Monday, April 30, 2007

Bring On The Nets! (or the Raptors if they're lucky)

The Cavs finished off their sweep of the (starless) Wizards tonight 97-90. Lots of sweeps going down in the first round this year. They're getting knocked for kind of slinking by most of the games in this series (especially given the Wizards being without their superstar and another of their top players)... but a sweep is a sweep.

Next up is the winner of the Toronto-New Jersey series, which the Nets currently lead 3-1. You ready for the next round LeBron?


Ok, ok, take a few days off and rest the ankle. They still need to finish up that other series anyway. In the meantime, let the Pistons & Bulls start softening each other up for the finals!

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Here We Go Brownies!


NFL Draft 2007! Your refreshing breath of football in the midst of the NBA & NHL playoffs and (sigh) baseball season.

Now, the Browns are pretty well known for horrendous draft picks since returning to the league. With such AWESOME first-round picks as Tim "home sitting on my" Couch, Willie "fell on a knife" Green, Courtney "ouch" Brown, Gerard "big money" Warren... and the Dynamic Injury duo of Kellen "Motorcycle Soldier" Winslow and Braylon Edwards. Jeff Faine at Center is in there somewhere too... while not as uber-bust as the other early picks, he's still got to be considered a loss.

So this year the Browns craftily managed to land themselves drafting third overall. Lots and lots of hot air was spent the past few months talking about who they'd pick... Adrian Peterson? Brady Quinn? Joe Thomas? When the time came, they played it safe and went for the area that arguably needs the MOST help for the team, picking up Joe Thomas from Wisconsin for the key Left Tackle spot. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed, but it definitely WAS the safe pick, and you can't argue that the Browns O-Line has been BAD. Still, I was bummed because this was a good pick for the future, but doesn't build any real excitement for NOW.

Then... the magic happens. Miami heads to Buckeye City and bites on Teddy Ginn WAY ahead of projections, instead of taking care of their gaping QB problem. And that means Brady slides further... and further... (they even took him off to a private room so he didn't have to deal with the "doesn't that suck" close-ups after every team that DIDN'T pick him).

And at #22 the Browns trade-up, back into the first round and land him after all. Two top-5 rated picks for the Browns in one year. NICE. And, Brady, like a champ, comes out & puts on the hat and holds up the jersey, being the last guy actually in attendance who hadn't done so at that point.

Of course, he was holding up the wrong jersey - so I had to do a little editing work for you. Not at all noticeable, I'm sure. ;)

Honestly though, I'm really happy about this - this is probably my favorite top 2 picks for the Browns since they returned to the league. They filled a much needed hole and STILL managed to get someone that we can hopefully ask to carry the franchise forward into the future. As long as he doesn't get sacked into oblivion first.

So I say, in the enternal mantra of the Cleveland sports fan, "This is the year!" ;)

Friday, April 27, 2007

Movies... Third Time's Still A Charm?

Yeah, I'm still here. Been a little busy lately, what with Amy being nasto-sick this week, and being out of the office at work Tuesday, Wednesday and half of Thursday for a training thing out in Dublin.

I DID get to hit up Tropical Bistro for the lunch buffet Tuesday (excellent as always) and finally got to try Benny's Cheesesteaks for lunch Thursday. I'd have to say I definitely enjoyed the cheese steak (I even opted for the cheesewhiz, going for the more authentic). I'm obviously no South Philly person, but at least one person who IS enjoyed it. I'd definitely go back, but given how freaking way-outta-the-way it is for me from home OR work, I don't know how often that'll be realistically.

So, in other news, after poking around in Trusted Opinion a bit more this evening, rating some more movies... that prompted me to hit-up IMDB and look for what movies were coming out this Spring/Summer/later this year that I was interested in checking out. (Those that I've already heard at least something about, of course...)

Sadly... or maybe predictably, most of them were sequels or adaptations. What's REALLY odd is the sheer number of the THIRD installments in a franchise coming out this year. While Hollywood may be "out of ideas" as the common criticism goes, they sure seem to have hit on quite a few successful franchises lately to be cracking out this maybe #3s.

Here's what made my list, roughly in order of expected release:
So, you'll note the FIVE starred third installments listed above. As well as a FOURTH installment (Die Hard) and a FIFTH installment (Harry Potter). I'm sure there are other movies coming out soon that I'll be interested in seeing, but scanning ahead through IMDB's coming movies list, these are the only ones that really caught my attention so far.

I also saw two OTHER third installment movies coming out this year... Resident Evil: Extinction and Rush Hour 3. I have really NO interest in seeing Resident Evil. I'm sure I'll end up seeing Rush Hour 3 at some point, but I'm pretty well Chris Tucker'd out for the time being. His shtick got old REAL fast.

What movies are you folks looking forward to seeing the rest of this year?




Thursday, April 19, 2007

That Post-Marathon Glow

Well, that's been here and gone by this point. Still, I had a great time. I posted by full review on a couple different forums, including the Sci-Fi Marathon forum and Columbus Underground. Not that it's really all that in-depth, but go there for a longer recap. For the short version - attending (in our extended group): me, Dad, Gary, Hutch, Randy, Jeff, Angel, two of Jeff's friends I don't really know, and Mike F. Always a blast hanging out with everyone, and this was no different. One of the best get togethers of the year, IMO. Best & Worst:
  • Best Movie I'd Already Seen: Flash Gordon. MAN, I love that movie. It's a CRIME it's out of print.
  • Worst Movie I'd Already Seen: Star Trek: The Motion Picture *yawn* pan-pan-pan "here's the outside of the Enterprise" pan-pan-pan "here's the outside of VGER" pan-pan-pan "here's the audience napping" pan-pan-pan
  • Best Movie I Saw For the 1st Time: Fido. A fun new take on zombie movies.
  • Worst Movie I Saw For the 1st Time: Automatons. SWEET MERCIFUL JEBUS MAKE THE BAD MEN STOP. Someone hand me a knife - even the MEMORY of this movie makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I'm not sure, but I think they may have been trying to make some political statement? Maybe?
  • Best Food: Fully Loaded Gateway Fries. YUM!
  • Worst Food: Greek Wrap. My fault for not paying closer attention, but it contained no meat. Not bad as much as just not what I wanted.
So yeah, the Marathon's over for another year. Back to normal life. In which I STILL haven't ditched the damn cough that's been nagging at me for a couple weeks now. It got better for a bit, and most all the other symptoms are gone, but this shit is getting old, man.

Take your mind off the doldrums with some fun games:
And if Flash games aren't your speed, see Emily Short's Interactive Fiction games. The only ones I've played at length are Galatea and Glass, but they're both very well done, immersive interactive fiction (that's a fancy way of saying "all text") games.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Psyched For The Sci-Fi (Marathon, That Is)

The 24th Annual Ohio Sci-Fi Marathon is this weekend at the Drexel Gateway theater! Noon Saturday to (roughly) Noon Sunday. I'm totally psyched.

My Dad & I have been going to the Marathon every year since the THIRD annual marathon back 1989 at the Drexel North! (Don't do the math, it doesn't work out.) Well, sadly, my dad actually missed one year, but I haven't missed one since. We cut out early a couple of the early years (I was still very prone to migraines those first few years), but we were there. We even got our pictures in the Dispatch while waiting in line one of those years at the Drexel North. To see a history of all the years, locations, and films shown, check out the Marathon History link. Suffice to say I've seen Them! on the big screen far too many times.

Over the years, we've picked up quite a few other folks for the outing - Gary (for quite some time now), Hutch, Randy, Featherstone, and many others have dropped in from year to year. We're doing our part to try and keep it alive at least!

This year's flier is here [pdf].

The (tentative/theoretical) schedule is:

Doors should open at about 10:30. Like last year we'll have a reel of pre-blast off trailers starting at about 11 or 11:15.

Noon Countdown & Blast Off
12 MONKEYS

2:30 KING DINOSAUR

4:05 THE GREAT YOKAI WAR - Ohio Premiere

6:20 Costume Contest
6:30 PUZZLEHEAD - Ohio Premiere

8:10 FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACEMONSTER

9:55 FIDO - Midwest Premiere

11:40 AUTOMATONS - Ohio Premiere

1:10 CHOPPING MALL

2:45 NIGHT OF THE COMET

4:25 MINDWARP: AN INFINITY OF TERROR

6:00 SLITHER

7:45 STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE

10:10 FLASH GORDON
Noon Presentation of Certificates to survivors (if any)

Should be a great time. Can't wait! You should join us!

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Snow, South Park, Cleansing The Filthy Internets

Well, for anyone in the area, after a gorgeous start to the week with highs around 80, it SNOWED last night and earlier today. Gotta love Ohio weather.

If you're stuck inside thanks to the crappy weather, I give you yet another option for killing time. EVERY South Park episode EVER, streaming straight to you, thanks to the miracle that is the Intarwub.

Check out AllSP.com while you still can. They don't host the vids, but even still, you know this one has a limited shelf-life. This is actually one that really irks me, because if Comedy Central's "on demand" offerings through the cable company were any good (see the HBO On Demand model), I'd GLADLY watch the shows there... but instead all you get are 5 minute clips of Stewart & Colbert, and a random smattering of 1-2 episodes of each of their 4,000 shows.

If you can make it through the extreme traffic, Video Hybrid is another site worth checking out.

In case that's just all too much for you to handle, you can always head to the righteous side of the 'net:
  • Believe it or not, there are actually MULTIPLE Christian-themed YouTube clones out there. Check out GodTube ... the obvious choice, but if that's not enough for you, how about GospelTube? I guess with the popularity of YouTube, endless clones like this (with targeted audiences) were inevitable, and hey - they do serve a good purpose for their niche audiences. And this isn't really a particularly SMALL niche, either.
  • If watching videos and making online connections isn't enough for you, you can facilitate off-line connections through MyChurch.org - self-described as "Facebook for Churches". Somehow I don't think that means you can use it to invite everyone you know to your kegger of biblical proportions, but I suppose it WOULD help you figure out the name of the girl you hooked up with behind the pews last week...
  • Finally, I'm sure most of you have already seen this one before, but check out Conservapedia, for "A conservative encyclopedia you can trust." Beacause one Wikipedia wasn't enough, now you get your wide-open editable, in-depth but not likely to be well-referenced information in multiple flavors of bias!
Anyways, have fun... as for me, I'm finally over the death plague acquired by way of Amy last week... though Evie was running a mega-high temperature yesterday and had to stay home from daycare today, so I would up working from home this morning while keeping an eye on her.

Monday, April 02, 2007

My Humps?

Brilliant!