Doncha Wish (that your favorite TV shows stayed on air?)

I find it horribly ironic that after saying this, Veronica Mars was replaced this past week by show "Doncha Wish You Were A Pussycat Doll," or whatever the hell they decided to name that horrible show.

Not only that, but now that Studio 60 has gone off for who knows how long, it seems that VM is also taking a break, as is Heroes. I guess that means that March is going to have me either watching a lot of movies, reading a lot of books, or playing a lot of video games.

A moment of silence

Manny as he was is officially gone. He got a brain transplant, and now is back good as new! Of course, this means that I have to try and remember where all my install cds are for all the programs I had on Manny, but that's okay.

So, my new computer needs a new name. What should it be? Any suggestions?

Mustn't get excited...

I keep telling myself that I will be disappointed in the end and that I can't get my hopes up, but I really can't help it.

It's official. There's a date and everything.

For a little while

My brother and I came home yesterday from the driving range and put our clubs in the garage. We saw water had come all the way to the door of the garage, but figured that it was just from the rain. See, the back door into the garage leaks when it rains and if we forget to put a towel there to stop it, that side of the garage becomes a swamp. Luckily, I was intrigued by how much water was in the garage and actually looked at the back door. It was completely dry.

We figured out that it was actually the water heater which had sprung a leak. So no hot water until that's fixed (and knowing my family, who knows how long that will take). Luckily, coinciding with this breakage, I've started house sitting for the next few weeks, so I, at least, will have a hot shower. Score!

Oh, and my little team got its first win yesterday (and only our second game). Go us. Unfortunately, we'll be playing basically the equivalent of a JV team tomorrow since Frontier only has two teams (JV and FS). So I don't think it will be a pleasant game for us. It is a chance to see what my team is made of, though, which'll be good.

Post Oscar Season

So, the Oscars happened last night, and we had a nice little shindig to celebrate. Like most shindigs, we had to have a contest, so we printed off Oscar ballets to see who could get the most right. There were, of course, prizes, with the first prize being a copy of The French Connection. For those of you wondering about a strange choice, it's really not all that strange. For one, it won best picture, and for another it's on a number of AFI lists, and rarely comes on TV for Chris and me to watch.

Anyways, the winners were Jessica and Chris (who tied) with 14 each, I think. I got 8 right, but most of that was because I generally picked what I thought should win, instead of what I thought would win. There were a couple disappointments, and a couple exciting upsets, and I'll relate my favorites here.

Where the Academy got it wrong
Best Visual Effects: In my opinion, Superman Returns should have won, instead of Pirates. I can see why Pirates won (the effects were more varied - lots of sea creatures and effects as opposed to mostly flying), but the effects in Superman were truly amazing and perfectly seamless. Pirates was too flashy for my taste to win this, but I can't be too upset, I guess.

Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth won (which I can't get too upset about), but I think Children of Men should have. Don't get me wrong, the cinematography in Labyrinth is good, I just thought Children was superb. Then again, I'm a sucker for long, cut-less, drawn out shots. But that's not all Children had. While it didn't cut very often, the camera movement and angles really let you feel and see what the characters were feeling and seeing.

Best Foreign Film: Granted, I've only seen one film in this category, but I can't imagine the other films being better. While I'm glad that Pan's Labyrinth won some other awards, I think Jessica was right in that they were given to it to make up for the lack of this Oscar.

Best Picture: I really don't think that The Departed deserved to win in this category. I didn't see all of the films up for the award, but I feel like the movie that wins this should somehow be important, and I didn't feel that The Departed was all that important. Honestly, I expected The Queen to win, and I'll give my opinion as to how right that was once I've seen it. I still think the Academy was wrong, but I'll try to withhold judgment until I've seen more of the films on the list.

Awesome Upsets
Best Supporting Actor: I'm very glad that Alan Arkin won this award. He truly deserved it, but I didn't expect him to get it. A very nice surprise for Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Original Screenplay: Another deserving win for Little Miss that I didn't expect. But I'm happy about it.

Best Supporting Actress: While this wasn't really an upset, I think it's awesome that Jennifer Hudson who on her first time out. And after America didn't vote for her. Which really just shows how much the audience of American Idol knows, really.

And Finally
Best Directing: I thought this might be the year for Scorsese, and I was right. Part of this probably had to do with the fact that his cast was amazing and he directed them perfectly. Part had to do with the fact that he was doing what he does best - a violent mob film. But most of it had to do with the fact that he really is a great director.

Honorary Oscar: How Ennio Morricone didn't win an Oscar for Best Score in 1987 for The Mission I'll never know. But at least he got one for his whole body of work, which is sorely deserved.

Oscar Season

So, it's that time of year again. Time for me to put out my list of movies from this past year. Now, it's true that I really haven't seen all that many movies this year (well, movies that were released this year, at least), so you'll have to keep that in mind as you look at this list.

1. Little Miss Sunshine
Reason for ranking: Everything about this movie works so well. The soundtrack is great and fits perfectly. The cast is amazing and hilarious. And it makes fun of beauty pageants. What more could you look for in a movie.

2. The Departed
Reason for ranking: While mob movies usually aren't my cup of tea (nothing against them, they just all pale compared to The Godfather), this one was good. I was constantly wondering when the moles were going to be discovered, and who wasn't going to die (because there are more that die than don't).

3. Children of Men
Reason for ranking: I'd like to put this one at the number 2 spot, but feel like it could have been better. Granted, the cinematography was amazing and I'm a sucker for movies with long, continuous shots, but some of the plot was lacking, and I felt like it was a little too preachy.

4. Pan's Labyrinth
Reason for ranking: This was a very visual movie, and I absolutely loved it. If this was a list of my favorite movies, it would probably be ranked second, but it's a list of which were the best, in my opinion. There were gaps in the story that I think could have been plugged, and it jumped a little bit, but I still loved it.

5. Brick
Reason for ranking: I love film noir, and this new thing - teen noir - isn't much different. This film put new life into a genre that has sadly seemed to lose it's place in our current society. The cast of young actors was great, too.

6. A Prarie Home Companion
Reason for ranking: There's just something about ensemble movies when they're done correctly. This movie was short on plot, but made up for it with randomness and great acting.

7. A Scanner Darkly
Reason for ranking: A very difficult movie to follow, and one that deserves a re-watching. There was some amazing voice acting, and the process of animation that they use is pretty cool. I don't want to say too much about it because most people haven't seen it, still.

Worst movie: Eragon
While the first book wasn't the best thing out there, it was far superior to the movie that came out. It was so bad, I'm not sure if I'll see the second one (if they make it). The only good thing about the movie was that Saphira looked wicked cool. Before the movie came out, I said that the entire movie would rest on how much effort they put into making the dragon look awesome, but it seems that's the only effort they put into the movie. Perhaps next time more script and character development, and the same amount of special effects. It wasn't the actors' fault, it was the writers and developers.

Loss of Innocence

There was an intervention on Friday night. A group of friends sat me down and decided that it was time I drank beer from a can. See, all of the beer that I've ever had in my life has either been on tap or in a bottle, and Chris finally decided that it was time. Actually, he decided this while he was at Von's and looking for something to drink. He decided that he hadn't had Bodington's in a while (which is an English beer somewhat like Guiness), which only comes on tap and in cans (it has a cool little CO2 capsule to make it way cooler than regular canned beer).

In completely unrelated news, I really like the new Window's Vista commercial, but hate what it's advertising. You know, the one where they show all sorts of cool stuff with people saying, "Wow," and then ruin it by saying that Vista is going to be like that. I'm sorry that I have no faith in Microsoft anymore, they've just failed so often that there's no room for hope in my heart anymore when it comes to Microsoft.

And in more unrelated news, there was once a pool that existed, for which there is no longer a reason. Congratulations Natalie.

Celebrate good times (come on!)

So, after months of being lazy, I finally took in Manny (my computer) to get fixed. And after thinking I would get him back in a day (like they said), I've finally gotten him back after a week. But the awesome thing is that he's back, and I now have my computer back in my room, so I can waste who knows how many hours updating things that really don't need to be updated and the other useless things I do on the computer.

So, be on the look-our for more posts more often.

Too much of a good thing?

So my leg seems to have finally recovered from whatever it is I did to it. Occasionally I will still feel a twinge, but it doesn't hurt while I'm running, which is what's important. And it healed just in time for me to hurt something else, too, although hopefully not. I played again as an alumnus today at BHS, and had a good time. It was nice to not hurt every single step I took. And this weekend we have an adult tournament here in Bakersfield, which should be fun. We can usually get people out for the Bakersfield tournament that can't usually play, so it's a nice change of pace for the team, and a good warm-up for the Vegas tournament in April. I just have to hope that I don't hurt something else.

Continuing my recent rash of watching movies (if you can believe it, I didn't watch many for November, December, and the first part of January), last night Rachel and I watched Little Miss Sunshine, which was as good the second time as the first. I also watched Philadelphia since it's on some AFI lists and I've never watched it before. It was exactly what I expected, and I had to keep reminding myself of when it was made, and what a huge movie it must have been back then. Of course, it got me to philosophizing about ethics and the law, so really, I spent most of the movie only sort of watching it and philosophizing. It was also very interesting to see how much the world has changed in only about 13 years.

Super Lame

As I hope everybody out there knows, this past weekend was the Superbowl. Now, I'm really not that into professional football (at least the American kind), but I will sit down and watch most of the Superbowl, because they're generally alright games, as far as they can be. It's also a great excuse to go over to somebody's house and eat a lot of junk.

So a small gathering of us went to the Burzlaff's house to enjoy the game, and continued the tradition we started last year of having a pool. This is the pool where everybody buys squares in a grid, and you look at the last digit of each teams score at the end of each quarter, and whoever has the square gets some money.

I generally never expect to win something when it comes to pure luck. In fact, I hate games that rely heavily on luck, because I tend to trust my own abilities more than luck. And this was proven to me once again on Sunday. With two seconds left in the half, the Colts (I think) had to make a less than 30 yard field goal for me to get some money. Now, they're kicker is one of the best and most consistent in the league, so I figured this might be my chance to trust somebody else and rely on luck. But of course, I should know better, and he missed the freaking field goal. Wide left. I was so angry, especially because it meant that Paul won on the same square for two quarters. I think that made me angrier than actually losing.

Working (or not) for the weekend

So I've been thinking about changing the look of my blog, but honestly, there aren't any of the other default skins that I like, and I'm much to lazy to both figure out what I want on my own and then implement it, so my blog will stay the way it is for the foreseeable future. Maybe when I finally get around to getting Manny fixed I'll celebrate by updating it, but probably not.

This past weekend was a heap o' fun. Friday night Rachel and I went out to play darts and visit some bars with my friends Brandon and Matt, and had a great time. Then, Saturday evening, we went (with the same people plus Brandon's sister) to play some mini-golf and then spend the evening at my house eating dinner and playing Settlers. All around fun was had by all, I think.

Somehow I hurt my leg in the last soccer tournament, and it's still hurting me three weeks later, which is very strange. What's also strange is that I have absolutely no idea how it happened. Usually this only happens with minor hurts like bruises and cuts, not with injuries that have me hurting almost a month later, so it's very strange. What's also bad is that it has had me sitting out of practicing with BHS when my team plays on Monday, and also passing on some reffing assignments. I'm almost tempted to go see a doctor, but unfortunately, I don't have insurance, and don't know any in Bakersfield who I can just stop in on. Maybe I'll try to get a hold of one of my teammates who works in a physical therapists' office. She's usually the person anybody on my team turns to when they are hurt.

Electric

Every single time I get out of my car after any time in it, I get a nice little shock. It was funny when it was happening to Robert in Santa Barbara, but enough is enough. It does, however, make me often think about that Mythbusters episode. You know the one I'm talking about.

Just too... pink.

Rachel knows what that's a quote from, and it was doubly applicable today. Not only did we have pink lemonade at the baby shower today, but everything that was there was pink. It was horrible. Pink bags, pink clothes, pink candles - everything was pink. Even the bag my mom gave me for the books Jessica and I gave Beet was pink. But I guess you have to expect that when it's going to be a little girl. I just hope my cousin has a boy so that I don't have to put up with all that pink again in a long, long while.

Oh, and the quote is from The Sound of Music, which is now triply applicable because we watched The Americanization of Emily earlier this week. This was the week of movies because Chris and I watched Cool Hand Luke, The Americanization of Emily, and Reefer Madness all this week. My favorite of the three was definitely Reefer Madness. If you haven't seen it, you should. It's a musical and completely off the wall. One of the funniest movies I have seen in a really long time. And it has some amazing actors in it - Kristen Bell, Alan Cummings, and Steven Webber to name a few. In many ways it reminded me a lot of Dogma, although not as gross.

And now I have to read because for some stupid reason I decided to reread all the Wheel of Time books from the beginning, and now I can't put them down, because I want to get to the most recent books. Although I am seeing a ton of little things that I've completely forgotten about. As much as I want to hate Jordan for taking so much freaking time with the plot, I have to admit that he is a master at making everything little thing important and connected in his story. I can't imagine what his outline must have looked like before he even started writing The Eye of the World, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had everything planned out even then. He almost surpasses Tolkien when it comes to that. Almost, but not quite.

Carpe Vino

So I got back from SB yesterday, and let me tell you, it was an awesome trip. Two of the best things in the world, soccer and wine, combined with one of my favorite places in the world, Santa Barbara, makes a trip that can't be bad. Let me show you mathematically why it was such a good trip.

6 wineries - Kylara, Fess Parker, Epiphany, Consilience, Koeler, and Gainey
6 bought bottles of wine
4 soccer games
5 new wine glasses
3 nights of sitting in front of a fireplace
6 different types of Tequila
3 different types of Scotch
1 Arroyo Hondo (my grandparents' former ranch)
2 rope swings
and 1 cat named Eliza Doolittle


It all adds up to one fun weekend.

...so much better on holiday

I got reprimanded last night for not having a new post in a while, so I promised I would get one up today. I don't know how long it will be since I have to head off to soccer very soon (BHS vs. Liberty - should I really be put on that game?), but I'll try to get some stuff in.

Last week I apparently disappeared from the face of the planet (according to Rachel), but in reality, I was in Mammoth, getting my snowboard on. It was fun. Tuesday and Wednesday there wasn't much snow, but we still managed to get some good riding in. Wednesday it was supposed to storm and leave us with 2 nice inches of fresh powder, but instead, it dumped over 4, which was a very nice surprise, if it did make for some harsh conditions. But some of us braved the cold and snow and managed to make a good day of it. Friday was awesome, if a little crowded.

Of course, once I got back, I basically stayed in bed for two and a half days, very sick. But I'm just glad that it didn't hit in full force when I was up in the snow, because that would have been lame.

It's a good thing that high school soccer goes on during the winter, because it is by far my most expensive season. First of all, there's Christmas, and spending money then goes without saying. But it also tends to be when I do the most shopping for myself (I can't go to the stores for other people without seeing at least a few things that I need), when I see the most movies (except for the rare instance when good movies come out in the summer), and take the most trips. Plus, snowboarding is expensive. Luckily soccer pays well.

My dad just started working at West High as a math teacher, and now apparently the AD emailed him because they are in need of softball coaches. He said he probably won't have time, but said that his daughter might be interested. We'll see if I am. I've always known that I would enjoy coaching softball more than I did playing it, but I don't know if I would enjoy doing that at West, or at the JV or Frosh Soft level. I guess I'll have to think about it. Plus, it would take a lot of time. And I don't know if I like softball enough. Soccer goes without saying, but not softball. Plus, bad softball is way worse than bad soccer. Way.

Speaking of soccer, I'm headed off to SB again this weekend for a little soccer tournament. I'm definitely looking forward to it, and especially to the Monday afterwards, when I'm (hopefully) going to go wine tasting. I'm hoping the wineries will be open since it will be a holiday, and if not, maybe I'll just have to break in and find some wine myself.

New news

So, apparently blogger has gotten it's newest version out of Beta, so if you belong to the quote page, you're going to have to change your account or something, since I switched it over. It's not difficult, and it looks like there might be more options in this new version. That's the first piece of news.

Another is that my dad is going to be a math teacher starting next semester at West High. He decided to go to teacher school starting last summer, which I think was a good decision on his part, since he wasn't enjoying his job very much at the time. So this is yet another teacher in my family, but at least it's not elementary.

I think I already mentioned it, but it's worth mentioning again. We're having frisbee on Saturday at noon. Call me if you need directions to Liberty Park.

And the last piece of news it that the title for the last Harry Potter book has finally been released. I'll let you find it if you'd like, so I'm not going to put it here. Apparently you can play hangman or something like that at her site to try to figure it out - Robert can send you the link if you'd like.

And that's it for the news from Becca.

KOL and frozen cheesecake

So lately Rob and I have been playing a browser based game called Kingdom of Loathing. It's pretty entertaining, and you can only play for a fixed amount of time each day (you have a fixed number of adventurers that you can do), which means I can't get sucked into it like I can Gemstone. It's completely off the wall, and makes fun of everything that it possibly can. Which, in my opinion, makes it great.

You should check it out if you find yourself bored at work. You don't have to install anything, and all you need is access to the internet. Check it out at www.kingdomofloathing.com

In other news, if you're going to be in town on Saturday, we're playing frisbee at noon at Liberty Park, which is across the street from Liberty High School. Just go down Stockdale until you get to Jewetta (past the new Riverwalk Park), turn right, and stay on that street until you see the park on the right.

And now I have to go find a cheesecake popsicle that my aunt sent us for Christmas. And play with some dry ice that it came with. Today is going to be fun.

A miracle

Two days in a row with a post! Even I don't believe it.

But now, sadly, I can't remember what I wanted to post about. Oh.

A couple weeks ago I was a sub for three days in my former seventh grade science teacher's classroom. I was painfully reminded about the only thing I really hated from Jr. High - dumb people in my class. Now, I loved math and English because they were tiered by ability, but for some reason, the state of California hasn't seen any reason to make history or science broken down by ability. I couldn't ever see a reason for this (and still can't, honestly). Most people didn't have a good Jr. High experience due to whatever, I really don't know. I loved Jr. High, expect for history and science. And yes, I'm a jerk and elitist or whatever, but really, there's no reason to put students of widely different abilities in the same class. Neither is going to get the help they need; one is going to be bored out of her mind, and the other is going to (probably) be lost.

So, there's my second post in two days.

Yes, I do still exist

To those of you who need a daily infusion of blogs to entertain them at work, I'm sorry for not updating. I have a somewhat legitimate excuse, though, in that my computer was broken. For that matter, it's still broken, but I am on the laptop in the front room. Hopefully my computer will be fixed soon, because I'm running out of books to read.

I've thought of a great many things to post in the time since my last one (way back near Thanksgiving? Sheesh!), so not it's time to see if I can remember any of them.

I did write up a post of the things I hate about Thanksgiving, but I really don't want to find it right now, so we'll see if I can give you the Reader's Digest version. I don't think that we as a country need to turn our slothfulness into a national holiday. The reason behind Thanksgiving is a good one, but what it has turned into is a holiday celebrating all the laziness of American by eating a huge dinner and following it up with doing nothing for four days except watching football and eating leftovers. Of course, I try to do the opposite, cramming in a football and frisbee game, but still, that's not what most people are doing. Also, I don't like getting beat over the head with the idea that I need to be thankful. Yes, I'm very aware of how nice my life is, and I'm thankful for it. But I don't want to have to talk about all the things I'm thankful for. Nor do I want to go around the table and list two things I'm thankful for, which has somehow become a Jennings family tradition for Thanksgiving. Thanks, but no.

Okay, got that out of my system.

So high school soccer is in full swing, and I'm loving it. It's one of the major reasons that winter is my favorite season (along with snowboarding, of course). We just had the Garces Tournament, where I was paid $45 dollars a game for games that consisted of two 30 minutes halves and a 10 minute halftime. Not bad, not bad at all.

I am reminded of the differences between volleyball and soccer as I'm bored while reffing a JV game. I told Chris that the differences are much like the differences between Plato and Aristotle. So here I shall explain (skip if you'd like).

In volleyball, every point matters. The game can be broken down into individual elements of points. Generally, the first team to 25 points wins the game, so each individual point is very important. You have to look at each serve, each hit, each spike, to see how the game is going to end up. You see the overall game through those individual points.

In soccer, you can't look at individual kicks and passes to see the whole game. There is so much of the game that would be lost if you only looked at what the ball does - much of the game is the positioning of players away from the ball. You have to look at plays, runs, attacks, and counter-attacks, to get a sense of how the game is going.

So in volleyball the individual things are very important. Each time a player hits the ball they have the potential to greatly impact the game, and mistakes (even minor ones like a mis-hit) are costly. This is not true in soccer. An individual can make a mistake like a bad pass, and the whole team can recover so there is no real impact on the game. In fact, this is expected. You cannot look at any individual play (or even a smallish group of plays) in soccer and know how the game will end up.

So, now onto the philosophy. Plato and Aristotle talked about universals and particulars. Universals are, well, universal things, or the essence of things, and particulars are individual things that we experience in the world. Like a chair would be a particular and the idea of a chair would be the universal. It's much easier to imagine universals as things like beauty and truth, but they are also things like desk and chair.

So, for Plato, universals are all that's important, and exist on their own. Particulars are reflected instances of the Form that they draw from. It's much more complicated than that, but just keep in mind that universals are important and all that's truly real. For Aristotle, universals are in the particulars, and do not exist outside of the elements that are seen in the particulars. So, how does this relate to volleyball and soccer?

In volleyball, you can look at individual points (particulars) and see the universal (the game or match). How each point plays out will tell you how the game will play out. If one team makes mistakes in hitting or setting the ball while the other team doesn't, you know who's going to lose, because you can see the game in how each particular is played out. Every particular (point, or even so far as hit) matters. This isn't so in soccer. Sure, you can look at lots of touches, passes, shots and figure out if there's a better team, but that is not necessarily going to tell you what the game is going to look like. Every particular doesn't matter, and a coach isn't going to yell at players for making a few mistakes (unless the coach is Leslie O'Conner). Instead, you have to look at overall strategy and knowledge of the game to see who is going to win. In volleyball, you can look at who hits, blocks, spikes, and serves better to know who is going to win. In soccer, it's who understands where and when to run, and how to beat the other team strategically that will tell you who wins, not necessarily who can pass, trap, and shoot better.

So there it is, a very lengthy and useless explanation of why soccer is like Plato and volleyball is like Aristotle. And one of the reasons that I like soccer better than volleyball (there are about a thousand others which I can list if you'd like to know).

Maybe I'll try to post the rest of the things I've thought of tomorrow, but then again, maybe not.

Worthless

I've probably posted about this every year since I've had a blog when this time of year comes around, but it must be said again: Thanksgiving is a worthless holiday. It's my least favorite (meaning stupidest in my opinion) holiday (ranking even behind Valentine's Day if you can imagine that), which ought to tell you something about how I feel towards Thanksgiving.

And it's really much too late to be discussing this now, so I shall continue my rant on why Thanksgiving is stupid tomorrow.