Movie Recommendation: Sunshine

Before tonight, it had been a while since I'd seen a movie that transported me (emotionally speaking) so far from the norm. I think much of the reason I (or anyone) enjoy movies is for their ability to temporarily capture your mind, move it somewhere else, and leave it there for a while. I attained this drug-like effect from the new apocalyptic thriller Sunshine.

One's ability to enjoy this movie is likely directly tied to accepting its rules. You have to swallow the premise that the sun is burning out and that humans have built a ship capable of relighting it. If you can overcome the mental hurdle of that improbable constitution, Sunshine should prove highly enjoyable.

The feeling this movie left me with was one in the same vein I get from imagining a comet heading right to Earth, or learning our solar system will soon consumed by a black hole. These aren't thoughts I've always enjoyed. Not more than a couple of years ago I think they would have scared me. Now I experience borderline euphoria when pondering the fragile and helpless nature of our existence. Sunshine was a great reminder of the meaningless, yet downright ecstatic nature of our consciousness.

Saturday Afternoon Needle

For those of you who played in WSOP events, if you go here, you can probably find proofs of yourself taken by WSOP photographers. Example:



However, if you're like Dave Irish who casually walked in to take his seat at the end of the first level only to go busto in the second level, chances are the photographer missed you. Sorry bud.

Bruce Bochy Has Shit For Brains

Imagine you're a manager of an MLB team. The game is tied in the top of the 13th and your inexperienced left-handed pitcher has put guys on first and third. Now coming to the plate with two outs is right-handed stud Edgar Renteria who is batting an outstanding .335 on the year. Your young lefty pitcher has struggled with his control in the last few pitches, including almost hitting the previous batter in the face. In the bullpen, you have right-handed pitcher Vinnie Chulk who has allowed right-handed batters to plate just 6 runs in 26 innings on the season. What would you do? You'd bring in Vinne Chulk to get your team out of a jam and keep the game tied.

What did Bruce Bochy do tonight? He allowed the young lefty to pitch to Renteria, who, to absolutely no one's surprise, hit a bases clearing double.

Well, that one got screwed up, but we've got another chance to get it right. Now we find ourselves with a man on second and none other than Chipper Jones coming to bat. Do you still leave your young, shaken lefty in to face Chipper? Hell no! Unless you're Bruce Bochy.

Another hit and another run later, and the Giants have a 3-run deficit staring them in the face as they headed to the plate in the last of the 13th, rather than the tied game it would have been if their manager wasn't some dumbshit with more hairs on his upper lip than functioning cells in his brain. MLB managers are incredibly stupid. I guarantee you I could do that job better than 90% of them.

BIG-GI-O!

I kinda just got put in my place. At the Astros game right now. Mike Lamb gets walked to load the bases with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th in a tied game. The fans start going nuts because Craig Biggio, who just today announced this will be his last season after playing in Houston for 19 years, is up to bat. Of course when the PA guy announces his name, everyone stands up and starts going crazy because this whole city loves him. I, however, remained in my seat bitching about how stupid everyone is because he's not that good, and, overall, has been a hinderance to the team this year.

Very first pitch, he jacks a grand-slam to left field. The anti-cynicism gods kinda put me in my place on that one.

Solutions For The Donaghy Situation

Anyone with so much as a pinkie on the pulse of the sporting world has probably heard that NBA referee Tim Donaghy was allegedly fixing games for some powerful people. If the NBA was traded publicly, this news would probably have resulted in a 50%+ plummet. Clearly, Commissioner Stern has a major problem that needs an immediate solution in order to preserve the "integrity of the game" (I hate that phrase btw). Anyway, I'm sure several others have thought of this before, but here's an idea for how to greatly reduce the chance something like this happens again:

The NBA should hire a third-party independent agency to grade referees. Games would be reviewed on tape and each official's performance will be scored through some fairly complex grading system. The results of these grades could certainly be public knowledge (essentially there would be statistics for the players and the referees). Of course, with a quantifying system in place, pay bonuses and other incentives could be given to the officials based on their performance. A minimum performance level could also be put in place and any official who fails to meet these expectations loses their job.

Of course there would be a lot of particulars to work out in order to implement such a system, but I think it'd be a fantastic way to restore the sanctity of the game in a very palpable way. But, if I had to guess, they'll probably handle this intangibly and the league will continue to suffer.

Vick's Dogfighting Scandal

I just read this ABC News article that dives into some of the particulars of dogfighting:

Inside, two severely abused dogs tear each other literally limb from limb in a life-or-death battle...

They are kept chained and locked in crowded cages, far away enough not to kill each other, but close enough to put them in a constant state of agitation...

The conditioning also includes steroid injections, and hours running on a treadmill or tied to the bumper of a moving car...

Since they rarely take the animals to the vet, breeders will staple the dogs wounds themselves, pump them with antibiotics, or leave them in a ditch to die...

The losing dog is often disposed of by electrocution, beating, or drowning...

Young child spectators can grow up insensitive to animal cruelty, enthusiastic about violence, and disrespectful of the law, reported the National Humane Society. Roach said a survey of Chicago middle schoolers showed that 38-40 percent of the third to sixth graders had witnessed a dogfight...

Obviously this is a highly emotional topic, but it's hard to muster even the slightest compassion for anyone who brings harm to defenseless creatures for the purpose of mere entertainment. The list of consequences that would seem too harsh for Vick and his goons is brief. At the very least, hopefully this incident will be sufficient to bring more national attention to the issue.

Obv Fortune Cookie Moment of the Day 07.18.07

Michael's fortune cookie from lunch today:

The Brain Is So Incredible

Last night I had a dream that while in Vegas, I stumbled upon a class reunion of the people I graduated high school with. For whatever reason, I was unaware they were having a reunion and only happened to be there by chance. As the dream progressed, I mingled from cluster to cluster catching up with people I used to know. The thing that really amazed me about this dream was the presence of literally dozens of people who haven't once crossed my awoken mind since the day I graduated. Even more amazing was that these former classmates appeared to me not as the youthful teenagers I knew them by, but rather as slightly heavier, fully developed adults, many with careers, wives, and children.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this dream was that, when recalling those in attendance upon awakening, I realized that none of the "poor" (per my recollection of them from high school) classmates were there. Because poor people can't afford plane tickets to Vegas, obv.

Stem Cells Are Not Holy

Card Player magazine published this article about a poker player who is going to die soon from what is essentially a form of Mad Cow Disease. He is probably the only person in the world with this disease, which doctors suspect he acquired from eating a deer (side note: that's what you get for shooting and eating random-ass wild game).

As the article reports, this man's few remaining days of agonizing pain could probably be reversed with a stem cell transplant. Unfortunately, our President (and most voters) use emotion, not reason, to make their decisions. So now this man, like countless others before him, gets to die a slow, painful death, all while knowing that medical advances capable of curing him have been banned by our government thanks to a belief in hearsay that’s still duping the gullible two-thousand years after its inception.

The irony here is that, odds are, the victim in this situation, a gun-owning hunter, likely cast a vote for his own demise in the last two Presidential elections. It's amazing how much suffering takes place as a direct result of the selfishness and stupidity of those who believe that "paradise" awaits them upon death. The only paradisical reward hanging in the balance of this dilemma is the capablility of our species to prevent others from dying in agony. Wake up to that reality.

Digging This Shit

I'm only about a third of the way through God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, but so far, I'm highly enjoying the read. From chapter six:

Serious work has only just begun on the study of these impressive societies [the Mayans, etc], which grew and flourished when Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha were being revered, but which took no part at all in those arguments and were not included in the calculations of the monotheistic faithful. It is a certainty that these people, too, had their creation myths and their revelations of divine will, for all the good it did them. But they suffered and triumphed and expired without ever being in "our" prayers. And they died out in the bitter awareness that there would be nobody to remember them as they had been, or even as if they had been. All their "promised lands" and prophecies and cherished legends and ceremonies might as well have occurred on another planet. This is how arbitrary human history actually is.

Wow, I wish I could convey opinions with that much effectiveness. Sometimes I feel imprisoned (mentally speaking) that I cannot. Anyway, for the non-religious amongst you, I highly recommend getting this book. It's one that requires slow, thoughtful reading for full comprehension of the point. A thank you to Paul Phillips for the recommendation.

Back To The Land of Human Depravity

That's the term my friend Justin ("skeptix" to the online poker world) uses to describe Las Vegas. It's a fitting description. Merely thinking about Vegas as the country's epicenter of empty wishes and materialism has me darn-near dreading Michael and I's upcoming 10-night stay. With that in mind, I'm going to make an emphatic effort to retain my sanity by reading/writing/relaxing more and gambling/drinking less. Vegas can really suck the life out of you if you give it the chance. A ten-day bender of gambling and drinking might sound fun on paper, but, in practice (at least for me) it'd get old, fast. My chances of playing optimal poker seem to be directly tied to getting plenty of rest and avoiding excessive quantities of alcohol.

Even though we're just five days before its start, whether or not I play the Main Event is indeterminable. Tomorrow I'll play the $1,500 Bellagio Cup tournament, the following two days will be $500 tournaments at Binion's, and if I'm not burnt out, Thursday will be a $1,000 Venetian tournament. There's a good chance I'll play the Main Event if I'm up, say, $5,000 after those tournaments.

For the next several days, all blogging will be resumed on PokerTips.org's "Live from the WSOP" section. Ciao.

Movie Grades - 2Q 2007

A
Schindler's List - Slightly underperformed my expectations, but looking back, my expectations were way too high. Liam Neison's performance was one of the best in any movie I've ever seen.

A-
Das Leben der Anderen - Great movie, but not worthy of IMDB top 100.
Knocked Up - The most complete and flawless acting in a comedy I've ever seen. Instant classic.
Once - This is a must-see if you're not an emotionless-robot.

B+
Alpha Dog - Powerful movie based on a true story. Timberlake is surprisingly a great actor. See this movie if street-crime/gang premises interest you.

B
Mr. Brooks - Farfetched, but did a good job keeping your interest.

B-
Ocean's Thirteen - Sloppy, but still entertaining.
Little Children - Tried to be like American Beauty but was ultimately unengaging, and, quite frankly, disturbing.

C+
Glengarry Glen Ross - Melodrama anyone?

C
Fracture - Color-by-number twist-ending drama. I'd give it an A if I was still 12 and easy to fool. Hopkins was classic though.

D+
Hostel Part II - The first one was believable, and terrifying. This one is just unbelievable.

D
Superfly - Terrible movie, but some novelty value for laughing at the logic of misguided Harlem drug dealers from the 70s. "A million dollars...CASH!!"

F
Fast Food Nation - A shameful attempt at discrediting the meat industry. I wanted to go to Whataburger after seeing this abomination.