoffs. What this means is that the Lakers will advance to play the team that eliminated them last year and went on to subsequently win the NBA Championship: the San Antonio Spurs. In my opinion, the Spurs are the ONLY team in the NBA that worries me at all. If LA can get past the Spurs, I think it's all downhill from there and LA should without question beat everyone else. However, as much as I hate to say it, I think the Spurs are probably going to beat LA.

Well, let me append that statement: Before tonight's destruction of the Rockets, I thought the Spurs would stand a very good chance to beat LA; but after tonight I'm not so sure anymore. LA has looked shaky at best over the last 3 weeks or so, losing a couple games by huge margins, winning others by extremely slim margins, and looking horribly inconsistent through most of it. About the only thing they hadn't shown in the last couple weeks was the ability to dominate anyone, but that changed tonight. The Lakers FINALLY looked like a championship team tonight, but after all, it is only one game. San Antonio, meanwhile, has won 15 consecutive games, with their last loss coming over a month ago. San Antonio also has home-court advantage because they had the better regular season record, and with all of that I would have to assume that the Spurs would be the favorites.

On paper, however, that is definitely not the case. LA has arguably the two best players in the game (or at least 2 of the best 5) with Shaq and Kobe, and additionally have Karl Malone and Gary Payton, who are also two of the league's best players (probably more like top 20 or top 25). Add to that they have a pretty good supporting cast of role players who have championship experience, and some good up and coming talented younger players. The Spurs, meanwhile, have Tim Duncan (who also might be the best player in the game) and a very, very good cast of role-playing supporters. On paper, if you go position-by-position you'd have to give the edge to the Lakers, but unfortunately for we Laker fans they play the games on the court, not on paper, and the Spurs play incredibly good on the court. They are the league's best defensive teams, and when the common saying in most sports (basketball is no different) is that "defense wins championships" you can see the importance of that. The Spurs also have a lot of poise, and have a lot of veteran players who have been there before and know how to win important close games.

Ok, enough comparing the two teams, time to make a couple predictions:

I think that whoever wins Game 1 will win the series (and thus, the NBA championship), so the next Laker game may be the most important of the series.

I think that either the Spurs are going to destroy the Lakers or LA will be extremely competitive and win a close-fought series.

I think that Kobe will have an incredible series, despite being guarded by his "nemesis" Bruce Bowen.

Finally, I think that the Lakers will win it in seven. :grin

So the other day I was looking for the soundtrack for Terminator when I discovered that there were not one, but two Terminator soundtracks! At first I was excited, but then I was a little wary, wondering what the difference was. Turns out I was right to be wary. The original soundtrack, the one I wanted, has half of the disc being the theme song and original score by Brad Fiedel, and the other half is the real gold: the non-score songs from the movie. The other soundtrack is the "Definitive Edition", which just means that it is ALL score by Brad Fiedel. Now anyone who's seen Terminator must remember the gloriously awful early-80's pure synth score accompanying the multitude of chase scenes in the movie. Now, while it is truly an impressively awesome example of cheesy synth score, I don't really need a full album's worth of it. The one good synth song (the Theme from Terminator) is on the original soundtrack, and there's like 5 or 6 of those cheesy synth songs, and then there are five absolutely awesome early 80's pop-disco songs, with the highlight being "Burnin' in the Third Degree" by Tahnee Cain and the Tryanglz, which plays while Sarah Connor is holed up in the club called Tech Noir waiting for Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen to come rescue her.

Ok, admittedly it's probably only gonna be geeks like me that even remember some cheesy song in a movie that's 20 years old like that, but maybe those geeks out there can help me out. I'm trying to think of other scenes like that with music like that. There's nothing better than that cheesy pop-disco that you heard in movies like that back in that era. I'm sure everyone is probably tired of me bringing this movie up over and over, but there's a scene like that in Fright Night, where Charlie Brewster and Marcy Darcy from Married With Children are trying to avoid Jerry Dandrige (the vampire) and duck into some disco club to get away from him. There's a great group of songs that get played in the club scene, most notably "Good Man in a Bad Time" by Ian Hunter. Interestingly enough Brad Fiedel did the score for Fright Night as well, and thankfully it's more of his trademark cheesy synth.

Really my question here is, what other movies out there feature this kind of silly cheese-pop songs that you really wouldn't ever hear anywhere else if you weren't watching the movie (or if you weren't a weirdo like me who tracks down soundtracks like these :lol)? About the only other one that comes to mind is the song "The Power of the Night" by Terrence Mann's group, Mann, from the movie Critters (although that song doesn't play in a club scene, but rather in a hilarious music video by fictional rocker Johnny Steele that two aliens watch on a spaceship). Somebody help me out here, got any other good songs like these? Also, what are some of the best synth-scores from movies out there? I figure Tron is probably gonna be at the top of that list, but what other great ones are there out there? You know what, Tron's probably got some great songs by Journey. Iron Eagle might have some good ones too.