You can blame most of this on Desperate Housewives. I’m a dozen episodes in and ashamed I’m not farther. By the middle of the week, I should have all of the first season, save the upcoming season finale, burnt to DVD, so if anyone wants to borrow for a little summer “dirty romance novel reading”, you’re more than welcome to. I can’t wait til next fall, when my 8:30 – 10:00 block on Sunday nights will be more than taken up by a beautiful Arrested/Desperate double-feature.
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The OC was already knocked down a notch on Thursday because I was alone watching it, as opposed to in the company of the usual posse. I called Christina, who pointed out how sad this was, then did some analysis with Anna, but it simply wasn’t the same. Pros and cons from this week’s episode?
Pro: Killing Caleb. Nothing like having a cliff-hanger going into the what you know will be a cliff-hanger of a season finale.
Con: Killing Caleb. There were two moral compasses on the show: Caleb was evil, the Cohen parents were good. You could always tell where someone was by how they compared to them. Now Caleb’s dead, Kirsten’s a lush, Sandy is still Sandy and Julie Cooper is a good guy? This is way too confusing.
Pro: How Theresa was used. Not too much, showed she was wise, probably still had feelings for Ryan but didn’t want him to see the baby and lose his good life. Well played.
Con: What high school has it’s eventual prom queen dateless the day before? You’re telling me that nobody woulda dumped their set date and asked Summer as soon as they saw she wasn’t with Seth anymore? Same goes for Marissa, who apparently is popular with both the student council and druggie-partying crowd. That’s completely inexcusable to just spring prom like that with no build-up.
Pro: The theme of prom. Under the O. Sea. Absolutely beautiful.
Con: The Zach/Seth rivalry already being over. You couldn’t have at least drug out Evil Zach for one more episode?! I miss him already.
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Why is everyone so amazed the Heat are still rolling without Shaq? Let’s say that Miami doesn’t make the trade, and the Miami line-up for this year is Dwyane Wade, Eddie Jones, Caron Butler, Lamar Odom and Brian Grant, with Damon Jones, Udonis Haslem and probably draft a more polished player than high schooler Dorrell Wright, especially with proven commodities like Jameer Nelson, Delonte West and Tony Allen on the board. Now, considering they were fourth in the East last year, doesn’t this team easily get the second seed behind Detroit, especially with two of the team that finished in front of them, New Jersey and Indiana, struggling for most of the season? And wouldn’t the MVP debate be between Nash and Wade as opposed to Nash and Shaq? Like a happy Lamar Odom isn’t getting 22-9-5 a game, keeping his All-Star status and his smile while away from the Lakers.
I’m going to dedicate an entire post some time to where Michael Redd should go with his shiny new free agent contract. Do you spend the next seven years of your career with Wade, Melo, LeBron? So many possibilities.
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Saw Crash on Thursday night, and it’s a definite hit, at least in the opinions of myself, Livey, Joey and Katie, who also saw it at some point in time during the week down in Jacksonville. There’s four or five insanely intense scenes that have you caught between leaning on the edge of your seat and burying your face in your hands at the same time, plus Don Cheadle has sex. Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser are involved, and they don’t screw anything up (remember when Sandra was guaranteed money? Speed, While You Were Sleeping, her good years), Tony Danza makes an appearance, Ludacris (ahem, Chris Bridges) is absolutely delightful and Matt Dillon is at a Wild Things-level sleazy for a while.
Not a fun film by any means, but required summer movie viewing.
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I asked Chad, whose also going through the back episodes of Desperate, to give me a quote on it. This is what I got:
“Desperate Housewives, which is the best show of right now, and when I say right now I mean watching all of the old episodes to try and catch up, I mean it has all the elements to make it good the comedy of say an Arrested Development, and the drama of an O.C. Allow me to make up a word to describe it, SUGLORIATE, Desperate Housewives is SUGLORIATE.”
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Early reviews for Star Wars: Episode III, are looking good. Apparently the dialogue is bad (well, yeah), but it’s a fine conclusion to the second (first?) trilogy. I’ve already got my midnight seats purchased for Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and I couldn’t be more excited, if only to call Sean and let him know every little detail before he gets to see it.
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When I talked about Ludacris’ (ahem, Chris Bridges’) rap in “Sugar” being so great, I really didn’t pay proper respect to L’il Kim’s, which is also fantastic. I feel hers is good simply because of the triple-hitting bass in the background, but the beat is just as important in a rap song as the rhymes, so it’s all fair game.
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Just because I needed a blatant excuse to post this again, the second cardboard billboard we take from South Pike, despite having no room for it, will be this:
The six-day span in June when Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Batman Begins both come out may be the best cinematic week in a long time. Just throwing it out there, because it’s fact.
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I like getting Entertainment Weekly’s again.
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What’s the main difference people say when citing that college hoops is better than the NBA?
Generally, it’s that the student-athletes care a heckuva lot more than their pro counterparts, which through most of the regular season I will agree with. Then explain to me how you can expect Chris Taft to be a viable NBA player when he doesn’t even care at the college level. Do you think throwing a few million dollars and a guaranteed contract his direction will somehow motivate him to greater things?
He has to be picked by the Knicks, simply because A) He’s another power forward on a team that needs a center, B) He’ll be another terrible contract they won’t be able to move C) They’ll be better players on the board (like a Deron Williams or Raymond Felton) that they’ll pass on, just to make it hurt worse and D) He needs to be reunited with Plaxico, who will be playing with the Giants next season.
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I need a good game of Contract Rummy. Anyone interested in learning?
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Saw Kicking & Screaming last night, and it was pretty good. Not great, and kinda slow to start, but once they unleash Will Ferrell, it’s good times had by all. I think Ferrell should only make movies rated PG-13 and up, as he wasn’t able to delve into his whole bag of tricks, and there were way too many little kids in the audience. It’s funny, although it’s the worst Will Ferrell film of the last few years, but considering that means that it’s simply not as good as Old School, Elf and Anchorman, you’re still in pretty good shape.
(And just incase this is your first summer with the blog, due to their being very little for us to actually do, we see a lot of movies. It’s costly, but culturing.)
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Download John Hiatt – “Cry Love”, especially if you’re an Arrested fan to the point you know the difference between “Hot Marta” and “Regular Marta”.
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Went to my first Pirates game of the season Friday night, and it’s pretty funny how many memories I have of Pirate games completely unrelated to the game itself. I’ll give PNC Park, the Buccos and Oliver Perez an entire post at some point in time.
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Big day of NBA Playoffs today, and the postseason officially starts as I’ll be watching some of the games from Gina’s basement later tonight. I’m hoping that the Pacers can pull this upset off (much more on that tomorrow), that the Suns can close out this series quickly and that the Sonics can somehow, miraculously tie things up with the Spurs.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
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