I Hate This Ride

It’s daunting to jump back into another Marvel vs. Capcom game, and realize once again just how impossible it would be for me to be any halfway decent at it. But at least with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it still felt like a legitimate game…relatively. This time around…I mean, look at these stupidly broken infinite combos that have already been discovered, only two days into its release. What a stupid, broken game. It makes being crappy at this game even harder to take…it’s like there no point to any of it, that even if I succeeded, it would all be for nothing.

Also, all the guys I know how to use suck now. Fuck this game.

This hate is consuming my life. I can’t stop hating, I just…can’t stop. I’m so scared.

– Sometimes I ask myself “Is it wrong that I am not more excited for this new Captain America movie?” And then I answer myself, “No, of course not, your initial gut reaction to everything is always correct.” But then I see this television spot footage recut with a Team America soundtrack, and I’m like “Hold on, this is pretty fucking awesome.” So then I’m like “Okay, well, maybe it will be pretty awesome, I don’t know. Stop asking me all this shit.” I don’t always hold conversations with myself, but when I do, I prefer to speak with a Caribbean accent.

Is anyone actually seriously jazzed up for this big Avengers mega-movie? Does anyone even use the term “jazzed up” anymore? On paper, it seems pretty crazy – the idea of combining multiple movie properties is pretty interesting, although the Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator franchises weren’t exactly great examples of execution. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s Joss Whedon, right? He has a sterling record of being able to put together great sci-fi ensemble projects (Dollhouse notwithstanding). But that’s only in the television and comic book medium…this is only his second stint as a movie director, and the first one was his own Serenity. I have reason to be skeptical!

I wonder if this is just going to turn out to be like Iron Man 3: Tony Stark and Sam Jackson trying to outsmartass each other…plus other miscellaneous costumed friends! Featuring Mark Ruffalo!

Also, it’s the Avengers. Is there anyone under 40 that gives a shit about the Avengers? Or maybe they’re Ultimates fans, in which case they are all fucking douchebags and deserve nothing good in life. Eat a dick, Mark Millar.

– I am also similarly skeptical of this X-Men: First Class trailer. I think it is just because it’s been so long since an X-Men movie was actually good…but I want this one to be good so badly. I mean it’s X-Men, it’s the 60’s…I have been clamouring for a way to combine mutants and Mad Men for way too long now. It’s two great tastes that taste great together! Betty Draper is a dead ringer for Emma Frost, and Michael Fassbender has kind of a Jon Hammish look…I mean this is awesome, right? Slick trailer too – the fact that it can be recut to sell the Star Wars prequels so successfully should speak to that…although the problem with the Star Wars prequels were never really related to advertising.

I wish I cared about this movie. It seems like a good movie to care about.

– Regarding the iPad…it is totally super gay balls, but it’s status as the ultimate mainstream luxury tech gadget cannot be debated. If you have $600 to throw around and you want to pick up a wacky thingamajig with zero practical use but is just really cool looking and shiny…then yeah, that’s your thing. And stuff like Pennant is precisely the type of thing that appeals to me – enough of these, and I’m going to make the iPad my thing. I honestly got an erection watching the video of this app, I can’t even lie. If this thing had the capability to get live scores and track games as they happen in real time, or to look up player statistics easily…I just might have to put an iPad on the top of my list of Crazy Shit To Buy When I Have More Money Than I Know What To Do With.

(This is currently at the top of the list, a “thinking cap” (hyuck hyuck) that allegedly increases creativity by electrically supressing the left hemisphere of your brain. But that just sounds backwards to me…plus, that dude looks like Ed Harris from The Truman Show, so I don’t really trust him.)

IT LOOKS SO COOL. It’s like that wicked Flip Flop Fly Ball site with pretty baseball infographics, but in app form! And The Postal Service soundtrack…pretty funny stuff. And all these Blue Jays wink winks through the video, including the use of Game 6 of the 1993 World Series for their examples…otherwise known as the last meaningful game Toronto has seen in the last two decades. I don’t know why, but if they used like Game 4 of the 2004 World Series in the video instead (when the Red Sox won) I would have hated this app. This is how fickle my heart is.

– Speaking of Game 6 of the 1993 World Series (successful segue!)…if you would like to join me for a nostalgia trip, here is a recent interview with both Joe Carter and Mitch Williams discussing good times. Fun read.

Also, no one is asking, I am not okay with giving Jose Bautista $64 million dollars, in case anyone was asking, which no one is. I love Bautista (even though I thought he sucked, as recently as halfway through last season) and I’m happy he’s going to be here for a while, but I’m terrified now that we’re going to have another Alex Rios situation in two years. That’s what giving a lot of money to athletes does to a fan base – expectations and standards are raised, and this plucky overachieving underdog that everyone’s rooting for now becomes the appointed franchise saviour who will be blamed by the fans for everything that goes wrong. With this contract, Bautista’s sudden emergence as a a heartless home run hitting bastard has turned from a wonderful surprise into a baseline expectation every year. And that’s sad to me, but that’s just how sports and sports fans work – we’re all hateful idiots.

Although, he doesn’t really need to hit 50 or 40 home runs again to justify the contract…even if he regresses and puts up a .360-370 OBP with 30ish home runs and decent defense at third every year, he’ll maybe average a 3.5 WAR player and worth that contract. Last year he was good for 7 wins above replacement, so the bar isn’t set quite that high. All the same, I don’t know if it was necessary…assuming the team could have signed him to $10 million in his final arbitration year, they’re essentially signing him to a $54 million, four year deal for 2012…would that be considered market value? Maybe there’d be a lot of teams out there putting together money for next offseason and lose out on Pujols or Fielder…would they throw that money at Baustista instead, if he had another monster year? Also consider that both Pujols and Fielder are first basemen, and that Bautista can play at both third and outfield…I don’t know, I can talk forever about this.

– Speaking of sports…Norm MacDonald is returning to television. With a show called Sports Show. I am shrugging right now, but you cannot tell because you are only reading my words and not my actions. Yes, I did just do a triple standing backflip, thanks for asking. I can totally do shit like that.

– I would like to take this opportunity to plug Party Down again, which was an excellent show. One of the driest and meanest non-British comedies I’ve ever watched, and it got canned after only two relatively short seasons, so there isn’t much of a long term commitment you need to make here to catch up on it all. I’m telling you, pick it up, it’s great. Plus, you can find out what happened to Lizzy Caplan, the ugly dyke from Mean Girls, because I know you’ve all been wondering about that. That movie was like the 2004 US Olympic basketball run by Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury, stacked with future All-NBA First Team members and MVP candidates like LeBron, Wade, and Melo. Likewise, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried carved out superstar movie careers out of Mean Girls, Tina Fey became a household name, and even Lacey Chabert and Lizzy Caplan managed to get solid regular starting gigs and still look very hot. Lindsay Lohan…flamed out as a bench scrub on Turkish and Chinese leagues.

…where was I going with this…? Man, this has been a long post.

Right, the complete oral history of Party Down as told by all the creators and cast. Fantastic read, but only if you’ve watched the show. So please do so. Because then you can add it along with Arrested Development whenever you want to cite how awesome and indie you are at watching canceled comedies.

I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride
I wanna take you for a ride