Reviewz

Wanted to chime in quick on a few topics while my neighbor stands next to his pickup truck in his jorts enjoying a Busch Light.


BREWERS


Truthfully, I'm not that disappointed with the Brewers. I just took a look at the schedule. I predicted preseason that they would probably win around 87 games, and be deep in the hunt. Of course, I'm an idiot. Anyway, based on my predictions, I have them at 24 wins after last night's game. They now have 21 wins. So they are perhaps three games worse than I had hoped. But there are like 120 games left. They will go on a random 7 game winning streak at some point, and get right back where they should be. But they gotta stop getting shut out. Pretty frustrating. Thankfully they come home and aren't playing at 1 a.m. starting tonight.


My take aways so far: Ryan Braun is my hero (although the recent shoulder injury is concerning), Zach Greinke is fun as hell to watch pitch (until he gets randomly hammered for 5 runs when he runs out of gas) and Prince is still fat. I love/hate watching Carlos Gomez turn a double into a triple, and then overrun third base and get tagged out, or make a cartwheel diving catch in center, and then strike out on a pitch 7 feet outside. Human roller coaster. Corey Hart got fat. Looking forward to the two extremely drunk Brewer games I've got planned in late June/early July.


NBA

I've actually watched almost every second of three conference finals games, and the 4th qtr of Game 2 of Mavs-Thunder. Game 2 of Heat-Bulls actually got the wife's seal of approval to be watched. And she HATES the NBA. I'm just saying that it has been entertaining.


MOVIE REVIEW

"Bridesmaids". Actually pretty good. I laughed really hard quite a number of times. It isn't quite the female version of the Hangover, but it is worth seeing. At this point, I don't think I would ever recommend seeing any movie at the theater. Seriously, it cost us like $40 for two of us to go. You could rent FORTY fucking movies from RedBox. I like going to the movies once in awhile, but if I'm spending $40 I'd rather go out to eat. I would definitely watch this at some point though. The fat chick is really, really funny.

BEERS OF THE MOMENT

"Thunder River Amber Ale". It is good. It is an amber ale and they are really hard to fuck up. What is odd is that after further review, Thunder River is brewed by "Green Bay Brewing Company", which is actually the same as Hinterland, which is much more expensive. Either way it was good.

"Somersault" by New Belgium. Pretty standard pale-ish ale with some citrusy type flavor. It was good. No complaints.

Exhale

Well there we go. Yo is a Cy Young contender and the Crew is sure to turn this 7 game losing streak into a 12 game winning streak after yesterday. Championship! Thus is the ebb and flow of the 700 game MLB season. I'm still concerned that the Crew hasn't hit at all for the last week. Big early season game today. They sort of need to steal this series after shitting Houston down their legs. Gotta score more runs though. Headed to the Keg on Wednesday afternoon for a game against the Padres. Headed down with my old man and his union cronies. No word on whether legs will be broken or not.

NBA PLAYOFFS

I find it incredible that no NBA team has EVER come back from a 3-0 deficit. If the Lakers demise is a foregone conclusion, then why are we wasting our time even playing game 4. There should be a rule that series are a best of 7, until a team wins the first three, then it is a skunk, and it is over. While I'm not the biggest NBA fan, I do follow it, and watch portions of games here and there. But I won't be going out of my way to watch any more games in this series until it gets to 7. Why bother?

GOLF

I finally got out for 18 yesterday. I'm not very good. 110 on 18 holes isn't getting me to the PGA tour. But considering I haven't touched a club in at least 8 months (Wisconsin weather rules) it could've been worse.

MOVIE REVIEWS

Watched a couple of older-ish movies from my DVR that I hadn't seen before.

"Youth in Revolt": I enjoy Michael Cera even though he plays the same character in every movie/TV show ever. I just find that character funny. Zach Galifianakis and his beard were in the movie as a alcoholic truck driver that is banging Michael Cera's mom. Steve Buschemi and trailer parks were also involved. I enjoyed the movie. I would recommend it, but I doubt I would stop to watch it again if it was on cable.

"The Hurt Locker": Supposedly won an Oscar. I'm a little Iraq movied out to be honest. There have been something like 10 million movies made about this, which I guess makes sense since this "war" has been going on for 10 years. It was a solid movie, but not very unique. It is an Iraq war movie. No idea why or how this won (or was nominated, I don't watch that shit) an Oscar. It is worth watching if you like desert war movies. I wouldn't watch it again.

BEERS OF THE WEEKEND

Lienenkugel Limited: Kind of dog shit. A cross between Leinie's original, which is awful, and Honey Weiss. Don't bother. Thank (Sports Bottle's) god I only drank one. I'm not sure what the idea behind "limited" was. I can tell you one thing, it will be limited to one in my stomach.

New Glarus "Two Women": Not as good as it might sound. It should be called "Two naggy ass fat women". New Glarus is always a conundrum to me. They make some absoultely delicious beer: "Fat Squirrel", "Spotted Cow", "Totally Naked", 'Back Forty Bock". And some really, really bad beer. This one would be in the second category for me.

I'm off to get fat at brunch. Peace.

The Dog Days of March

This is the time of year where it starts to really suck working six days a week in an office. But it starts turning around a bit today. Why? Well because it is obviously a national holiday, that's why! My theory that any time a major American sport that doesn't normally play on a weekday afternoon, has a game on a weekday afternoon, nobody should have to work, kicks in today because of the Big East Tournament. Due to the fact that there are 7,543 teams in the Big East, their tournament starts on Tuesday afternoon. It all kicks off at 11 a.m. with South Florida v. De Paul. If you don't think I'm going to casually monitor that game, you are dead wrong.

So in the land of Juice, enjoy your day off America! Also, you have off tomorrow, Thursday and Friday for college hoop action. And a three day week next week with the opening of the NCAA tourney (which has mysteriously caused a block of "No appointments" on my calendar from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday).

THREE QUICK ASIDES

Last night was one of the most classic episodes of 24 ever. This season has been extremely hit an miss, with a few great episodes and few really, really bad ones. Last night was classic. I hesitate to ruin the best parts for the other person in America that watches the show. But Bauer was great.

To keep on the 24 theme, I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" for the first time the other night. I actually really enjoyed it for some reason. Also, President Hassan on 24 is ruined for me now because he is the host of "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" in India on the movie. I can't take him seriously anymore.

Also, shout out to my brother for pointing out 1985 Bears v. Packers on NFL Network last night. I enjoyed the shit out of Jim Zorn behind the blocking of Ron Hallstrom handing off to Jessie Clark and passing to Phillip Epps for at least 45 minutes. Also, if the Packers can have legitimate cheerleaders in 1985, why can't we have them now?? Why do we trot out the fatties from UWGB in windpants???

Mel Gibson, Pro Bowl, Grammys, Madden '10

The weekend that didn't involve getting blacked out in La Crosse (please provide me with details), but that did involve copious amounts of time sitting around by myself when I could have been drinking, separated by paragraphs.

MOVIE REVIEW

Saw "The Edge of Darkness" starring 90-year old, alcoholic, anti-Semite, Mel Gibson. It was pretty awesome. In 2010, I've decided to go with a 10 point system to rank the 4 movies I'm going to see. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10, which is solid but not spectacular.

MADDEN '10

I had a lot of spare time on my hands so I decided to see if I could simulate to the end of Franchise mode on Madden. I didn't get anywhere close (I'm not actually sure where it ends). I'm not sure what the point of this is other than I needed an excuse to say that after I shitcanned Mike McCarthy after 15 seasons, 11 playoff appearances, and one Super Bowl title, the next three coaches were: Walter Jones (6 seasons, 1 playoff), Asante Samuel (3 seasons, 0 playoffs) and Brandon Jacobs (in first season). I always think it is funny to see which former players get put in the coaching ranks.

PRO BOWL/GRAMMYS

Not sure which was more lacking. The lack of interest of the Pro Bowlers in "blocking" and "tackling" or the lack of giving a shit about not swearing by Drake, Eminem and Lil' Wayne during their performance.

I like swearing and flipping a middle finger to CBS/FCC as much as the next guy, but when you do a 4 minute performance and 2 minutes 30 seconds is sporadic silence due to editing, it gets a little annoying.

I personally have no problem with the Pro Bowlers not giving a shit. I want to personally thank Mario Williams for not killing A-Rodg when he went unblocked into the backfield. I want to say fuck you to Vincent Jackson for blindsiding Clay Matthews and nearly killing him on a block.

Also, nobody told me I was going to need 3D glasses for the Michael Jackson tribute at the Grammys. So I got blurry Carrie Underwood instead of 3D Carrie Underwood. Not cool.

Please return to not having your time wasted.

Weekend Schizophrenia

Wow. Where to begin? How about a list? In chronological order? Don't mind if I do!

-Well, Bucky took care of his shit. (8-2) is looking pretty good right now (especially to get into the Get Together). Anything short of (10-2) is going to be disappointing. It really is too bad that college football is stupid and they will get no chance to do anything special. Not saying they would, but at least they would get a shot.

-CU played Dayton tough, and looked really, really good in the first half. But ultimately they couldn't hang on. Not a back breaking loss, but they aren't going to get any favors from the committee going forward. They are going to need a big win in Orlando (pretty sure they play Michigan, which would qualify) for their resume, or they will need to wipe out the Valley. It is early to make these proclamations, but when you are a mid-major, your margin for error is razor thin.

-Movie Review: "Law Abiding Citizen". I don't see that many movies in the theater. This one was pretty fucking bad ass. I would recommend it. The premise is a tad ridiculous, and by tad I mean completely impossible. But it was cool either way. Jamie Foxx still isn't a very good actor. He should stick to playing cross-dressers in "In Living Color". But he didn't ruin the movie. I'd give it 3.5 out of 5, although I am a very tough judge.

-Ladies and gentlemen, Brandon Jennings! You know he is good when I'm getting text messages from MORE THAN ONE random person to get me to turn on the game, especially when these people are not really huge NBA fans. And then, when I do turn it on, my wife (who is probably in the bottom 5 in the nation in NBA-fandom, and who every time I turn a Bucks game on, which is very infrequently, remarks that she "wishes the Bucks would move from Milwaukee so she didn't have to think about them sucking anymore") was interested. What a ridiculous performance. Make room on the bandwagon! (at least until their first 10 game losing streak or inevitable Jennings injury). This all means I will probably make room for them in the channel switching rotation, and be cognizant of when they actually play, lets not get crazy yet. But it does appear from 7 games that the Bucks have finally hit big on a lottery pick.

-The Packers have a mental illness. How they can go from playing as bad as they did last week to playing as well as they did (generally) this week? We lose to one of the worst teams in the league and then beat one of the best? I dunno. The defense was preseason-esque. They were all over Romo's ass. Woodson did his best defensive player of the year impression: 9 tackles, 2 forced fumbles, INT, sack. Hawk and Barnett were not non-existent. Clay Matthews continues to impress. B.J. Raji had a tackle! The O-line kept the sack count under 5, which is a slight improvement at least. The penalties were still awful, and inexcusable, but we can't expect to fix everything overnight. Special teams didn't kill us. Suddenly, I think they can be 7-4 after the Lions game. I love completely changing my outlook on the entire season based on the outcome of one game.

-UW held on 75-46 to beat a feisty Indiana University Purdue University at Fort Wayne Mastadon team. There were like 200 people at the Kohl Center. This game counted. IPFW is a real team.

-Someone should tell Bill Belichick that he isn't playing a game of Madden '10 in that hoodie. He is coaching a real NFL game. Seriously, I would lead towards punting in Madden. That was CRAZY.