Nothing like an NFL draft to get back on the old SP horse! Time for an old fashioned draft diary!

7:00 CDT: We are coming to you live from Casa Van Betta. Alex is here for the moment to watch the first few picks. We open with Ray Lewis and some rapper who looks like Usher, but obviously isn’t Usher. Alex says, “I look foward to the Philly fans booing everything”. We’ve got Berman, Chucky Gruden, and Mel Kiper Jr (who hasn’t aged a day in the last 10 years, but aged 50 years compared to him 20 years ago). Van Halen’s “Right Now” is playing… Alex: “God I really want some Crystal Pepsi.” Goddell comes out… everyone boos… not just Philly fans.

7:03: The Colts are on the clock… be back in 10 minutes. Gawd… Andrew Luck is not an attractive man. Alex: “It’s like he’s a cross between Joe Mauer and Ovechkin… he’s got all of his teeth, but he’s still ugly.”

7:05: The Colts surprisingly don’t milk the moment. Wow, that hat is terrible. “INDIANAPOLIS” I”m surprised they can fit that on the front of a hat, it should wrap around the hat like Mientkiewicz wrapped around the back of a Twins jersey.

7:09: Jesus… I hadn’t heard Luck speak before… I immediately thought Sloth from the Goones, but Alex opted for “Puttin’ on the Ritz”

7:10: Rangers scored (I knew I shouldn’t have let Alex have the remote… most likely we’ll miss the Redskins pick…)

7:12: Nike commercial… Lando the Ref makes an appearance! Chelle will be happy. Oop, the pick is in! And it’s RG3… no surprise. Damn, RG3 needs a better tailor… maybe he plans to go Hulkamania and flex right out of that suit.

7:18: I assume Cleveland was asked by ESPN to just hold off so they could run a bunch of useless RG3 highlights, and they interview him.

7:20: With the 3rd pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns select Trent Richardson… who actually looks decent in his suit. Jesus, Richardson is huge, but he’s hugging all these guys in his group who are all bigger than him.

7:21: The Vikings pick is in… they aren’t fucking around this year. I assume it will be Matt Kalil… but who knows… we’ll now wait several minutes so Richardson can pose in the horrible “CLEVELAND” hat. Seriously… who at New Era came up with that horrible design???

7:24: Shot of Kevin Smith…er, wait, that’s Matt Kalil. It looks like he’s wearing a purple tie… boy, this could be awkward. He’s not on a phone though… hmmm…

7:27: Matt Kalil… good. Safe pick, but the right pick. Plus the Vikings traded down to pick up a 4th, 5th, and 7th round picks from Cleveland.

7:30: As somewhat expected, the Bucks traded out and the Jags moved up to take Justin Blackmon. But the crowd is booing because this means that Dallas is on the clock. Wait… Dallas? What did I miss?

7:35: The pick is in, we assume Claiborne… very much a Dallas pick. Boo birds… Claiborne… all very predictible.

7:39: Kiper: “He’s got kick-returnability” When is Mel going to keel over and we can have McShay take over?

7:42: Tampa Bay takes Mark Barron. Back to be DBs. Alex: “I think we’ve already gotten to the point in the draft where I don’t care anymore.” I think I agree. This could be a very short diary.

7:49: The pick is in for Miami… we all know it’s going to be QB Ryan Tannehill… and they do. This draft has gotten very boring very fast.

7:54: Panthers take Luke Keekley…er, Kuechly… poor kid. I challenged Alex to name me one good Panther defensive player… Julius Peppers… ok, so he got one. Kevin Greene… ok, two. Maybe Sam Mills at the end of his career… who turns out to be dead. Wow. Sam Mills, the field mouse, dead at 45 in 2005.

7:58: Bills… Stephon Gilmore… another other guy with a super tight suit. What the hell? Is that the new look? His sleeves are so short it looks like he’s wearing his little brother’s suit.

8:03: 11th pick… 11th??? Wow this is taking a long time… they take Dontari Poe, who is apparently Ferengi. Look at the hair… what the fuck?

8:05: The crowd starts booing? Oh, Iggles trade up. Michael Floyd dead ahead.

8:11: And the pick is… Fletcher Cox… wow… they trade up for that? Good work Philly!

8:21: Busy watching hockey and a youtube video of The Big Hrbowski. The Cards picked Floyd. So if Kolb can’t complete a pass to him or Fitz he should be drummed out of the league.

8:28: Rams take some guy named Brockers… yeah… ok, I’m definitely running out of steam… this might turn into a diary of the Rangers/Senators game.

8:31: Text from Phil: “Who the fuck is Bruce Irvin?” I think this proves that after the top 10 it really falls off fast unless you are a college football junkie.

8:38: Jets pick is in… let the booing begin. Quintin Coples. Yeah, I might bail at the halfway point and go watch some hockey. And Alex has decided to bail. We’ll wrap it up here. See ya!

Skol Vikings!

Wanna watch the NCAA college basketball tournament (aka March Madness) online (presumably at work) this year? It’ll cost you. If you’re a cable or dish subscriber, you can ‘authenticate’¹ with your account and watch all the games for ‘free’. If you’re not one of those people, you can pay $3.99 for the whole slate of games.

“We had to protect our distributors, and part of that protection is to make sure when people are cable, satellite or Telco subscribers, they have the opportunity to watch all these games for free on any device they want,” [Turner Sports president David] Levy told SI.com.

Translation: “Why aren’t you witless sheep spending $100/month to buy cable and watch all of our quality programming? Then this would be ‘free’ for you.”

I will allow that four bucks is a reasonable price point. However, this does nothing to lessen my view that the cable companies are doing EVERYTHING they can to protect their cartel model for television against those of us who would prefer not to pay a maximum amount of money to watch the minimal amount of what we’d like to see on television.

Short version: The last of an era?

Watching True Grit last week put me in a Western mood, and since I had never seen Unforgiven, I queued it up from The Netflix. Great cast (Eastwood, Hackman, Freeman, and Richard Harris). It won Best Picture (and Hackman won for Best Supporting). And I’d bet it’s the last True Western made, or at least I can’t think of another like it since.

If you’ve seen a classic Clint Eastwood Western, you pretty much know what to expect from Unforgiven, with the twist that this is basically capital-C Clint coming out of retirement to do one last killin’. He teams up with his old partner (Freeman), and a new ‘kid’ (Jaimz Woolvett) to kill two cowboys who cut up a lady, and claim the bounty for it.¹

I think there are two things that mark this movie as the last of the Westerns, at least in our current movie climate. First, the pace. It’s a slow movie. (Note: I do not think that this is a bad thing.) We get plenty of time with all the characters to establish who they are, and what they’re doing, and why. I enjoyed it, but it was jarring. I’m not used to watching movies like this anymore. The second thing: Not only did this movie not glorify killing, it made shooting a man a very difficult thing. Morgan Freeman lost his nerve and couldn’t shoot the first cowboy, and the Kid, for all his big talk, had never shot a man until he killed the second cowboy, and he couldn’t handle it afterwards. The movie spent time on this to make a point of it. (Note: I also do not think that this is a bad thing.) Even Gene Hackman’s character, played so well as an almost reluctant villain, never shot anyone in the movie.

In any case, for a 20 year old movie, Unforgiven holds up quite well. I’m glad I watched it.

Short version: A simple story, wonderfully told. Highly recommended.

Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin. Directed by the Coen Brothers. True Grit is the story of a US Marshall and a Texas Ranger, teamed up to hunt down the killer of a little girl’s father (at the insistence of the girl). Hailee Steinfeld does wonderfully in the role of the mature-beyond-her-years 14 year old, Mattie Ross. Bridges and Damon are both wonderful as the drunken Marshall and rogue Ranger (respectively). Brolin does well in a small role as the killer, and the underrated Barry Pepper has a good role as the leader of an outlaw gang.

What I personally loved about True Grit is that it simply told its own story. No ‘shocking’ twists or plot devices. We get time to learn about each of the three main characters (Steinfeld, Bridges, and Damon) so that we actually care about them as they get to hunting down Brolin, who’s travelling with Pepper’s gang. The dialogue and pacing are great, and the movie is very visually appealing, set in the Arkansas wilderness in Winter. The few scenes shot in the snow looked especially good to me.

It’s as simple as that for me. If you like a good Western, or even just a good story, True Grit is absolutely for you.

Short version: Really quite enjoyable.

Mr. Scott Walters took me up on my big screen offer this week, so TNM hit the Riverview Theater for 2011′s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the sequel to 2009′s Sherlock Holmes. All the major talent returned for this one: Robert Downey Jr (Sherlock), Jude Law (Watson), Rachel McAdams (Adler), as well as director Guy Ritchie. New to AGoS, Stephen Fry played a wonderful Mycroft, Jared Harris was solid as Moriarity, and Noomi Rapace played a gypsy fortune teller/revolutionary, which actually worked pretty well as sort of a sidekick to Watson in a few scenes.

Pretty straight-forward plot in this one – Holmes plays a game of cat-and-mouse with Moriarity, who’s manipulating national dignitaries in an attempt to start (and profit from) a war. He lures Watson away from his honeymoon (subplot A) and joins with Rapace’s character because her brother is mixed up in Moriarity’s schemes (subplot B). The movie is a little light on dialogue and development, but it doesn’t really have to be deep. AGoS builds directly off the 2009 SH movie, including the slick action scenes where we see Holmes fighting out the scene in his mind, and then fighting it out for real. It’s well paced, and interesting enough to hold together.

I remember walking away from SH thinking that it could have been outstanding, but fell just short of that, which was disappointing. Perhaps my expectations were lowered for AGoS, so while I thought it didn’t come as close to being an outstanding movie, I enjoyed it from start to finish. Unfortunately for this set of Holmes characters, what the movie also showed me was just how absolutely outstanding the current BBC run of Sherlock is, in both story and cast. Especially Moriarity. Seriously, Sherlock is worth watching once JUST for Andrew Scott’s turn as Moriarity. It’s a little unfair to compare the two, but inevitable since they’re two Sherlock franchises running at the same time.

In the end, I do recommend seeing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – especially if you enjoyed the first movie, but it also stands well on its own. …and then after that go rent the Sherlock DVDs, because seriously, everyone needs to see that show.

No movie this week. Not because I don’t love you (I do).

It’s because it’s my birthday! And I’m gonna watch the end of the Wild game (because I’m a glutton for punishment), and then start watching the first season of Community (in an attempt to finally get my sister off my back about it).

We will resume regular programming next week.

*URG*. It happened again.

A co-worker just called me “Wayne.” It’s understandable in that it’s his first week on the jov.

But still.

Being called Wayne may be my biggest pet peeve. I’m not exactly sure on the reason. It’s probably because I knew two Waynes growing up, and neither is a person to whom I want to be preferred. Anyone who mistakenly calls me Wayne these days is by no way confusing or comparing me with these two, but it still irks me.

As a public service to you, gentle reader, here is the unabridged list of names that I do not like to be called. Please adjust your behavior accordingly.

• Wayne
• Ward
• Big Guy
• Chad
• Chaz
• Wader Tater
• Metta Wade Peace
• Wade Van House

As I walked through the skyways just now, I noticed three people sporting backpacks emblazoned with the following logo:

To be a luddite, or not to be a luddite? That’s my question. While not opposed to technology– that would be just silly– I certainly value boundaries, both in costs and in distractions. So, low-tech or high-tech? Which is nobler?

I’m blathering, naturally, about the stuff in my pockets. Right now, I have:

1) a Blackberry Bold smartphone, sponsored by my work and used to get my work e-mails, as well as some rudimentary web surfing and texting
2) a Blackberry Curve smartphone, sponsored by me and used to get… well, I don’t really use it
3) a 3-gig iPod, 2007 vintage, with a cracked display and a propensity to shudder and buck and shut down if it’s cold out

This is *too much stuff* to carry around, especially when I can (theoretically) consolidate at least two of these into a single device. The work Blackberry seems to be the constant, in that I need to be able to access work e-mail and that’s the only mobile device that supports that (right now). However, should I:

- ditch the personal phone entirely in that there’s really nothing that I do on it that couldn’t be accomplished via the work phone? Considerations: ethics (meh), more draconian restrictions coming on what I’m able to do and see on said work phone?

- get a low-tech non-smart cell phone that allows me to keep personal calls and texts on my own dime but ditch the burdensome data plan?

- kill two birds with one stone, pitch the Curve and the antiquated iPod for a new 4G iPhone?

Please note that cost is a factor in this decision– I don’t necessarily have the funds to dish out for an iPhone right now. That being said, the iPod is clearly on its last legs, and not replacing that when it ultimately croaks is not an option. So, arguably, I’d be spending that money at some point, anyway.

It’s a question of whether I want to use said funds to collapse two of my pocket devices (that sounds dirty) into one, while continuting to float the somewhat unnecessary costs of the personal data plan – OR – being cheaper but lower-tech and carrying on my tradition of lumpy, radioactive pockets.

Guidance is appreciated.

Short version: Donne Wahlberg’s finest hour.

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all ze week. Make no mistake, this isn’t a particularly good movie. It’s a paint-by-numbers, ensemble cast, heist/gangster movie that doesn’t vary from a formulaic script. There’s some mistaken identity, and a hit gone wrong, and in the end some characters get redemption, the good guy gets the girl, and everyone more or less lives happily ever after.

However, there’s something to be said for a movie just being what it is, and this isn’t a flat-out bad movie. Pete Postlethwaite is an entirely believable crime boss, Claire Forlani (his daughter) is beautiful, Wahlberg is actually halfway decent, and I didn’t hate Michael Rappaport. The rest of the cast fill their roles well, there are no manufactured ‘shocking’ plot twists, and it clocks in at a nice, trim 95 minutes. I watched Triggermen, and while I was bored at times, I found myself, if not entirely entertained, at least not angry.

That said, there will be no repeat viewings of the movie, and I only recommend it if you want something vanilla. Official review: Meh.