Monday, May 07, 2007

Politicians on MySpace

I was never interested in the social networking websites, and I find it even funnier when major celebrities or corporations even have pages on websites like Myspace.com. Yesterday I saw something even more ridiculous - each candidate for President has a MySpace page. Even more absurd is that when I clicked on the profile for Rudy Giuliani, I was told that "This profile is private. This user must add you as a friend to see his/her profile." Rudy Giuliani's profile is private? Really? Isn't this going against using the MySpace page as a political ad / fund raising tool?

The humor of each of these candidates having a MySpace page is also pretty good, I suspect none of them have ever used MySpace before or even have direct participation in maintaining the pages. I'm surprised they don't link to each other in the "friends" section.

MLB Draft

Hey! The MLB Draft is going to be televised on ESPN2!

Isn't that... the most boring thing you could ever think of?

Let's see -- nobody follows amateur baseball the way they follow amateur football or basketball. The teams are not able to trade draft picks. The draft order is set randomly. Players who are drafted get to report to the A ball affiliates.

Who will be the MLB version of Mel Kiper, Jr?

While this is a good idea to bring attention to the MLB draft, I have the feeling that this will be very very boring. The NFL draft has so much chatter and balderdash to begin with, can you imagine what the 50 round, 30 team MLB draft will be like?

Sunday, May 06, 2007

5/6/07 - Seattle Mariners vs New York Yankees

I forgot to bring my camera to the game today, but it was quite a game!

First off, the fielding of the Mariners was horrible. LF Raul Ibanez lost at least two fly balls in the sun, with them dropping in for hits / scoring plays. They had at least one or two additional fielding muffs such as the catcher dropping a foul pop up and the third baseman throwing away a ground ball.

SP Darrell Rasner was pretty good today, much better than when I saw him last month. I was a little bummed out when I realized Phillip Hughes would have pitched today were it not for the pulled hamstring. It was also too bad I missed Chien-Ming Wang's near perfect game yesterday.

Josh Phelps ran into the catcher unnecessarily at one point in the game and got hit by a pitch his next time up. Both teams were warned. Later in the game, reliever Scott Proctor threw an inside pitch to a Seattle player who went crazy, pointing and yelling. There was some back and forth but no fight. It was pretty ridiculous, the pitch didn't even hit the Seattle player! Even more ridiculous was the sight of both bullpens emptying. The players came out and there was nothing going on. It was kind of funny I suppose, but the last thing the Yankees need is another pulled hamstring because of jogging out from the bullpen.

Finally in the seventh inning stretch, the biggest news of the day. After they played "God Bless America," they began to play "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as usual. Suddenly after the first line of the song, public address announcer Bob Sheppard says, "Please direct your attention to the owner's box and the jumbotron screen for an important announcement." At this point, I thought something awful had happened outside. Instead, it's Roger Clemens from the owners box, and he said something like, "...got me out of Texas" and "see you guys real soon." It doesn't really matter, we all knew it meant he was coming back. Totally ridiculous, theatrical and awesome! I have tickets to a game in June and am secretly hoping he will be back that day.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Extended Edition DVD's

I've been noticing that a number of the comic book movies that have come out lately have had "new" releases on DVD that act as "extended" versions. I think the trend started with "X-Men 1.5" which incorporated deleted scenes into the original cut. Most recently there was also a "Spider-Man 2.1" cut released as well. I can understand that these films are popular and that the movie studios are trying to maximize their money from the DVD's, but films like Daredevil, Ghost Rider and even Fantastic Four are also having extended cuts produced. This is pretty frustrating, as these movies were not even that good, and it seems like the movie studios are specifically targeting the comic fans for "double dipping" with DVD's. I wish that the movie studios could just produce a high quality, DVD that contained a ton of features definitively, but I think considering how many times the Star Wars saga has been re-released, I will just have to dream.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Spider-Man 3 Premiere - Spoiler Free Review

I was lucky enough to get the chance to see Spider-Man 3 tonight as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Here is a spoiler free review.

First off, the setting: The film debuted at the UA Kaufman Theater in Astoria Queens. It was closer to get to from Manhattan than I had expected (just off the R train). They had 14 screens with each showing Spider-Man. It was a mob scene around the theater. We entered through a back entrance, so we didn't get to see the red carpet entrances of the stars. I was in theater 1, but did not see any stars or celebrities in the theater.

On to the movie: To start, I thought this movie was a pretty good film. Anyone who goes to see it should have fun for the most part. If you were a fan of either of the first two films, you should enjoy this one. The performances by all the leads were very good, including Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Topher Grace and Thomas Hayden Church. At times the story suffers from "too-many-characters-itis" that makes the storytelling choppy, but as in the first two movies, they use Peter's personal dilemmas to be the outline for the rest of the Spider-Man action sequences. There are some funny lines, and I think some of the humor is a little more over the top than in the first two movies. The story has heart, however, and the action, while too heavy in computer graphics at times, is pretty good for the most part.

For a third outing in a franchise, Spider-Man 3 is a strong movie. It's certainly better than X-Men 3 was, and will probably be well received at the box office and by critics. There is no doubt that a Spider-Man 4 will follow, the only question will be who will be behind them.