Flick Review: Django Unchained

Django Unchaimed (2012)

Directed By:  Quentin Tarentino
Starring:  Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Walton Goggins, Quentin Tarentino

Django Unchained is a movie I've been wanting to see since I saw the bootleg footage of the trailer from San Diego ComicCon.   Being a fan of Tarentino in general, I probably would have seen it anyhow, but I'm also a huge fan of the western genre, which goes back to my childhood.  As such, I made sure to see this flick within a week of it's released.  I had high hopes for it entering the theater.  It did not disappoint.

Django Unchained follows the story of Django (Foxx), a slave who is rescued by a German Bounty Hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Waltz), He reveals that that he freed Django because he can identify a gang that he is hunting, the Brittle Brothers, due to their prior work as overseers at Django’s former plantation. Schultz, who is opposed to slavery personally, comes to an agreement with his new charge; in exchange for his assistance, Schultz will give Django his freedom. The two successfully find their quarry, during which Schultz hears the sad tale of how Django was separated from his wife, Broomhilda (Hilde).  Moved by the story, the two strike an accord; in exchange for Django continuing his working arrangement with Schultz throughout the winter, the two will combine forces in locating Hilde’s current whereabouts.  After a search in the auction records, the duo find that Hilde has been sold to Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), a charming, but loathsome figure who owns one of the largest and heavily fortified plantations in the South.  With the stakes raised, the two must find a way not only to rescue Hilde, but also find a way to ensure that her freedom will be both permanent, and legal, as well as ensuring that they all live to tell the tale.

Just as he did in Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds, Tarentino pays homage to a genre film in his own manner, the spaghetti western this time around. It’s very much the same as the Clint Eastwood films I remember watching as a kid, from the panoramic and at times desolate environments, the slightly dramatic, slightly cheesy instrumental music, and even down to the ludicrous and slightly hysterical opening scene theme. Some of the music is original, although I did detect the theme from the Clint Eastwood flick, Two Mules For Sister Sara in the film as well.

There is some wonderful dialogue in the film, with plenty of witty back and fourth, incredibly quotable lines, and some wonderfully comedic and dramatic sequences.  It's this complexity and thought that is placed into the writing that is the ultimate hallmark of a Quentin Tarentino flick.  You're guarantee to hear or see something new or unique, and crafted to perfection.

The movie is beautifully shot.  There are some wonderful snow and mountain scenes, and the action sequences are pure Tarentino, filled with bloody, beautiful chaotic action.   The costumes are near accurate for the times, and rather tasteful for the most part (I love Jamie Foxx's hat, and and looking for a similar one as we speak).  The film isn't completely historically accurate, but the movie is a work of fiction, and thus this isn't a major problem.

There are a host of memorable and wonderful characters in the film, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll only be covering the major players in the film. We’ll start with Jamie Foxx, who plays Django. Apparently, from what I’ve read, Foxx was not the first choice for the role, as Tarentino wanted Will Smith at first to play the lead. However, after viewing the film, and some thought, I think the right actor was casted for the role. Both Foxx and Smith are excellent actors, but Foxx is able to inject a certain menace and humor to the role that I don’t think Smith would have been able to. Foxx is able to come off as slightly arrogant and haughty at a point of the film when his character is incognito. Smith, in my opinion, wouldn’t have been able to do that, as his characters are at best incredibly likable or sorrowful, almost messianic figures. Christoph Waltz returns to Tarentino’s works as Schultz, who is a complete 180 from Waltz’s previous Tarentino role of Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds. Like Landa, Schultz is a charming, humorous energetic individual who commands your attention when he is on screen. Unlike Landa, Schultz is a kind hearted man with a strong sense of moral justice, which we see from his first encounter with Django to his eventual role in the mission to Candyland. As he did with Landa, Waltz takes the role and knocks it out of the park.

DiCaprio is the role of a villain for one of the few times in his career, and suffice to say, he absolutely rocks it.  DiCaprio looks every bit the part of the Southern Dandy that his character is, but combines this with an almost loathsome charisma and a overbearing smarmy sort of arrogance that makes you almost root for his demise.  And the funny thing is, he's far from the most evil character in the movie.  That goes to Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Candie's head slave, Stephen.  He is so obnoxious, so calculating, and embodied with a unpleasantness that progresses to being outright loathsome by the end of the film that you wish that he would suffer the most excruciating demise possible for him in the depths of Tarentino's mental chamber of horrors.  It takes a great actor to play great villains, and both do it perfectly.

All in all, Django Unchained was worth the wait since I saw that first grainy trailer.  It's arguably Tarentino's second best film (Inglorious Basterds remains my all time favorite), and it definitely holds up to multiple viewings, from what I've heard.  I'd advise you to see it, and if necessary, see it alone if you have to.  It's good enough to withstand the shame of seeing a flick alone.  After the first five minutes, you won't care that you did.

2013 Baseball Hall Of Fame Ballot Thoughts

I love baseball.

Unlike most of my family, who love football and basketball, respectively, I tended to fall more towards the spectrum of baseball.  I enjoy the game, the strategy that is employed, the scouting and evaluation side of it, and just the fact that I can go to a ballpark, watch a game, and have a conversation with a relative of friend while watching the game.  When I first began blogging, it was primarily as a sports blogger, which I maintained for almost three years before finally giving it up a couple of years ago.

However, one thing I did do, and this goes back to my first blog post, is keep track of the baseball hall of fame voting.  It was my first time ever offering an analysis on a subject, and since then, I've kept up the tradition of posting my thoughts on the ballot, as well as trying to guess who might make it.   So, in that vein, here are my thoughts about the ballot, starting with the fuckers that shouldn't be on the ballot.


Todd Walker (INF), Jose Mesa (RHP), and Roberto Hernandez (RHP) - LOLZ!   Average to fringe contributors, but really, why are they even on here?  It just gives people the opportunity to chuckle for a moment before moving onto the next name.

Tim Raines (DH) - No.  Raines really is a guy that should be in the Hall of Fame.  He was a prodigous hitter, and was probably the second best leadoff man behind Ricky Henderson, who is already in the Hall of Fame.  He was an underrated stolen base thief, a skill that often goes unnoticed by those who analyze his game.  However, Raines' early drug use, as well as the fact that he was mostly a Designated Hitter, are what hurt his candidacy among some voters, even though advanced metrics do show that his performance does rank among many players who are already in the Hall.  It's unfortunate, but I doubt that he'll ever get in, barring a massive change amongst the voters.

Jeff Bagwell (1B) and Craig Biggio (2B/OF/C) - Not This Time, and Strong Possibility.  The original Killer B's, and for almost two decades, the faces of the Houston Astros, both players are well regarded as good people, great players, and likely Hall of Famers.  However, both are going to have some roadblocks along the way.  For Bagwell, it's that there are rumors that he might might have tried the juice at some point in his career, as well as the fact that he didn't reach 500 dingers in his career.  In the case of the former, I'm sure that you'll find rumors about everyone, but in the later, it's important to know that Bagwell played in one of the most home run suppressive parks in the Astrodome, where homers went to die.  As for Biggio, while he does have 3000 hits, it's the end of his career, which people saw as him holding on simply to reach that milestone, that hurts him, although I think the juice stigma on some guys will help his cause.  Still, both will likely get in in time, although I hope that they get in together, much as they did throughout their careers.

Lee Smith (RHP) - No.  Smith was the all time saves leader, but this was seen as more of a product of Smith's exceptionally long career than any sort of dominance.  With some truly exceptional closers coming up on the horizon in Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, it's safe to say Smith is kinda screwed.

Allen Trammel (SS) - No, and this is a shame.  Trammel was an offensive shortstop who had the misfortune of playing right before a revolution in the way shortstops hit and defended arrived in the league with the arrival of Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada, and others.  As such, the change in the position from one of defense to offense made his numbers look quite pedestrian in comparison, although the position has now turned back to one of defensive value rather than offense.  Such a change of philosophy will come too late from Trammel, who will likely never be enshrined ever.

Jack Morris (RHP) - NO!  NO!  HELL NO!!! Morris is probably one of the more divisive Hall Of Fame candidates out there. Those against him call him an average pitcher, a compiler, someone who was a workhorse, but never dominant. Those for him call him an ace on winning teams, a man that pitched to the score and battled to get the win. The truth might be in between, but trends more to the former, rather than the later. Morris was one of the most durable pitchers in his generation, but looking back at his more advanced stats, Morris only was much better than the league average pitcher in six of his 18 seasons, and was below average for four. Morris was rarely among the league leaders in strikeouts, and his command for much of his career was average at best. And while many will lionize Morris for willing to take the ball and be willing to pitch until he ended up the winning pitcher, that isn't a measure of dominance, but rather remarkable durability. Ultimately, what really is the only factor that gets so many people willing to throw their support behind Morris is Game Seven of the 1991 World Series, which is regarded as one of the best games ever played. It’s only because of that one singular event that so many sports writers are so willing to support Morris. And that’s fine. But ultimately, it’s misguided.  Morris might squeak in this year, as there appears to be quite a bit of animosity toward many of the steroid era players, but I doubt it.  But I've been wrong before.  He'd easily be, based on the stats alone, one of the worst ever inductees to make it into the Hall of Fame (Jim Rice is also up there.)

Edgar Martinez (DH) - No.  Much like Tim Raines, Martinez is also going to be stigmized by the fact that he was a DH for most of his career, and didn't play the position.  It's unfortunate, because Martinez was really good, and would be a borderline candidate if he were a left fielder or first baseman, rather than just strictly a DH.

Rafael Palmeiro (1B/3B) - Not A Chance In Hell.  Palmeiro is one of the only members to be in the 3000 hit club and 500 homer club, and the only one that will never get enshrined.  He was arguably one of my favorite players growing up, and seeing him go to the Orioles after he played for my favorite team, the Texas Rangers, killed me as a kid.  However, Palmeiro's candidacy went down the tubes when he 1) made his infamous statement to Congress and 2) became the first high profile player ever to be caught under the new steroid testing policy.  People haven't forgotten, and judging by how long he's been on the ballot, I don't think anyone ever will.

Dale Murphy (OF) - No.  Murphy had a nice enough peak during which he was one of the better outfielders in baseball, but nothing certainly worthy of Hall of Fame consideration.

Bernie Williams (OF) - No.   Williams was part of the core four Yankees that came up in the farm system during their dynasty period in the mid to late 90's (along with Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera), and was the first of the four to retire.  He was a solid player for a time, but wasn't a great one by any means.  His also didn't have much of a decline period, as his production, ability to play center field, and durability jumped out the Empire State Building once he turned 34.  Still, it's a great career, and one that might get him enshrined in Monument Park, but not anywhere else.

Fred McGriff (OF) - No, and it's a shame.  The Crime Dog was a exceptional hitter in his time, hitting for power and showing exceptional patience at the plate.  The biggest reason why McGriff hasn't been inducted, and it's a stupid one, is that he didn't reach the 500 home run plateau, which is kind of the standard for hitters, much like 3000 strikeouts and/or 300 wins is for pitchers.  It's more likely than not that McGriff will fall of the ballot, which is a crying shame.

Barry Bonds (OF) and Roger Clemens (RHP) - Not this time.  The two biggest names of steroid era likely won't get into the Hall right off the bat, as many will refuse to vote for them out of principle.  That's stupid, and the Hall of Fame will be incomplete without the era's greatest hitter and it's greatest pitcher in it.  They'll make it in time, as I do believe public opinion will soften over time, but the hardline stance that some writers have over the use of PED's, as well as the fact that both were/are colossal pricks will hurt their causes in the short term.

Mike Piazza (C) - Yes.  One of the greatest catchers in Baseball History, Piazza hit for power, was a capable defender, and was generally an asset to the teams that he played for.   He might have held on for a bit too long, and his career does have the usual steroid rumblings, as much of the era's best players do, but there is no reason why he shouldn't be in.

Curt Schilling (RHP) - Not this time.  Schilling was one of the more dominant pitchers in the late 90's, early aught's, although it did take him sometime to turn his talents into production.  He was one of the biggest big game pitchers of all time, and the owner of one of the more memorable post-season moments of all time, Schilling will probably make it into the Hall of Fame in time, provided he doesn't get tossed into the can for the shenanigans with his video game company first.

Kenny Lofton (OF) - No.  Kenny Lofton was sort of like the Shasta version of Ricky Henderson.  Both were speedy outfielders who got on base and functioned as above average leadoff men.  Both had some pop in their otherwise tiny frames, although Henderson had a slight edge on him.  However, Lofton wasn't quite as effective as he began to lose his speed, and towards the end of his career, he was miscast as a starter when it was obvious he needed to be a bench player.  Good player, but not hall worthy.

Sammy Sosa & Mark McGwire (OF) - Not a chance in hell.  Sosa and McGwire will forever be linked by the '98 Home Run Chase, which saw McGwire hit 70, breaking Roger Maris' long standing home run record.  However, they'll also both be linked as the poster children of the steroid era.

Steve Finley (CF) - No.  A very good player, who was a solid lead off man, and a excellent centerfielder for some time.  However, his peak years were good, but not great, and both the beginning and the end of his career weren't exactly pretty.  So, no.

Don Mattingley (1B) - No.  Mattingley's career can essentially be told in two parts.  From 1982-1989, Mattingley was often the lone bright spot of some truly wretched Yankees squads, which George Steinbrenner micromanaged into the ground before his temporary banishment from baseball allowed then general manager Gene Michael to rebuild the franchise in time for their mid to late 90's dominance.  If any grade school kid was asked who his favorite player was in the 80's, more often than not it would be Mattingley.  However, after '89, Mattingley's back would betray him, and the result was that Donnie Baseball would be robbed of much of his power and durability for the remainder of his career, which ended in '95, after his one and only appearance in the post-season.  Mattingley isn't a Hall of Famer, but his lingering on the ballot is as much a testament to his continued popularity as it is a dreaming of what could have been.

Julio Franco (INF) - No.  A solid contributor for a long time, and he certainly had one of the longest careers ever to be enjoyed.  But the only way Franco will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame is as a medical exhibit.

Reggie Sanders (OF) - No.  Sanders was an average player, hit for some power, got on base at times, but never did anything exceptionally well.  He was far from a star, but he had some very good years where he was an asset for some squads, in particular the 2001 Diamondbacks team that won the championship in such  dramatic fashion.

Jeff Cirillo (3B) - LOLZ, No.  Cirillo had a couple of good years, but overall was an average third baseman.  They shouldn't have even listed him, but I suspect he'll get one or two pity votes.

Larry Walker (OF) - No.  Walker is a borderline guy, but his late career injury woes are combined with a discounting of his numbers due to the fact he played much of his career in Colorado.  I figure him to get more consideration in a few years.

Ryan Klesko (INF) - No.  Klesko was a useful enough player in his time, and had some burn as a guy who could hit for some power and fake a number of positions on the field.  However, he was nothing special and played for a bit too long than he should have, although the fact major league teams were willing to throw money at him longer after his usefulness ended shouldn't be held against him.

Woody Williams (RHP) - Awww, Hell No!  Woody Williams had a long career, that's for certain, and was useful for a period of time from 1997 to 2004 as a guy who could eat up innings in the back end of your starting rotation.  But let's be honest: he wasn't a dominant pitcher, and much of his success was the result of pitching not only in the National League, but also behind some great outfield defense and spacious ballparks. The amount of homers he gave up each year alone would were enough to make a case for an All Star spot if they were somehow collected into a single humanoid construct.   So yeah, I'd have to vote a big no on him.

Rondell White (OF/DH) - No.  His brightest years were with the Expos, a team that no longer exists, before he spend much of the aught's watching his career decay into a crawling, pitiful mess, much like the zombie that Rick Grimes first meets in The Walking Dead.

Aaron Sele (RHP) - Ha Ha!  Nope! Sele's continued employment in baseball was due to two factors: A) he could pitch a ton of innings and B) he could pitch marginally well enough to avoid throwing up on himself. The highlight of his career was probably winning a World Series in 2002 with the Angels.  The bad news is that he was hurt, and thus never got to pitch for them.

Sandy Alomar Jr. (C) - No.  Sandy was an excellent defensive catcher who mostly was a backup, although he did at times have some periods as the full time starter.  Great guy to have on a team, and is generally on the short list of guys who will become a future manager.  But, no.

Royce Clayton (SS) - No.  A very good defensive shortstop, but not really much of a hitter or anything more than a average regular or stopgap option.  Clayton did play for a good long time, but he's probably know more for his appearance in the film Moneyball than for his playing career.

Jeff Conine (OF/1B) - One of the first real players to be identified with the Florida Marlins, (indeed, his nickname was Mr. Marlin) Conine wasn't anything really special.  He hit for a high average and had some pop, but wasn't anything special.

Mike Stanton (LHP) - Nope.  Stanton was probably best known as serving as a part of the set up corp to Mariano Rivera during the Yankee dynasty, but he enjoyed a good, long career in his time.  Set up men don't make the Hall of Fame, however, but Stanton can take solace in the fact that he has some nice championship jewelry (although 1999 is gaudy as hell), and the fact that he does have a steady gig on MLB Network Radio.

Flick Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey (2013)

The Lord Of The Rings, when it first came out several years ago, was rather revolutionary at the time.  It took source material that was regarded to be difficult to adapt as a live action film, and was able to turn it into a film that not only appealed to the fans of the books, but also to a mainstream audience.  It catapulted several stars, such as Orlando Bloom and Viggo Morenstein, into stardom, won a bunch of awards, including Best Picture for Return Of The King, and made billions of dollars in merchandise and movie sales.  The entire trilogy is regarded to be a modern masterpiece.  But for some of the fans of the original Tolkien novels, the films felt incomplete, because of the omission of the first book, and the prequel of the series, The Hobbit.  It seemed odd to have Bilbo's story, how he got the ring, as well as some of the references made to in during the series, to not be told.  However, these fears were abated when Peter Jackson did announce that he did intend to eventually turn the book into a film.  I just didn't expect the book to be stretched into a trilogy.

The story follows Frodo Baggins' (who makes a cameo in the film) uncle Bilbo, a hobbit who has led an rather quiet life until he encounters the wizard Gandalf The Grey.  Almost unexpectedly, Bilbo finds that he has been enlisted by the wizard into the quest to reclaim the lost Dwarven Kingdom of Erebor, which fell to the dragon Smaug years ago.  Although he initially refuses to participate, Bilbo has a change of heart and joins the company of thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, the heir to Erebor's throne. The journey is filled with danger, as the company encounters Orcs, Wargs, Goblins, as well as the presence of some dark power rising in the woods, as they attempt to make their way back to the Lonely Mountain to challenge Smaug.  Also, something else lies in the journey, waiting for Bilbo to find it:  a mysterious object that will affect not just Bilbo's life, but also the fate of all of Middle-Earth itself...

For the sake of full disclosure, The Hobbit was actually my favorite of the LOTR series. I enjoyed the characters more, it's entire narrative was contained in a single volume, and had enough visuals to make it a feast for the imagination. The biggest fear I had, going into the film, was what the film makers decided to do in order to extend the narrative. At the most, I thought the Hobbit could be extended into two movies, but not three. As with the Lord Of The Rings, Jackson remedies this by using some of the other supplementary material that exists to help flesh out the story, as well as pursue some of the other plotlines that exist in the original novel.  The most notable of this is the presence of the Necromancer, which was only mentioned in a few passages in the original book, but in the film is now turned into a very real and imminent danger.

Jackson also takes time to tell some backstory as well, going into the story of how the Dwarves were expelled from their homeland, as well as the source of their dislike of the Elves, which is evident at times in the relationship between Gimli and Legolas in Lord Of The Rings.  There are also some other sequences made in order to tie this trilogy in with that of The Lord Of The Rings films.  All of these additions are nice, and do serve a purpose to explain the story.  However, they do tend to drag, which when combined with The Hobbit's own slow start, does result in the film being a bit slow in the beginning.

The visuals in the film, as all LOTR's films, are stunning.  There are some beautiful panoramic shots of the New Zealand countryside.  Rivendale, the Elventown close to the Misty Mountains, returns in all of it's dreamy, ethereal majesty, and a couple of new settings, the Goblin caves as well as Erebor itself, also look absolutely stunning.  Other memorable sequences from the books, such as Bilbo's encounter with Golem, the Dwarves' frantic escape from the Goblins, and finally, the rescue by the Eagles, are all brilliantly done, much as we have come to expect from Jackson's prior work on Tolkien.

The cast is exceptional, also as we have come to expect.  Martin Freeman, who is famous for his wonderful portrayal of Dr. Watson from the BBC Sherlock series, is Bilbo.  Much as his Watson, Freeman's Bilbo comes off as likable, although prone to the occasional awkward outburst.  He's brave, loyal, and has a noble quality to him that makes you take an instant admiration and liking to him.  These are qualities that were similar to the qualities that the four hobbits had in the prior film series, except all rolled into one.  However, Bilbo's character is not strictly contained to the book, as Jackson has Bilbo choosing to be a much more active agent in his fate, as opposed to the book, where he was at first kind of just along for the ride.  This, along with other changes to the narrative that Jackson has added, show Bilbo as being With this change, there result in other additions to the narrative, give Freeman a chance to show Bilbo at his best, and he does so wonderfully.

The dwarf company replaces the Fellowship in this trilogy, and the casting is fairly dead on.  Richard Armitage plays Thorin, who is every bit as serious, noble, stubborn and unyielding as he was in the novel.  Ken Stott plays Balin, who was probably my favorite dwarf of the novel, although he's much older in this movie than he was in my memory.  Other notable dwarves are Fili (Aidan Turner), who will likely be this film's bit of eye candy, much as Legolas was in the prior film, while James Nesbitt plays Bofur, who has a small role, but somewhat fun role as an early friend to Bilbo.  I'm sure all of the other dwarves will have greater roles in time, but at the moment, the movie merely sets up the new universe, while also trying to introduce multiple new characters at one pop.

Returning the series are Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, Cathe Blantchett, and Christopher Lee, as Gandalf the Grey, Elrond, Lady Galadriel, and Sarumon, respectively.  Gandalf is what we expect at this point, an advisor to the dwarves, as well as a protector to the hobbits in the journey.  Unlike the Gandalf in the Rings trilogy, this Gandalf is much more of brawler, due to his powers not yet achieving the strength that they would in the later films.  Sarumon and Galadriel are in the film to possibly set up the future conflict with the Necromancer, as well as serve as another tie-in to the prior trilogy, while Elrond's role in the book was minor, but important.

In closing, the first Hobbit film is a great film, and one that you should see.  It does take a while to get started, and it is overly long in some places, but all in all, it's a movie worth the price of the ticket.

(Not So) Fast Break

Photo by Grant McKeekin, check out his Flickr here.

Basketball runs in my family.

My uncles from my Mother's side of the family were high school standouts for the El Paso High Tigers, with my younger uncle playing semi-pro basketball in Mexico for a time.  My older cousin Chris was a starter for his high school team in Albuquerque, and was quite a good one too.  I remember travelling with my family to his games in Las Cruces when La Cueva would play a local team there, like Mayfield or Onate.  My uncle Emilio was a local legend in El Paso, who often played pick up games against the famous 1966 Texas-El Paso team that won the NCAA championship, and even played for Don Haskins for a couple of years before a devastating knee injury derailed his hopes of turning pro.  His two daughters were starters for their ladies high school team, the Hanks High School Lady Knights, before going off to college.   Another cousin played for his local high school team while his father was stationed in Germany.  My sister played some junior high school ball for her team, and even my brother gave a crack at trying to play hoops.  He wasn't bad, but decided to do track instead.

Myself?   With this amazing history in my family, and the potential for possible adequacy, and perhaps even stardom in my genes, I should have been amazing at this sport that I had an interest in. right?

But no, I sucked hard.

No, that's a bit too harsh.  Despite my interest in the game (I'm a lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan), the skills weren't there.  Up until high school  I stood at five feet, had no rhythm or feel for the game, and barely able to control dribbling the ball.  So, to put it a little kinder, I was absolutely abysmal at basketball.  A vortex of suck, as the cool kids on the basketball blogs put it.

Needless to say, I tended to be on terrible teams when it came to P.E. basketball teams, especially in junior high, where coaches, out of disinterest or laziness, just allowed the kids to form their own teams.  Naturally, the kids that were good, or at least competent, tended to group together, creating two or three super-teams  which naturally walloped the out of the five or six squads made up of scrubs.  So, for the month and a half that basketball was organized for that particular grading period, P.E. became an exercise of suiting up in our uniforms of old t-shirts and shorts that were a couple of washes away from being used to wash a car (my uncle coined the term P.L.C.'s for these clothes, which stood for Para Llavar El Carro) and getting smoked by fifty. Yes, it was every bit as fun as it sounds.

It was in the final few games that my particular band of unathletic misfits (who had the audacity to call themselves the Celtics, which may have jinxed the real life Celtics who went 32-50 that season and missed the playoffs), went against the team that had dubbed themselves the Rockets, who were sitting pretty at the top of our makeshift division, with the playoffs set to begin the next week in a winner gets absolutely nothing, round robin tournament before we switched over to Dodgeball or something along those lines.

Predictably, things started off badly.  That particular team had at least two of the starters from the Slider 7th Grade A team, with at least a couple of the bench guys from the B team thrown into their mix.  They could play, and had been since they were kids.  My team on the other hand, could be summed up in the following statement:  we weren't big, but we were slow.   So it wasn't a surprise that after twenty minutes of play, my team was down by double digits.  My memory is hazy, but the point differential was probably in the thirties or forties.  It wasn't pretty.

Things only got worse after what consisted of our halftime, which was generally break long enough to go run to the outside water fountain, which was usually the one fountain on the school whose refreshment tasted faintly like the pipes. Still, whatever was in that faintly lead tasting hydration must have ignited some superhuman gene within our opponents, because we were getting destroyed at an even more breakneck pace than before. It was like watching the Seven Seconds or Less Suns, but with you being the guy this time, you're on the receiving end of the beating.

That's when my teammates started leaving. It should have been expected. At some point, no matter how hard you might try, there are certain things that you just aren't able to do, simply because physically, you can't. In this case, after all the losing from the past few weeks, as the schedules were far from balanced, the running up the score on others, and the current annihilation in progress, sometimes people reach their breaking points. And in this case, someone did. I don't remember the kids name, but I just remember the look of disgust on his face that preceded a quiet, cracking voice, still halfway between manhood and childhood croaking "Screw this."  One moment, he was playing matador defense against the other team's point guard, the next moment, he suddenly turned and walked sullenly, dejectedly off the court.  The dam had broken, as once one person leaves, it's hard to keep other people feeling the same way from doing so.  In the span of minutes, I found that I was now very much alone on the basketball court.

This created a quandary, as the other team and I, were at something of an impasse.  The game was still going on, and coaches were watching to make sure that we were participating.  Quitting wasn't something that reflected well on one's P.E. grade, even if it was the difference from getting an A or a B on an otherwise useless class period.  On the other hand, there wasn't a team on the floor anymore, so technically, how could the game still be continue?  Realistically, I could leave the game, walk away, and no one would have blamed me for doing so.

Except I couldn't do that.  Call it stubbornness,  call it pride, or maybe some uncrushable part of my sense of self that I had yet to discover, but I couldn't walk away.  The idea was unacceptable to me.  Time was ticking, and a decision needed to be made.  I had the ball in my hands, and five other people were standing, wondering just what I was going to do next.

I had no one to inbound the ball to me, I just bounced it once and charged in, five on one, myself against the world.

If this were an episode of Saved By The Bell, or at the very least an episode of ABC's After School Special, I suppose this would be the moment where i discovered some sort of  hidden ability, an Allen Iverson-esque ability of basketball in which I could play in isolation, dominate the game, and somehow lead myself to a comeback.  Or that my teammates, inspired by my stubborn determination, would come roaring back to my side, and through some mixture of grit, luck, and determination, we would have emerged victorious.

But no, I got destroyed, 70-something to 4.  And I was extremely lucky to get the four.  The score would have probably been higher if the whistles not eventually sounded the final whistle for all of the games on the playground courts.  I have to admit, I was slightly embarrassed.  I hadn't expected to do well, although I didn't expect a trouncing along those lines.  However, I do remember feeling oddly proud of myself that I had at least played the entire period, and played my hardest, even though it wasn't very well.

The next day, after suiting up, I passed by the dot-matrixed printed standings of our divisions, which usually told us which playground court to go to, along with where we stood in our divisions.  Out of curiosity  I looked at my team's record, and was surprised to see that we had somehow picked up a win.  Well, I wasn't  surprised, my mind was blown.  I asked the couch if he had made a typo, and he said, no, you guys picked up a win yesterday.

I immediately sought out one of the guys from the other team the day before.  I asked him, what happened?

"You won the game."  He said simply.

"How?"  I asked, confused more than ever.  "You kicked my teams ass, and then my ass right after that."

"You didn't give up."  He said simply, looking at me like I was a complete idiot.  "Everyone left, but you stayed and you still played.  So we went to coach after the game and forfeited.  You earned that win."  And then he walked off, leaving me staring as he walked out into the school grounds as my band of misfits slowly dragged their sneaks to today's latest trouncing (we lost hard, breaking our one game win streak.)

Despite the rather unbelievable circumstances of this story, it is a true one, and I've told it as closely to the truth as a can, for it did happen almost 19 years ago.  And it has taught me quite a bit as I've reflected over time.  That being persistent and confident in one's self can help lead you to where you need to go.  That people will respect the effort that you place in a cause, even if it at times may be a hopeless one.  And that at times, even though something may seem hopeless or dire, perhaps it is better to

Maybe I do have something to add to my family's basketball history after all.  A story about a guy that took on the world, got beaten up in the process, and yet still came out with a victory, in his own way.  This is not going to be a story that will be held in esteem, nor will be told in the nostalgic, sepia tones that the tales of my uncles' hoop dreams are told then and now.  It's a story that will likely die with me, and will likely be forgotten.  But the important thing is that it happened.  And for that brief moment, as I stood in the hallway of the middle school, with the rest of my gym classmates filing past me, I might have, for that brief moment, felt like they did, when their stories were the moment, when they were young, and they were writing their stories on the hardwood.

Five Of My Favorite Disaster Flicks

Tomorrow is December 21st, 2012, the latest date that doomsday fetishists have circled for our immanent demise (and also, coincidentally enough, my parents' 33rd wedding anniversary.)   Seeing as how the world could either end in a massive technological-zombie apocalypse, or more likely, nothing, I figured I would share five of my favorite post-apocalypse films that I would show for a movie marathon.  Why?  Because it's the end of the world, what else do you have going on tomorrow?

28 Days Later

A modern horror classic, 28 Days Later is, in my opinion, perhaps the most important movie in the zombie genre since the original Night of The Living Dead.   It was revolutionary for it's departure from the zombie as a shuffling, slow, but unrelenting menace, instead portraying the undead hoards (well, infected hoards) as quick moving, violent threats that had to be dealt with quickly.  It's really a beautiful film to look at, with it's grainy, almost dirty look of the film showing Danny Boyle's point of view of post-apocalypse Great Britain.  There are some beautiful scenes: the almost picturesque views of the English countryside, allowing the viewer to momentarily forget the surroundings and circumstances of the film, the view of Jim walking through a empty and devastated London, to the intimate, brutal, and gory zombie battles, in particular the final scene when Jim leads the hoards of infected to rescue Selena and Hannah.  The soundtrack is also top notch, and is perfectly integrated with the film's scenes, in particular the zombie attacks, which gets progressively more frantic and unrelenting as the movie progresses.  All in all, it's a great film, and unlike many zombie films, it has a happy, hopeful ending.

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is another disaster film favorite of mine.  Granted, it's completely unrealistic (28 Days Later's zombie scenario is at least plausible, as opposed to God forgetting to pay the heat in this film), but it also knows this and doesn't take itself seriously.  It's highly entertaining, features Emmy Rossum looking incredibly cute, Dennis Quaid bring his brand of rugged awesomeness to the film, as well as Jake Gyllenthall bring youthful enthusiasm along with his brand of mediocre acting (he was great in Jarhead, though).  All in all, if you have time to waste, don't feel like exercising your brain, and just want a popcorn movie, this one's for you.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend is another good post-apocalypse film, loosely based (very loosely)on the comic book of the same name. It’s very much in the vein of 28 Days Later, in which a virus devastates the world, leaving very few survivors (in this case, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. No word about Carlton or Jazz). We have some great empty city shots, such as the driving through the empty city scene, as well as the mini-golf off of the aircraft carrier shot. Still, even though the source material is deviated from, it’s a good movie, and Will Smith does a fantastic job in it. See the extended cut with the alternate ending, it’s awesome.

The Postman

The Postman gets a lot of grief for being another over the top, over-budgeted Kevin Costner post-apocalypse film. Actually, though, it's not bad. The story isn't great, but it's plausible, and the cast manages to pull it off well enough to give it some believability. Costner's acting is good, and seeing him go from being a lonser to the father of civilization is oddly gratifying. And how can you not hate the Tom Petty cameo as the mayor of the dam city? The only problem I have is, didn't society come back a little too quickly at the end of the film? Other than that, it's not bad, much better than people will give it credit for.

The Book of Eli

he Book of Eli is a great film, centering around Denzel's character Eli, travelling through west coast, as he takes a Bible to Alcatraz to mass produce to the population, but is immediately set upon by raging atheists who want the book's power for their own means.  It's a gritty, dark and dirty film, but one that has some great fight scenes, and some good acting in the form of Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.  It's another plausible survivalist tale, and a damn good one.

So, hopefully if you are having any end of the world parties, be safe, be responsible, and don't do anything stupid, because remember, if the world doesn't end, and you do something stupid, you're going to have to answer for it on December 22.

Taping Music Off Of The Radio: A Brief Retrospective

Photo by Tramavirtual

My office Christmas party was this past Friday, and as usual, a great time was had, with lots of conversation, some drunken observations (I never drink at these gatherings for fear of becoming the talk of the office), as well as the usual shenanigans that tend to occur between co-workers after hours.  Rewind back to three hours prior, and I was tearing open my closets like I was robbing the place, looking for a roll of wrapping paper to wrap my secret Santa gift.

It was in this ransacking of my own home that I found something that had been tucked away in the back of a closet for quite some time, the sheen of dust already turning it's oily black exterior into a sort of gunmetal grey. I paused over this dusty little container, curious to what I had in there and what may have possessed me to keep this thing over the years.

Most of these tapes were made back in the 1990's, a magical time when I went from a awkward, shy youth to a even more awkward, shy young adult.  The Internet was still in it's infancy, and still had it's potential to become something new and exciting before becoming overrun by Facebook and porn.  MTV still had music in between their reality show programming, and Kurt Loder was years away from being locked in a freezer like Sly Stallone in Demolition Man, only to be thawed out when someone big from the 80's and 90's had passed.  The highlight of the video game world was probably Doom, in all of it's pixelated gore and glory.   Woodstock had returned, was hailed as a success, returned again, and went down in a fiery mess of violence, commercialism and Fred Durst.

The 1990's were also, more than any decade in my humble opinion, plagued by the misfortune of having an overabundance of albums that had perhaps one or two really good songs, with the rest of the album being only a hop skip and  a jump away from being categorized as a fetid sewer.  Keep in mind, the average CD price was around $12 to $15.  In 90's dollars, that was the difference between buying a music just so I could have access to the song Sex And Candy, or using said fundage on a tank of gas, a cheap date, some illegal beer for a kick back, or some other tomfoolery that I may have been up to back in those good old days.

Fortunately children, or those children who are young enough to have been born after 1990 or so, there were ways to get the song if you wanted it bad enough.  The first was to see if you could bum a CD from a friend that happened to be stupid enough to buy the song, usually for another CD that you had been stupid enough to purchase.  However, if you were desperate enough, and had enough patience, there was a way to get around having to pay for the song: taping said song off of the radio.   It's a long dead art, killed by the digital age, but back then, and several generations before then, we had this down to a science.  All you needed was a Memorex, a stereo with a record option, and some time.

The process began with calling the deejay on the request line, offering everything but your first born child for the chance of the song of your dreams to be played.  This tended to be a crap shoot, as deejays, then as now, tend to ahve their own ideas as far as what is good music that should be played.  I usually had the best of luck with Glen Garza, the only guy at our local (only) rock station to play music after 1986.   I hated Magic Mike, who played a non-stop orgy of Van Halen, both from the Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth eras.

Second, you assumed the yoga-esque pose by the radio, waiting like a lion for it's quarry.  Everyone had their own positions, usually some bizarre love child of the utkatasana and malasana poses.  Anything that prevented you from developing a bloodclot in your legs that would lodge itself in your lungs and kill you like Finney from the novel A Separate Peace.  

And there you would wait, often waiting through aggrevating commercials (like the infamous J.J. King of Beepers jingles), and at times shifting your yoga positions to something more comfortable, even taping an occasional song that you might have liked and had not occurred to you.  We all even had the songs that we knew and hated enough to use for bathroom breaks, grab a bite to eat, or go do something productive (in my case, usually something by Rush.)

And who can forget those moments waiting by the radio when your musical quarry, finally DID come on.....only to have the accursed deejay start rambling on about how this was the band's new single, how he thought it was awesome, and the name of the radio station before the song began to play. All the while, you're crouching there with the recorder going on your stereo screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP! I"m trying to get music here!"  Especially if said deejay happened to love the sound of his own voice to talk right up until the lyrics began (unfortunately, also Glen Garza.)

True, I did have enough recordings where I could remix two different sections into one complete song, and I acquired the skill (a useless one) to get it to where it was seemless.  But nothing beat the feeling of recording the song perfectly from one take to another, without interruption, commercials, or egotistical deejay ranting to ruin it.   Over time, I had even had a sort of loose network with my friends, where we each traded different mixtapes amongst each other for other music that we had.  It was like Pokemon, but without the stigma attached to it.  You would talk about new bands you had heard, shared music that you had, and just find different ways to enjoy something that you may have been passionate about.  And I think it's this part of the tapes that is why I kept them for all these years.  It was the memories of sharing and trading tunes with friends, and the different memories of a more innocent and simple time, of days gone by.

P.S.  Fuck you, Glen Garza.  I'm still bitter.

The Atrophied Remains Of My Terminated Writing Career

Photo by Thorin Nielson (check out his Flickr here)

I was cleaning out my USB drives the other day.  It's rather tedious work, as it is mostly organizing folders, old school assignments, small text file notes and other random bullshit that tends to accumulate when you are in a hurry or want to write something down on the go.  One of my more hated personal traits of mine is that I do tend to be a bit of a hoarder.  For some reason known only to my subconscious mind, I tend to hang onto things longer than I should, always out of some irrational fear that I'll need it at a later point, but won't have it.  In reality, most of it deserves to be tossed out.  Far too often, what sounds good at the time, after it's had the time to percolate and age, really turns out to have been a horrendous notion in the first place.  In the end, most of it after review is sent to my electronic dustbin, where it eventually, after a couple of keystrokes, is gone forever, blown into millions of electronic smithereens.  In the digital age, deletion tends to be easier, as we lose that physical connection that we have back when people found themselves buried under Andres mountain ranges of tree pulp.

However, upon encountering an older USB drive that I forgotten I had, I was surprised to find out that I unearthed a treasure trove of older .doc files that I had from years ago.  This was my old back up of my creative projects, back when I fancied myself as a younger, browner, Stephen King.  The amount of stuff on there ran the gamut of literary expression.  Old poems, some of which had been finished, but never collected or posted.  Various started and aborted short stories, although a few were finished.   And, incredibly enough, four projects that I was once very serious about that, but had stopped working on, all far enough along that they weren't ideas or short stories anymore, but full fledged bodies and skeletons of narratives.  I suppose the best analogy to describe them would be if you were rebuilding a car, and had managed to get the frame cleaned and straightened out, had the basic guts of the engine installed, as well as some of the necessary components that make a car a car.  Granted, it wouldn't get you very far, but at the very least, there was something there that gave you a vague idea of what the car would have looked like when finished, and perhaps even taken you where you wanted to go (like those junk yard cars that exist to solely take you from one car corpse to another.)

They were never finished, and probably weren't anywhere close to being so, but the story concepts were far enough along that each one had sort of undergone a miniature big bang, with universes beginning to form around the central outlines and ideas of the stories.  There were characters that had evolved from mere shadows that shuffled in and out of my subconscious, having fully decided to step out into the overcast light that I imagine is what the inside of my mind looks like, to introduce themselves and take part in whatever literary whim I would decide to cast them in.  There were four stories that I had managed to get quite a bit of work done.

• Battle Royale - A colaborative effort with Jesse Sanchez, a friend of mine at the time.  We had both read and watched the film, Battle Royale, and wanted to create an American version of the film, using the same guidelines as the BR Universe.  
• A Walk With Death - A random idea of mine, it would be a collection of stories of people, who, in their last five minutes of life, would have a conversation with Death himself.  Not all of them were exactly nice, uplifting stories.  Some were quite dark.  Really dark.
• A Social Experiment - Another odd title of mine, where I took the concept: what if you took a regular guy, suddenly made him the world's most wanted criminal, and dropped him into a foreign country to survive on his wits alone for three days.  I wrote day's one and three on legal paper, with the outlines of day two typed out.
• Like A Song (Working Title) - Like a song was a dystopian/sci-fi novel that I was writing, about an otherwise perfect society that we had in the future, It centered around a young man, a promising cadet for the society's security service/military forces, that wound up joining the rebellion after a great personal loss that occured, as well as how the event was spun.  It had giant robots, various tidbits of philosophy that I had learned, most notably Noam Chomsky, as well as my own various theory about religion, mythology, and other things that happened to pop into my head.  This was my opus,   This work was the most complete, and actually had a book and a half done, as well as some other future sequels finished.

After going through the words that I had once so carefully typed out, dedicated so many evenings to weaving the different threads of thoughts together, a thought came to me.

Why didn't I ever finish?

I suppose, in two cases, real world events came into play that made my once carefully crafted thoughts dated.  I had a falling out with Jesse, and tried to continue Battle Royale on my own.  Then, The Hunger Games was published, and I knew that, with a similar premise and it's own rising sales numbers, a true tribute to Takami's work would not be possible.   As for Like A Song, around the same time as I stopped work on Royale, I discovered the T.V. series Firefly, which more or less covered some of the same concepts that I had been working on in my own work.  And so, I discontinued it, fearing being seen as piggybacking off of Joss Wheldon's work (although I do love Firefly, Angel, and Wheldon's work with the Marvel Universe.)

Before I knew it, hours had passed, and it was now early in the morning hours.  And that same thought lingered in the air, as sobering and depressing as the smell of a lost love's perfume, enough to bring back some fond, happy memories, but the absence of the person making it all the more apparent that the physical presence is gone.

Why didn't I ever finish?

I knew the answer.

Fear.

Fear of being labeled as being too similar to another writer's work.  A fear of being labeled of not being quite good enough.  Most importantly, it was a fear that the work that I had put in heart and soul into, spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours working on crafting thousands of different cranial synapses together, and something I had truly cared about and was passionate about, being rejected as not being good enough to share with others.   Around 2009, I abandoned any further attempts at a writing career.  I felt that I was too old, and that many of the ideas I had written were already now out in the public.  I deemed that the stories had been told, in one way or another, and that rather have them suffer the fate of being labeled as unoriginal, and savaged as such, I would just archive them and do nothing.

However, none of it is as bad as I may have thought.  Some of it does have some originality, and the narrative is a much different than what I would have thought.  I'm thinking of finishing some of it, and rather than submit it to publish, just sharing it here for free.  For at my best, even though I have a great number of things I like to dabble in creatively, I'm an daydreamer, and a story teller.  Perhaps, just by putting it out there for the general public to read and receive it as they choose to, I'll have achieved both.