Field of Deets

So I went to the scrimmages last night, took a few notes, lost 'em, conveniently forgot to write down the final scores and missed the mens' team's coach for a post-game interview - should be a great article.

After my two roommates, Heed and The Rizz, got done with post-game showering and teammate touchfest, we came home to play a little Hold 'Em with my fourth roommate, S-Mac, and Heed's brother, The Geoff. Ladies, The Geoff is 25, single, has a steady job and good sense of humor, he isn't in the best shape, but who is? We had some drinks; I made big stiff ones. That sentence was loaded with inuendo. We did the bar thing, met up with some volleyball players who haven't drank in 3 months because of their "dry season." Stupid idea. They were shitfaced. We came home, had more drinks, yada yada yada, I woke up drunk, went to the store, made Bloody Mary's and now it is halftime of the Badger game.

A few Bloody Mary's and 31 Badger points later, here I sit, posting a blog, waiting for roommates to return to the Batcave. I called my buddy Perverted Tom to come over and have some drinks, make a tour of our friends' houses with a pitcher of the good stuff, but he is Doug Christied and said his special lady friend was coming over. Back to the Badgers, great stuff. Wow. Two dudes I played with in high school start at linebacker for the Badgers, Mark Zalewski and Andy Crooks. It's fuckin' cool to see them out there. Zalewski (boner) is a redshirt sophomore and Crooksy is a true frosh. Crooks usually plays 1st and 2nd downs. He is the middle backer. Tough, thick, strong kid. Boner plays the strong side and is fast as shit. I was his tackling dummy in a drill junior year once. It hurt. Game on.

I got Rancid blasting through the house. Back to the game, Back to Bloody Mary (doesn't that sound like a nickname you would give a girl you devirginized?)

Until Later.

So after watching the picture box last night, I sat down for a little heads up hold 'em with my good friend Heed. We sat there playing No Limit Hold 'Em and watching the 'Wolves/Nugs game, and having a few whiskey-sevens and rum and cokes. Nugs sounds better to me than Nuggets. The was entertaining to say the least, but my team unfortunately lost in OT. Some highlights: K-Mart shoved Sammy the Alien and Sammy threw the ball at him nice and 3rd grade like. K-Mart raised his hand and deflected it like a fly buzzing toward his freshly packed bowl. Then later, KG, The Big Ticket, The Kid, Kevin Garnett gets into it with more than one or two Nugs players, one of whom, Elson, publically questioned Garnett's sexuality during the playoffs a season ago. Garnett kept his cool, realizing that no player on the Nugs was worth his getting ejected or suspended; he did the same thing in the Peeler incident last year against the Kings. He is too smart for that playground bullshit. KG's line: 25 pts, 15 rebs, 7 assists, and 5 blocked shots, one of those being a rejection on Carmelo that probably made want to run to his backpack to find a quick escape.

And as for Heed's and my Hold 'Em game, we did it, as Heed said, WNBA playoff style, best out of three. I took the first without much drama, he took the second without much drama, then came the third. I took the best hand into the turn and river and he drew out and beat me, leaving me with six chips. I caught some nice hands and some nice cards and doubled up a few times, eventually drawing even before wiping my ass with cards and taking the rubber match. Okay, so that last line was going a bit far, but I won.

After the Hold 'Em, my buddy Perverted Tom stopped by with another friend, Amy. Then we headed for the bars, we left Heed at home though 'cause he has a basketball scrimmage tonight so he was taking it easy. We entered our first smoke-filled bar, Amy and I went in first cause Perverted Tom was talking on the phone to his newly acquired special lady friend (he's whipped like Doug Christie). So we headed to the back to find my built like a brick shithouse friend Luke and his friend with the Irish acccent so thick that I had no idea what he was saying. We had a few drinks, pretty tame night, nothing exciting. Then we split for home. I popped in The 'burbs, made a sandwich and passed out.

I gotta split for the scrimmages now so I can write about 'em for Monday's edish of the paper.

Until later.

Thursday Night TV Report:

The OC premiere left something to be desired. It accomplished one thing that every season premiere should though, which is answer the cliffhanger questions from the last episode of the previous season. But just doing that is like never going to class, showing up for the test and getting a C. It requires minimal effort, if any at all. So what did we learn?

EPISODE SPOILERS COMING (that means that if you don't want to know what happened, do not read on - you've been warned):

- We learned that Seth ended up living in Portland all summer with Luke and Carson, Luke's father, who was pretty much driven out of town when his homosexuality was discovered.

- We learned that Seth got to Portland by bus, not by sailing.

- We learned that Marissa is going to have to hit bottom before her life moves forward.

- We learned that Kirsten is the rock of her entire family.

- We learned that Sandy is the most well-written character on the show.

- We learned that Summer still has issues.

- We learned that Ryan went back to Chino with Theresa. We also learned that she lied to Ryan about having a miscarriage.

Here are my thoughts:

Theresa's baby is not Ryan's. She got pregnant intentionally with the hopes of convincing Ryan it was his so he would come back to her, when she realized that it wasn't working, she had to lie. It will come out later that the baby wasn't Ryan's and when that happens, it will be the last episode that we see her in. The writer's realized the mistake they made in the plot by her getting pregnant and are now correcting it. I'm glad they did it right away though, which have been part of the reason for the mediocre premiere.

Julie Cooper is a cancer to men's financial situations. Cal is fucked. Jimmy was fucked. Now Jimmy is getting fucked by Kirsten's sister, who we will hear a lot about but see none of.

Seth will be back to the quick-witted smart ass that we like him being, his remarks are about 65% of the reason I watch the show. (Misha Barton and Rachel Bilson and the other hot OC bitches are 25% and Peter Gallagher's character is the last 10%). You can have hot girls on a shitty show, but you need something surrounding them to make it work.

Ryan and Marissa will be up and down until the final three episodes. Seth and Summer get together after about five episodes, which gives Anna four episodes to make an appearance.

The dialogue in this show is why I watch it. Lines like when Summer said, "I use descriptive insults to give voice to my inner pain," and when she referred to Seth as a "bitch on a boat" at least twice" are what I need from this show and didn't get enough of tonight.

The line of the show belonged to Julie Cooper though, "Marissa has become the spawn of Chuckie and Kieth Moon." Perfect. It's fitting, makes us think, and then makes us laugh a little.

Although the show has a pretty good cast, not great, but more than sufficient, and it does have a little of the day time Soap vibe, it is good because of the writing. The dialogue is original, often humorous when you don't expect it, and it moves so quickly as some points that you have to get a joke right away before you can appreciate the next one. Those qualities are rare today.

One more note: I wonder how long the mediocre acting of Marissa and Ryan can carry the most dramatic plot lines in this show.

CSI had one of its greatest episodes tonight. It referred to an episode from maybe two or three seasons ago and had all the usual twists and intrigue. I was about to write that the episode "referred back" to something from before. But once you refer to something, do you really need to refer back to it? Isn't the back part implied? I hate these inefficiencies in the English language as it is most commonly used by the general public. Call me out if you catch me doing that shit and I'll get you lunch or something. CSI is easily the best show on TV, and the women on it are pretty easy on the eyes too.

False alarm on the Ray Liotta appearance on ER. That comes next week. I watched Identity for nothing last night.

Until later.

So the newspaper folks didn't tinker with my article too much. They did, however, eliminate my only quote from a player, of which I should have had more anyway. The trouble with that was that all four players I spoke to said the same thing, and nearly word for word. I guess I should have asked better questions of each or been more prepared. Whatever. Time for a rebound on Friday when I cover the team's intra-squad scrimmage. I'm doing the women's team's scrimmage as well. Should be a fun-filled four hours in a basketball arena. My back should be in enough pain to warrant lying down by the end of the girls' game, then I will endure the guys' game as well. (I'm not a fat ass who can't sit up; I just have issues back there) Not exactly my ideal way of kicking off Friday night activities, but I want to write and you have to start somewhere. But happy hour sounds like a better somewhere. I like watching these teams play; I've been at nearly every guy's game over the last two seasons, but an intra-squad scrimmage is a fun event to go to intoxicated so you can hoot and holler at your friends on the team and not give a shit. Instead, I will scribble notes. It will be fun, I have no reason to bitch.

So, a few more election thoughts. I heard today that there are 300,000 Serbs in Ohio and 90% of them voted for Bush. Interestingly enough, Gore won most of their votes in 2000. Why the change? Well, rumors of Kerry naming Wes Clark the Secretary of Defense had surfaced and convenient for Bush was the fact that Clark was the general who blew to hell most of the Serbs' home land during the Clinton administration. When a Serb from Ohio wrote Senator Kerry about this, he received a standard form letter in return: "Thank you for contacting us blah, blah, blah..." Ouch. There's a 300,000 vote swing that cost you the election, John. Culture matters, might not want to blow 'em off next time. Just a thought.

I got a paper back in my PolySci class today. Prof gave me an 85, solid B. I love B's on tests, hate B's on papers. I want A's on all my papers. I wrote about why the phrase "under God" should be eliminated from the Pledge of Allegiance. The reason I didn't get an A, as noted by the Prof, was that I didn't refer to the textbook at all, as I was instructed to. Well, I had yet to open the textbook at the time I wrote the paper. Oh well. Also, I made a small joke in the paper, which he didn't catch. I wrote that to be fair to all religions, the phrase should read, "under G*d," since Orthodox Jews don't believe that the name of God should be written or spoken. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. He circled it with a question mark. Most people don't know that in the original version of the pledge, which was written by a Baptist Monk in the late 1800's, "under God" was not included. It wasn't added until 1954 when Congress, the Senate and President Eisenhower thought they would shove it to the "Atheist Communists" and add the phrase. How petty, how irresponsible. I'm pissed. One man took this case to the Supreme Court last year and they shut him down. He had previously won the case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the blessed souls of the Supreme Court overturned it. Shit. Maybe next time, the Court did leave openings from someone to bring it back.

Abruptly changing topics, I had a weird nightmare yesterday when I was napping that the article I had submitted had been read and re-written by Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! guy, who was an English Lit major in college. The article gave the both of us co-writing credits. Odd. Paranoid.

After raving about Ray Liotta last night, I had to watch one of his movies. I watched Identity, since I bought it a few weeks ago, but haven't watched it yet. It's a good movie, a solid 7 out of 10. (I always use 10 as a scale instead of 5; 5 is too limiting.) It's not a perfect movie. Not many movies come to close to being the perfect movie. There are criteria for this, which I will write about later. But for now, I nap, read, eat, and hit up the picture box.

I've long thought about starting a blog, and I think I have just become pissed off enough to do so.

Yes, we have the best country in world. So why complain about Bush being re-elected? 1) While being the best, we are easily the most dissappointing country in the world. 2) Because Thomas Jefferson would. 3) It is Patriotic.

I even crossed my own party lines, The Libertarian Party, to vote for Kerry so we could end this abomination of an administration, so we could end this spreading of intolerance, so we could keep religion from interfering with policy, so we could take advantage of stem cell research, so the American people would have a better chance of keeping their social freedoms, so we could stop our country from continuing on this imperialistically dangerous path, and so we could finally concentrate on the real terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. So Fuck Bush and his god and his business interests and his oil and his ineptitude. He is erasing any progress we have made.

What needs to happen in this country for people to roll over in the morning and think to themselves, "You know, things just aren't moving in the right direction right now." C'mon people, at least 51% of you, wake the fuck up.

Scary doesn't even begin to describe what happened on Tuesday. This is our generations "Day of Infamy," the day when the Republicans took a 55-45 seat lead in the Senate, the day when they took control of the House, holding 230 of the 435 seats, the day when they won the presidential election, electing a, to use the most simplistic of parlance, bumbling idiot with too much interest in the self and not enough in the betterment of the country. To drive the dagger deeper, at least one and potentially three Supreme Court bench seats will be opening, and with a Republican President, Senate, and House, you can be sure that we will see a conservative named to the bench, a bench that already has a conservative slant.

What does all this mean? It means that the church and state will continue to get closer every day, it means that advances in stem cell research will not be made, it means that many of our freedoms and rights are in danger, such as a women's right to choose.

Something that people don't think about nearly enough is our freedom from things, not our freedom of things. This is important. Freedom of something should automatically imply freedom from something. We have freedom of speech, but we also have freedom from speech - it's called the 5th amendment. While we have freedom of religion, we need to also have freedom from religion. I demand to be free from President Bush's and the rest of the Religious Right's religion. I should not have to sit and listen to the President and Senator Kerry talk about their faith on a nationally televised presidential debate. It should not matter and damn the moderator for asking, that bastard was asking questions to give Bush the edge all night, and Kerry still won the debate. Someone needs to give the country orders to not take "God Speak" into consideration when deciding who will receive their vote. It is like in a jury trial when a lawyer or witness divulges information that has been deemed inadmissible by the court and the jury is instructed to disregard that information in their deliberations. It happens in movies and on TV quite often; I believe it does in Runaway Jury. But even though the jury is supposed to pretend they didn't hear it, they still did. The judge's orders will affect some jurors and others will blow it off, but at least he is getting through to some. This is what needs to happen, someone needs to come on TV after the debates and remind the American Public about where church speak is appropriate and where it is not. Church, faith, God, etc, has no place in a political debate in America. It is plain and simple, yet so hard for some to understand.

That's heavy shit and these are heavy times. America, in its current form, has been going strong for 200+ years. How many other countries can you name that have gone as strong as we for as long? It is going to end sometime and the next four years will be crucial in deciding when. Will Bush keep blowing off allies? Will he keep unjustly "going on the offensive?" If so, sorry kids, but we're fucked. We have the greatest democracy to ever exist, even as corrupted as it is. But what we need is a politician to step forward and show some balls - cast down religion in politics, tell the special interest groups to go to hell - this person needs to have a high profile, they need to debate anyone willing to challenge them. I am sure there are many people out there who would be awesome for this position, but there are two problems, this person would need to be independently wealthy and elected as a Democrat or Republican (probably Democrat) and good luck getting those guys to do what needs to be done. They need to be able to reach into the minds of Americans and stimulate that duty to country obligation so they will look at things as Americans should, with respect to the constitution and their fellow countrymen. Instead we have people looking at things with respect to their own interests and their god. God, I hate God.

We need to make progress socially, economically, and globally. Socially we need to hand the homosexual community their rights on a silver platter. Get married; receive all the benefits heterosexuals do, good for you. People, this is only a matter of time until it happens. Look at what happened with Civil Rights and Women's Rights, it took some time, but they eventually receive all the rights that white men have. Do we really live in a country that is this insensitive? For you gay bashing Jesus Soldiers out there, your church doesn't need to recognize the marriage, that's completely up to them, as granted by the constitution, but the government certainly needs to. It is only a matter of time, after this administration passes through, of course.

From anger to utter bafflement, how does the Democratic Party lose this election? With the amount of anti-Bush sentiment that is out there, it seems like they should have been able to run Ted Kennedy and win the presidency. But nope. And here is why, we see and hear all the anti-Bush stuff because protesting speaks louder than assembling in support of something. Also, because the major media outlets are located on the coasts and the coasts tend to be liberal, excluding Fox, of course, so we see much more of it. You don't see people in Oklahoma or Wyoming on national TV much.

I'm excited to head to my political science class tomorrow, which is a rarity for me, for all classes. Our Prof has dedicated a day of class to the election so it will be good to hear some opinions on it there. I intentionally took this course this semester for this reason. I thought ahead, also a rarity for me, and I'm glad I did.

On to lighter subjects, The OC's season two premieres tomorrow night. It is the kind of show I usually despise, but the writing is smart and witty, especially for the characters of Sandy and Seth Cohen, played by Peter Gallagher and Adam Brody, respectively. They even give smart quips to Anna and Summer at times, characters who in most shows would be complete ditzes. In The OC they are only part-time ditzes. I hope they bring Anna back this season. And followed by The OC is CSI, which I love, and then after that tomorrow night Ray Liotta is guest starring on ER. I never watch ER, but since Shoeless Joe Jackson will be on it tomorrow, you can bet I will be there. Liotta is far underrated, one of the best actors America has to offer. See the movie Narc. I was also excited to see that NBC will have a show in 2005 called "Criminal Behavior" where Liotta will play Frank Nolan, a character specifically written for him by writer/executive producer Shane Salerno.

Also, running in my school's newspaper tomorrow is an article I wrote previewing the basketball season. It is kind of bland and not real exciting, but it is just reporting, take in info and spit it back out on the page kind of stuff. This is the second article I have written for the paper, the first was an article on playing poker, specifically Texas Hold 'Em. I liked the article I turned in, but I was pissed when I read it because the copy and managing editors took out a few paragraphs, destroying the article's continuity and making me look like I write like a fourth grader. I was pissed, really pissed. Hopefully tomorrow goes better and they don't mess around with my words. I don't mind if they make corrections, or minimal changes, but changing points I make and rearranging my words are what gets me pissed.

I will let you know how it goes.

I was just reading some shit online about Ray Liotta and I came across a message board where people were ranking other people's DVD collections on a scale of 1-10. Who gives a shit who owns what or what some knob you don't know thinks of your collection. Good for you, you bought a lot of popular movies and a twelve year old kid gave you a 9 out of 10 (you missed a perfect score because you own Pearl Harbor), go celebrate with a bag of popcorn and your right hand.

I shouldn't talk, I own over 100. Whatever. You're not ranking my collection.

Until Tomorrow.