How Shaq Gave Me My Groove Back

Listening to: ceo, "Come With Me." Apparently any music coming out of Sweden right now is bets on to be good. This is a solo project from Eric Gerglund of Tough Alliance and here's an interesting interview with him from Pitchfork. What I really need to know is whether "ceo" is to be pronounced as one word or if the letters are to be spelled out individually. Either way it makes it hard to Google.

The last time I posted about the Celtics, they were on the verge of getting into the Finals after taking the first three games from the Orlando Magic. Then a dream matchup of Boston versus Los Angeles materialized (again) and soon after the Celtics took a 3-2 series lead. Ahead by double digits going into the last twenty four minutes of the season, I literally skipped down the block during halftime of game seven, thinking about the night's upcoming festivities. When the Celtics won, I would drink some whisky and celebrate in macho style -- even if I can't drink whisky without coughing like an amateur.

This unexpected championship would launch my slow moving 2010 into proper orbit. Two victories over the Lakers in three years and nothing could have been dreamier. Life would be triple rainbows and pouring sunshine. This second Celtics-Lakers matchup was doubly exciting because George and I were cheering together each game, going so far as to make shooting sleeves out of socks to help the team's shooting woes. She even named an eggling after Rajon Rondo.

Then tragedy struck. The Celtics fell apart after halftime, Ron Artest became a hero, and now history will have to accord Kobe some measure of respect as a slayer of his demons and a five time champion -- even if he played horribly that last game. Following the four point loss, I collapsed on the floor and ran my tongue over the gash I'd opened in my lip earlier. Yes, I was cheering so hard that I somehow slammed my head on the ground in frustration and bit myself. George shed a few tears for the huge loss. I would have cried if I wasn't a robot incapable of human emotion. Our friend, who had come over to help us celebrate, was instead tasked with trying to cheer us up. Just an hour before we were ready to tear up the town. Now I was inconsolable.

After that night, I decided to swear off caring about sports. It's just the same old, same old, over and over. "A soap opera for guys." Why is life about winners and losers anyway? Why tie my emotions into the fortunes of some far away team that I've never even seen play. What am I cheering for exactly? A specific combination of colors on a uniform? Bleh.

But then the offseason started and the promise of another contending season lured me back in. While Lebron James took his talents to South Beach to form the Super Friends, the Celtics reloaded. Doc Rivers came back. Ray Allen came back. Paul Pierce restructured. Nate Robinson came back. Marquis Daniels came back. Kendrick Perkins is recovering after a horrific knee injury. The walking corpse that is Jermaine O'Neal signed. And finally, earlier this week, the one and only Shaquille O'Neal became a Celtic. It's a strange world we live in where enemies from the last decade are suddenly part of your team.

I know there are skeptics out there who point out that a thirty eight year old Shaq will clog the lane. I don't care. His sheer immenseness will help alleviate the rebounding woes Boston displayed last season. They still need a backup swingman to replace Tony Allen and round out the roster but they're looking good. The Heat are the new front runners in the East, and the hated Lakers also made some quality off-season additions, but there is hope that Boston has one more run in them. My lip has healed, my heart has scarred over, and I'm ready to cheer again.

So I guess it is true. You can love and lose, and love again.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Mark Ruffalo is one of those guys who's in every movie but you couldn't name a single one of his characters. He's like Peter Sarsgaard in that way, but much more likable than Sarsgaard. Well, this is Ruffalo's best role to date. As a big bad bike riding, leather wearing, organic food restauranteur, Ruffalo is incredibly charming, can make denim on denim actually work, and has the sort of macho and sensitive appeal women swoon over. Julianne Moore's character cheats on her wife with Ruffalo's Paul and from the perspective of an audience member, it's totally understandable. He's just that damn likeable and irresistible.

The Kids Are All Right is an actor/actresses' movie and while the dialogue isn't exactly blow your mind stellar, and the characters are drawn a bit broadly, the general appeal of the cast makes it worthwhile -- and Ruffalo pushes it from a high B to a low A. The movie has been marketed as a lesbian-marriage comedy, and that has brought its share of fans and detractors. Some differing viewpoints from Racialicious, Slate, and Jezebel. And an interview with director Lisa Cholodenko.

I declare Mia Wasikowska, who was Alice of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, as the new Claire Danes. There's a very slight facial resemblance but it's more Wasikowska's energy, her expressions, and her presence on-screen that is so eerily similar to Danes'. My friend turned to me immediately after The Kids Are All Right and commented on the resemblance before I could get it out. Someone needs to give her an amazing part asap. I might have to write it for her if I can ever get my act together. Mia, have your people call my people!

Salt (2010)

The anecdote being thrown around about Salt is that it was originally a Tom Cruise vehicle but when he turned down the role to do Knight and Day, Jolie jumped in. The movie itself is full of plot holes and motivations and I lost interest in the "Who is Evelyn Salt?" question about forty minutes in. But since I had read so much (Check out Malinda Lo's post "Salt and the F-word: Femininity") and heard so much about the movie going in, I was committed to watching it.

Think about how often an action movie is headlined by a female. Outside of Milla Jovovich -- who is strangely perhaps the preeminent female action star these days right? -- it's true, they're few and far between. So go see Salt because even though it's mostly mediocre, it's better than watching another Jason Statham retread.

I looked up Angelina's box office grosses to see if she was worth her twenty million price tag. Surprisingly, she pretty much is -- if you don't factor in her non-action oriented movies. I wonder if her upcoming role as Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged will be the great dramatic role she needs or if "Girl, Interrupted" will remain her acting apex.

Also, I couldn't take August Diehl seriously as Salt's loving and caring German husband. He was just too good in Inglorious Basterds as an evil guy. I kept waiting for him to turn bad.

Starfall

Listening to: Grum, "Can't Shake This Feeling." His real name is Graeme Sheperd, which is just asking for multiple misspellings. Grum's other stuff is a bit too electronica for me. Like I imagine trying to dance to it but finding it very difficult. I could dance to Can't Shake This Feeling though, I think.

During one of the NBA Finals games, the first Starcraft 2 commercial was shown. Frighteningly I knew what they were advertising about five seconds in when I saw the red headed ghost. One of the most highly anticipated video games of the past decade finally came out this week. While I knew any video game playing would be the death of me in college, I had many friends who lost their educational careers to the original Starcraft. Me, I was smart and waited until after I left Michigan to fire up the game. I'm not nearly as smart this time around. I've already been participating in the recent Starcraft 2 beta for a few weeks and the full on game is going to be amazing.

What is interesting is how technology has changed the way you can learn/play Starcraft. Keep in mind the original came out in 1998, probably around when you were fiddling around with a clunky homepage. Nowadays, with review sites, comprehensive blogs, immersive videos, professional gamers, and all the rest, it's so easy to study the game on a detail you never could have before. Limited to just your circle of friends or online gaming buddies, you weren't actually privy to a game changing strategy unless it was actually done to you. Now I can watch a mothership / colossus / force field combo over and over in awe.

Game changer.

And look at this NPR article about the two best Starcraft sportscasters, Husky and HD. They get over 100,000 views per video (while SC2 was still in beta) and provide more exciting announcing than most other sports' professionals.

While I know playing Starcraft 2 will likely be the death of me, I need it in my life and you do too. When the beta was down for a few weeks, I had to stave off addiction by reading guides online to sooth the ache. There are a ton of Starcraft 2 blogs already out there but a few I enjoy are Starcraft 2 Strategy Masters, The Shokz Guide, and SC2 Blog. Also I found the RPG Exploiters series of best counters to be particularly useful. I'm a Terran player myself so knowing how to beat the other races is pretty important. Here's a quickie guide as linked to from Kotaku about picking your race.

The best Starcraft 2 podcast I've found is Starcast (blog). The two hosts, Garrett and Kyle, have just the right mix of conversation and strategy talk, while not being pro-level players. It's nice to hear from people who are just like me, struggling to find time to balance my real life with Starcraft life. I'd check them out staring with episode one.

Friends, family, concerned citizens of Earth, if you don't see me for the next few months, you'll know why. "And there's the gg."

Awesome Assembled!

For the most part, the reason I don't make it a point to attend Comic Con anymore is because it's changed too much. For one, it's incredibly overcrowded and you know how I feel about crowds. Tickets sell out months ahead of time so if you want to go you better buy now, literally. I got my one day pass like eight months ago. Plus the people who show up to Comic Con nowadays are different. I know it's not for me to judge who is a fan and who isn't, especially since I don't wait in lines, dress up, participate, or actually buy much anymore but the thing about modern Comic Con is that it's just become a thing for people to do. Like going to the zoo or Sea World. The Comic Con I grew up with was dominated by stalls of comic book vendors and tables of geeks playing Magic and AD&D. That's the Comic Con I knew and loved, Dorksville USA.

While I understand the sleek new Comic Con and the monetization behind it, the floor space is now dominated by video games, television/movie promos, and packed with just about everything except comics. Everything is event driven and epic from a marketing standpoint but there's just not much going on anymore. Comic Con's dork soul has floated away and while there are a few cool exhibits here or there, a wonderful small press area, and some fantastic people watching, it's hardly enough to get me out of bed and through the crowds anymore.

Unless there's a bachelor party planned around the Con. Then I'm totally there!

My friend Chris is getting hitched in the fall and since we are fellow geeks -- he feeds me lots of comic related goodies -- I knew this would be quite the experience for him. Many of our other friends were rolling in for the weekend as well and I knew we were headed toward good times when a friend had us pre-make D&D characters via email. You don't know how much that assignment excited me. For my bachelor party, everyone better bring some twenty sided dice with them, and a few d4s for extra-credit. The guys got Chris a Superman outfit to wear and he was a great sport about it and walked around with with Clark Kent's humility and Kal-El's regal bearing all weekend.

Strangely, Chris was the only fully costumed Superman we saw all of Friday (the only day I attended). Alvin's theory was that Superman was too mainstream and most everyone else went for obscure costumes to get geek cred. That left Chris as the Only Son of Krypton and people were constantly stopping him to pose for photos. The best part was overhearing little kids walk by and then whisper to their parents, "Dad, it's Superman!" SuperChris was a celebrity all weekend and is probably being uploaded to albums and Facebooks as we speak.

A huge highlight was walking around and almost literally bumping into Jim Lee. He was talking to somebody and munching on some nachos. At first I wasn't positive it was him because I'd imagined he'd be taller. Like ten feet tall, approximating his stature in the comics industry. Who is Jim Lee? Only the greatest comic book artist of all time and now co-pubisher at DC. He's drawn definitive versions of the X-Men, Batman, Superman, recently redesigned Wonder Woman's costume, and is probably the greatest comic book artist of all time. Oh wait, I said that already but I'll leave it in there twice to indicate how great he is. I had at least three of Jim Lee's posters on my walls growing up and if I had my way (or owned any walls in my adulthood) they'd still be hanging proudly.

Later on, I found out that Chris' friend got an original Batman sketch done on his iPad by Jim Lee. I got a copy of it and can't stop staring. I'd repost but it's not really my sketch so I feel bad revealing it to the world. Trust me though, it's awesome and I can't believe Lee finger painted it. I so badly wanted to take a picture with The Jim Lee but I get all weird around famous people so I just choked and followed him around. I needed to share my excitement with the world but I was walking the floor with my neophyte friend and he was less than enthused. "Who's Jim Lee?" he asked. "Is he related to Stan Lee?"

Sigh...

This brings me to a great point. At Comic Con, your "normal" friends become cool liabilities and can be the cause of super embarrassment. "Shhh! Don't ask that question out loud! I'll explain to you who Galactus is later! Gah, stop look at those plushy toys and concentrate on the comics!" Comic Con is full of nerd love moments like me seeing Marvel editor-in-chief and Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada and then staring at him creepily thinking, "This man three feet away from me is responsible for so much good in my life. I must see how he wields a pen." This kinda stuff non-fanpeople just wouldn't get I don't think. Heck even when I saw the guy who makes the Cube Dudes I got a little starstruck.

Traditional celebrity sightings included glimpses of Anna Paquin, a guy who really looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and Adriane Curry dressed up as slave Leia. Wait, is Curry a celebrity? Arguable. She apparently likes to dress up for the geek crowds though. I anointed her most annoying girlfriend on Earth during the show on Vh1 with the ex-Brady. Are they still together? Oh and there was an autograph booth for the Soup Nazi. Not the actual Soup Nazi but the guy who played him on Seinfeld. Yes, the actor was charging money for a signed picture of him from a minor role he did fifteen years ago. There oughta be a German word for depressing and fantastic at the same time right?

Well, whatever that word is, I'd like to also apply it to my attempt to meet Marjorie Liu, who's a very prolific writer and whose career I've tracked for awhile. Aside from being an author across multiple genres, she writes for Marvel and has done a lot of Dark Wolverine, X-23, and is now penning Black Widow. A long time ago she started a Wolverine and Jubilee fansite and recently did a Wolvie and Jubes story in Girl Comics #3. Basically she went from fan to actual Marvel writer and that's like my dream come true.

So in trying to say hello to Marjorie and go, "Hey, I think you're awesome!" I ended up at one of her many panels, waited around till the end, and then since we were told to not approach the panelists until they had reached the signing area, I, like the rules abiding person that I am, waited. But then we had to get going so my only chance was to try and catch her walking in-between. However, a lady in cat ears was sucking up Marjorie's time and I panicked. Doubly so because again, I get weird around famous people.

Basically I interrupted their conversation by quickly tapping on Marjorie's arm, blurted out a request for a picture (without an introduction, entirely out of context, and without any verbal appreciations for her work, even a small one), and was so rude and broke all the rules for proper requesting. I did everything I didn't want to do, which was be totally weird. She was nice enough to take a picture anyway though. Which I will post here for posterity and to prove that you can win and lose simultaneously with great awkwardness. See why I'm gonna need that word for depressing and fantastic at the same time?

I did get a chance to meet and chat with Ryan Claytor from Elephant Eater comics (who I blogged about a month ago) and that was much more successful than the botched Marjorie thing. Ryan's booth and marketing stuff is just super quality -- just like all his work -- and I kind of loved his bookmarks, posters, promos for his upcoming summer tour, and even his own Elephant Eater bags! And not only that but he hand stitched his own tablecloth, which is quite the feat. I picked up more of his And Then One Days and his Master of Fine Arts thesis, "Concatenations: Autobiography in Comics," which I'm excited as all heck to read.

To wrap up, Comic Con 2010 was a success and while I can't imagine I'll be back next year, you never know. The more bachelor parties held at Comic Con versus some lame place like Vegas the better my life will be. Thanks for partying here Chris! And yeah, we got a little bit of D&D in. Everyone else is so jealous, I can tell.

Despicable Me (2010)

I've been anxious to see this ever since being hooked on the movie's theme song, revealed during promos last summer. It was just so catchy and evil. Little did I know that Pharrell did the soundtrack. I was thinking during the movie that the score seemed off but now that I know Pharrell did it, everything makes sense. The auto tune, the boopity boppity sounds. Most of it worked but some didn't. Here's a little short behind the scenes clip with him.

The film itself was wonderful. There aren't many surprises plot wise but the concept, execution, and humor throughout was dead on. It's been a strong year for animated movies and Despicable Me didn't disappoint in any way. I guess I can't give it the ultimate high grade though because it was exactly as expected and just nice entertainment and nothing ground breaking. Still, I'd watch it again if I could.

Here's an interesting little post up over at Feministing that points out the movie's (possible) not so subtle racism against Asians. I can't say I agree necessarily, but it's something to think about.