And the Oscar Goes To....

Your 2008 Best Picture is No Country for Old Men. I've made my feelings about that particular film very clear over at USeeThat, but I have another axe to grind.

It's more of a question really. I watched the Oscar broadcast to see a countdown of all the Best Pictures leading to the present one, and I wondered: Where have all the great films gone?

Here in reverse chronological order are all the Best Picture wins of the 21st century:


No Country for Old Men

The Departed

Crash

Million Dollar Baby

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Chicago

A Beautiful Mind

Some of these are good movies. Some of them are great movies. But are they All-Time Great movies?

Here's the lineup for Best Picture in the decade of the 1970s:

Kramer vs. Kramer

The Deer Hunter

Annie Hall

Rocky

One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest

The Godfather Part II

The Sting

The Godfather

The French Connection

Can anyone realistically say that a Crash or a Chicago or a Lord of the Rings has the drama of a Kramer vs. Kramer? The cultural influence of a Godfather? The pathos of a Deer Hunter? The timelessness of a Rocky? The wit of an Annie Hall? Is it even close? Should a cinematic adaptation of a play or the third movie in a trilogy even really be considered for Best Picture?

Perhaps the Best Pictures of the modern day will be looked back upon as timeless classics, and it is only through the opaque, rose colored glass of history that the best films of thirty years ago seem so superior. But if not, why? Are the true best pictures falling through the cracks? Are modern film making techniques somehow diluting the quality of the films they purport to improve? I'm certain the directors, writers, et. al of the modern era are working just as hard as their predecessors to produce quality products, so why the disparity?

As someone who was a mere child in the 70s and has never been a Hollywood insider, I don' t know if I'm qualified to speculate intelligently about this, but it sure does arouse my curiosity.

Five Coolest Lines from "The Terminator" (1984)

1. "That Terminator is out there. It' can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely WILL NOT STOP. Ever. UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD."

2. "He'll find her. That's what he does. That's ALL HE DOES."

3. "I'll be back."

4. "Come with me if you want to live."

5. "You'll be perfectly safe. We got 30 cops in this building."

Super Bowl Wrapup II

Okay, time now to continue my annual tradition of recapping the Super Bowl.

The Game:

The NEW YORK GIANTS are your Super Bowl XLII Champions! Who could have predicted it? Oh wait, I did, a week and a half ago.

In all fairness, it's easy to pick an underdog; if they lose, you get credit for making such a bold prediction and if they win, you look like a genius. And it was sort of a soft prediction. Nevertheless, I put it out there.

Since it seems like it will still be a long time before my long-suffering Jets make the big dance, I will have to live vicariously through their sister team. I will definitely enjoy the blemish on Belicheck's perfect season. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Congratulations 1972 Miami Dolphins.

Objectively, I think any football fan can be happy that we had a great game where each team had their destiny in their own hands down to the final minute of play. Everyone wants a great game (except perhaps Patriot fans, who would have been completely intolerable had Brady pulled out a last second miracle) and we got one.

Oh. And the commercials. Every year, the cry goes out that the commercials aren't what they used to be. Don't believe me? Click here. And every year I insist that they were NEVER what they used to be. I think we always got one or two good ads, which lingered in our memory as a spate of great Super Bowl commercials. The commercials haven't changed, WE'VE changed. If we could have hopped online in 1970 or 80 or 90 to dissect every commercial that appeared, as we can today, I wonder if we would ever have learned to romanticize Super Bowl ads. Furthermore, in the last decade, there has been a quantum leap in the level of ingenuity required by advertisers looking to attract clients online, and the tools they have at hand to entertain, surprise and amuse viewers thanks to technology. Traditional T.V. commercials really don't stand that much of a chance.

In sum, we had an exciting season, a great final game, some cool commercials (Alex Rocco reprising his Godfather "Horse head" scene with a car grill), some lame ones (a baby buying stocks on eTrade, Coke bringing Republicans and Democrats together, these are just tired retreads as far as I'm concerned...besides the only kind of coke that brings Republicans and Democrats together doesn't come in soda bottles) and a bunch in between. Next up, Super Tuesday, a contest whose outcome is actually of genuine importance.

How Much Longer Will This Go On?

The producers of the Miss America pageant pulled out all the stops this year, offering a hip new show with hotter swimsuits, text message voting, and pop culture related questions. How could viewers watch this annual tribute to the glorification of women?

On TLC as the culmination of a four week long reality series.

America, it's time to let your girl go. In the first place, no one has ever seen the Miss America pageant as anything less than a beauty contest except its producers, who diligently weight talent and Q/A categories, the only result being to leave viewers puzzled as to why the most beautiful girls never seem to win.

In the second place, the Miss America pageant was conceived in 1921. Television didn't even come into existence in the United States until 1940. The concept of Miss America came to light at a time before teenage girls could be world famous pop stars and championship athletes, before adult women could manage billion dollar companies and run for President, before anyone in America could flip on their computers and find pictures and biographical data on hundreds of beautiful, talented women in moments on the Internet.

In short, the time for beauty pageants, particularly this one, has long past. Let it die.

Oh, and congratulations to the beautiful and talented Kristen Haglund, Miss Michigan, on being selected Miss America 2008.

Do the Giants Have a Chance?

The New York Giants are going to Super Bowl XLII. It's hard to believe. At the beginning of the season, it would have been an iffy proposition as to whether or not they would have made the playoffs. Now only one thing stands between them and hoisting their third Vince Lombardi Trophy.

That one thing? One of the greatest football teams of all time.

As a Jets fan, it pains me to say this, but the New England Patriots, like the Green Bay Packers of the '60s, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins of the '70s, San Francisco 49ers of the '80s, and Dallas Cowboys of the '90s, have earned the title of team of the decade. The Patriots are the team of the '00s, and, video assistance or not, are going to be tough to beat.

Can the Giants do it? Of course they can. They were an underdog to Dallas; an underdog to Green Bay. They've shown they can put up points, and they've shown they can play defense. If anyone can put a blemish on the Patriots perfect season, it's the Giants.

Then again, I could be biased. I really, really hate the Patriots.

Ch-ch-changes

The Democratic Primary battle has been cast by the mainstream media (who we learned in New Hampshire don't have a clue) as "Change vs. Experience." But what does this really mean? What are voters supposedly asking for when they ask for "change?" Change to me means something different from what is currently there. Given that we currently have a NeoConservative Republican regime, it seems pretty clear that any Democrat, be he or she moderate or liberal, will represent a change.



ITS THE CHANGIEST!



So what does it mean? Are we to believe that Barack Obama is somehow changier than Hillary? Clearly, both are opposed to every position the government currently holds, be it on Health Care, Abortion Rights, Gay Rights, The Economy or any other issue you can think of. Are we to believe that once Hillary gets into office, she'll say "hmm, I wanted to be President so I could do all of these things, but they're just too "changy?" The whole concept is utterly ridiculous. Some suggest that voting for Hillary would just send us back to the Clinton Era. The Clinton Era where the twin towers were still standing, there was no war in Iraq, the Federal Deficit was a Federal Surplus, and crime and unemployment were down instead of rising? That all sounds pretty good and changy to me.

How Do You Mount A Comeback When You're The Frontrunner? With a Little Help from Iowa, CNN and FOX News

With apologies to L.L. Cool J, DO call it a comeback. In 1992, an overlooked Bill Clinton began a massive surge to the Presidency when he shocked the world with a second place finish in New Hampshire, causing him to be annointed "The Comeback Kid."

But it seemed that for Hillary, there would be no energizing "Comeback Moment." How could there be? Hillary was the presumptive frontrunner, and even a second place finish might be viewed as a devastating loss.

But then something changed. Polls showed Obama not only gaining ground, but taking the lead over Clinton. A CNN poll showing Obama as a 9 percent favorite was viewed by Fox "analysts" (in whose hands the poll lead magically morphed into "12 or 13 percent") as a massive defeat for Clinton. the Fox pundits gleefully readied themselves to desecrate Clinton's corpse. Other news agencies quickly followed suit.

Even I, who predicted Hillary's nomination a year ago, was beginning to feel some cracks in my armor of confidence. But I never should have doubted the Clinton machine.

Whether it was targeting younger voters, preparing a shakeup of staff, or Clinton's showing of actual emotion at a speech in New Hampshire (see below), she pulled it off, not only winning in New Hampshire but turning herself into a comeback kid.

All I can say is. Look out Obama.

While Edwards claims he is in this to the end, I think the handwriting is on the wall. Clinton's best move now would be to reach out to Edwards with a VP spot on her ticket as soon as possible and lock him up before he throws his weight on Obama's side. Hillary, if you're reading this, give John a call.

Oh, Roger....

Well, Roger Clemens, to no one's surprise, is denying allegations of steroid abuse as outlined in the Mitchell Report. The real surprise is that anyone is taking his denials seriously. His pathetic argument, which seems like it may have been constructed while watching a "Bonds on Bonds" marathon over a bottle of Jim Beam, is that he was injecting B-12 and Lidocaine for his joints. As Dan Patrick remarked on his radio show: "When will he start taking Truthdocaine?

Another radio host commented, and I paraphrase: If Clemens did steroids under the current climate of scrutiny, he would have to be the dumbest person of all time.

I can see why someone would think Roger Clemens is very smart and self aware, after all, this is the guy who thew a SHARP STAKE at an innocent person on INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION.

This is also a guy who lied every time he said he retired as soon as another team made him a better offer and whose teammates are pretty much giving up that they use performance enhancing drugs (making this the year that both the Yankees and Patriots are correctly accused of cheating which is deeply satisfying). A guy who continues to throw ungodly fastballs ten years after he should have been retired, and whose excuse is just a weird combination of the first two excuses he heard: Bonds' "I didn't know the substance was steroids" and Petite's "I was just doing it to come back from injury."

I'm not afraid to say it here (since no one is reading this): Roger Clemens, you are a lying sack of crap and I can't wait to see you embarrass yourself on 60 Minutes.

There.

The Race is On!

So the Iowa Caucuses have come and gone, and the big winner on the Democrats side is Barack Obama. Good for Obama, but I'm not ready to back off my prediction just yet. First of all, the Iowa Caucuses are the perfect place for a guy like Obama to shine. It may be possible to actually shake the hand of every single Democratic Iowa Caucus voter, and that's just the kind of thing Obama's good at. Secondly, this sweeping, crushing 38% plurality of Obama's results in a net gain of how many delegates? One. This is a deficit I think the Clinton machine can make up.

Edwards, on the other hand, may be in some trouble. Shaking the hands of rural folk is also what Edwards does best, and if Obama does it better, he may be looking at a Vice Presidential nod once again. Time will tell.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is your big winner. Huckabee is just the kind of religious loon that right wingers love to vote for. Sure, he seems like a nice guy day-to-day. On the other hand he compared abortion to the holocaust and homosexuality to necrophilia. This guy will be one to watch.

Jerry, Where Art Thou?

It's been nearly six months since Jerry Yang won the World Series of Poker.



Since then, there's been no sign of him. Sure, he hasn't had any big tournament success since then, but Jamie Gold didn't have any major cashes in his first six months and it seems like his name and face were everywhere.

Now, of course, circumstances were a bit different. Gold was involved in a massive lawsuit involving the right to his winnings. But this did not affect the fact that Gold has appeared on numerous televised poker programs featuring celebrity pros, such as Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker, while Yang is nowhere to be seen. A Google search of Yang turns up mostly links to the guy who owns Yahoo:

Yahoo Champion----------Poker Champion

So where is Yang? Is it simply too soon? I don't think so. The word was that Yang was going to be an "Ambassador of Poker." He was going to usher in a new era of poker that would wash clean the stain of Gold's lawsuit-tainted victory.

But I think maybe people like the taint. They like their poker champions with a little edge. Either that, or maybe the poker boom is finally coming to a head. With U.S. restrictions on Internet poker and nearly five years since Chris Moneymaker's historic victory, maybe the bloom is off the poker rose.

Time will tell. In the meantime, I'm playing in a tournament next week.

One Awesome Christmas Present

Look what just turned up in my stocking!

Evil for Dummies

Last night, as I prepared to slip off to Slumberland with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I suggested to my girlfriend "why don't we watch a pleasant Christmas show to fall asleep to?" Purposefully aiming the remote, she responded: "How about MOST EVIL?"

MOST EVIL is a gratuitous program on the Discovery Channel wherein Dr. Michael Stone fetishises serial killers by placing them on a scale which he has the audacity refer to as a "scientific tool," his MOST EVIL scale.

The only scientific tool anywhere near this scale is the guy who invented it. Calling a scale of evil a scientific tool is like calling One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi a scientific time measurement. There is no conceivable diagnostic value in deciding that Charles Manson is a 15 and the Reverend Jim Jones is a 22. Stone offers no suggestions for treatment of those on the scale, and it's clear that the designations are fairly arbitrary and mostly speak to how strong the ego is of the subject (if you got other people to kill for you, you score high. If you killed for someone else, you score lower).

Will Smith, Basically a Good Person

In an atrocious example of yellow journalism, Hollywood.com attempted to stir up some trouble last week by printing that Will Smith thought that Hitler was a good person. This is of course not what he said. He essentially said that no one with any modicum of sanity wakes up in the morning planning to do evil, or thinking they are evil. This wild, politically incorrect idea was first suggested by well-known close-minded bigot Socrates. So Will, why don't you go hang out with your own kind at any Philosophy department in the country if you love Hitler so much?

That last bit was sarcasm. The fact is, people all think what they are doing is right and good. That's why we have those terms. Does it seem more likely that Saddam Hussein woke up in the morning thinking that he was evil and George Bush was good, that he wanted the dark forces to win like he was some kind of desert Sith Lord? Or did he probably think that a white infidel was evil for threatening his and his people's way of life? If he didn't think he was evil, did this make him a good person? Obviously not.


Labeling others as evil is just a way for us to feel superior. Feeling superior is not a good starting point if you are trying to understand others who behave in a way you don't care for. This does not mean that people cannot commit horrible acts and be deserving of punishment for it. It's even okay to hate them. But calling them evil is just howling at the moon, and I think that was Will's point, and it's a good one. Take note, Dr. Stone.

The True Meaning of Christmas

At this time of year, as people rush around trying to finish off their last minute Christmas shopping, I think it's important for all of us to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas, as Sol Invictus, has been a pagan ritual for thousands of years celebrating the winter solstice. Why is the winter solstice so important? It represents the time that the Earth's orbit begins to bring the Northern hemisphere closer to the sun; in effect, the days get longer again. For ancient peoples, this represented the Sun God's reemergence, hence, the celebration of Sol Invictus: "the unconquered sun." In later years, Jesus ("the unconquered son?") fit neatly into the pantheon of gods whose rebirth was signified by the solstice.

The point being that it's okay to get psyched about Christmas because of the presents. Christmas is a celebration of new life and rebirth, "the sun will come out tomorrow," as it were. Save your whining about peace on Earth and goodwill towards men for Easter.

Christmas is also a good time for us to remember Odin. Odin, the Norse God who was All-father to folks like Thor and Baldur, also liked to fly through the air on his eight-legged horse. Did he give presents to all the good little boys and girls? One can only look to the skies and wonder.

Users are Losers

So, the Mitchell report is out, and it turns out that....wait for it....a bunch of baseball players use steroids. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true. The biggest revelation the report revealed?

No one cares.

No one I know, anyway. I mean once you get past the fact that the best player in the game, the best slugger of all time, went from looking

like this:

To like this:

What else is there? So a bunch of names came out. There are probably a bunch more that didn't, and who knows, maybe even one or two on the list are wrongly accused. The point is, America has gotten far beyond the point of being so naive about its national pasttime as to believe that its players are moral paragons. We know they cheat, we sort of hope our favorites don't, but we watch them anyway. I don't think there's a name on that list that shocked anyone, and if there is, there shouldn't be. If Major League Baseball thinks steroids are a problem that should be corrected, they should fix it, with better and more frequent tests and harsher penalties. Naming names is boring. Besides that, it's fascist.

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution!

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! is a system for beating Craps promoted by gambling authority Frank Scoblete.

I have nothing interesting to say on the subject of Craps. It's a casino table game which can be a lot of fun if you have money to burn and don't mind a lot of people around you screaming.

I just love saying "Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! Doesn't it sound like the name of a Japanese Game Show?

Show Me the Money

I signed with The Gage Group on Thursday. My agent, Josh Orenstein, is a smart guy who always seems to be hustling and has a lot of stuff going on, so I'm pretty sure we're going to make a bunch of money together once this strike ends.

If it ever ends....

Anyway if someone happens to stumble upon this blog and wants to hire me for something, contact him.

Once this wretched strike ends....

Casino Games that Sound Dirty But Are Not

1. Three Way Action

2. Around the World

3. Big Split Poker

4. Double Exposure

5. Flip It

Strike!

So as of last Monday, the Writer's Guild is on strike. Although I am not currently a member of the guild, I had hoped to be one soon, so this is still bad for me. To me this is reminiscent of one of those TV or movie scenes where the executive slides a piece of paper over to the hapless worker and says "this is what I am prepared to offer you" then cackles with glee as the worker opens the paper to find a big fat zero written on it.

The worst was the New York Times article which referred to the Rockefeller Center picketers being just like real picketers except "instead of hard hats and work boots they sported fancy scarves and arty glasses," or something to that effect. I guess journalists somehow consider themselves superior as writers to screen and television writers. I look forward to seeing you pull on your work boots and tool belt when your union strikes.

The fact is that when labor knuckles, all workers lose, whether it's Hollywood screenwriters, baseball players, sanitation workers or fry cooks. In almost every case, whatever labor wants, it's inevitably about one percent or less of what management is getting, despite the fact that labor does all the work (hence "labor"). The writers are asking for very little, just a small piece, ANY piece, of the new media pie. Considering that there is no new media without them and that the producers are offering nothing, does that really make them worthy of derision?

By the way, has everyone heard about "Aqua Dots?" They are this new candy imported by the Chinese that contain the date rape drug. Aren't the Chinese scoring enough points with us without making Christmas come early for American pedophiles? It seems to me like we didn't have these many problems with the Chinese when Clinton was in office.

Poker Guide for Tourists

If you're planning to play live poker, you should expect to find different types of players at different types of games. Of course, every game will have their share of nice guys and jerks, but certain types seem to gravitate more to some games than others. To wit:

7 card Stud: This game tends to consist of elderly players waiting to die.

Omaha: Omaha seems to attract the most wretched refuse of poker playing society. Omaha players always seem to be looking for a fight, whether it's with other players or the dealer, and often display some of the sourest pusses you've ever seen. A fun tactic Omaha players seem to enjoy is lying to the dealer about the strength of their hand. Omaha hands are already the toughest in poker to read, plus the dealer has to make sure that the pot is split properly, which if there are side pots and quartering, can be extremely difficult to do correctly, so for a player to announce they have a straight or a nut low when they know they don't really adds to the fun. And of course, the players will not hesitate to berate the dealer mercilessly if he/she makes any mistake.

Limit Hold'em: I've actually found limit players to be among the most pleasant of poker players. Life or death (by way of your entire stack) does not hinge on the turn of every card, so it's a much more relaxed atmosphere. These players are much happier to chat with you and enjoy playing the game.

No Limit: This game, being the most popular, attracts the biggest mix of players. There are some very nice players in the NL game, and some miserable SOBs as well. Many NL players want you to think they are professionals (generally the ones who really aren't) and a lot of them look around as if they are waiting for a bigger game, especially if they've just lost a huge pot in this one. On the other hand, this game also has players who very quietly and patiently collect everyone's chips.

Tournament: I find that a lot of tournament players have something to prove. That is, they want everyone to know that they're not the dead money at the table, somebody else is. This can be characterized by wild, inappropriate aggression or a lot of big table talk. Tournaments are also where you will find the most Internet wizards, skinny kids who are barely old enough to shave and calculate every move seemingly perfectly as they push chips into the pot and build their stacks, mostly unfazed by the occasional, inevitable bad beat.

High Stakes

If any of you out there are poker fans (if there is anyone out there) you owe it to yourself to check out High Stakes Poker. I had a previous post that explained why:

http://craigshappyplace.blogspot.com/2006/07/tournament-poker-is-for-sissies.html

This season, season 4, the players came up with a brilliant innovation that should have the producers kissing their collective feet. Unlike the usual prop bets that no one outside of the game can appreciate, they came up with an ingenious one that drove the action like crazy. It was this: Anyone who wins with "The Hammer" (7-2) gets $500 from each player.



The most brilliant thing about this is that the amount won from each player was less than one big blind, but every player is willing to put thousands at risk in order to win the prop. Think of an arrangement in your $5/$10 game where everyone has to pay you eight bucks if you win with 7-2, so every player ends up risking $200 or $300 in order to collect a $60 or $70 bounty.

I also enjoyed when Phil Hellmuth says "Mike, explain to the viewers at home what it means to 'buy the button,'" when it was clear that Phil didn't know and there were probably about a hundred thousand "viewers at home" who knew exactly what was going on.