So I'm in the middle of spending 10 weeks back in DC for a developmental rotation, working in the office I started in (but in a different division) and I'm struck by a couple things. First it's shocking how many people remember me, all kinds of folks here remember me walking the halls and suprisingly are pretty affable. Second I can't walk into an office or meet someone new without being offered a job, which is great, but I'm not sure I'm ready to move back to DC. I love DC, it's a great town and I have lots of friends here, the lady I'm working with now is great and I think I could do great here. But traffic here has gotten worse in the two years I've been gone, and the town has changed a little bit. I don't know how I would grow as a person here, I would grow professionally, and maybe that's enough, but I don't know where the other parts of my life would grow, other than my waist size, since you spend a billion hours commutting it leaves less time for the gym.
But all in all, the Pentagon is still great, the work is fun. And if the commute wasn't horrible I'd be here in a sec. Incidently the weather has been nicer here in DC than in San Diego.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
World Cup
The World Cup is going on right now and as of this writing the US beat Algeria to win their group and advance to the knockout stages. The US should have been down 3-0 at the half and Algeria would be cruising into 3rd place in the group. What sickens me is that the US plays so very poorly in the first half of games and gets away with it. Against Slovenia, they got pummeled in the first half, they were down 2 nothing and the defense looked like a bunch of plastic cones and unfortunately Slovenia's forwards had at some point dribbled around some plastic cones. In the second half the US poured it on and all anyone could say was, "Wow that disallowed goal was the worst thing I've ever seen!" And the talk about that game became about the refs and not about how woefully inadequate the US was for half of the game. Nevermind the fact that a US player decked a Slovenian defender away from the ball.
Against England it was the same thing, blind dumb luck. The US got manhandled and eked out a tie because someone buttered up the England's goalkeeper's gloves. And now all of a sudden the country is ablaze with folks proclaiming Landon Donovan the king of the world, and I for one do not welcome our new Landon Donovan overlords. The hype is great but let's be honest, the US played over half of their three games extremely poorly, and only through dumb luck are the continuing.
It's quite possible the US will end up playing Serbia, which benefitted from the worst call in the World Cup against Germany with a red card that gave Serbia the win. And if the US plays them we will probably win because Serbia is terrible. Then all of a sudden everyone will be crazy about how USA is the new soccer Emperor and soccer fans will come out of the woodwork....Ugh
I love the World Cup, but I love the World Cup 100% more when the US is not in it. We are not a great soccer country, these are our D list athletes at best. The best athletes in the country are playing Basketball, Football, Baseball. Here's a short list of the sports more important that soccer in the US:
1. Football
2. Basketball
3. Baseballe
4. Hockey
5. Nascar
6. Golf
7. Roller Derby
8. MMA
9. Boxing
10. Jai-lai
11. Bowling
12. Table Tennis and Ping-Pong
13. Real Tennis
14. Bicycling
15. That weird Speedwalking thing they tried in the olympics
16 X-Games
17. Surfing
18. Competitive Video Games
19. Running
20. Monster Truck Rally
21. Billards
22. Lacrosse
23. Extreme Eating Competitions
All of these things get more coverage than soccer which is approxiamtely the 34th most important sport in the US mindset. It's a great amateur sport, fantastic at the college level. But the US national team is a joke, a silly silly joke.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Real Best 10 Baseball Movies of all time!
Someone else I know did a horrible, and I mean just horrible job naming the 10 best Baseball Movies of all time. It was one of those jobs that makes you think, this guy just has no clue what's going on, a good top 10 list can have some movement in the list and you can argue on the placement of the movies on the list, but there are certain movies you have to hit. I'll make my own list, which may not be 100% accurate but it at least lends itself to some credibility. But first I'll start off by mocking his list:
10. Field of Dreams
9. Hard Ball
8. Fever Pitch
7. The Natural
6. Little Big League
5. Rookie of the year
4. The Rookie
3. Major League
2. The Sandlot
1. A league of their own
Holy crap, fucking "Fever Pitch"? "Little Big League"? Come the fuck on, how dare you have those two movies on there and skip some of the best baseball movies of all time. It pains my eyes to see those movies over "Field of Dreams" and "The Natural", and it is basically telling the world that you are a clueless yokel pedophile when you put those movies over "Bad News Bears" and "Bull Durham", which you left completely off the list. I understand liking kids baseball movies, but can you at least hide your sexual attraction to children a little better?
The sad thing is that you start off so well, it's like you almost kind of steer in the right direction and then you jump off a godamn cliff. 1-3 could legitimately be defended as the greatest baseball movies of all time. They are all fantastic movies which warrant at least consideration. But then you derail your train off the tracks forever with "The Rookie"...are you trying to tell me that this piece of Disney garbage is the 4th best baseball move ever? It wasn't even a well made movie!
From there it gets even worse. 9,8,6,5,4 are all abhorrent selections, let me tell you why.
9. Hard Ball - I liked it a lot better when this movie was called Mighty Ducks 7 - Gettin' Mighty With It. The tagline for this movie is the universally stupid and incorrect saying "The most important thing in life is showing up" Well if you show up and do a fucking horrible job like you did with this list you are a failure and a bum, and you wouldn't have been either of those things if you'd stayed at home or not put this list out there.
8. Fever Pitch - Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon...this is possibly the movie that I'll be forced to watch in hell for all time. Even the most jaded of Red Sox fans doesn't consider this a "good" movie. It's tripe, it's awful, and all DVD's of this movie should be burned, and the master copy should be shot out of a cannon into the sun. This might actually make the list of worst movies of all time. When the nuclear war sweeps the earth priests of the new religions are going to use this movie to show the evils of the old world or possibly treat a copy of this movie like the necronomicon, a tome so evil and terrible that it must be sealed away for all time at the risk of angering the fire gods of the sky again.
6. Little Big League - Extreme Islamic Fundamentalist Radicals (the bad kind) show this movie to suicide bombers before they send them out in a truck full of dangerously poorly rigged explosives.
5. Rookie of the Year - There's one sequence in this movie that is any good, and it's the extremely flawed part where they show him striking out major league stars. I believe they show him striking out Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Bonds and some other guys. This movie was made in 1993 and the kid plays for the Cubs...what's wrong with this picture? It actually is a good example for why this movie can't be on the list of greatest baseball movies, it doesn't understand how baseball works. Frequently throughout the movie there are terrible errors about scorekeeping and baseball rules and it conceptually has no idea how the game of baseball is played, it is just factually terrible. The IMDB page for errors in this movie is about 400 pages long.
Here are some movies that didn't make my top 10 but you could argue belong in there somewhere:
Any sequels or remakes - I like Major League 2 and Angels in the Outfield, I think there are a couple more remakes out there that are pretty solid baseball movies but I didn't include them because I think the list is rounded out enough without sequels.
Summer Catch - Actually not a bad movie, and if this list were hottest chick in a baseball movie it would be number one by a lot. But in the end the acting in this movie leaves it out of my top 10, the acting is pretty terrible at times and the realistic chance of a scout all of a sudden deciding to sign a kid to a big signing bonus is silly. There are plenty of guys who can't pitch complete games and always blow it in the 9th inning, they are called middle relievers in the big leagues. Plot holes keeps this off my list.
61* - I like this movie, I think the acting in particular is pretty fantastic. It also clearly understands the game of baseball. The problem I have is the factual inaccuracies that this movie suffers from being too Yankeeized*. I think when you make a historical pictures about this timeframe there is enough evidence to be factually accurate that a decent job editing the movie should be easy. The film makes some pretty horrible factual errors but I still like it and it could very well appear on a top 10 list.
Angels in the Outfield - I actually like the remake better than the original. It is very campy but I'll allow it. I was just never that crazy about the concept of this movie, so I'm leaving it off.
10. For love of the game - I saw this movie and was a little shocked that it wasn't more highly regarded. While it's as much a campy love story as it is a baseball movie it is still pretty good even though there are some editing problems. I also love the fact that it's not some championship game, or some kind of playoff game, it's a simple movie about an aging veteran having one more day in the sun. Which always rates highly with me. It shocks me to have 3 Kevin Costner movies on this list but so be it.
9. Eight Men Out - Although it's filled with factual errors and problems I find the subject matter to be fascinating. The acting is pretty great too but the story is just compelling as hell. Amazing performances by John Cusack and David Strathairn. The cast of this movie is fantastic.
8. Mr. Baseball - Still holds up today as a phenomenal movie, both in the baseball part of the movie, and the love story. But again it has the aging veteran trying to have one last day in the sun. It's formulaic as hell, and you can predict what happens, but it's still fun to watch and Tom Selleck is the perfect part for the roll of stupid american ballplayer in a foreign country. The editing is actually pretty top notch for a sports film as well.
7. Bad News Bears - The remake was garbage but the original is fantastic, it's pretty much the original story about losers making it which has been done 1000 times since then. It is supposed to be a comedy, but it is actually much deeper and more genuine than it appears at first glance.
6. Major League - I feel like this movie should actually be higher on my list. But I think that it hasn't aged nearly as well as some of the other movies on this list, the comedy itself doesn't always hold it's weight anymore. But it's still a great movie and I would watch it any time.
5. The Natural - Tremendous story, just pure fiction and it's great writing. I actually think this is one of Robert Redford's worst acting performances and he's still fantastic. The editing in this movie is abysmal.
4. Field Of Dreams - Again I feel like I should have this movie higher on my list, it's a good movie with solid acting and in interesting and engaging plot. I think I may have done this list too fast...
3. The Sandlot - This movie has universal appeal. People who may never have seen this still mouth out "FOR - EV - ER" because they've seen other people do it. The story is fantastic and the scene where the kid fakes drowning to make out with the lifeguard is one of the great scenes in kid's movie history, the scene where they beat the rich kids and the catcher is talking trash is the best sports scene in kid's movie history. I feel like maybe this movie should be a little bit lower on my list, possibly supplanted by Field Of Dreams, the problem is that the first time I saw Field I was incredibly sick. Every kid wishes they had a nickname as cool as Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez.
2. A League of Their Own - Tom Hanks should have served two years for Grand Theft for his role in this movie. He steals the movie and turns an ok movie into one of the best baseball movies of all time. "There's No Crying in Baseball" and his subsequent diatribe is one of the most quotable sports lines ever. The movie is pretty darn predictable and you can cut out the beginning and the end for all I care but the scenes with Hanks are priceless. David Strathairn is also fantastic in this movie.
1. Bull Durham - May very well be the best sports movie of all time. It is quotable, funny, deep, and knowledgeable as hell about baseball. The story, the acting, the transitions, it's all there. It's not a love story, and it's not a pure sports movie, it's a movie about life. And to keep it off your list of the 10 best baseball movies of all time is stupid.
10. Field of Dreams
9. Hard Ball
8. Fever Pitch
7. The Natural
6. Little Big League
5. Rookie of the year
4. The Rookie
3. Major League
2. The Sandlot
1. A league of their own
Holy crap, fucking "Fever Pitch"? "Little Big League"? Come the fuck on, how dare you have those two movies on there and skip some of the best baseball movies of all time. It pains my eyes to see those movies over "Field of Dreams" and "The Natural", and it is basically telling the world that you are a clueless yokel pedophile when you put those movies over "Bad News Bears" and "Bull Durham", which you left completely off the list. I understand liking kids baseball movies, but can you at least hide your sexual attraction to children a little better?
The sad thing is that you start off so well, it's like you almost kind of steer in the right direction and then you jump off a godamn cliff. 1-3 could legitimately be defended as the greatest baseball movies of all time. They are all fantastic movies which warrant at least consideration. But then you derail your train off the tracks forever with "The Rookie"...are you trying to tell me that this piece of Disney garbage is the 4th best baseball move ever? It wasn't even a well made movie!
From there it gets even worse. 9,8,6,5,4 are all abhorrent selections, let me tell you why.
9. Hard Ball - I liked it a lot better when this movie was called Mighty Ducks 7 - Gettin' Mighty With It. The tagline for this movie is the universally stupid and incorrect saying "The most important thing in life is showing up" Well if you show up and do a fucking horrible job like you did with this list you are a failure and a bum, and you wouldn't have been either of those things if you'd stayed at home or not put this list out there.
8. Fever Pitch - Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon...this is possibly the movie that I'll be forced to watch in hell for all time. Even the most jaded of Red Sox fans doesn't consider this a "good" movie. It's tripe, it's awful, and all DVD's of this movie should be burned, and the master copy should be shot out of a cannon into the sun. This might actually make the list of worst movies of all time. When the nuclear war sweeps the earth priests of the new religions are going to use this movie to show the evils of the old world or possibly treat a copy of this movie like the necronomicon, a tome so evil and terrible that it must be sealed away for all time at the risk of angering the fire gods of the sky again.
6. Little Big League - Extreme Islamic Fundamentalist Radicals (the bad kind) show this movie to suicide bombers before they send them out in a truck full of dangerously poorly rigged explosives.
5. Rookie of the Year - There's one sequence in this movie that is any good, and it's the extremely flawed part where they show him striking out major league stars. I believe they show him striking out Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Bonds and some other guys. This movie was made in 1993 and the kid plays for the Cubs...what's wrong with this picture? It actually is a good example for why this movie can't be on the list of greatest baseball movies, it doesn't understand how baseball works. Frequently throughout the movie there are terrible errors about scorekeeping and baseball rules and it conceptually has no idea how the game of baseball is played, it is just factually terrible. The IMDB page for errors in this movie is about 400 pages long.
Here are some movies that didn't make my top 10 but you could argue belong in there somewhere:
Any sequels or remakes - I like Major League 2 and Angels in the Outfield, I think there are a couple more remakes out there that are pretty solid baseball movies but I didn't include them because I think the list is rounded out enough without sequels.
Summer Catch - Actually not a bad movie, and if this list were hottest chick in a baseball movie it would be number one by a lot. But in the end the acting in this movie leaves it out of my top 10, the acting is pretty terrible at times and the realistic chance of a scout all of a sudden deciding to sign a kid to a big signing bonus is silly. There are plenty of guys who can't pitch complete games and always blow it in the 9th inning, they are called middle relievers in the big leagues. Plot holes keeps this off my list.
61* - I like this movie, I think the acting in particular is pretty fantastic. It also clearly understands the game of baseball. The problem I have is the factual inaccuracies that this movie suffers from being too Yankeeized*. I think when you make a historical pictures about this timeframe there is enough evidence to be factually accurate that a decent job editing the movie should be easy. The film makes some pretty horrible factual errors but I still like it and it could very well appear on a top 10 list.
Angels in the Outfield - I actually like the remake better than the original. It is very campy but I'll allow it. I was just never that crazy about the concept of this movie, so I'm leaving it off.
10. For love of the game - I saw this movie and was a little shocked that it wasn't more highly regarded. While it's as much a campy love story as it is a baseball movie it is still pretty good even though there are some editing problems. I also love the fact that it's not some championship game, or some kind of playoff game, it's a simple movie about an aging veteran having one more day in the sun. Which always rates highly with me. It shocks me to have 3 Kevin Costner movies on this list but so be it.
9. Eight Men Out - Although it's filled with factual errors and problems I find the subject matter to be fascinating. The acting is pretty great too but the story is just compelling as hell. Amazing performances by John Cusack and David Strathairn. The cast of this movie is fantastic.
8. Mr. Baseball - Still holds up today as a phenomenal movie, both in the baseball part of the movie, and the love story. But again it has the aging veteran trying to have one last day in the sun. It's formulaic as hell, and you can predict what happens, but it's still fun to watch and Tom Selleck is the perfect part for the roll of stupid american ballplayer in a foreign country. The editing is actually pretty top notch for a sports film as well.
7. Bad News Bears - The remake was garbage but the original is fantastic, it's pretty much the original story about losers making it which has been done 1000 times since then. It is supposed to be a comedy, but it is actually much deeper and more genuine than it appears at first glance.
6. Major League - I feel like this movie should actually be higher on my list. But I think that it hasn't aged nearly as well as some of the other movies on this list, the comedy itself doesn't always hold it's weight anymore. But it's still a great movie and I would watch it any time.
5. The Natural - Tremendous story, just pure fiction and it's great writing. I actually think this is one of Robert Redford's worst acting performances and he's still fantastic. The editing in this movie is abysmal.
4. Field Of Dreams - Again I feel like I should have this movie higher on my list, it's a good movie with solid acting and in interesting and engaging plot. I think I may have done this list too fast...
3. The Sandlot - This movie has universal appeal. People who may never have seen this still mouth out "FOR - EV - ER" because they've seen other people do it. The story is fantastic and the scene where the kid fakes drowning to make out with the lifeguard is one of the great scenes in kid's movie history, the scene where they beat the rich kids and the catcher is talking trash is the best sports scene in kid's movie history. I feel like maybe this movie should be a little bit lower on my list, possibly supplanted by Field Of Dreams, the problem is that the first time I saw Field I was incredibly sick. Every kid wishes they had a nickname as cool as Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez.
2. A League of Their Own - Tom Hanks should have served two years for Grand Theft for his role in this movie. He steals the movie and turns an ok movie into one of the best baseball movies of all time. "There's No Crying in Baseball" and his subsequent diatribe is one of the most quotable sports lines ever. The movie is pretty darn predictable and you can cut out the beginning and the end for all I care but the scenes with Hanks are priceless. David Strathairn is also fantastic in this movie.
1. Bull Durham - May very well be the best sports movie of all time. It is quotable, funny, deep, and knowledgeable as hell about baseball. The story, the acting, the transitions, it's all there. It's not a love story, and it's not a pure sports movie, it's a movie about life. And to keep it off your list of the 10 best baseball movies of all time is stupid.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Taking care of the college kids
I feel like when I was in college when I would hang out with guys not in college they would take care of me. Give me rides and pay for meals and such. So now that I'm one of the older guys I feel a certain obligation to do the same. I've kinda taken a couple guys under my wing, and make sure they're doing alright. Small things, a meal here, a ride all over the city to events. That kind of stuff doesn't take alot of effort on my part to mean alot to them. So I guess what I'm saying is pay it forward.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
When I was younger my heart was far more open then it is now. Ultimately that has led to people hurting me very badly time and time again. After the first time I learned that once your heart gets hurt it's not worth the time, nor does it make you feel any better to tell the person who hurt you how you feel or how hurt you are. If someone hurts me now I don't tell them a word, they don't get to know how they affected me or how bad I feel. But gone is the openess in my heart, possibly closed forever to the outside, nobody gets to know how strongly I feel about them, nobody gets to know if they hurt me badly. This has two distinct problems, the first is I absolutely don't get to have any real meaningful relationships with women, because I won't let them know how I feel, I won't open myself to the possibility of getting hurt anymore. It's just not worth it, the effects on me afterwards are to severe to make it worth my time. The second thing is that I don't ever get hurt in the same way.
There are umpteen million things wrong with this strategy but probably the worst is the fact that I don't have relationships. I'm so independent now that the need to have someone in my life is completely non-existant. But just because the need is gone doesn't mean it's not something I would like. I've accepted that I don't like being physical with someone in a more casual relationship. The appeal of sleeping with just anyone as opposed to someone I have emotional connections to doesn't appeal to me. So it's kind of just leaving something unfullfilled.
What's funny is the people that have hurt me so badly have probably done me a favor in the long run with the exception of the most recent. Someone mentioned my longtime college girlfriend to me, and while I haven't spoken to her in a long time I can't imagine what would have happened if she hadn't hurt me. I'd probably be divorced and unhappy. Same thing with other people that hurt me, I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like now if I had continued to be with them. As it is, while I'm not happily in love with anyone, and I really prevent myself from that happening. But I'm certainly much more in tune with myself and aware of what I want. I don't need anyone, which is a statement a vast number of people can't make. At some point I think it's going to be a detraction that I haven't had any long term relationships in some time, maybe it already is, but I will not open up my heart to someone again just to have it crushed again.
There are umpteen million things wrong with this strategy but probably the worst is the fact that I don't have relationships. I'm so independent now that the need to have someone in my life is completely non-existant. But just because the need is gone doesn't mean it's not something I would like. I've accepted that I don't like being physical with someone in a more casual relationship. The appeal of sleeping with just anyone as opposed to someone I have emotional connections to doesn't appeal to me. So it's kind of just leaving something unfullfilled.
What's funny is the people that have hurt me so badly have probably done me a favor in the long run with the exception of the most recent. Someone mentioned my longtime college girlfriend to me, and while I haven't spoken to her in a long time I can't imagine what would have happened if she hadn't hurt me. I'd probably be divorced and unhappy. Same thing with other people that hurt me, I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like now if I had continued to be with them. As it is, while I'm not happily in love with anyone, and I really prevent myself from that happening. But I'm certainly much more in tune with myself and aware of what I want. I don't need anyone, which is a statement a vast number of people can't make. At some point I think it's going to be a detraction that I haven't had any long term relationships in some time, maybe it already is, but I will not open up my heart to someone again just to have it crushed again.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Pretzel Recipie goodness
I baked 4 batches of these this morning and they have been eaten like hot cakes. Try making them for pretzel goodness. Also my friend Peter says you can subsititute one cup of flour for wheat flour and add honey for extra deliciousness.
Ingrediants for 1 batch:
4 cups flour
2 table spoons or one packet yeast
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 2/3 cup warm water
coarse salt
5-6 table spoons baking soda
Preheat the over to 375
Heat a pot of hot water while adding the baking soda to make a baking soda bath Line a cooking pan or two with crisco
- Mix brown sugar with warm water and add yeast, let it sit for 3-4 minutes
- Pour 4 cups of flour into food processor, add the mixture and let it mix for 20 revolutions
- After twenty revolutions you should have a ball of dough that has the consistency of play-do, depending on the flour it may be too soft and you'll need to add pinches of flour to get the right consistency, if the dough is ready before 20 revolutions the ball will be heavy enough to stop the food processer
- Knead the dough a bit to make sure it all has the same consistency
- Cut dough into smaller portions, usually you can make 12 large sized pretzels or 16 good sized ones
- Roll each piece out and fold into pretzel shape
- Add each pretzel into the baking soda bath for 30 seconds each
- Remove pretzels and place on crisco sheet sprinkle salt, a little salt goes a long way but it's personal preference
- Place sheet in the oven for 7-10 min until pretzels are a golden brown
- remove and serve with cautionary tales about hotness
Usually goes well with just about anything, cheese, butter, mustard, ham, beer, etc etc etc
Ingrediants for 1 batch:
4 cups flour
2 table spoons or one packet yeast
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 2/3 cup warm water
coarse salt
5-6 table spoons baking soda
Preheat the over to 375
Heat a pot of hot water while adding the baking soda to make a baking soda bath Line a cooking pan or two with crisco
- Mix brown sugar with warm water and add yeast, let it sit for 3-4 minutes
- Pour 4 cups of flour into food processor, add the mixture and let it mix for 20 revolutions
- After twenty revolutions you should have a ball of dough that has the consistency of play-do, depending on the flour it may be too soft and you'll need to add pinches of flour to get the right consistency, if the dough is ready before 20 revolutions the ball will be heavy enough to stop the food processer
- Knead the dough a bit to make sure it all has the same consistency
- Cut dough into smaller portions, usually you can make 12 large sized pretzels or 16 good sized ones
- Roll each piece out and fold into pretzel shape
- Add each pretzel into the baking soda bath for 30 seconds each
- Remove pretzels and place on crisco sheet sprinkle salt, a little salt goes a long way but it's personal preference
- Place sheet in the oven for 7-10 min until pretzels are a golden brown
- remove and serve with cautionary tales about hotness
Usually goes well with just about anything, cheese, butter, mustard, ham, beer, etc etc etc
Friday, February 12, 2010
So many unwritten
I've had so many topics I've needed to write and so many of them are half written and discarded or saved and never to be completed. I don't know what's going on but I'm struggling to write anything I like. I'll have all these great ideas and then when I sit down to actually complete them it doesn't happen. I need to try harder.
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