Second Annual Non-Football Sports Thoughts

Whoopity shit. The Miami Heat, by all accounts, won an amazing NBA finals. I watched the last half of the last game. I will admit, it kind of felt like the super bowl of the NBA. It was the last game of the year, not like the previous Game 6 where the season could have or could not have ended. I hate that. That's why I think I love football. If you don't bring your best that one day, you are done. Go home. Nobody remembers the loser. The second half of Game 7 saw the lead change several times, but I kind of felt like the night would belong to the Heat, at home in Miami, and especially after some dude sunk a loooong three point shot that was a perfect swisher as the buzzer rang on the third quarter. That put the Heat in the lead. The Spurs fought back, I think capturing the lead a couple times themselves. Then when I think the Spurs were down by like one or two points, Tim Duncan goes for a layup, but MISSES! He tried to knock in the ball as it rolled around the rim, but that fell to the floor. For the first time in that game, and apparently in the playoffs, Duncan showed emotion by slapping the floor in disappointment, mid play. I knew it was official then. A matter of minutes until the Heat won it again.

Why do I care about this game if I truly deep in my heart dislike the sport of basketball? Lebron James. Say what you want, but he is like the NBA's John Cena. I used to watch wrestling A LOT. John Cena came on the scene, and he was awesome. His wrestling was a little weak, but he had verbal skills with harsh raps that eventually turned him into a good guy, fan favorite. Then he started rapping about how his opponent liked poop and pee pee. I shit you not. I stopped watching. I have read a few things in preparation of this post. I also watched some videos as well. He is the star of the show now. Whether he fights for the title or not, he is this era's Hulk Hogan. Fans who are around my age or older boo the shit out of him. Youngins and ladies cheer him relentlessly. Watch the John Cena vs. CM Punk Match from the Money in the Bank Pay Per View a few years ago. I believe that was in Punk's home town of Chicago, so he was favored anyway. It is all fake I get it. But people toon in to watch Cena either win or lose. I tuned in to the four finals that Lebron James was in. Or at least tracked it and tried to watch highlights.

A chance to see the greatest basketball player play one last game of the year against a (as I had heard) great team after Kim had already fallen asleep for the night? That's a no brainer. I will watch. Lebron James stepped up scoring 37 points, tying an NBA record of some kind. Of course they also find a way to manipulate stats these days to make some new benchmark. I think it was something like Lebron has a record for the most games in a row with scoring a certain number of points while scoring on a certain percentage of his shots. It was a weird stat that people tried to make a big deal out of. So, that out of the way, well, I actually enjoyed watching this game and series and NBA end for the year. I don't care about the implications for the future of Miami, or the rest of the careers of the Spurs. I don't care about the high-top fade the 76ers now have.

I think this guy lives down the street from Brandon. Anywho, the 76ers drafted and traded players galore, but have no head coach. Good luck getting one now. It is much like the Eagles implementing a defense from a position coach THEN looking for a defensive coordinator...Sorry this is NON-football thoughts. It is hard for me to care about the NBA more now than just the Toronto Raptors Mascot failure videos (look him up). I will promise myself this - if future NBA Finals go to Game 7 and scores have been relatively close, I will watch that game only.

As far as the rest of the NBA section of my forum, it appears the 76ers have made it a "see you next year" season. I did hear the GM speak today, and it is the most energy he has had. He established his team first and then will probably land a coach soon. A coach who would be willing to develop players rather than target ones he wants. Perhaps a very good move that can make the 76ers exciting in the coming years.

So Chicago scored two goals in 17 seconds to win the Stanley Cup 61 seconds thereafter. I saw the flurry. It was amazing. And if you saw the players' reactions to the goal, it was as if that was the game-winning goal in overtime. Many threw their gloves off. How demoralizing for Boston to lose like that. It is one thing to give up the three goals, one per period. It is another to lose it like that. I am just glad we can put the Boston Marathon tragedy behind us, unless the Red Sox make it big. That would be horrible.

Locally, local sports radio tells me that the Flyers have shipped off a couple players, letting their stupid Russian goalie live the life for the next decade plus. And little kid stunt double Danny Briere is gone as well. The NHL Draft is this Sunday, where Europe's finest will be in attendance.

Tennis - Uh, I only ever cared when I was married, back when Marcos Baghdatis was playing and making a surprising run to the Australian Open finals. That was awesome. I was up at all weird times of night. One time he was in studio for an interview in Australia on ESPN, and a bunch of crazed Cypriot fans burst in. They shouted something in Greek to the host. Baghdatis giggled and told him they were saying that Marcos was crazy awesome. Instead they were chanting - "You are stupid" to the host. Well played. He then fizzled.

Golf - The US Open occurred at the Merion Country club, which apparently is the most popular attraction of all time in Philadelphia as it DESTROYED my commute home for up to a week before it started. The number of BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and yes, SAABs, that passed me by and made their jerk out of state moves when traffic wasn't moving to begin with was staggering. I almost had to cut myself to let the boiling blood leave my body. That many people haven't stood around one hole since the Great Latvian Mine Collapse of 1847. (Shout out to my weirdos in Latvia!)

Baseball - Apparently, my alma mater, Cinnaminson High School, won their first Baseball State Championship. Good for them, but I don't really care. It is no longer my town and I have ZERO connections to anybody in that school anymore. My new home town's best accomplishment involved the film "Silver Linings Playbook" and could potential hold the record for most gay marriages ever if ever approved.

As far as the local team goes, the Phillies suck. Support them, so they have a team worth caring about. Just don't get your hopes up. As a die hard Eagles fan, one loss can ruin a week. But the next Sunday I am pumped up to see if they can win, even when the season has been lost. Support them. But I guess that is the problem with 162 games. If you could choose to go to 81 of them or watch 76 of them on TV, I am sure you would choose the latter. But if you go, stay there. Cheer them on. You never know when you might see something magical.

That said, the Phillies are dead in the water.

I really don't care about many other sports. Some former race car driver is picking on Danica Patrick for being more of a commercial than an actual race car driver. So says the old man former hillbilly who now slicks his hair back on national (read: southern) TVs across all of America (read: Confederacy).

Wrestling - Keep it in the olympics! It was the original competition in Greece, who you base the games off of. Who cares about the viewing popularity. Don't let the United States dictate this global event. I am sure several more people train/participate in the sport of wrestling than Extreme Knitting, Skateboarding, Fruit Booting, and even Diving. Just don't be stupid (anymore).

Bodybuilding - Joe Weider, creator of the modern bodybuilding championships, died. He must have been out of shape. In all seriousness, the magazines he issued were great until he took on ads for legal steroids that turned my 100 page issues of Flex magazine into 200 page advertisement opuses. Muscle Mag International is where it's at!

Movie Review - World War Z

So my cousin recently posted on his Facebook page that this movie would provably suck because it was rated PG-13 which would mean less gore. I told this to Kim, but she has been looking forward to this movie for weeks and ever since I saw the commercial with thousands of zombies running up a wall I've wanted to see it. 

So first thing was first, after dinner at the the Miller Springfield Ale House we headed out for an 11 PM show. We were like the second or third small group of people who came in to the theater with 20 minutes to spare until it started. 

Teenagers come walking in to make the next 20 minutes completely unbearable. They consisted of one couple and the girl's two equally obnoxious single friends. These two groups sat in different rows and carried their stupid teenage conversation across the theater. Then I went to get my betrothed some snacks and passed three wild and crazy guys. I came back in, and these dudes from like northern Finland were sitting in front of me. I had to move us a couple seats over so we could see. How the hell do you just plop down in front of a girl you are much taller than. They didn't even lounge back in their seats. 

Once the movie started, it took about two minutes to get to the action. The zombies are basically people infected with a strain of rabies who are so overcome by the disease their sole purpose is to pass it on. It starts in a traffic jam in Philadelphia and all the idiots in the crowd are hooting and hollering for the city. 

Brad Pitt and his family escape. Let me just say, for the level of attractiveness stowed upon Pitt his wife is very very very plain looking. His daughters are young and one has asthma. 

Any who, they get to Newark and flown onto an aircraft carrier. Zombies can't make it to the water. Turns out Pitt is a former United Nations investigator and meets his old comrade. He begins a travel of survival across the world taking him to Asia, Israel, possibly Cyprus, and other European countries. 

Should I spoil it? Yeah, why not. This paragraph will be spoilers. Skip to the end of it. Long story short, a girl soldier from Israel is bitten in a plane. Pitt cuts her arm off so the infection dies. He ends up at some disease control place with some random scientists. As Pitt has seen the zombies rampage, he notices that apparent sick people are left alone by the zombies. That said, he also learns that if a zombie hasn't moved much, their reaction to stimulus is delayed. He travels through the lab to infect himself with some unknown disease. He walks past zombies and the lab I guess identifies a strain of some disease I forget that they then spread to armies across the world. The movie ends with Pitt narrating that the fight has just begun as piles of zombies are being burned and people fight back. It looks like potential for a sequel

Ok, overall, I enjoyed the movie. It had awesome, and that's an understatement, scenery and the hordes of zombies running through city scenes were incredible. I loved the movie actually. So what if it wasn't a bloody, zombies cracking open skulls to eat brains and the movie showing you said actions. The commercials show a scene with hundreds a of zombies piling up to get over a wall. It was awesome. Also, the acting was very good. The zombies, as the movie went on, became more comical in their behavior, whether unintentionally or not. But it is hehe point in the movie where they already had me hooked in and Pitt had to observe the behaviors of the zombies. These individual interactions maybe showed a little too much of the zombies, which is the only real negative mark to me. 

If you want to see a bloodbath, don't watch World War Z. You want a visually stunning movie with a good story and intense action and to have a good time, go see it. 

If you worry about how the book translated to the movie then you shouldn't have read this post. I refuse to compare books to movies as there is no comparison. One is extremely boring, and the other is a movie. 

Worst Ever Movie Review - The Helpers

A couple weeks back my boy Kareem came over to have dinner. It was great to see him again, and as a bonus he brought us a stack of movies about a foot tall. And I mean just DVDs, no boxes or nothing. We go through and take like 30 based on his description.

 

 

 

So when we asked for his Black Guy Synopsis, he basically said this group of early 20 somethings gets stuck on the side of the road and when they ask for help they get tortured by these crazy white guys. Sounds good. 

Literally one minute in this movie proved to be a bad choice. So there are three couples and one dude who got stood up. The solo rider has a camera for no other reason than he wants to film his trip to Vegas. There's a white couple, a black couple, and a marine with some Spanish chick he has been seeing lately. It seems like the marine is an asshole, the black guy is a step and fetch it black guy, the white guy is a whiny pansy, and the white guy is, of course level headed. 

So, there's a detour and they make a left turn. Like 100 feet later they blow two tires. With their trip to Vegas in jeopardy the guys choose to make the girls wait in the car so they can talk about how much they hate each other. The guys walk for what should be been hours to the nearest gas station. They ask for help and the marine is a dick. The mechanic doesn't want to be recorded. They follow him to the back where there is a bar and restaurant and ultra friendly staff. The place offers the free drinks from a slutty bartender. Of course they make the black guy go, "Daaaaaaaaaaamn" upon seeing her. Follow up black guy stereotypes involve the guy, named Jordan, asking very coyly for chicken, sleeping when he should have been awake, and a pretty white girl assuming he plays basketball.

 

Apparently, several hours pass by as the marine, black guy, and camera man sit and enjoy food while normal ol' white guy is out with the overly nice mechanic. They actually show a montage of the men at the bar getting wasted as the sun appears to both rise and then set. Amidst the now thriving party atmosphere at this bar, which is attached to a mechanic garage, that also has a motel, the men who stayed see the truck lights of a tow truck with their car and women inside it. By my count, there were supposed to be 5 total people put into the obvious two person cab of the tow truck. The black guy of course is upset that his fun is ruined now that his no good girlfriend arrived. Also suddenly there is a guy who has a massive hair lip scar who is overtly nice as well. The bartender is all over the camera man, and it was karaoke night at the bar. So the girl drags the camera man onstage and sits him in a chair and gives a G-rated lap dance, i.e. Gay-Rated lap dance. Seriously, by this point, Kim and I were begging for these shitty actors to die.

 

All drunked up, the couples are offered free rooms, and they all go separate ways. The marine and  his Hispanic girlfriend have sex in a violently fast way that porn actresses said it wasn't real. I mean this was bad. The white couple has odd sex, interrupted by the marine looking for more beer. The black couple is joined with the girl getting all dolled up and sexified, then just happens to prance into the bedroom for her boyfriend to be asleep (apparently as usual, you know like a lazy black guy). I probably wouldn't have thought about calling out the movie like that if they hadn't already had planted some things about the guys behavior earlier in the movie.

 

Oh and all this, including the car service, drinks, food (i.e., chicken), and hotel stay is FREE. Nope, nothing odd here.

 

So the camera man wakes up realizing that he just betrayed his girlfriend Julia and sneaks his way out of the room with his bar wench. He finds the car is out front with tires replaced and bags out and next to the car from the other couples. He finds the white couple first, with the door surprisingly unlocked. He wakes them up, videos the girl getting dressed after he finished zooming in on apparently the world's smallest male genitalia, as he described it. Once they are dressed he is standing in the door way talking about how they can't remember anything then THWACK!!! His head falls off and the waiter from the bar is holding a sickle and smiling about it. Then he closes the door and locks it from the outside after the girls from the bar clean up the bloody mess in about 10 seconds.

 

Then there's a man in a control room watching all the couples' rooms. It goes on to show the white couple, with the guy crying uncontrollably throughout the rest of the movie, and the other couples, who are bound.

 

The marine is tied to a chair and has several cuts on his body and also a shock collar on his neck, and his Hispanic girlfriend is tied on the bed by her hands and feet. The black couple is in the bathroom with the girl bound in a tub and the guy strapped to a chair, with an empty bucket attached to his suspended in the air arm that also has a wire taped to it attached to a bunch of batteries on the floor.

 

Basically, what happened was these men and women asked for  help from orphans who were left to do die in an orphanage. The hair lip guy and mechanic slowly reveal the plot from the beginning, that some fire happened, and when some body asks them for help they think that means they are weak and must die. When these formerly orphaned people asked for help they got put into shitty homes and beaten by the orphanage master. I know this scenario is probably and unfortunately true in some cases, but by this point I didn't care about any of them. So, below is my recollection of the murders:

 

• Hispanic girl, bound by feet and ankles is, is ripped in half by two trucks with the chains that bound her attached to the hitch.
• Black girl is killed by the 4 separate shocks of doom. They added rocks to the bucket on the black guys arm so the wire dipped down.
• White bartender girl skank who slept with camera man is killed when the black guy head butts her so hard she falls backward into tub, and he shocks the shit out of her.
• Marine is shot point blank in the head, after being tied to a chair ALL day. I bet he smelled like pee and poop.

 

Then it's revealed that the white girl (from the white couple) is the daughter of the evil orphanage owner/operator who tortured them. Somehow she is also tied up to two pickup trucks. They nonchalantly talk about ripping  her in half. Oh and this was all set up by the camera man's girlfriend, Julia, who also happened to be one of the orphans. Julia then springs out of a motel door, only to immediately get jumped by the black guy. He threatens to break her neck unless they let the white girl go. This makes Hair Lip Larry rethink the whole plot and lets them all go, even giving the white guy the gun. Black guy then punches the pretty white blonde Julia square in the face.

 

They eventually get cornered by Hair Lip Hank and Brad the mechanic in the restaurant section. I clearly saw the three of the victims shoot these two perpetrators. It ends with the white couple and black guy limping out the hidden area to the main road and waiving down a car. Then pan out "6 months later" to a convenience store. Some black guy buys a fruit soda (I'm serious, this movie was horrible on many levels), then the next guy is a little white guy who asks for help. It reveals Hair Lip Henry as the cashier, and he says "Hey Brad this guy can use our help." White kid smiles. Sinister drum smash sound. Fin.

 

All in all, I hate Kareem. He truly wasted my time with this movie. Of course, Kim and I really thought about turning it off before it ever got started, but we were interested in what the deaths would be. I love a good racist joke, but the overt racism in this movie was offensive to me. The fake sex was awful, the acting was worse than Rocco trying to lie to me about NOT eating candy, and it was only 78 minutes long. That is shorter than the movie phone booth. I've had bowel movements that lasted longer. And were more enjoyable.

 

Kim went to brush her teeth after the three victims were trapped in the restaurant, so I told her the ending. She said, "I guess the moral of the story is if you're an orphan, don't get burned."

 

I would rather go to jail for punching my grandmother than recommend this movie to anybody.

Eagles Junior Pro Day Review, aka How GJ Kinney Can Go F Himself

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Black Cloud Part Deaux?

So I have been at my new job for 3 weeks now. That's fifteen working days. I have learned a lot while being given a lot of opportunities to make the most of my career. However, of those fifteen days, it has rained maybe nine of them up here. The only days it wasn't raining it was like 98 Degrees. 

So I got to thinking about the time I had spent at my last job. People often discussed my misfortunes as a black cloud. I had a house that had flooded, a tree fall through it, and many many upgrades that I had to give up when I sold it. I incurred debt after debt that I only had myself to blame every time my bank account took a $1,000+ hit at a time. I got married and divorced, and had 9 total grueling surgeries on my ass and later developed into mystery stomach ailments that would often devastate me. I had psychotherapy for a lot of issues and a car accident every year. I felt LUCKY to have made it through alive another year. This became known as my black cloud of bad luck. 

I binged a question about rain every day at a new job but it gave me random results. Google provided more of a range of suggestions. None were helpful. I know rain on your wedding day is good luck. Rain during a baseball game shuts it down while rain in a football game only seems to make it more violent. Rain when I had done work in the field at my old job was often refreshing, especially on those balls hot days. 

When I looked up superstitions about rain, I see that rain supposedly washes away your sorrows. I only have really one sorrow right now, and that is addressed in my other Blog (which I purposely have not written in for a while, but I have some thoughts to enter in it soon). One other superstition is that if it rains when the sun is out, the devil is beating his wife. I find this one hard to believe as the devil is a sinner and probably has several wives or none at all. So that is hogwash. I can picture the devil from South Park finally hitting back Saddam Houssein. Finally one superstition about rain is that if you wash your car, it will rain. These people who wash their car directly before it starts to rain are the unsung heroes of our planet as they help bring about the hydrological cycle full circle. 

So if rain is washing away negativity it is a good thing. Once I feel like I may be letting my new employer down, they reaffirm my efforts with praise and offer any advice they may have. They know there is a learning curve in this type of work from one company to the next. 

Hopefully there is not a lot of snow this year. Don't get me wrong I love the winter and it's inclement weather. But the roads I must travel on have people driving them who have no respect for mother nature or its powers. 

That's it for now. I'm still trying to find time to write as I got settled in here. I just have to cut my lunch 30 minutes short now. See the sacrifices I make for you?