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I’m the kind of sports fan who wishes that ESPN 8 (the Ocho) was an actual channel.  I love learning about sports I didn’t even know existed.  As long as there’s at least two people competing for some sort of trophy, I’m probably going to watch.  That’s why the Olympics are great, and it’s the winter games that I enjoy the most.  Sure, there’s plenty more stuff to see at the summer games, but I’m more about the idea of pushing yourself to the limit in the cold and ice than in nice sunny weather.  Don’t believe me?  Well, here’s my top five winter Olympic events.

I find this photo slightly arousing.

For one, the biathlon is a sport that I’m especially fond of.  I love to watch all of the cross-country skiing events, but I usually find myself saying, “You know what this race needs?  Guns.”  And BAM, there you have it, the biathlon.  I first learned about this sport from the classic C64 game, Winter Games from Epyx and I was stunned.  Who thought this up?  Wasn’t there a James Bond movie that started with Sean Connery jumping out of a helicopter onto a ski-slope?  Was it even Connery?  Well, it was thought up by the Norwegian army.  Good thinking.  After all, how are you going to defend yourself against invading Swedes?

Speed skating is another fave.  My first Olympic memory is seeing it during the ‘88 games.  I might’ve even seen Dan Jansen wipe out.  I just thought it was cool as hell to see someone skate so fast with what seemed to be minimal effort.  These days, the short track is what gets me pumped.  It’s like rollerball or something.  In my experience, making a sport faster and smaller in scale will usually make it better in some ways.  Look at arena football.  Yeah, I said it.

"No shotgun, you're all sitting in the backseat. Stop kicking your brother."

Fast pace is a recurring theme at the winter Olympics.  Try the bobsled.  It combines the luge (which I think is stupid, whether someone died last week or not) and soapbox derby racing (which I think is awesome), and adds a teamwork element.  You end up getting a sport that’s just dangerous enough to think “Those guys are crazy” but in a sled that looks like a nuclear submarine.

TOOOOOOMBAAAAAAAAAAAA

Downhill skiing is the best kind of skiing, whether you’ve got guns or not, but if pressed, I’d say that it’s the slalom that I love the most.  Nobody did it better than the immortal Alberto Tomba, and he’d be the first to tell you.  These days, though, the skiers fly down the hill so fast that I wonder how a human being can go that fast on snow and ice and not die every single time.  Bode Miller wipes out a lot in the Olympics, but he stays alive, so I guess that has to be worth something.

And of course, I’m sure you could guess what my favorite thing about the winter Olympics is…

Do you believe in a career in motivational speaking? YES!

I love da hockey, and when da hockey is good, I ain’t complainin’.  I can understand when people still grumble about keeping the Olympics as an “amateurs only” competition, but let’s be honest.  If the NBA is allowed to send the Dream Team to the games to (more often than not) destroy the competition every four years, then other team sports should get to do it, too.  Since the NHL has been allowing its best players to represent their countries, there’s been no doubt about who’s got the most talent.  The league didn’t even bother to have an All Star Game this season.  Why have one game with two teams when you could have several teams play for two weeks… in Vancouver, of all places!  From where I’m standing, I’m thinking that the final four this time around will be the U.S.A., Canada, Russia, and Sweden.  After that, who knows, but if the Americans keep playing like they did against Canada the other night, we might have another miracle on our hands.

I’m Morgan Freeman for Visa, and I’ll see you… at the games.

The last time I posted about the Bruins, they had just won the Winter Classic in exciting fashion and were looking to start a second-half push to the playoffs.  A month later, key players went down with injuries and we lost ten excruciating games in a row.  Slowly but surely, the likes of Lucic, Savard, and Ference made their way back to the ice and beat the Canadiens a week ago in Montreal.  Three more wins after that, and the B’s are right back in the thick of it, seventh place in the conference and, for the most part, resting up over the Olympic break.

Baaaack in the saddle agaaaain!

All during the bleak month of January, there was all sort of talk going around… fire Claude Julien, kick Tim Thomas out of goal on a permanent basis, etc… the most interesting storyline was the question of whether or not the B’s should have traded for Ilya Kovalchuk.  Kovie is one of the most natural goal-scorers around and there’s no doubt that that’s the one area that the Bruins are truly lacking.  It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Cam Neely or Bill Guerin, so why not get a guy who can score 40-50 a year without much effort?  Well, we didn’t because he’d have only had been a late-season rental.  The team would have had to have given up a lot of great players (not to mention the all-important Toronto pick in next year’s draft) to get it done for a guy who in all likelihood will not even come back to play in the NHL next year; rumor has it he’ll go pick up a huge contract back in Russia.  In my opinion, the Bruins have actually built a great team that only needs a fire lit under them – or that high draft pick next season – to finally get back into the Stanley Cup Finals.  And believe me, that’ll be a sight to see.

My only hope is that the coming break doesn’t mess up any new rhythm the guys have.  They’ve finally started winning again, and it feels good.  We’ve got a lot of guys in the Olympics, but it’s the rest of the team getting their rest that makes me more optimistic than not.  At this point, all we need to do is make the playoffs… sometimes, crazy things happen when you’re there.

If you like Bruins blogging, go check out HubHockey.  It’s not the best written, but like NoMaas does for the Yankees, it’s funny, smart, and goes against the grain from time to time.  It also helps that it’s probably the only Bruins blog that is actually updated every game.  And check out the fight log!!

I have nothing to say tonight.

Here’s a link to a blog that features mostly screengrabs of Commander Riker.

Setting course for Risa (LIKE A BOSS)

YOU’RE WELCOME.

I’ve had February 2nd marked on my calendar for a while now, and for a multitude of reasons.  It is, of course, Groundhog Day, one of my very favorite holidays.  Punxatawney Phil did indeed confirm that we’d have another six weeks of winter, but I really didn’t need him to tell me that.  Tonight is the debut of the final season of LOST, which I’ve been counting down to since last May.  But the thing I’m most excited about… the Oscar nominations were announced this morning.

I was more excited this year than I usually am because this year the Academy decided to up the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten.  Part of me assumes this is because there was nerd rage when The Dark Knight got snubbed last year.  It seems to me that us geeks will be pleased, and I’ll tell you why.  The noms for Best Picture are:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Precious
Up
Up In the Air

I only saw four of those (Avatar, D9, The Hurt Locker, and Basterds), and really only wanted to see one other (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man).  I didn’t hear about An Education at all.

Evicting some fookin' prawns

You already know my feelings on Avatar, so let’s get to the other pictures I saw this year, starting with the geek-vindicating District 9.  In many ways, this flick is like the anti-Avatar.  Whereas James Cameron had access to zillions of dollars, South African/Canadian director Neill Blomkamp scored $30 million from Peter Jackson and was left alone by studios to make a feature-length version of his spectacular short, Alive In Joburg. What you get is a film about alien-human relations that tackles some of the same issues, but does so in a half-documentary, half-action thriller.  It’s smart, it’s funny, it looks great, and although far-fetched, it’s much more terrestrial than Avatar.  The film is quite deserving of its R-rating, with plenty of profanity and incredibly over-the-top violence.  The final act is on par with Robocop as far as ludicrous amounts of bloodshed goes, and dare I say, just as much fun.  I’d buy that for a dollar!

I was most excited to see this as one of the Best Picture nominees because, as good as I thought it was, I didn’t expect to see it get picked out as one of the year’s best.  Part of that might have to do with the fact that it also made over $200 million worldwide with its modest budget, but maybe I’m just being cynical.

Hans Landa - Tarantino's most sinister character yet

Meanwhile, where Avatar was the ultimate pet project of Cameron’s career, Quentin Tarantino finally released his own long-in-production opus.  Inglorious Basterds is another film geek’s dream come true; QT’s vision of World War II as a Spaghetti Western, with all of the trappings you should expect from the original Video Store Director.  I’ve seen (and for the most point loved) his films up until this point, and I can safely say that this is his best.  Not as in “best yet,” either.  If you’re here for a serious account of WWII, then you’re sadly mistaken.  QT essentially uses the war as a backdrop, as a way to tell a new kind of story.  It’s rather difficult to really describe Basterds without recounting his whole career, so if you’re not a fan, it’s not for you.

If you are a fan, though, then you’re in for plenty of great Tarantino Brand dialogue, as well as some great characters, such as Brad Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, Eli Roth’s Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, and Melanie Laurent’s vengeful Shoshanna Dreyfus.  But without a doubt, the film’s best performance comes from Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz, playing SS Colonel Hans Landa, known as “The Jew Hunter.”  Waltz plays the villain with true relish, making him at once engaging and repulsive.  Landa’s sinister nature goes beyond Nazism and into the realm of inhumanity.  Whereas some men wore the Nazi armband because they felt they had no choice, Landa is the kind of man who wore it because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Seeing the competition, Waltz should have no problem winning.

Tearing a car apart has never been so exciting

When it comes down to it, though, I would vote for The Hurt Locker for Best Picture if I had the chance.  Not to mention Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow and Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (above).  Set in Iraq in 2004, we follow an Explosive Ordinance Division unit through the final month of their tour.  Their new team leader, Sgt. William James (Renner) is kind of like Mel Gibson in Leathal Weapon: brilliant, yet slightly unhinged.  Throwing protocol out the window, James would rather defuse a roadside bomb by hand than send in a remote-controlled robot that could spare his life and those of his squadmates.  Not to mention bystanders who like to hang out and watch the events unfold in the scorching Iraqi sun… and might be holding onto the detonator, too.  The film’s tagline says it all: “You don’t have to be a hero to do this job.  But it helps.”

What makes The Hurt Locker great is the suspense.  Think of your favorite bomb-defusing scene of all time.  Remember how exciting it was?  The suspense, the sense of doubt that the hero can render the device neutral in time, sweat rolling down his determined brow…  Now multiply that feeling about a hundred times and repeat it four or five times.  Now imagine a hero who’s genuinely likable, even though he’s a conventional anti-hero.  Just when you think that he’s a total jerk to his squadmates, he turns around and proves himself a true leader when the chips are down.  But The Hurt Locker doesn’t just deal with the heroics.  When Sgt. James returns home, he has trouble adjusting to civilian life.  Will he stay home after risking his life countless times in a hellish environment… or will he go back to the one thing he knows he’s good at?

If Bigelow wins for Best Director, it would be sweet: she was married to James Cameron from ‘89 to ‘91.  I’m unsure of who the winner will be, to be honest.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Avatar win, simply because of the fact that it’s topped Titanic as the all-time highest grossing film (although ticket prices were higher for 3D showings, etc).  Then again, Titanic wasn’t up against nine other films.  We’ll have to see come March 7th.

Apparently, it’s “Doppelgänger Week” at Facebook.  The idea being that you’re supposed to put up a picture of a celebrity who people say you look like.  Well, I don’t do stupid crap like that.  But if I did, I’d have put up a picture of Ice Cube.

Straight outta Worcester!

Spittin’ images.  I almost don’t recognize myself sometimes.  Okay, so I’ve never actually been mistaken for Mr. Cube, but I always saw a resemblance.  In my family we always say, “You can tell your own.”  I just didn’t feel like going with the old “HEY COSTANZA LOL” treatment this time around.

ANYWAY.  This is just an example of the kind of thing that I hate to see at Facebook.  MySpace was rife with this sort of thing and now it’s creeping up on my cleaner, more streamlined social network of choice.  Soon enough there’ll be plenty of embedded music players and migraine-inducing animated backgrounds.  That’s how this sort of thing starts.  There goes the neighborhood.

I’ve got more to say about social networking… it’s a video I’ve wanted to do for a good long time and once I’ve got a weekend to myself, I just might do it.