Eat In

My wife and I don’t go out to eat very much. We just find it a lot cheaper and easier to cook on our own.

Last night, we made one of the best meals we’ve had. Total prep and cook time? About 15 minutes.

Our meal consisted of protein (Sirloin Steak), carbs (Mashed Sweet Potatoes), and vegetables (green beans). All in all a very all rounded meal with each item being rather delicious.

The steak probably took the longest time to cook. We started off by thawing out the steak. This takes about 3-4 minutes. Meanwhile I oiled up and preheated the skillet I was going to use. Once the meat had thawed, I added seasoning (Kosher salt and a little steak seasoning). Then I put it in the skillet. I cooked it 5-7 minutes and it was cooked to about “medium.”

The mashed sweet potatoes we made from a box. Yes, I know that real sweet potatoes are better, but we wanted to give this a try. We started by combining the necessary milk, water, and butter in a pot. We then brought it to a boil (about 4 or 5 minutes). From there, we poured in the potato packet and stir. We then let it stand for a minute. That’s it.

If you thought the potatoes were easy, check out the green bean process. We bought a steam fresh package of green beans. This type you just toss the whole package into the microwave for 5 minutes. Once done, you let sit for a minute and enjoy.

Compare this to going out to a restaurant or even a fast food place.

At a restaurant, you are lucky to have a seat within 15 minutes. Then you have to order, pray that no one messes with your food, and then pay the bill. On average, it’s probably an hour by the time the meal is over.

For fast food, you can get in and get your food pretty quick. But if you calculate the time to drive to and from the fast food joint, it is likely to be a half hour before you get your food. Then the food is usually of a low quality or something you shouldn’t be putting in your system.

So, in summary, what is the point in going out to eat (unless it’s for a bunch of people)?

It’s got what plants crave

Apparently, someone has decided to come out with a real version of Idiocracy’s uber-drink, Brawndo.

Now it is only a matter of time before all of you water fountains turn into Brawndo fountains and our plants explode to life after switching out the boring old H2O for Brawndo.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to check out Idiocracy. It’s not a great movie, but it definitely offers up some great laughs and is worth the rental.

Athlete Biopics

Lately, it seems that the Oscars have been filled with musician biopics. First we had Ray, then we had Walk the Line.

It looks like filmmakers are starting to look to athletes for their new biopics.

It started of with Marky Mark playing the dude from Invincible (I never saw the movie because it dealt with foosball). Today, I heard the news that Jake Gyllenhaal is going to play Joe Namath in an upcoming biopic. This got me to thinking. Which athelete would make a really good biopic subject?

Here’s some of the criteria that needs to be filled.

1) The player has to have achieved some success. Whether he was the best in his sport for his career or he played one amazing game. As long as he did something special.

2) The player has to have had an interesting background. This can be either before becoming a player, while playing, after playing, or any combination of.

3) There can’t be a Hollywood style biopic of the athlete yet. So, if you are hoping for another movie about Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, you won’t find him on this list (Other athletes would include Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, and Brian Piccolo among many others). I’m going to allow Pistol Pete because he has only had a documentary and a story about him in middle school made.

So, let’s get to the list of atheletes that would make good biopics:

1) Mickey Mantle – One of the greatest power hitters/center fielders in baseball history. He suffices the first criteria pretty easily. How about his life’s story? Well, he had some serious injuries as a youth (and later as a ballplayer). The doctor’s wanted to amputate one of his legs from an injury in high school. Then later in life he blew out his liver due to alcoholism. So, the second criteria is satisfied. There was a tv documentary done on his life in 2005. Also, there was the movie “61*,” but that was more about the 1961 season that involved Mantle than a straight biopic. Barring the rights from the estate of The Mick, a biopic would be welcomed.

2) Marion Jones – She is a multiple medal winning Olympian. So, the first criteria has been met. She had a messed up life with a doping husband and then got caught for being on steriods when she won her latest Olympian medals. So, there is an interesting story there. As of yet, there is no biopics made about the woman. She fits all the criteria, but her biopic may come off a bit stale do to all the steriod paranoia that is circulating. At best she turns into a Lifetime biopic.

3) The Basketball Jesus… Larry Bird – One of the top 3-5 players ever in the NBA. He meets the first criteria. The biggest question mark I had was if he had an interesting enough background. Turns out that his father, Joe, had some issues. Joe had some bad alcoholism that lead to a divorce and ultimately suicide. A little later, Larry married his high-school girlfriend and ended up having a kid. He then denied paternity to the kid for a while. So there is some story there, but the drama during and after his NBA career is limited. To my knowledge, no biopic abuot Larry Bird exists as of yet.

4) Jamario Moon – He hasn’t done anything near what the previous three have done, but he is a 27 year old rookie in the NBA that is garnering some talk about Rookie of the Year award. It’s a stretch, but I’ll give him the first criteria. As far as the second criteria, check out this story from TrueHoop. Anyone who is a good to great NBA prospect in high school and then takes until the age of 27 to break into the league is going to have a story (kind of like a cooler version of “The Rookie”). Naturally, there are no movies about Moon. So, Moon is a decent candidate to have a biopic, but I’d suggest waiting 10 or 20 years before going ahead with it.

5) Pistol Pete Maravich - One of the best college basketball players of all time. He also had a really good NBA career (5 All-stars, one game where he dropped 68 points, etc.). He’s worth of a biopic. He had a pretty normal life (besides the crazy basketball skills and amount of practicing done). His NBA career ended with an injury and afterwards he went off to search “for life.” He went on to become a devout Christian, saying that he wanted to be remembered more as a Christian than a basketball player. Then his life came to a sudden end from a heart attack at 40. There was a movie made about his childhood, but it only focuses on him as a youngster. So, I think we are okay on the third criteria.

I could go on with more (and better) athletes to make biopics of, but I’m doing this half-assed.

So, who did I miss? Who shouldn’t be on the list?

Keeping you updated on the MLB Offseason

I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve missed a bunch of baseball transactions that I should have noticed. Here’s my take on a few of the offseason transactions.

1) Alex Rodriguez resigns with the Yankees – This is probably good for A-Rod and the Yankees. The Yankees have the greatest ability to surround A-Rod with playoff caliber talent.

2) Tori Hunter signs with the Angels – Not good news for Oakland A’s fans (i.e. me). This helps out the Angels tremendously. Hunter is a Gold Glove winner in CF. Hunter tends to have a really good batting average (.310 to .330) and hits a decent number of homeruns (around 25 to 30 a year). Hunter is an instant upgrade over the player formerly known as Garret Anderson. This also gives the Angels to rest Vlad by putting him in the DH spot (play Anderson in LF, Hunter in CF, and Gary Matthews in RF). The Angels won the West pretty easily last year, this move would suggest that they will do the same next year.

3) The Angels and White Sox trade Orlando Cabera (LAA) for Jon Garland (CHW) – I’m not really sure what the White Sox were thinking here. The Angels have all the advantage in this trade. They get a proven young arm for a shortstop on the wrong side of 30. Jon Garland has been a bit inconsistant over the past couple of years, but he is a solid 3rd starter. Meanwhile, the White Sox get a career .273 hitter who plays decent defense at SS but is 32 years old. The gave away a pitcher who will be good over the next several years for a SS who is good but likely to decline soon.

4) Jason Kendall signs with the Brewers – I really like this signing for the Brewers. Last year, the Brew Crew finished right in the middle of the league in team ERA. Kendall does a great job handling pitching staffs and is known to improve the team’s ERA (see what he did in Oakland). The biggest knocks on Kendall are his lack of power at bat (not a problem in Milwaukee) and his weak throwing arm (may be an issue). I think that the defense, leadership, and pitcher handling that Kendall brings far outweighs his downsides. Look for the Brewers pitching to improve next year and for them to be in contention in the NL Central.

5) Free Agent Joe Kennedy dies – Wow, the last couple of years the A’s had used Joe as a great long reliever. He was part of the reason the A’s won the AL West in 2006. Now he is gone at the age of 28.

6) Tom Glavine signs with the Braves – Glavine is still a good pitcher even though he is up there in age. He will be no where near what he was when he was last with the Braves. But he will give them a good #2, 3, or 4 pitcher to go with. The Braves could make some noise in the NL East next year.

7) The A’s trade Marco Scutaro to the Blue Jays for a couple of minor leaguers – This one is right up there with the Garland/Cabrera trade. What the hell were the A’s thinking? Marco Scutaro, while not a full time player, had been one of the consistantly good players on the A’s. He made a name for himself by being especially good in clutch situations. The A’s give him up for a couple of minor league pitchers who project out to be set-up relievers at best. Congrats to the Blue Jays for the steal they got with this one.

A Fun Read

Lately Bill Simmons’ posts on ESPN have become a bit asinine to anyone living outside of Boston or “Red Sox Nation.” Really, all he has talked about for the past two months is the Red Sox and their winning the World Series, New England Patriots and how they are the best team the NFL has ever seen, and the Boston Celtics and how they are better than the mid-nineties Bulls teams (okay, he didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have).

Anyway, I was shocked when I read his latest ESPN the Mag article. Not only did it not touch on any of those topics, it actually was a fun and entertaining read. He goes into how his 2 year old daughter has become a fan of the NBA.

You can read the article here.

Writer’s Strike Rumor

There is a rumor circulating around that the Writer’s Strike could be coming to an end in the next couple of weeks.

I don’t know how valid the rumor is, but I will go ahead and throw out a little evidence that may or may not help validate the rumor.

First, the two parties started negotiations again yesterday. Naturally, this is going to be a big step in concluding any strike.

Second, NBC came out and extended two of their new series for full seasons (Chuck and Life). Would NBC extend the seasons for these shows if the strike is going to cancel the seasons anyway? It may be that they just want to be covered in case the strike does end early. Or it could be that they realize that the strike is going to end soon and decided to start working the spring schedule accordingly.

They only thing that is important is that a fair deal is reached and that the writers can get back to work on the shows and movies we love.

Full Season

Chuck has been picked up for a full season. Good news because it has been the best new show this season. It has been very consistant and always funny.

Now, if we can just convince them to pick up Journeyman. Which has been very good, but it took a while to build up (hence the low ratings). If NBC sticks with Journeyman, the viewers will come. It is a good show and deserves a full season.

Cliffhangers

NBC last night offered up the best cliffhangers since Sly Stallone took on John Lithgow.

On Chuck, another good episode ended with the cliffhanger of what will Sarah do, stay with Chuck or run off with Bryce?

On Heroes, a very solid episode ended with Hiro with his sword running at Peter while Peter started up a Hadouken move.

Add to all of this the fact that some resolutions are coming for Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman (due in part or in all to the Writer’s Strike) and we have a lot to look forward to.

Mass Effect

Yesterday, I received my x-mas gift from Chris in the mail (by the way, thanks Chris!).

I knew it was going to be a Xbox 360 game, but I wasn’t sure on which one it would be. It turns out that the game I received was Mass Effect.

For those of you who don’t know, Mass Effect is a Role Playing Game (RPG)/First Person Shooter (FPS) from developer BioWare. BioWare has made some of the greatest RPGs to date (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire). With Mass Effect, they took a similar role playing system and added in the FPS elements. 

Mass Effect’s plot revolves around future space travel. Set in the year 2183, Humans have discovered technology from an ancient civilization that has allowed huge advances in space travel. Now, a new relic (a beacon) has been found on a planet called “Eden Prime.” Now it is up to you to find the beacon and what its deal is.

You start off by customizing your lead character. This customization has both really awesome elements and really lame elements. You can start off with the standardized character or go in and adjust it to your liking. You are an idiot if you use the standard character. Once in the customization screen, you get to enter any first name you want. Unfortunately, you are stuck with the last name “Shepard.” After you have chosen your name (I went with the highly unique, “Mike”), you choose your background story. This is supposed to change up game play a bit, as different people treat the different backgrounds differently (can you tell I only took one English course through out college?). Anyway, I made my dude a guy from the colonies who is known to be ruthless (i.e. not the most socially apt, but is known for getting tough jobs done).

Once your background is set, you get to choose your class. Here you have 6 different choices (I hear you can unlock an additional 6 classes, but we’ll see about that in the future). There are really three main classes (Soldier, Engineer, and Adept) with the other three being some combination of the main classes. Soldiers are self explanatory. Engineers are apt at using mechanical devices (can hack computers, heal up the group, use multi-tools, etc.). Adepts are essentially wizards/force power users. I choose a combination of Soldier and Engineer (called Infiltrator). The infiltrator is known for finding ways to get to higher ground and then using a sniper rifle to pick off enemies (I decided that sounded like fun).

The next step is to customize the face. Unlike KOTOR or Jade Empire, Mass Effect offers more customization than 10 preset faces. With Mass Effect, you can go in and adjust every little detail about the character. Eventually, you can get the character to look a lot like you (unless you are heavy set. They don’t offer any ability to make a fat face). I personally spent at least 15 minutes figuring out exactly how to adjust the face to match my own. I did a pretty good job, but my character ended up looking more like Michael Westen from Burn Notice than it did like me. I’m going to blame this on the poor viewing options while creating your character. You can look at your character dead on or have him/her look in any direction. Unfortunately, this doesn’t allow for a good estimation of everything on the face. So, my character ended up with high cheekbones and lips that jutted way out away from the face.

Overall, the amount of customization more than offsets the few nagging issues. So, before the story even starts, it is rocking.

After you are done messing around with your character, you start up the actual story. A couple of cut scenes play and you are thrown into the middle of an unfamiliar ship. You can walk around and talk to the various crew members and see what they have to say (similar to other RPGs).

When you do have a conversation with someone, you will be prompted by a dialog menu. It’s a bit different than it was with KOTOR and Jade Empire, though. Here you select one of the options and your character will say something along the same lines. It’s pretty cool. Then, while the conversation is going on, you get pictures of more than just the faces of the characters. It makes each conversation feel like a cut scene.

As you are talking to people and listening to the voice actors, you will probably pick voices you have heard before. Within the first five minutes, I had picked out the voices of Keith David (“This never would have happened to Woogie!” or ”How’d you get the beans above the frank?”), Seth Green (from pretty much everything cool in the last 5 years), and the dude who played Carth Onasi in KOTOR (Raphael Sbarge). From looking at Wikipedia, if you go with a Female lead character, it is voiced by the lady who did Bastilla from KOTOR. The male lead is done by one of the Jade Empire guys, but I didn’t recognize the voice. Basically, the voice actors are good.

So, after you get done chit chatting, it’s time for some action. Seeing as though this is in part a FPS, there should be some action. Well, it turns out that it isn’t really a FPS, it is an Over-the-Shoulder Third Person Shooter (or OtSTPS). The problem with this style is that it is very difficult to see things and aim accurately (at least so far it has been). So, you end up with villains sitting in your lap while you freak out trying to shoot them at point blank range and not hitting them. Now, I have only play the game for an hour and a half, and at least half of that time was the customization and conversations. So, I might be complaining about something that ends up working well with time (i.e. I love the way Halo operates, but I had extreme difficulties for the first couple of hours with that game).

So far, the game has been good, but things just have felt as exciting as they have been for KOTOR or Jade Empire. The character customization is deep, but with a couple of issues. The RPG style conversations are good, but give off the feeling that you are always in a cut scene, which makes the game come off a little clumsy in my opinion. Then when you do get to the action, it is difficult to operate things, but that could just be the learning curve. Also, I have yet to use any kind of force power/engineer power. That whole system seems complex and out of place so far. But as I go through the game, I am realizing that these are problems that are more about me not being used to the game yet. 

Basically, this game seems to be a bit polarizing. It all depends on your level of ADD. I’m pretty patient and I could see myself really getting into the game the more I play it. On the other hand, Super ADD Boy would probably give it up after the first couple of hours because of all the dialog and “cut-scenes.”

So, if this sounds like a good time, then go out and pick it up. If you have ADD, then you probably haven’t read this far (or you just skipped to the bottom). In that case, this game probably isn’t for you. If you are unsure, I’d say it’s at least worth the rental price to find out.

Dis-Enchanted

I went to see Enchanted this past week (as did much of America). It turns out that I am one of the few people who didn’t like the flick.

The movie movie was sold by the trailer. We were sold into thinking that this would be a wonderous tongue-in-cheek look at the world of Disney Fairy Tales (kind of like Shrek, but done better).

The basis of the movie is that a young princess-to-be, Giselle (Amy Adams) gets sent real life by an evil queen (who happens to have the powers of a witch, but that is never really explained). Once in real life New York, Giselle goes through culture shock. Eventually things work out.

I’d like to say that there is more to the plot than that, but there isn’t. The movie has this great premise but fails to do anything with it. It could have been somewhere along the lines of Elf, but instead it just crumbled to pieces as a hackneyed piece of work.

Here’s some of the issues that kept me from enjoying the movie.

First, it’s chocked full of song and dance. Some people enjoy this, I hate it. The biggest snore of the movie comes in the middle with a huge song and dance through Central Park that takes some where between 5 and 30 minutes. The song just drags on and on. It just took me right out of the movie (similar to the driving scenes in Ricky Bobby: Talledega Nights).

Second, the entire story was too simplistic. Outside of the originality of the “fairy tale comes to real life New York” twist, the story is very basic. So, while I can appreciate that one twist drives a story (i.e. read anything I have ever written), it isn’t good enough for a full length moving picture. It just doesn’t play out well.

Third, the satire isn’t biting enough. As I said earlier, this movie could have taken the route of Shrek and broken down the stereotypical Disney fairy tale movie. Instead of doing that, itself was a stereotypical Disney fairy tale. There are a few pokes and prods into the world of satire with the film, but they are done half-heartedly (in my opinion). Thus, nothing gets a full belly laugh from the audience; only a few snickers.

The last issue I’ll discuss is the overlap of trailer and movie. Once again, all the best jokes were put into the trailer for the movie. So, by the time we got to see the movie, they were all tired and didn’t garner any laughs.

Add all of this up, and Enchanted is one of my least favorite movies to come out this year. I know I will get ripped for my opinion (last I checked, the movie was rated 93% on Rotten Tomatoes), but I gave the movie 2 out of 5 stars on Netflix.

I’d suggest renting Elf or Ella Enchanted to get your fill of:

A) Mythical/Fairy Tale beings making the leap to the real world (Elf)

and

B) Satire of the stereotypical Fairy Tale (Ella Enchanted)