What, Tru Wasn't Available?

It's like an art project from a class dedicated to making me mad.

It's fun to bust on St. Louis because: a) I'm a hater; b) "city living" in this city is not the same as real city living in a real city, like New York, London, Chicago; c) medium-sized, Midwest cities lack certain cultural amenities and privileges which you find in the big, coastal places where I've spent most of my time. (Even Chicago has a coast along a big-ass lake). But, I also enjoy living here a good deal. The people are sweet; the cost of living is low; there is no shortage of things to do; I can spend a Sunday reading in a beautiful park, going swimming at a pool, seeing a movie, and walking around with friends. Also, it's hotter, and I like hot.

One thing that will always suck, however, is the rap culture in St. Louis. I can't help it, and summer's approach exacerbates the awfulness of this enduring truth. The latest evidence is pictured above. Rather than Summer Jam--which, to be fair, has a pretty horrible lineup this year--we have Super Jam (and only the second one!). Rather than real rappers, we have, well, those people. Are you kidding me? For a second, I considered going as an endeavor in comedy, but I said the same thing to myself when I went to a "big" hip-hop show in February, and that one was at least saved by Ludacris, a true MC.

So I won't be at Super Jam. And things like Rock the Bells won't be rolling through the Lou. And, well, it's gonna be a long, hot summer. At least I have that pool to which I alluded. Though, on the East Coast, we have this thing called "the ocean." Hot damn, Joe, there I go again: hate, hate, hate, hate.

Where Amazing Caucasian Happens

Props to the commenter "dunny" for passing along this gem:



One of my favorite things to say when I chat with my man HR is that white people stay winning. And it's true. Except in this video. The Newble boot to Lil' Dunny's head (no relation to the commenter, I would assume) is awesome.

Something Nice for a Saturday

Now I want one, just to commemorate the review.

I'm not really a "car person." I love driving and I love my own car, but I don't really know anything about whips. Like, what makes the suspension on a 2009 Jeep better or worse than suspension on something else. Or, like, why it's good to have chrome wheels. I don't read car magazines, and I once went to a Funkmaster Flex car show just so that I could see Wyclef and Busta Rhymes perform. I just like being in the ride with the radio on.

But what I do like a lot, and know a little about, is good writing. And so, everyone should read this New York Times review of the Nissan Cube. An excerpt to entice you:

My view on bringing wacky Japanese-market cars here is that companies should strive to keep the product as un-Americanized as possible. Offer a shrimp-scented air freshener and a holographic hood ornament and a GPS system that includes maps of other planets: the whole appeal lies in cultural authenticity. This kind of car should be so Japanese that it makes me want to wear a Hello Kitty backpack, watch incomprehensible game shows and eat whales. I mean, research whales.

Ill.

Jay Stay Paid

Thanks for this, Peter!

This beat just screams out for Elzhi to slay it, no? How ill would that be?

- Jay Dee, "Coming Back"

Cop Jay Stay Paid.

Well, That Was Cute

At the risk of seeming like an asshole, I am going to be honest: I hate the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I marvel at LeBron, of course. To watch him is to know that I'm witnessing history. But I came here to bury Cleveland, not to praise LeBron. More specifically, I want to explain myself.

Think what you will about Malcolm Gladwell, but if nothing else, his writing invites a certain kind of new, or perhaps unconventional, thinking which is fun to pursue, even if you don't agree with his specific inquiries and outcomes. His recent, much-discussed New Yorker piece about how underdogs succeed was less resonant for its specific examples than for the prevailing idea that underdogs must play by their own rules, not the conventional norms exploited by favorites, in order to enhance their chances for victory. It's something to which I've regularly returned as I've watched the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs won 66 games this year for two reasons. First, they have LeBron James, a unique player who has become practically unguardable and is now, more than ever, bounded only by his own ambition. Second, they deceptively fashioned themselves as underdogs.

Do not read it as more of the same, tired, exaggerated NBA criticism when I write that the regular season can be something of a grind. For players, for coaches, for fans. 82 games over six months has its merits, but it also has its foibles. Among them is that on many given nights, individuals and entire teams can easily excuse inadequate effort and inconsistency. It's just one game. On a smaller scale, it becomes easy to take off plays, quarters, halves. Especially if you're someone of whom only limited production is expected and on whom only limited attention is focused. Take off enough quarters, or simply miss enough shots, and a role player will find himself out of a rotation. But to have one or two bad quarters a week when your contract is guaranteed and injuries pile up and all the rest? Pretty common, and pretty easily excused.

Not on the Cavaliers, though. For a team of limited overall talent, and one surrounded by the inescapable narrative about the preternatural superstar burdened by his pedestrian teammates and perhaps destined for the Garden, there was no margin for so many excused absences. No. Rather, Cleveland was a team which all season seemed to thrive by choosing against the tedium which other teams, even good ones, allowed to foment. Beyond the traditional NBA sets and the luxury of an unstoppable force, the Cavaliers played a game of scrapping, hustling, and aspiring.

Not all that great, Cleveland compensated for ability limitations with effort. But the Cavaliers were not just some team that wanted it more. Instead, to their credit, the Cavs deployed a kind of ferocious basketball intelligence that seemed to consciously target the lethargy countenanced by other squads. More than any team I can remember, Cleveland was one which generated its own momentum, often through excelling, if that's the right word, at seemingly innocuous NBA mechanics. Slapping at loose balls; getting hands in as men drove by; dramatically throwing up their arms to sway referee impressions about loose balls--on most nights, Cleveland was this boiling stew of total basketball focus which most teams couldn't match. The Cavaliers took such tremendous pride in doing small things so attentively and in such animated fashion that it suggested a few things: they felt the need to be smarter than the other team in order to win; they derived purpose from being constructively irritating; they didn't feel that the normal tactics and rhythms of NBA basketball were terms under which the could win, so they fashioned a somewhat radical approach in demeanor and concentration. That's being an underdog.

What I've described sounds admirable, perhaps even romantic, doesn't it? Who couldn't love this team which has innovated at the margins? It might even be genius, of sorts: dispensing with the flashy but ultimately fruitless total assaults on basketball convention, Cleveland has still subtly played by new rules. This is a team of high-achieving underdogs who have taken that desperate style and made it a goliath game; their aspirational, dire effort is that expected of overmatched opponents. It has stylized a collection of minute changes to create a distinct basketball method. That should be cool, right? Yes, it should. But somehow, with these players, it isn't.

I am likely being curmudgeonly and rigid and unfair, but I have hated seeing these players affect this change. Other than LeBron, the Cavaliers are largely unremarkable players, and seeing these fairly mundane folks transformed challenges what I want to think of them. Take Mo Williams and Delonte West: both are players who do specific things that complement LeBron, but neither is a difference-maker. Really, the Cleveland guards seem like replaceable parts on an assembly line, only each now enjoys a spirit of daring and a certain confidence which appears enabled by James and his growth. That might even be a talent, to fully shine in reflected glory, so I should give them dap for it. But still, I even resent that they seem to play so hard for James just so that they can share in the basketball ecstasy which he commands. A personal paradox of Cleveland is that the very players who have wrought a new style, of sorts, are the precise reason I have been so uncomfortable watching it work.

Again, my dislike for Cleveland is likely irrational and unfair, but nonetheless, it's there, omnipresent. And that's why I've loved this Orlando series. The Magic are so flawed in their own ways, but suddenly, as if transformed by the cavalcade of criticism which greeted them after failing to put away Boston the first time they could, the Magic have morphed into not only a team of perfectly matched parts, but one which can mitigate Cleveland's underdog style. The Cavs have been exposed by an opponent just as smart, and as passionate, and as daring, if not more so in all those ways. Bereft of the stylistic advantage it cobbled together all season, Cleveland is lost, and has reverted to the staid, bland attack upon which it relied in previous seasons. Not since the opening half of Game One has Cleveland played like the team it was for 82 games and two rounds of the playoffs. The body language has changed. No longer swarming, the Cavs seem panicked. No longer bold, they seem meek. They've lost that innovative flair for basketball zealotry. It may be the ultimate testament to LeBron's still rising ascendancy that he can instill so much drama in games that have devolved into one on five.

An underdog which perfected the theater of goliath all season can no longer look behind the curtain for its advantage.



A few other thoughts about the Eastern Conference Finals:

- Is there any indication that Mickael Pietrus doesn't think he's still playing for the Warriors? And, hasn't that been kind of ill? He is so unembarrassed to hoist a three, to step back for a jumper as soon as he finally gets the ball, to camp out in the corner waiting to shoot less so that he can add three points to the tally and more so that he can incite a raucous ovation. Beyond his admirable defensive effort, his zany parallel rationale has been incredibly satisfying. And for some reason, he's always been a sympathetic figure in my mind. He carries himself and plays as though he expects to be more important, and better, than he actually is. Somehow, I have projected onto him the persona of someone unfairly diminished, and as such, any success seems like validation.

- Apologies to Stan Van Gundy. I am not sure if he's a good coach, but he's certainly not the worst coach, and he may not actually be overmatched. Sure, I sit at home yelling at the TV in a high-pitched, raspy falsetto every time I see him, but that doesn't mean he isn't exposing his counterpart as the real fugazi.

- There is still hope for Dwight Howard. Not yet sure how else to articulate it, though. Let's come back to it.

Too Much John Wall on the Brain

Look at the photo above. The red arrow directs you to a headline which appeared above my GMail inbox: "S&P cuts UK's rating outlook to negative."

Do you know what I thought when I read that? In order: 1) Which college basketball organization goes by "S&P"? 2) How could anyone be down on Kentucky after this ridiculous recruiting class? 3) No, seriously, what happened with Kentucky today to engender any decline in confidence?

I think I need to get more of a life.

If You Were Thinking about Seeing "Terminator," Don't

Like Watchmen, an awesomely scored trailer was the highlight.

The more I write about movies, the more I seem like a huge dork. And I haven't even yet written about how much I cherish 30 Rock's Star Wars jokes. Or the entire Lost episode dedicated to rewriting the original trilogy. We can get to that some other time, and you can then start making fun of me for likely hanging out with Harry Knowles. Nothing you say will be worse than what my sister hurls in my direction. Or this guy, who called me "dubious" and calls himself "Cheesecake." Surely there is a Cedric the Entertainer joke to be made about men who call themselves "Delicious."

Back to the lecture at hand, though. Don't see Terminator: Salvation. Really. Chief among its sins is that it makes no sense. And that assessment doesn't even take up the puzzling time-travel elements that have always challenged Terminator movies. Like the film itself, I won't wade into those waters right now, not least of all because I have no idea what could possibly make sense within the context of what these movies have created. No, this one has a set of issues unique to itself.

SPOILERS COMMENCE NOW...

First, the movie centers around two things: a new kind of terminator, the T800, that is some sort of human-cyborg blend, and the capture of Kyle Reese, the man who already eventually goes back in time to sire John Connor. Without really addressing this, the movie conflates the latter's capture with the idea behind the former. Is he going to be some science experiment? I suppose that could have been cool, but the answer is no. The point of the entire 130-minute movie is that robots want to kill both Reese and Connor so that, you know, James Cameron couldn't have ever made those first movies to begin with. The robots do capture Reese at one point, and so why didn't they just kill him when they had the chance? Because they were hoping to lure Connor to their headquarters? What's the point of that? Killing Reese preempts the present, changes the past, and resets the future. Just do that and let us leave much earlier.

Second, also within the category of "Terminator: Salvation makes no sense," the movie hinges on the lazy implication that the entire plot was an elaborate setup. From Skynet allowing the humans to discover and "capture" a T800 to that T800's inevitable return to the robots through a series of spectacular events, the movie "resolves" itself by doing something very Matrix-like and saying that, in effect, the robots are always in control, and they have manipulated humans in very labyrinthine ways. It kind of sucks. And it presupposes questions that warrant real exploration: does this mean that beyond being self-aware, Skynet is smarter than humans? How can Skynet account for human emotion if a central part of the movies was that robots from a future beyond the time of Salvation didn't grasp emotions?

Some other things that don't make sense:

- Given that real-world humans currently employ robots to fight for them (like unmanned aircraft and these dope gun-ship robot things I read about in The New Yorker), why hasn't anyone in the future developed his or her own robots to battle Skynet? I understand that it would undermine the nature-vs.-technology dynamic of the franchise, but the Resistance uses all kinds of fancy bombs and guns, so it's not as though they're pinning their hopes to the natural world.

- Why did the actor Ben Sam Worthington speak in an Australian accent for half the time if his character's from Los Angeles?

- Why wasn't there a real consequence to the purported nuclear explosion that takes place toward the film's end?

I could go on, but I won't because you might still see it, despite this warning. Just like John Connor failing to avoid things his mother cautions against. (That was lame).

Even if the movie made sense, it still wouldn't have been very good. It's joyless, and it asks nothing of the actors. All of the relationships are implied at best, and few of them make sense. The "acting" is limited to screaming and intense whispering. Common is in it, and he just plays himself in goofy military clothes. And worst, the movie does nothing cool with the franchise. Aside from a few knowing references, like playing a Guns N Roses song, Salvation fails to mine the past for meaningful continuity and set up a trilogy worth following. For instance, there are no glimpses of, say, the nascent technology that might lead to the T1000, which would be very cool and might logically implicate the questions of time travel that are central yet also, somehow, glossed over. It's just a wholly dumb, compulsory action movie.

Fingers Crossed

Remember that one time when the Knicks actually won something?

Rejoice, Knicks fans, it's our time!

That's right, tonight is the NBA Draft Lottery. Tonight, we have a 2.8% chance of eventually drafting Blake Griffin, a 3.3% chance of eventually drafting Ricky Rubio, a 3.9% chance of eventually drafting Hasheem Thabeet (please, no!), and a 72.4% chance of staying at 8, where the Brickers should be based upon record, and drafting...Stephen Curry? Ugh...

I don't dislike Curry, overall, but I do dislike him at 8. Among players not named Griffin or Rubio who could go in the lottery, Curry seems to have too many red flags. He isn't a real point guard (which the Knicks could use, with all due respect to Chris Duhon), and he is too small to be an ideal shooting guard. He has a small frame, and I'm not sure how much weight he can put on. The dude's a great shooter with a quick release, but it feels like I am describing a lot of guys from college who wound up doing nothing in the NBA. Curry may also be close enough to a finished product that it is worth gambling on someone (say, Gerald Henderson?) with far greater capacity for improvement. When you pick in the top ten, you should get someone who can reliably start for your team, at least. No? And it's not like the Knicks need to waste another pick on the new Danilo Gallinari. I'd love Curry if the Knicks were picking in the first round's last third. But at 8? Or 9? Or 10? No, no, and no.

This draft looks pretty lame, honestly. Lots of questions all over the place. Though maybe that makes it more fun? I don't know. Part of the problem is that many of the highest-regarded guys don't have much already discerned personality. Assuming the Knicks draft at 8, the dudes who, upon cursory glance and little thought, seem acceptable would be: Henderson (gets to the rim, constantly aggressive, shown an improving range, well-coached in college); DeMar DeRozan (good size, good athlete, has some moxie, most capital letters available); Earl Clark (odd, cool, quirky combinaton of size and skills, plus he went to Louisville and I love Rick Pitino); one of the Carolina guards (Lawson is a real PG, Ellington will be a decent scorer, and if the Knicks are gonna take a SG...); or Tyreke Evans (no left hand and no jumper, but players that size usually aren't so comfortable with the ball. And he's had a bad life, so I'd enjoy rooting for him and his brother).

Me at FD

What will happen with Andrew Bynum tonight? Is he ready for the Nuggets? Is he ready to know that he matters? Read.

Taking It Back Can Be Overrated

The best thing about Eminem albums is that you get older but they stay the same age.

When I was leaving high school and entering college, pop music was saturated with artists embraced for being angry, middle-class, generally disillusioned white men. Bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit were celebrated for offering not so much music, but a larger aesthetic that captured what I'll call a post-modern discontent. Their sound was meant for people relatively privileged--house, car, mall, American Eagle--but nonetheless angry. Not just generic frustration, the culture of the music crystallized something which always struck me as a younger-man's analog to the crisis of masculinity that originally afflicted men who fled to the suburbs after World War II. These bands appeared to speak to and for people who felt suffocated by the tedium of Americana and needed an outlet for that angst and disaffection. It wasn't a new phenomenon, of course. For decades, people have been attempting to portray this adolescent America that is neither rich nor poor, not especially put upon, but still quite frustrated.

Excused for being angry, the bands who cultivated this niche were given license to mine family dysfunction, domestic abuse, aggravation arising amidst the prosaic boredom, and the violent fantasies which were harrowingly echoed by real-world incidents like that rash of school shootings from roughly a decade ago. Songs like Limp Bizkit's "My Way" even sought to render these feelings as heroic--lashing out in the throes of such crushing suburban despair was a masculine triumph, if not an exercise in martyrdom. This music was never all that good, but taken as a collective article of cultural history, it maintains tremendous value, just as movies like The Ice Storm tap into a specific kind of ennui that warrants curation.

Marshall Mathers always made rap music for this group, and for this era. While working in a traditionally black, traditionally urban, traditionally poor medium, Eminem's music still found a cultural partner in the garish frustration rock that dominated TRL. It was perfect, really, because TRL was an Eminem fan club that connected him to the primarily suburban audience which heard its voice in his hip-hop, as it did in Jonathan Davis's rock and roll (even as said audience stood in Times Square yelling loudly enough to be heard back at home in Long Island and New Jersey).

Appropriately, Eminem responded by churning out records filled with enough nasal pop satire to provide cover for a steady procession of dark, twisted music that thematically mirrored so much of the disquieted rock: fantasies about killing pregnant women, bilious explorations of childhood abuse, jarring drug parables, angry picking at the happy veneer intended to coat inner- and outer-ring suburban life. Moreover, it was all set to a sonic landscape that was increasingly dramatic, and even ominous, always intended to summon a visceral response. (Nevermind, for now, that many of the later works were horribly produced and incredibly unpersuasive in their faux tension.) That brand of hostile, aggressive hip-hop was, again, so similar to the confrontational rock music of the time. Really, it's almost lazy to cast Eminem's rhyming as just more of the same misogyny and drug talk because to do so neglects that his came from a different place than that behind, say, The Chronic. Conversely, they are so easily conflated that we should acknowledge that regardless of how one feels about Eminem as a vehicle of cultural and racial cooptation, few rappers have reinforced the genre's stereptypical social distortions as Em has, and he did so in service of the audience often spared sanction when hip-hop is villified. Whose music has been more vulgar or hostile?

Relapse is therefore aptly titled, because it stands both as another repetitive contribution to the Eminem canon, and as the kind of thorough, devoted exploration of disturbed existence which was popularized so memorably ten years ago. Eighty minutes of droll, crude humor breaking up large chunks of outrageous verses about drug problems, masturbation, sexual abuse, and homicidal fantasies, Relapse is everything you'd expect from Eminem.

That's the problem, ultimately. This album sounds dated, in its sonic composition, its rapping, and its content. All of your traditional Eminem elements are there, and in turn, it doesn't sound right. He has not grown as an artist, and his sound offers nothing new, either for him or for the contemporary hip-hop landscape. This is sadly ironic, because to turn on the radio now is to hear basically one of four songs: the egregious love track, by someone like J. Holiday; the fad-of-the-moment southern junk, like the Stanky Leg; the indistinguishable New York song, by someone like Maino; or something with Lil' Wayne. One might, therefore, welcome something distinctly Eminem as refreshingly different, but rather than offering a welcomed departure, Relapse mostly just seems sad.

To his credit, Eminem remains a technically impressive MC. While the popular rappers of the moment so often dispense with carefully considered constructions, instead substituting sing-song improvisations and loose, sometimes awkward rhyming, Eminem opts for tight verses when not dropping well-executed syntactical and rhythmic flourishes. It's just too bad that that his voice could still make someone crazy enough to act out some of what he depicts in verse.

Woo Hoo!

I think this is the sort of song Cam'ron would make if he were to become a character on 30 Rock. Whatever. I love it. Have no idea why.

Maybe when I am done trying to write my way onto the the law review I will have more than 20 minutes a day to make SB happen. Sorry, fam.

- Cam'ron ft. Byrd Lady and Skitzo, "Woo Hoo"

Year of the Rap Comeback?

Hey, heeeeeey, hey!

Honestly, I don't know. But it could shape up that way. Eminem's coming back (sadly, though, as his new shit all sounds wack). Rae is coming back, and you know how I feel about that. Cam is back, and it's OK, not great (more on that later today or tomorrow). De La put out something new after not being heard from since the dope and underrated Grind Date. Doom came back. Houston is trying to come back, with new joints from Slim Thug and Mike Jones (Who? No, seriously, like, who really still care about that clown?) White people have even tried to come back.

To our endlessly growing list, we can add Busta, who's dropping Back on My Bullshit later this year. I haven't really been feeling Busta in recent years. His music has been up and down but mostly mediocre, he embarrassed himself with that anti-snitch ridiculousness, and he is a known homophobe. So that's not good. But, on the other hand, I do still listen to The Coming, and this track with Uncle Murda is on some 1996 shit. It's the more winsome Busta, and the beat sounds like it could have been cooked up during Coming studio sessions. I'm into this. Plus, Uncle Murda references Fresh, one of my favorite movies growing up. (When did Uncle Murda become ubiquitous, by the way? If someone from New York is going to be on every New York song, can we get someone better? As a New Yorker now living in St. Louis, I don't ask for much else.)

- Busta Rhymes ft. Uncle Murda, "Director's Cut"
 

Eddie House Talks a Lot. All the Time.

You know, for a guy who is relevant only because he had the good fortune to play with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, Eddie House talks and gesticulates a lot. He has more Damon Jones in him than I'd like to see.

That said, this interview was awesome.

Song of the Moment

Not a woman

You know what? It becomes a little played for underground cats to endlessly rap about how much better they are than everyone else, and how little respect they get. I feel bad writing that, because plenty of less-heralded MCs deserve more heralding, but I do it mostly for the purpose of logic. Anyone, sitting in his apartment, or even playing some shows at the local bar, or using the interwebs, can front like he'd be the next big thing if only everyone else would stop sleeping and celebrating bullshit. That routine is disingenuous on some level.

Conventions of "true-school" rappers have been easy to clown for a long time, and the insipid work cycles of too many knit-cap-wearing rappers make cynicism regarding their existence--forget just music--hard to shake. When a rap act can penetrate this thick layer of bored disdain, though, it's notable. And refreshing, like seeing sun after a month of rain.

I've been driving around St. Louis with the sun shining out my radio thanks to this new Tanya Morgan joint with Blu. Right now, in the SB Mobile, if it's not one of Raekwon's auspicious tracks or Crime Pays (review coming this week!), it's probably Tanya and Blu.

This song just knocks. The sample, and the tempo of the sample, are gorgeous. Soft but not stale, and active but not frantic to the point that the soulful elements of the song are subsumed into something overwhelming. Instead, the melody, and the tone, and the sound quality--kind of washed out a little--set a background mood that invites Blu and Tanya Morgan to go in and have fun. Which they do. This is not put-me-on whining, or better-than-you boasting, or even mean-mug threatening. It's just some dudes who enjoy rapping, and have a good time playing with their words in the service of helping an audience smile along with them while they tell you about what they're thinking. I think that last sentence captures Tanya Morgan perfectly, and I don't mean to insult them as substanceless. Rather, they are, perhaps, the apotheosis of rappers whom you'd want to meet, or with whom you'd like to have that proverbial beer from political campaign trails. They are accessible through their honesty and lack of pretense about any of rap's fictionalized elements that even an artist like Common, who purports to always be keeping it real, will exploit. Tanya Morgan is when keeping it real goes right.

One other thing: I listen to this song a lot, and without fail, I find myself waiting for the background elements of the sound composition to be filled in even further with that haunting, thin, vibrating sound in the background of "Pass the Plugs." Am I crazy for linking these two tracks, or does someone else hear that?

- Tanya Morgan ft. Blu, "Morgan Blu"
Peep TM here. New album on May 12.

- De La Soul, "Pass the Plugs" (buy)

Bonus
- Tanya Morgan, "Tanya Morgan Is a Rap Group"
To be fair, this song partially approaches a little of what I was bemoaning up top. But they're funny enough to get away with some of it.

A Message for Brett Favre

Me on FreeDarko

I'm kind of feeling the Nuggets, somehow. I just love their crazy.

 

A Brief Memo about Appropriating My Childhood

TO: Hollywood
FROM: Straight Bangin'
DATE: May 3, 2009
RE: Revising My Youth

It's been quite a run, hasn't it, Hollywood? For about a decade, now, you've been taking everything I grew up obsessing about, caring about, or just plain knowing about and "re-imagining" it all on the big screen. Sometimes, you've done a great job: rarely does a day go by when I don't think about those Lord of the Rings movies. Similarly, I think we all bow down in appreciation for films like X2, The Dark Knight, and even Iron Man. Kudos for those efforts. On the flip side, though, there has been a lot of awful work, even from people who might otherwise have been entitled to try. I still wish I could recover the time I wasted on Speed Racer, or Daredevil, or Ang Lee's Hulk, or that disaster we know as the most recent Indiana Jones movie. Don't get me started on Episodes 1 and 2. Really, you haven't been the most responsible caretaker of my halcyon fantasies and escapism.

As is the case every year as the weather warms up, we've arrived at your latest efforts to update my past and make money by sucking in nostalgists like me while exposing younger folks to these older ideas repackaged in a way which you think best speaks to today's twelve-year-olds. I'd say you did a pretty good job with Wolverine. The writing was horrible, but only an idiot would have shown up expecting David Mamet. Instead, I felt like you met my realistic expectations--there was endless action shot in a manner that didn't induce nausea, some pithy punch lines, lots of cool franchise potential, and a fairly faithful adherence to the general storyline popular with people like me. It's a performance that will get me back in a theater this weekend for Star Trek. You've earned another 9 of my dollars.

But, let's take a moment to be real: there is potential danger on the horizon. I saw this today and it was exciting, but also a sobering reminder:



That looks cool. Very cool. You seem to be angling toward an honest depiction of what a 27-year-old man might remember and most like about G.I. Joe. Therein lies my point: G.I. Joe is perfect for your exploitations of my youth. People my age who grew up with it remember the cartoons and the 80's-era toys. We remember that G.I. Joe was a fighting force of the dopest soldiers possible, and that they were always trying to stifle what, in retrospect, was the illest terrorist cell of all time. Al-Qaeda ain't got shit on Cobra. And really, that's the extent. I don't care about the plot of G.I. Joe. And beyond the theme song, the enduring elements, at least for me, are the characters and the central struggle between the Joes and Cobra. It's something which can go from whatever was happening in the 80s to some weird, green missile destroying the Eifel Tower. Sure.

Transformers on the other hand? Well...



...this isn't Transformers. This is "Really Cool Space Robots." And it could be an alright movie. But it's not Transformers. Transformers don't have teeth; Devastator is a collection of construction vehicles that form an anthropomorphic uber-robot; they make a very specific noise when transforming; they shoot lasers at each other; no one talks through the radio. It's just not right; it's this abject revisionism that, well, sucks. Stop it. Please. Don't do this.

Got my point? You know? Certain source material is more malleable than some other, Hollywood. I need you to do a better job recognzing that. Thanks.

- Joey

God in the Building

Yeah, motherfucker, I'm back from the dead
Drivin' like a bat out of hell in a red
Caprice Classic, I spit acid
I 'on't rap ringtones, I flow classic

Yeah, so the first year of law school is over. Let's goooooooo...

- First, this news is offensive and disappointing (HT: HR). Like, worse than the fact that DJ Qualls got to participate in this:



Rick Fox?! A guy with this hair?

- Second, there is one letter and a world of difference between SB and this site. I think the latter is ever more awesome, however. (HT: Robbie)

- Third, Alex Rodriguez. Not that there was any doubt, but let us again take a moment to recognize him as not only a fraud who has forever cast his talent in doubt (just how good is he?), and not only as an athlete worthy of a spot alongside Brett Favre and Roger Clemens in the pantheon of people about whom I want to never hear another word, but also as an all-time narcissist and self-loather of the highest order. Honestly, I feel bad for him on some level. He's disgusting--a self-absorbed, cheating womanizer. But to be so insecure that you spend your entire life participating in these charades and in this self-destructive behavior while always searching for direction, validation, and acceptance is pretty sad. The lengths to which he's gone to find a way to feel good about himself are staggering.

- Fourth, Gawker straight kills it. Amen. I can't believe people in Boston even care that he did this. As the story notes, it's not like he dissed someone called "Sully."

- Fifth, let's talk about Jeremy Tyler tomorrow.

- Sixth, I can't tell how I feel about this new De La Soul running mix thing. Gonna have a review up on Monday.

- Seventh, it's time for Bulls-Celtics.