The 2004 Pepsi Holiday Spice Pepsi Challenge... UPDATE!!!
Last night Ryan N., Jamie, myself and a few others mixed The Captain and PHS.
It was... pretty good. And very festive.
I'm going to look into this further and see what develops.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
A Holiday Tour of League HQ
Jackie B. Kennedy made housewives across the world titter with glee when she opened up the White House for a televised tour during JFK's term in office. And then yesterday I found myself watching Laura Bush's crack squad of Junior Leaguers decorating the White House for Christmas.
Hey, W... you want a smaller government? Quit spending $5 mil on decorating the part of the house you don't use.
Anyhoo, The League was inspired. I don't actually want any of you people in my house, but I'd like to share a little Christmas cheer with you.
And so, the Christmas Tour of League HQ begins.
It's always nice to see how taking a photo of your own home quickly makes it appear that maybe your home is a crime scene. Especially when you have nothing but white walls.
So, let's start outside and work our way in.
Funny how houses don't photograph terribly well from outside in the dark, but there you have it. I guess it's sort of minimal on lighting. Well, I'm a cheap bastard and it was raining while I was hanging lights. What do you want?
Mel welcomes you to the house. He was not feeling very photo-friendly tonight.
We'll bypass the front room and head back to the living room/ kitchen.
This is our equivalent of a Christmas Village. Jamie won't let me do the whole Christmas Village deal. I think she knows the "Village" would quickly become a major metropolitan area.
Rudolph's nose does, indeed, light up.
Mr. and Mrs. Snowman sit atop the entertainment center with another Rudolph.
We have this weird sort of shelf space up above for which we've never thought of a good use. We put stuff up there on the Holidays. BTW, there are no fireplaces in The Valley of the Sun. It's 78 degrees here today. Possibly warmer.
We now return to the front room.
Here is the table we put out this year. I'm not really sure if we'll do this every year, but we did it this year for the first time.
Here's my official Polar Express reindeer bell. It's hanging from the lamp which is supposed to hang over the dining room table we don't have.
Here's our nativity set. I like it. Understated and it doesn't have the same creepy faces as the one my folks had when I was a kid.
The tree. It's our Charlie Brown tree. It's only four feet tall and fake. You can see from the bookshelf that we probably need more bookshelf space. Kids, furniture is expensive, and I have a comic habit to keep up with.
My mom thinks I don't have a star. Here is my star. See it? I have a star. One year I put Superman on top of the tree, and ever since then I've caught an earful before Christmas.
Our tree is Super.
Jamie is an extremely patient person.
The train to Christmastown.
Anyway, that's it. We only have a few presents under the tree, but it was enough to cover up the nice tree skirt my aunt sent us a few years ago. Ah, well.
We've been cohabitating for several years now, and we're getting our Christmas traditions down pat. It's fun pulling this stuff out every year and slowly adding more as you go. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the tour.
And this is totally unrelated, but I finished my online class today. Oh, and I reviewed Blade Trinity below. For your reading enjoyment.
Jackie B. Kennedy made housewives across the world titter with glee when she opened up the White House for a televised tour during JFK's term in office. And then yesterday I found myself watching Laura Bush's crack squad of Junior Leaguers decorating the White House for Christmas.
Hey, W... you want a smaller government? Quit spending $5 mil on decorating the part of the house you don't use.
Anyhoo, The League was inspired. I don't actually want any of you people in my house, but I'd like to share a little Christmas cheer with you.
And so, the Christmas Tour of League HQ begins.
It's always nice to see how taking a photo of your own home quickly makes it appear that maybe your home is a crime scene. Especially when you have nothing but white walls.
So, let's start outside and work our way in.
Funny how houses don't photograph terribly well from outside in the dark, but there you have it. I guess it's sort of minimal on lighting. Well, I'm a cheap bastard and it was raining while I was hanging lights. What do you want?
Mel welcomes you to the house. He was not feeling very photo-friendly tonight.
We'll bypass the front room and head back to the living room/ kitchen.
This is our equivalent of a Christmas Village. Jamie won't let me do the whole Christmas Village deal. I think she knows the "Village" would quickly become a major metropolitan area.
Rudolph's nose does, indeed, light up.
Mr. and Mrs. Snowman sit atop the entertainment center with another Rudolph.
We have this weird sort of shelf space up above for which we've never thought of a good use. We put stuff up there on the Holidays. BTW, there are no fireplaces in The Valley of the Sun. It's 78 degrees here today. Possibly warmer.
We now return to the front room.
Here is the table we put out this year. I'm not really sure if we'll do this every year, but we did it this year for the first time.
Here's my official Polar Express reindeer bell. It's hanging from the lamp which is supposed to hang over the dining room table we don't have.
Here's our nativity set. I like it. Understated and it doesn't have the same creepy faces as the one my folks had when I was a kid.
The tree. It's our Charlie Brown tree. It's only four feet tall and fake. You can see from the bookshelf that we probably need more bookshelf space. Kids, furniture is expensive, and I have a comic habit to keep up with.
My mom thinks I don't have a star. Here is my star. See it? I have a star. One year I put Superman on top of the tree, and ever since then I've caught an earful before Christmas.
Our tree is Super.
Jamie is an extremely patient person.
The train to Christmastown.
Anyway, that's it. We only have a few presents under the tree, but it was enough to cover up the nice tree skirt my aunt sent us a few years ago. Ah, well.
We've been cohabitating for several years now, and we're getting our Christmas traditions down pat. It's fun pulling this stuff out every year and slowly adding more as you go. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the tour.
And this is totally unrelated, but I finished my online class today. Oh, and I reviewed Blade Trinity below. For your reading enjoyment.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Here at The League, we see shitty movie so you don't have to.
For whatever reason I got it in my head to go see Blade Trinity. Full disclosure: I saw Blade and Blade 2 on opening nights and just enjoyed the hell out of them. Blade Trinity? Not so much.
From the opening scene of the movie, something just feels... off. Something is wrong. I don't mean in a good tension building way. I mean, the editing seems sloppy, the scenes don't really make sense. Special editing techniques seem borrowed and poorly used. Even the audio seemed muddy a few times (but that's also Snipes playing a character who never unclenches his jaw long enough to speak). Camera shots are okay, but not great. Dialogue is covered, but there are some scenes that just feel as if the director has no idea where to put the camera or what the intention of the scene is, which is weird. David Goyer wrote and directed the movie.
Additional disclosure: I used to read David Goyer comics, so I was really pulling for this guy. He used to write JSA and some other comics, and word on the street is that his next project might be a big-screen adaptation of The Flash. Which I think would be swell. Except that large chunks of this movie have the feel of a particularly well crafted undergraduate student film. That is not a compliment.
In the interest of even more disclosure, I had read something WAS wrong with Snipes while the movie was being made. I don't remember where I read it, but it seemed to suggest Snipes may have been charged with domestic assault charges during the filming of Blade. So, you know, maybe there are good reasons why Blade seems so, uh... tense. I cannot confirm or deny these rumors, so I do not believe these allegations (note the clever way in which the League avoids yet another charge of libel).
The movie is full of simply dumb inconsistencies.
-The vampires, who burn up in daylight, live and work in a sky scraper which is big and mostly glass. Sure, they COULD be hiding out during the day, but that's like keeping a big ol' jug of chlorine gas in your house and just thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
-Cops are armed with... nothing. So when that chick from 7th Heaven appears in the movie armed only with a bow, no biggie. She doesn't need to worry about being riddled with bullets while selecting an arrow and taking aim.
-People escape from a half-dozen police cars by... driving away in a late-80's model SUV down a normal city street.
-Our lady-hero gets a stern reprimand from Blade because she isn't prepared (ie - isn't wearing armor vs. the vampires...) and she STILL goes into t he final battle in a really cute belly shirt she found at the GAP.
-She is, however, armed with a sort of laser hack saw which is reportedly "half as hot as the sun", but which folds up comfortably onto your belt without scalding you, and which needs a power supply no bigger than a pack of gum. And the thing doesn't melt your eyes out of their sockets when you kick it on (forget needing a welders mask).
Parker Posey, who I really, really do like, plays exactly the same role she played in Josie and the Pussy Cats (a movie which I secretly love but try not to admit to enjoying). The director manages to make Ms. Posey look awkward and stilted from the very first shot of the movie (in which the vampires, for no good reason, unearth Dracula in the middle of the day in the middle of the Sumerian desert... nice stealth mission, guys). I think that's hard to do. They also seem to put her in some pretty funky hairstyles which do less than flatter Ms. Posey.
Jessica Biel seems both out of her league and element in this film. And someone should have pointed out to her character that listening to MP3's with ear-buds while people are trying to kill you is sort of like intentionally closing your eyes while someone is trying to kill you. It doesn't make you tough. It makes you silly.
Ryan Reynolds will be the reason people like this movie. He's great. Seriously. He's really funny and fits well with the modern action film as a wise-cracking tough-guy. In the SPider-Man comics, Spidey is always talking trash while he's picking fights, and the writers of Spidey 3 would do well to watch Reynolds performance here to see how it's done.
The rest of the cast are pretty much fill-in-the-blank slots. Sure, there's a big, tough bruiser vampire (played by the guy who was Sabretooth in X-Men), but not a whole lot else to take a shine to. One actor plays a blind geneticist, and I'll say she does a lot with a small role. But it's not much to save the movie.
Oh, and the Zoe character gets to riff off of Newt from Aliens. Bleah. And she completely disappears during the final firefight which she sort of sparks.
Plotwise: Dracula is dug up, ostensibly, to capture/ kill Blade. Dracula is TOLD this. Then, upon returning home, the exact same five vampires who dig up Drac immediately set-up Blade and get him captured by the cops. However, instead of just putting a bullet in Blade and going off for blood-slushies, they play with him for a while. No idea why.
Having awoken their God for apparently no reason, Dracula is then supposed to somehow be helping the vampires with some sort of formula, but for what? I'm not sure. I THINK it's to allow vampires to go out in the sunlight (which Dracula can do), but it's never really clear what master plan Parker and Co. are working out. The plan is the sort of hazy mess you usually only see at large, public universities. As they work out the details, Parker and Co. ditch Drac by giving him some clothes nobody in their right mind would wear out except to go "clubbing", a little walking round money and then letting him wander the streets of what is clearly Vancouver.
Never mind the fact the FBI is operating here in Vancouver (we see that big space-needle doo-hickey a dozen times in the film) like it's no big deal. Or that it seems like sort of a let-down to go from being the scariest vampire in the world to having to live in Canada.
Natural resources are wasted.
-Patton Oswalt show up, toss out a few lines and then are tossed away.
-Vampire dogs are introduced and then just dropped (literally).
-Even a relationship between Seventh Heaven refugee-girl and Kris Kristofferson is muddily established and then goes absolutely nowhere.
-Kristofferson backs up all his computer files (to where?) and then blows up the building he's in to, I guess, protect Blade. Never mind that his files, should they have fallen into the hands of the police, might have actually shown the police Blade might not be just some kooky guy with a great car.
Look, this is one of those movies I could go on and on about, and people who liked it could argue, "Hey, League... It's not that kind of movie, quit taking it so seriously".
And, God help me... I am not taking it all that seriously, but this has got to be one of the laziest, sorriest feature films I've seen this year (including AVP). The Blade series, which was sort of a one-trick pony to begin with, maybe never should have gotten beyond the first film. But the second one was okay, if not a great improvement. One would have hoped the cast and crew connected with this flick would have done a better job.
I assume this is it for ol' Blade. I'm kind of hoping the Blade movies have now fulfilled America's obsession with rich club kids as bloodsuckers and will move on to some new idea. The idea was great when it was fresh, but like all sci-fi fantasy ideas, its being done to death (see Underworld or Dracula 2000).
For whatever reason I got it in my head to go see Blade Trinity. Full disclosure: I saw Blade and Blade 2 on opening nights and just enjoyed the hell out of them. Blade Trinity? Not so much.
From the opening scene of the movie, something just feels... off. Something is wrong. I don't mean in a good tension building way. I mean, the editing seems sloppy, the scenes don't really make sense. Special editing techniques seem borrowed and poorly used. Even the audio seemed muddy a few times (but that's also Snipes playing a character who never unclenches his jaw long enough to speak). Camera shots are okay, but not great. Dialogue is covered, but there are some scenes that just feel as if the director has no idea where to put the camera or what the intention of the scene is, which is weird. David Goyer wrote and directed the movie.
Additional disclosure: I used to read David Goyer comics, so I was really pulling for this guy. He used to write JSA and some other comics, and word on the street is that his next project might be a big-screen adaptation of The Flash. Which I think would be swell. Except that large chunks of this movie have the feel of a particularly well crafted undergraduate student film. That is not a compliment.
In the interest of even more disclosure, I had read something WAS wrong with Snipes while the movie was being made. I don't remember where I read it, but it seemed to suggest Snipes may have been charged with domestic assault charges during the filming of Blade. So, you know, maybe there are good reasons why Blade seems so, uh... tense. I cannot confirm or deny these rumors, so I do not believe these allegations (note the clever way in which the League avoids yet another charge of libel).
The movie is full of simply dumb inconsistencies.
-The vampires, who burn up in daylight, live and work in a sky scraper which is big and mostly glass. Sure, they COULD be hiding out during the day, but that's like keeping a big ol' jug of chlorine gas in your house and just thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
-Cops are armed with... nothing. So when that chick from 7th Heaven appears in the movie armed only with a bow, no biggie. She doesn't need to worry about being riddled with bullets while selecting an arrow and taking aim.
-People escape from a half-dozen police cars by... driving away in a late-80's model SUV down a normal city street.
-Our lady-hero gets a stern reprimand from Blade because she isn't prepared (ie - isn't wearing armor vs. the vampires...) and she STILL goes into t he final battle in a really cute belly shirt she found at the GAP.
-She is, however, armed with a sort of laser hack saw which is reportedly "half as hot as the sun", but which folds up comfortably onto your belt without scalding you, and which needs a power supply no bigger than a pack of gum. And the thing doesn't melt your eyes out of their sockets when you kick it on (forget needing a welders mask).
Parker Posey, who I really, really do like, plays exactly the same role she played in Josie and the Pussy Cats (a movie which I secretly love but try not to admit to enjoying). The director manages to make Ms. Posey look awkward and stilted from the very first shot of the movie (in which the vampires, for no good reason, unearth Dracula in the middle of the day in the middle of the Sumerian desert... nice stealth mission, guys). I think that's hard to do. They also seem to put her in some pretty funky hairstyles which do less than flatter Ms. Posey.
Jessica Biel seems both out of her league and element in this film. And someone should have pointed out to her character that listening to MP3's with ear-buds while people are trying to kill you is sort of like intentionally closing your eyes while someone is trying to kill you. It doesn't make you tough. It makes you silly.
Ryan Reynolds will be the reason people like this movie. He's great. Seriously. He's really funny and fits well with the modern action film as a wise-cracking tough-guy. In the SPider-Man comics, Spidey is always talking trash while he's picking fights, and the writers of Spidey 3 would do well to watch Reynolds performance here to see how it's done.
The rest of the cast are pretty much fill-in-the-blank slots. Sure, there's a big, tough bruiser vampire (played by the guy who was Sabretooth in X-Men), but not a whole lot else to take a shine to. One actor plays a blind geneticist, and I'll say she does a lot with a small role. But it's not much to save the movie.
Oh, and the Zoe character gets to riff off of Newt from Aliens. Bleah. And she completely disappears during the final firefight which she sort of sparks.
Plotwise: Dracula is dug up, ostensibly, to capture/ kill Blade. Dracula is TOLD this. Then, upon returning home, the exact same five vampires who dig up Drac immediately set-up Blade and get him captured by the cops. However, instead of just putting a bullet in Blade and going off for blood-slushies, they play with him for a while. No idea why.
Having awoken their God for apparently no reason, Dracula is then supposed to somehow be helping the vampires with some sort of formula, but for what? I'm not sure. I THINK it's to allow vampires to go out in the sunlight (which Dracula can do), but it's never really clear what master plan Parker and Co. are working out. The plan is the sort of hazy mess you usually only see at large, public universities. As they work out the details, Parker and Co. ditch Drac by giving him some clothes nobody in their right mind would wear out except to go "clubbing", a little walking round money and then letting him wander the streets of what is clearly Vancouver.
Never mind the fact the FBI is operating here in Vancouver (we see that big space-needle doo-hickey a dozen times in the film) like it's no big deal. Or that it seems like sort of a let-down to go from being the scariest vampire in the world to having to live in Canada.
Natural resources are wasted.
-Patton Oswalt show up, toss out a few lines and then are tossed away.
-Vampire dogs are introduced and then just dropped (literally).
-Even a relationship between Seventh Heaven refugee-girl and Kris Kristofferson is muddily established and then goes absolutely nowhere.
-Kristofferson backs up all his computer files (to where?) and then blows up the building he's in to, I guess, protect Blade. Never mind that his files, should they have fallen into the hands of the police, might have actually shown the police Blade might not be just some kooky guy with a great car.
Look, this is one of those movies I could go on and on about, and people who liked it could argue, "Hey, League... It's not that kind of movie, quit taking it so seriously".
And, God help me... I am not taking it all that seriously, but this has got to be one of the laziest, sorriest feature films I've seen this year (including AVP). The Blade series, which was sort of a one-trick pony to begin with, maybe never should have gotten beyond the first film. But the second one was okay, if not a great improvement. One would have hoped the cast and crew connected with this flick would have done a better job.
I assume this is it for ol' Blade. I'm kind of hoping the Blade movies have now fulfilled America's obsession with rich club kids as bloodsuckers and will move on to some new idea. The idea was great when it was fresh, but like all sci-fi fantasy ideas, its being done to death (see Underworld or Dracula 2000).
Friday, December 10, 2004
Mrs. League here. I'd like to create a new column here at the League called:
THAT AIN'T RIGHT
I regularly read cnn.com, which generally contains a nice, if somewhat guarded, overview of the world today. There is a section on the main page of this site which features a Video of the Day. I've been noticing in the past week or so video titles such as "Florida park having trouble getting crocodiles to mate" and "Woman gets hand caught in bus door; subsequently run over". Now, I'm just speaking for myself, but it seems like those are two news items not screaming for video coverage. Just my two cents...
THAT AIN'T RIGHT
I regularly read cnn.com, which generally contains a nice, if somewhat guarded, overview of the world today. There is a section on the main page of this site which features a Video of the Day. I've been noticing in the past week or so video titles such as "Florida park having trouble getting crocodiles to mate" and "Woman gets hand caught in bus door; subsequently run over". Now, I'm just speaking for myself, but it seems like those are two news items not screaming for video coverage. Just my two cents...
Well, that went poorly...
Yesterday was my final presentation for my ostensibly "online" course I am taking in pursuit of my Masters. Honestly, I didn't work all that hard on the presentation itself as I am much more focused on the paper which the presentation was going over. I'm about 80% done with the paper, and have outlined it to completion, so I felt fairly confident in my talking points.
I don't like Power Point as a resource for presentations. People spend too much time worrying about which trippy background to use, how to make cool sounds and flashy animations whiz in and out of the frame. I pretty much like to use a white background and black, arial text. Totally boring, but I guarantee you, I spend 1/2 the time of some people on my presentation prep, and the audience doesn't care.
Seriously, nobody cares. I hate to be the one to tell you, but it's true.
Anyhoo, apparently presenting on "Considerations for Implementing Distance Learning Programs in Institutions of Higher Education" is not as sexy a topic as I had originally believed. I announced that I do not like giving presentations, and would feel more comfortable having a conversation using my PPT's as a springboard. Well, that didn't work. The blank stares I received as I proceeded weren't just the usual "hey, you're not making any f**king sense" stares I usually get when I present. Rather, these people were actively NOT listening to me. Doodling on notepads, playing on computers, checking their voicemail... luckily my instructor was nodding emphatically and smiling the entire time as if encouraging the syrupy smelling kid in the class as he brings his macaroni art to the front of the room for Show & Tell.
Of course as I concluded and asked for questions, nobody raised their hands to ask any questions and everyone looked down at their shoes or at their desks.
"Oooookay..." I nodded.
My teacher tried to help out by asking a question, but it didn't really go anywhere. Someone sort of asked a question which didn't really relate to anything I'd just said. And at that point I was trying to figure out if it was possible everyone in the class just didn't care, didn't like my presentation, or didn't understand a word I said. Or if it didn't matter. And there's no graceful exit in a classroom.
Anyway, that's why I've been busy.
Yesterday was my final presentation for my ostensibly "online" course I am taking in pursuit of my Masters. Honestly, I didn't work all that hard on the presentation itself as I am much more focused on the paper which the presentation was going over. I'm about 80% done with the paper, and have outlined it to completion, so I felt fairly confident in my talking points.
I don't like Power Point as a resource for presentations. People spend too much time worrying about which trippy background to use, how to make cool sounds and flashy animations whiz in and out of the frame. I pretty much like to use a white background and black, arial text. Totally boring, but I guarantee you, I spend 1/2 the time of some people on my presentation prep, and the audience doesn't care.
Seriously, nobody cares. I hate to be the one to tell you, but it's true.
Anyhoo, apparently presenting on "Considerations for Implementing Distance Learning Programs in Institutions of Higher Education" is not as sexy a topic as I had originally believed. I announced that I do not like giving presentations, and would feel more comfortable having a conversation using my PPT's as a springboard. Well, that didn't work. The blank stares I received as I proceeded weren't just the usual "hey, you're not making any f**king sense" stares I usually get when I present. Rather, these people were actively NOT listening to me. Doodling on notepads, playing on computers, checking their voicemail... luckily my instructor was nodding emphatically and smiling the entire time as if encouraging the syrupy smelling kid in the class as he brings his macaroni art to the front of the room for Show & Tell.
Of course as I concluded and asked for questions, nobody raised their hands to ask any questions and everyone looked down at their shoes or at their desks.
"Oooookay..." I nodded.
My teacher tried to help out by asking a question, but it didn't really go anywhere. Someone sort of asked a question which didn't really relate to anything I'd just said. And at that point I was trying to figure out if it was possible everyone in the class just didn't care, didn't like my presentation, or didn't understand a word I said. Or if it didn't matter. And there's no graceful exit in a classroom.
Anyway, that's why I've been busy.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Mrs. League here. Last year 'round Christmastime, the League and I were camped on the couch taking in the yearly showing of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Leaguers, this is my absolute favorite Christmas special. I Loved Rudolph as a wee lass and would spend an alarmingly abnormal amount of time drawing pictures of the nasally-challenged Christmas deer. But last year's viewing sparked a new discussion at League HQ starting with the consensus that "Hey, this show is sending out some questionable, non-Christmassy messages."
Someone agrees with us: 16 Serious Questions about "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"
Here's just a sample:
"1) Why is Santa such a complete bastard?"
".......this guy is absolutely ITCHING to cancel Christmas. Hey Santa. It's not your call. Christmas is the day Jesus was born. God will let you know if Christmas is cancelled. Until then, get in the damn sleigh."
Good stuff.
Someone agrees with us: 16 Serious Questions about "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"
Here's just a sample:
"1) Why is Santa such a complete bastard?"
".......this guy is absolutely ITCHING to cancel Christmas. Hey Santa. It's not your call. Christmas is the day Jesus was born. God will let you know if Christmas is cancelled. Until then, get in the damn sleigh."
Good stuff.
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