Keeping Score

Gooooooooo Hooskies

I don't want to jinx anything, so I'm not going to actually, you know, name anyone, but my Alma Matter is ranked seventeenth in the AP poll and twentieth in the ESPN poll this week. This might not sound noteworthy to any of you, but you have to understand that this school I went to for five years of my life sucks. They were never supposed to be a football powerhouse, and the stadium itself is pathetic at best. This is more noteworthy than even the Northwestern blitz to fame, since Northwestern at least has money.

Last week we were three-and-oh and I thought it couldn't last. Now we're four-and-oh.

Please let it last. Pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease.

And would it kill anyone to televise a game?

Gol!

I don't know what it is with me and the weird cars lately. Chalk it up to being on the road for nearly two god damned hours every morning.

Any rate, here's another weird one:

The First Sign of the Apocalypse

CHICAGO, IL. - Witnesses on the Kennedy Expressway recoiled in terror today as they saw what surely can only be described as the beginning of the end of the world: An H2 being used for something even remotely useful.

Describing the sight as a once in a lifetime event, Laura Jones relates her harrowing experience: "I just can't believe it. It was like, holy shit, here's this H2 towing something! And here I'm all, 'can those things even tow stuff'? I couldn't like, fathom it. I totally fucking hate those things."

Sources say that an H2 was spotted on 90/94 late yesterday afternoon towing, of all things, some sort of ditch-witch. "Look, don't get me started on the correlations between witches and Hummer owners, okay?. And could I just point out the irony in the whole ditch-digging thing? Maybe he needed it so he could dig himself out if he accidentally went offroad, y'know?" said Tyler Brown, a frequent commuter on 90/94. "I was lucky I didn't go off the road. I was totally slackjawed. You don't see this kind of thing every day. You can bet my sweet ass that you'll see this kind of thing ever again. Did I mention he was a horribly inconsiderate driver?"

Miss Jones, despite the encounter, still claims to totally fucking hate H2s.

Put the Awards Back Into the Show, Please

Did anyone here besides me actually watch the Emmys this year? Show of hands? Okay, I can see that nobody cares anymore. Good.

Because the "Awards Show" platform needs a serious revisiting. How in the hell does a director justify hurrying along someone who's given less than thirty seconds to make their acceptance speech, but then decides to cut to a three minute long piece about how they got Simon and the gang to audition the fucking acountants for the Emmys?! PEOPLE. It's an Awards Show. Not a variety show.

Giving an award for the director of the Tony Awards for "Best Variety Show Direction" is pretty much putting the nail in the head of the Awards Show coffin. Giving out a TV award for award show?! Wasn't this supposed to be an awards show that just happens to be televised? Shouldn't it work the same whether it's on TV or not? Hey, let's just admit that this is nothing more than a TV show that we put on to charge more money for advertisements, and not a show where we award the best performances in Hollywood! Why not just come forward and tell the public that you'd rather not hear what the award winner has to say, and that you'd rather have Bernie Fucking Mac go on for five minutes about how not funny he is.

I've got this crazy idea. Why not just throw a huge party, invite all of Hollywood, and then don't even bother handing out awards. Just have song and dance numbers up on the stage the whole freaking night, with some of the world's worst stand-up comedy routines in order to distract the viewing public from the bitter truth:

It's not about the awards anymore, is it? It's all about your ratings.

Award winners: please start telling the director to go fuck himself when they cue the music while you're in the middle of your acceptance speech. It worked for Randy Newman at the Oscars, and I (and the audience) applauded him for it. And please, literally say "go fuck yourself" on mike. If they cut to commercial, so be it. You didn't show up to get your face on TV that night. You showed up to accept an award for excellence, so who cares if TV land sees your acceptance speech or not. Right?

Right?

Review for the Reviewers

I just got back from Underworld, and I've got something I'd like to ask the reviewers out there:

Just at what point did going to see a movie lose the magic for you? I'd like to know what event in your life made you mentally and physically unable to sit in a theater for two hours and just attempt to have a good time, without being completely blown away by the film. Did a girlfriend slap you when you tried to make a move for her panties in the back row during Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Maybe your friends laughed at you when you cried at the end of E.T. Or maybe you've had eighteen hundred too many scripts rejected by Hollywood to ever regain any sort of love for the theater-going experience. I feel sorry for your kind.

Let me explain. I was a kid once. I know it's hard to believe, but hey, we've all been there. Some of us just seem to remember more of it than others. I remember seeing that big triangle ship float through space shooting at the smaller, more tubular ship, and thought to myself "this has to be one of the greatest experiences of all time." I didn't just mean Star Wars. I meant just getting to go out and see a fun, exciting movie; allowing oneself to get caught up in a great chase scene or feel like you're right there in the heat of a fight. Sometimes seeing a movie is wonderful just because it lets you forget who you are for a couple of hours and live someone else's more exciting life.

At what point did reviewing a movie become a hate-it-or-love-it experience? Where's the levity? Where's the gray area? Did you folks see the same previews I did? I went to go see a movie where vampires shoot at werewolves with guns. Black leather and goth ensue. This isn't rocket science, people. It's a fucking action movie with more style than any of you will ever have in your entire collective lives. Sure, it's thin on plot, and the acting gets a lot bit weak at times. But guys? Action movie. It's certainly not epic. This isn't Shindler's List starring Lestat with American Werewolf in London. If you were expecting more than The Vampire Matrix meets Romeo + Juliet, well, you got what you deserved.

And don't bitch about paying nine bucks to see it, either, because you didn't. You're a reviewer. You're not entitled. Folks, I've got news for you. I've seen much, much worse for a hundred and eighty bucks, and it was called Rent. This is not haute divertissement. It's nickel theater. This is meant to get you out of the house for a couple of hours and tell you a story. It might be a deep story. It might be sad. It might even be epic. But it may just be fun.

Imagine. Letting your hair down. Enjoying yourself at a movie.

Stranger things have happened.

Nazis, Nazis, Everywhere

Hey! Everyone! Bush is a Nazi! Wait! So is the Dalai Lama!

.

In all things, levity. That's all I ask.

Links via LYD, in case you're not reading it already.

How to Make a Serial Killer

1). Purchase a bag of Skittles for sixty five cents out of the vending machine. Use a dollar bill.
2). When no change spits out, press the "return change" button.
3). A dime will drop down into the change tray.
4). Repeaded pressings of the "return change" button yield no additional change and the following text message from the machine:

"Have a nice day."

Coming Soon to a URL Near You

Just a quick note to everyone: I'm moving Keeping Score to a new site, one that will be a very permanent domain, and it will have a different name. And art! No, it's not SteveBowler.com. Some real-estate monkey already grabbed it, seeing as he is also named that. Besides, I'm not a big fan of naming my website after myself. I know there's a good number of my friends who like that, and I can't begrudge them their own name.

So any rate, keep an eye out for a moving sign in this here space, and please update your bookmarks when it shows up.

Yes, you people who keep coming here via the old Keeping Score blog page sixty four times a month, this means you.

Attack of the Mystery Magazine Subscription

So an issue of Blender appeared in my company mailbox this morning, and I have no concrete recollection of every ordering it. My name and my company street addy seem to be in order, and yet I have to say that it's a complete mystery as to how the hell it got there.

I mean, this is like the musical version of Maxim or something, which, by the way, seems to be of the persuasion that the more they assault my eyes with flashy loading screens the more distracted I'll be in my attempts to flee their site. The magazines are no different. Why do they think that unreadable pages filled to capacity with nothing but sidebar information is more captivating than a good article? Oh wait...right. Teenagers.

While I have no doubt that this was one of those "hey, free magazine subscription for industry insiders!" kind of thing that I occassionally sign up for (and later regret), I have to ask: Why, oh why, couldn't I have drunkenly subscribed to a useful magazine???

You know, like Playboy or something.

Send Help

Fatally BORED. Having difficulty concentrating. Must. Find. Something. Productive and Creatively Challenging To Do. At work.

In other news, new chapter in the Matrix Blog, with another possibly tonight.

Doh

I apologize for the sudden lack of updates. I've been working on the Matrix Blog (see next post) a little bit too much.

See also: Mother is in town.

If you're looking for quality entertainment, and for a funny funny rant on the new RIAA lawsuits, swing by Tim's blog. Said everything I have to say about it, only funnier.

Hey Looky

I started a Matrix Character Blog. Yay for Fandom. Go have a look see if you're so inclined, won't you?

The Whiteboard

This was written on my whiteboard the other day when I came into the office. I thought maybe I had stumbled into the plot of some really bad horror movie or something. Like some twisted combo platter of Stephen King and The Ring or something.

As it turns out my PC just had a virus. A hideous, insidious, vicious virus that infects your brain and reboots your intelligence if you...ah nevermind.

Hot and Sexy Groceries.

These two items found at the grocery store are really only funny due to their proximity of being located right next to each other:

VIP CIRK

I realize that not many of you out there are fans, but Liz and I are of the persuasion that Cirque is le bombe.

We hit the newest installment, Varekai, on Saturday night, and due to my total lack of pre-planning, were forced into buying VIP tickets (Tapis Rouge; red carpet, get it? ha?) so that we could have a front row/center view of the show. Besides being nearly picked for the comedy-routine (I was like, ecstatic that my seat happened to be on the center row, which is where they always pick the audience participant from. Unfortunately, I was a bit too heavy for the female comic to pick up so she picked someone a bit lighter.), the other highlight was the VIP tent.

Never have we felt like we were some sort of priveledged royalty before this, and hell, it was at the circus. Our badges allowed us private access to this tent (along with maybe 100 other people), and it was a lot of fun watching peasant after peasant be turned away from the tent entrance, and then have us just waltz right on in, feeling the curious gaze of the other non-priveledged peer after us. "Wot's in there, me lord?! I do say the rich have it good!"

The VIP tent itself was pretty cool, but this mask thing inside was just the coolest.

It was about 10 feet across (if you stood in front of it your head would come up to about the eye area). It was basically this huge white mask that had a constant, perfectly matted video feed on it of the different performer's faces with their make-up on. They eerily matched all of the footage so all the eyes matched, so when it cross-faded between performers it would look like a morph sequence. The eyes looked around the room, blinking. It was cool as hell. I want one.