Spring Is So Not In The Air...

First of all, what is with this weather. I thought it was supposed to start getting warm. I blame Bush. Good thing next week I am escaping to Florida for some much needed golf and sun. I am the least dark I have ever been. Speaking of which, after watching lots of Scrubs over the last couple months I would like to be referred to as Chocolate Bear. So a couple quick things to mention. The Pistons clinched the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Home court until the Finals is pretty huge. Also congrats to MSU, the new National Champions in Hockey. I gotta tell you though, nothing ruins a national championship like hockey. I was in East Lansing for the game (though it was in St. Louis) and no one seemed to care. It's funny how a school like BC (a college hockey giant) can care so much about something that seemingly no one at MSU cared about. Anyways, it's something to brag about.

I finally signed up for netflix 2 days ago and got my first movies today. This means that I will now be watching even more movies than before which is semi-ridiculous because I watched too many as it was. I got my frist 2 movies already and I've already watched 1. So far I'm very impressed with how easy it is to deal with.

I guess I am not really in a very pensive mood right now but I'll blog tomorrow or something.

As always, yadda yadda yadda.
-M, p & z

oh ps - anyone moving to nyc or la in the fall? I may be looking for a new roommate here if i decide to move out to brooklyn or if i move to la i'll need someone out there as well. Did anyone see The Last Mimzy like I told you to? Or Friday Night Lights like I asked? Seriously, if you're bored go online to nbc.com and you can watch all the episodes for free. Whatdoyagotto lose?

the pic is from the last time i was home. tell me lake huron isn't the greatest backyard...

More Reviews...

So before the season started I picked the east to finish like this: Pistons, Bulls, Cavs and the Heat in the top 5. Right now, the Bulls are hot and I really want them to get the number 2 spot so we can meet them in the conference finals. Nothing could excite me more that a conference finals with our old rivals. In order for the to happen we need to beat the Cavs this sunday and then have the bulls match whatever cleveland does for the rest of the season. Anyways, with less than 10 games left in the season it's getting to be a pretty exciting time.

I'm going to start giving movies a rating system. It's going to be out of 10 points and there will be many things taken into consideration including: acting, direcitng, cinematography, soundtrack, originality and of course enjoyability. The difference between this ranking system and others is that it will be by genre. For example most movie critics go see some innane kids movie like Firehouse Dog and then have the idiocy to compare it to TMNT. My ratings will be specifically applicable to each movie. For example I would give the 300 a 7 and Talladega Nights an 8. I don't think that Talladega Nights is a better movie than the 300 but I think as far as a Will Ferrel movie goes, it's an 8. It's hilarious. But as far as all the hype and for how cool 300 should have been, I only give it a 7. Generally people expect a certain something from a movie which is usually why they choose the movie they do and that is what I'm going to rank, whether it lives up to what it should be.

That said I saw a couple more movies that I'd like to review. Blades of Glory and The Last Mimzy. I'll start with Baldes of Glory. To me I felt like the whole time I was waiting for the next one-liner. There were no really hilarious moments and I never really cared what happened to anyone. The difference between this and Talladega Nights was that in the latter, Will Ferrel actually was Ricky Bobby. I believed the whole thing and I cared about what happened to the characters in the movie. In this movie it's almost like it's just a sketch on SNL. I don't believe any of it and the whole time I am just waiting for Will to say something funny like when he tells Heder that his skating was like "cirque de so-lame." I have used that line about 50 times since yesterday. Overall I'd give the movie a 5, Will and John have some hilarious zingers but it's a disspointment.













After that was over I movie hopped over to The Last Mimzy. I have been wanting to see this since it came out but every time I want to movie hop to it I usually have to wait an hour. Anyways this movie was really something special. I had heard mixed reviews, generally good ones saying the film was an instant classic and others saying the director was reaching. I for one, agree with the former. This movie truly makes me want to be a little kid again so I could see it from a more imaginative perspective. It mixes ET, The Explorers and a little bit of Alice and Wonderland perfectly into an amazing movie. I really believe it is up there with those movies. It has all the imagination of The Explorers but it's so vivid and real that it reminds me of Close Encounters. I'd give this movie a 9, and the kids they got to play the leads are perfect not to mention the little girl is cuter than a puppy licking a kitten.

Anyways, thats all for now. As always get your feet off the ground and reach for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain heals, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

hallelujah hollaback
-M, p & z

oh ps - hopefully people actually listen to some of my reviews and take my advice. i highly reccomend the last mimzy if you liked ET and The Explorers growing up. If you don't remember the Explorers then go to imdb and check it out. also friday night lighs has its season finale next week, it really is one of the best shows on tv so check it out. you can watch episodes online if you are bored at work.

Best City Ever?...

So San Francisco passed a ban on using plastic bags. In place they have either paper, a reusable cloth bag or a mild plastic that breaks down easily in composting. How cool is that. Since moving to NYC I have been increasingly aware of the damage that plastic bags cause due to the amazingly large quantity they give out in stores here. They will always double bag you simply because most people walk to the store and they don't want you to have your bag tear and all of your stuff ome out. I remember back in the day Kroger used to give you 5 cents for every bag you brought back to help reuse them. Thinking back on it, they were 20 years ahead of the times. I stopped using grocery bags a couple months ago when I bought a canvas bag at whole foods. I can take it into any store and have no need for any plastic bags at all so when I heard about this ban I was overjoyed. San Francisco has always been one city I could see myself living in, though I haven't been there in probably 15 years. I don't know a single person who doesn't love it out there. If there were any place outside of Michigan to steal my heart away it would definitely be SF.

So we are now into April and aside from one setback (which gave me the runs) I have yet to eat any meat but chicken so far this year. Surprisingly I don't miss other meat anymore. I went through a rough patch a month ago when the steakhouse downstairs (literally downstairs) started keeping their door open and wafts of succulent steak entered through my windows. People have expressed their feelings about my chickenatarianism. Most don't care, others think it's stupid and don't get it. So to explain a little bit: I don't agree with killing animals. Morally speaking, I think it's wrong. I think all animals have an equal right to life as any other living creature. That said, chicken is my holy grail. It is the greatest tasting entity to evolve on earth. It is easy for me to give up every other meat, just not chicken. I was a vegetarian before for a few months and the one thing that broke me was chicken. For some reason when I tell people that I only eat chicken they get defensive. They think that I am attcking them when I really don't care what they do. They come up with elaborate theories about how the only way to get protein is from meat (which they know isn't true esp. when many legumes have more protein than any meat). I wouldn't try and get people to stop eating any meat (except for veal) unless they didn't want to. It is the same as trying to get people to recycle or drive less, however if people want to do those things that would rule.

Did anyone care about the NCAA tournament this year? Quite possibly the least I have ever been interested in a basketball tourney in my life. Wow, Florida won. I get to see that overrated guy with his wildly long hair. It's no surprise my roommate and I found ourselves watching not only the season finale of The Hills over the game but also the lame Live Afterparty where they answered some questions. I'm just glad OSU lost. Watching college basketball is about as fun as watching the WNBA, I really could care less. Don't get me wrong, I love MSU and would have felt differently about this tourney had they not lost to UNC, but seriously I have no interest in a tourney with no story lines, no famed cinderella teams, no one to root for other than a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed. The best team won. Who cares.

That's all for now. As always, get your feet off the ground and reach for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain heals, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

hallelujah hollaback
-M, p & z

oh ps - I talked about Mika on here a while back and his cd finally came out last week. I said he I liked him because he reminded me of Queen. Well his cd is no different, if you like Queen you will like this cd. Actually sometimes it almost seems like he took one of their songs, changed the words to update it but kept the tempo and the content pretty much the same. For example his song Big Girl (you are beautiful) is suspiciously familiar to Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls. Anyways, it's a good cd. worth a listen.

The Problem With City Life...

So now that the weather is getting warmer I, like most people, venture outdoors a bit more in search of summer. I was wandering around the west side along the Hudson River the other day when I came across a small park that had grass cut as short as the fringe around a putting green; but it was real. So I took off my shoes and layed down on the grass for a while just reading and listening to some Jack johnson (he can make you feel like its summer faster than you can say hoola-hoop). After a couple hours, I assume shortly after school must have gotten out, a group of little kids showed up at the park to play soccer and they were having so much fun on the grass it was ridiculous. Their level of excitement reminded me of my ferrets when I let the in a new room, they run around and tackle eachother until the don't know what to do.

I felt so bad that these kids playgrounds at school is concrete and then I realized that I hadn't seen a soccer field, football field or any field with grass for that matter anywhere in the city. How awful these kids don't have grass to beat eachother up on, and sand to land on when they jump off at the top of their swing. No sliding in the mud when it rains, no making that annoying high pitched shreik from pulling a blade of grass taught between your fingers and blowing as hard as you can. Of course when these kids were on the grass it was like they knew what to do, that innate sense of freedom to fall. This one asian kid was falling all over the place (though he was by far the biggest flopper I have ever seen, I mean this kid would get the ball taken away from him then fall down and scream and say someone kicked his leg - I mean the kids little brother was getting annoyed). A little while later, two other kids came with a football in tote and that was like the showdown of the century. You would think they were fighting over the last piece of land in Manhattan. Of course there were more playing soccer so the football duo went to a corner of the park to toss their ball around. But how sad is that, there I was in a park smaller than my yard at home, and these kids don't even have enough room to play two sports at once.

I guess my point is that this city is for people over 21, without dogs (over a foot long), who don't have kids and who are not planning on ever having any here. Most of what I learned about life I learned on the playground. Not completely but you know what I mean. Anyways, as always get your feet off the ground and reach for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain heals, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

Hallelujah hollaback
-M, p & z

oh ps - movie reviews: Last weekend I saw three movies. You know how I feel about TMNT, but I also saw Reign Over Me and Shooter. Both were enjoyable. Reign Over Me is slow and methodical. Nothing really happens but the characters go through some pretty profound changes. There wasn't much of a soundtrack which was kind of lame and definitely made it seem longer. Not worth seeing in theatres but def worth a rental in a few months when it's on dvd. Shooter was different than I thought it would be. It wasn't the usual Mark Wahlberg action flick. It was much more plot oriented and had a Borne Identity feel to it. Some of the coolest sniping I have seen (besides me in Halo) but I enjoyed it. Not for everyone but if you liked the Bourne trilogy then you'll like this. Actually, I forgot the new Bourne hasn't come out yet but I can assume it will be exactly like the second one which was sadly the same exact movie as the first.

pps - in regards to the pic - the little asian kid on the right was my favorite, though the kid with the ball was hilarious because everytime it was his turn to be goalie he would run over to his mom and hang out and the other team would score