A couple of weeks ago, Apple released a software update to the Apple TV, and the news was mostly under the radar. The fact that Vimeo support was added got a bit more play than the feature I care most about — streaming previously-purchased TV shows through the Apple TV via iCloud!
We have two Apple TVs in the house, one in the living room, one in the bedroom. Any time that I wanted to watch something I’d purchased from Apple, I needed to have my external hard drive connected to a computer in the house, and leave iTunes up and running on that computer, in order to stream the media using the Apple TV. Not a big deal, but a White Whine / First World Problem on those nights when I go upstairs to bed, want to watch TV, but forgot to set up the computer downstairs for this scenario.
Now, with the Apple TV software update, the problem goes away. No more do I have to leave the hard drive plugged into the laptop and leave iTunes running. No more do I have to lament losing the previously purchased TV shows. I can now offload the files from my external hard drive, freeing up space for other things. This could easily be my favorite new Apple feature of 2011… which is kind of sad, now that I think about it.
We went this afternoon to see Captain America: The First Avenger, which I mentioned earlier this month that I was anxious to see. Cap did not disappoint me, which is the way it should be. Captain America should never disappoint you! I was pleasantly surprised that Chris Evans brought a little bit of depth to the character, and I really enjoyed Stanley Tucci’s time on screen. Hugo Weaving made for a great Red Skull, too bad we won’t be seeing more of him. I also appreciated bringing The Howling Commandos into the story — any excuse to get Dum-Dum Dugan on screen is worth it. I even caught myself singing “The Star-Spangled Man With A Plan” as we were walking through the parking lot afterwards.
The gripe is, as always, that the 3-D experience wasn’t worth the extra money. It never is, especially with non-animated film. There was one action sequence where Cap throws his shield, and the ricochet comes right at the audience; I’ll admit that I flinched at that moment, it was so fast.
Since it’s a Marvel movie, you have to stay through the end of the credits. Afterwards, you’ll wish it was already May 2012.
I sat down on the couch tonight and turned on the television. Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring was just starting on one of the cable movie channels, and I figured that would make for great background sound for my daily blog posting. I had a whole blog post planned out for today,
Maybe 6 minutes into the start of the movie, the dark lord Sauron is kicking some serious ass, and just when it looks like he’s completely conquered the armies against him, Isildur takes a swing at him with a broken sword. It’s a lucky swing, since it chops off Sauron’s ring finger, the one wearing the One Ring, and that puts a serious damper on Sauron’s corporeal form.
This struck me as highly improbable, even for a fantasy story where suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite. You’re telling me that this total badass dark lord, full of evil magic with his ring of power, after decimating the armies of men… and all it took was taking a sword to his finger to defeat him? And it takes him thousands of years to even start to come back into power?
Achilles had his heel; Glass Jaw Joe had his jaw. Sauron had his finger. Go figure.
Is there a famous movie quote that’s misquoted more often than this one from Jaws?
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
I blame Clerks for perpetuating the misquote, thanks to the scene where Randall plays salsa shark. Everyone, including Randall, says “We’re” instead of “You’re”.
Rather than go to one of the Daily Post suggestions today for blog topics, I asked my Twitter army for ideas. I am nothing if not a benevolent leader, and I will grant the requests of the first six that came through to me.
The BCS Championship Game
Patrick asked me to “write about the myth that last night’s BCS championship game was actually a good game. It was atrocious, if you ask me.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t watching the entire game. I got home in time to turn it on, but spent a good chunk of the game with the volume muted and not paying attention. It was on during the prime hours when I can be on the phone with my lady, due to our long-distance relationship and a two-hour timezone difference.
What I did see, when I was paying attention, was a pair of rhythm offenses that couldn’t find their rhythm after long layoffs since their last games. No one would have predicted that it’d be a 0-0 game after the first quarter. When the second quarter resulted in more scoring, it seemed that both teams were finding their legs. But neither one could keep it together for full drives. There’d be a drive that would result in a crisp, fast touchdown, then two drives that were sloppy.
The fact that the game went down to the wire had me watching until the end, and I found the last few minutes of the game exciting. Back and forth action, controversial (but correct) calls by the officials, and a last-second field goal for the win. At least that much of the game was fun. Certainly more fun than last year’s game, once Colt McCoy was knocked out.
I’m not particularly a college football fan; I’m an NFL guy. I was happy that the few minutes when I focused on the game were exciting. That’s about all I can ask for.
Sweater Fuzzies
Lynn asked me to “Write about those little fuzzy things that hang off your sweater, but you don’t notice until you get to work. FML.”
Here’s the real problem with those little fuzzy things, Lynn. Every one of those is a piece of your sweater that you can’t replace. It’s not like dead skin cells that are replaced by new skin cells. Every one of those fuzzies is a tiny percentage of your sweater you’re never getting back.
This reminds me of the Office Space / Superman III scheme: Carve off the rounding errors on every transaction, and over time it’ll add up to millions of dollars. You don’t notice each individual fuzzy… but before you know it, your sweater is threadbare and you’re having to buy a new one!
Which brings me to a revelation I had late last night. I was having a little trouble falling asleep, and since I don’t like to count sheep, I was thinking about the odds payouts in craps — no idea why that was the topic for thought. I fixated on the place bets on 4s and 10s, once you reach a $25 buy bet. At $25, a 4 or 10 buy bet will pay out at 49-to-25 — meaning, your $25 bet turns into $49. In practice, this means you toss $1 to the dealer, and you get back $50, instead of the dealer having to count out $49.
If you have a $50 bet, you toss $2 and get paid back $100. All good, so far, right?
Here’s where the casino gets you… If you press that $50 up to $100 and hit the number, you toss then a $5 chip, instead of $4! They’re keeping the $1 change when they pay out your $200 winning! And you don’t think anything of it, because you just raked in two black chips for the price of one red! BASTARDS!!!!
Don’t Mess With The Bull
Patrick also asked, “how about a history of people who have talked shit to Belichick/Brady/the Patriots, as Rex Ryan is trying to do.”
Writing up a history of everyone who’s crossed the Patriots coach and quarterback would take research, and I’m trying to write quickly here.
Here’s the thing. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady do not forget. They hold grudges. They’ll let you flap your gums, wait for you to catch a breath, and then they’ll punch you in the mouth.
For those of you who don’t get the reference, Annette is referring to my now-defunct Tumblr site, Project Gummi Bear. I do miss working on the project sometimes, but not enough to try to revive it. You’d be surprised at how much creative energy it took to pose gummi bears as if they were in famous movie scenes!
If you don’t have ESPN Insider access, I’ll sum up the article. KC Joyner purports that Ben Roethlisberger is as good as Tom Brady, and his evidence is based on three obscure statistics:
Short Pass Yards Per Attempt
Vertical Pass Yards Per Attempt
Bad Decision Percentage
I’m not a “football scientist” like KC Joyner. However, the metrics that he chooses reek.
When I was running technical support teams, I used to say that you could be selective in your metrics in order to support the argument that you’re trying to make. If I want to show that we’re doing a good job, I would present metrics that showed an improvement. If I was fighting for more headcount, I would present metrics that showed we were struggling and needed more investment. I could tell whatever story fit my agenda using metrics.
You want to try to convince me that Ben Roethlisberger is a good quarterback? No need, I’ll be the first to point to his winning percentage and his two Super Bowl rings. Assuming Brett Favre is really, truly done playing, there are only five active quarterbacks in the NFL who’ve won a Super Bowl as a starter: Tom Brady three times, Ben Roethlisberger twice, Peyton and Eli Manning once apiece, and Drew Brees once.
You don’t need to use “Bad Decision Percentage” as a metric. If you do, I’ll suggest three more bad decisions that’ll jack up Roethlisberger’s Bad Decision Percentage:
Riding a motorcycle without a helmet
A Lake Tahoe hotel room
A Milledgeville, Georgia night club
It’s as simple as this. As a quarterback, on the field, I wouldn’t bet money against Roethlisberger… unless he was playing against Tom Brady.
Head Over Heels
Last but not least, Myka requested that I tell “a man’s view of why women try to kill ourselves with heels.”
To put it bluntly, it’s because women love it when a man checks them out as they walk on by. And when you wear high heels, we’re more likely to say what John Travolta said in Face/Off:
“I hate to see you leave, but I love to watch you go.”
Not every blog post that I’ll do over the course of 2011 will be hundreds of words… Sometimes you just have to enjoy the little things.
One of my favorite movies of the last couple of years is Zombieland. I got home this evening from the hockey game in time to catch Zombieland on cable, and lucked out enough to catch the Bill Murray scenes.
If you like funny, and you can stand a little zombieness, you have to watch Zombieland. Seriously. Watch it now if you haven’t seen it. You’ll thank me for it.
What’s this, another post about a movie that I saw over the holidays?
I spent the holidays this year with April, out in Houston. For a long-distance relationship, this was our first chance to spend such a long span of time with each other – eleven whole days! I was off from work for all but two of those days, and while I could’ve taken those last two days as vacation days as well, April had to go to the office. The last day I was there, this past Monday, she was working, and my flight wasn’t leaving until 9pm, giving me the day to kill.
I took the opportunity to go see The Fighter. I’d heard all the hype about the film, all the good praise of Christian Bale, etc. And, let’s face it… who doesn’t like a good boxing flick? I don’t even like watching real boxing, but I’m a sucker for a good boxing movie.
I'm Batman
Sure enough, The Fighter didn’t disappoint. Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund was fantastic. You can’t take your eyes off of him when he’s on screen, all of that manic crack-fueled energy keeping him bobbing and weaving at all times. He’s that guy who you KNOW you shouldn’t listen to, the one who will ALWAYS get you into trouble or let you down… yet you still fall for the line he’s giving you, eyes wide open that you’re making a mistake and you’ll regret it.
Amy Adams was a total bad ass, the girl who takes shit from no one, especially a loser like Dicky. I wouldn’t say she was a revelation in The Fighter, since she’s been so good in other movies – in Doubt, she was my favorite non-flying nun of all time, and I just wanted to take care of her in Sunshine Cleaning.
Even the soundtrack was heavy-hitting, with “How You Like Me Now?” coming in expertly during the final boxing match. The Heavy is one of my new favorite bands, and their anthem was used in just the right spots.
(Did you see what I did there, with the pun? Pun very much intended!)
As a Massachusetts kid, the shots of Lowell brought back plenty of reminiscing. While I didn’t grow up in Lowell, it was familiar enough, harkening back to my youth in Framingham and my college years in Waltham. However, seeing the fashions that Mark Wahlberg wore was more than a little painful. I’m pretty sure I had the same outfit that he was wearing when the limo came to pick up his family to take them to the airport!
Go see The Fighter. You know my thoughts on TRON: Legacy already. If I had only gone to the movies once over the holidays instead of twice, The Fighter definitely would’ve been my first choice.
Mix in references to Star Wars and a picture of Obi-Wan Kenobi
Post soon after 9:00am PST on the first Monday morning after New Year’s, when so many are just getting back to the office but aren’t ready to start working
I write this post at the risk of losing geek credibility.
Until last week, I’d never seen the original TRON movie. I don’t know how I made it through the 1980s without seeing it. The big movie of 1982 for me was E.T., not some flick about computers and video games. As the years went by, TRON never crossed my radar again – not on cable, not on videotape, not playing on the television at a friend’s house.
When the trailers for TRON: Legacy started popping up in 2010, I thought, “Hey, that looks pretty cool… what was the original all about, though?” It wasn’t something I needed to rush out to see, since it wasn’t part of my childhood.
I think I'm the only dork on the planet who couldn't care less about the new Tron movie.— Jason Nassi (@jnassi) December 17, 2010
I couldn’t understand why my geek friends were so excited. I didn’t share their enthusiasm. Some were saying that the original TRON was a formative experience of their lives.
So, last week, while on vacation, I downloaded a copy of the original TRON to watch before taking April to see TRON: Legacy in IMAX 3-D. It was a date night, and, in retrospect, we could’ve made a better date night movie choice than TRON: Legacy, I’ll grant you.
I watched the original TRON, and I found it boring. My 2010 (soon to be 2011) adult sensibilities had trouble sitting through a 1982 sort-of-kid’s movie. The concept was cool, a man being transported into a computer world where he could interact and battle with computer programs. But it was slow and silly and can’t hold a candle to more recent movies of a similar vein. Maybe TRON was the first, but it’s certainly been done again and again since then, and that’s the mindset I came from.
I’ve seen The Matrix, what could TRON do for me?
Totally not paying attention to Tron. Something about computer programs and cycles and tanks and Jeff Bridges. And Lacey Underall as a nerd.— Jason Nassi (@jnassi) December 30, 2010
Anyway… TRON: Legacy was a different ballgame. Now I was viewing something new, something modern (post-modern?), where I was in the right context to see it while it was fresh.
And it was definitely visually cool. Not necessarily anything we haven’t seen before; in fact, I can’t today remember anything visually that was new to me. Which, really, is what you want to get out of an event movie like TRON: Legacy. I saw Avatar last year in IMAX 3-D, and that seemed groundbreaking at the time. TRON: Legacy didn’t have the same effect on me.
As for the story… well… I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before.
SPOILER ALERT!!
You're really messing with my Zen thing here man!
Young man grows up without his father, likes fast-moving vehicles
Young man displays skill at a form of battle that he’s never seen before
Old man in a hooded robe teaches the young man how to hone his skills, with a mystical bent
Old man in the hood has a past with the villain, the villain being his former protégé who is now on the side of evil instead of good
Old man, young man, and a young woman break into the bad guys’ place to steal a ship
Old man is seen by a guard, does something with that mystical bent to get the guard to ignore his presence
Villain raises an unnatural army of troops, all copies from the same template
Old man does battle with the villain in order to save the young man and the young woman, and sacrifices himself
Young man and young woman seem to have some chemistry, but there’s also something there between them that precludes them from getting it on
Young man takes to the ship’s turret to shoot at the ships that are chasing them
One character’s weapon of choice was a solid beam of light attached to a handle
The old man’s other protégé turns on the villain to switch back to the side of good as his last act before death, redeeming himself and foiling the villain’s master plan
That’s right, I’m saying it — TRON: Legacy stole its story from Star Wars!
By the end of the movie, April was nauseous from the IMAX 3-D, and I had a sour taste in my mouth because the second half of the movie was such a blatant re-hash of Star Wars (and Return of the Jedi, and a little Attack of the Clones).
But, hey, it was cool to look at, so at least it had that going for it….
You’re probably familiar with the old Wide World of Sports tagline, “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.”
Well, there’s a different adage I want to write about today. I call it “The agony of victory, the thrill of defeat.”
When you work with/near a sales organization, the end of the fiscal quarter is always a hectic time. You feel like everyone around you is on an emotional roller coaster, and they’re not necessarily going in the same direction. Highs and lows abound.
Last week was the end of Q2 for my company, and as has been the case for the other 20 quarters since I’ve worked there, there was some nailbiting going on. Okay, truth be told, I bite my nails even when it’s not the end of the quarter… stupid nervous habit that I’ve had since childhood. But I digress.
Sometimes the team does well, but not every individual member of the team is able to perform up to the standard that’s set for the team. It’s particularly hard to watch people who bust their ass all day, every day, not able to get that elusive win that’ll push them over the hump. It’s painful to watch, others celebrating around them.
Let me bring it to some sports analogies, my specialty.
The Agony of Victory
Byung-Hyun Kim was never the same after the agony of defeat
I was thinking back over recent sports events, trying to come up with an example of a team being victorious on the biggest stage, IN SPITE OF an individual’s performance.
Team sports are rife with these examples of an individual being blamed for a loss, choking in the clutch, something going horribly awry when a win seemed all but assured. Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series being the example most near (but not dear) to my heart, as a Red Sox fan. Jose Mesa for the 1997 Cleveland Indians. Ernest Byner with The Fumble in the 1988 AFC Championship. Nick Anderson in Game 1 of the 1995 NBA Finals. And so on and so forth.
But I had more difficulty coming up with an example of an individual being the goat in a playoff/championship where the team actually WON.
The one that did come to mind, though, was Byung-Hyun Kim, then of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series. To recap briefly, Kim was the closer for the Diamondbacks, and with a 2-1 series lead, he gave up a home run to Tino Martinez in the bottom of the 9th inning to blow the save. To add insult to injury, he then proceeded to give up the game-winning home run to Derek Jeter in the bottom of the 10th inning. Even worse, he was sent out there in Game 5, and blew the save AGAIN, another tying home run given up to Scott Brosius in the bottom of the 9th inning.
Needless to say, the Diamondbacks’ manager didn’t use Byung-Hyun Kim in Game 6 or Game 7. The Diamondbacks pulled off the upset to win the World Series in spite of Kim. The agony of victory indeed.
The Thrill of Defeat
He's going the distance, he's going for speeeeeed
The reverse can also be true, where a team or individual is unable to clinch the victory, but since a valiant effort was put forth, the legend can be even greater.
The most iconic example of this is fictitious – Rocky Balboa. If you’ll recall, in the first Rocky movie, Rocky did NOT win the title match against Apollo Creed. But Rocky went the distance, surviving 15 rounds with the champ in the boxing ring, and winning America’s heart even in losing the decision.
This formula is repeated over and over in sports films, the lovable underdog losers getting so close to victory but ultimately coming up juuuuuuuuust short, usually in slow motion, and always with an appreciative crowd giving them a heartfelt ovation afterwards.
Hey man, nice shot
How about in real life, though? We don’t have to go back very far for an example – April 5th, 2010 to be exact, when the Butler Bulldogs were THIS CLOSE to pulling off one of the greatest Cinderella stories in history. Gordon Hayward launched a shot from half-court as time ran out, which just missed going in. Had that shot gone through the cylinder, Butler would have captured their first NCAA Men’s Basketball championship, upsetting the Duke Blue Devils. Instead, Duke wins as the favorite, and Butler will probably be largely forgotten.
But, hey, at least Gordon Hayward made a name for himself, enough to get himself drafted #9 overall in the 2010 NBA Draft.
