jimmy

David O. Russell really makes you work for it in American Hustle.

About a month ago I went over to Brendan’s apartment to watch the screener. We put it in, and 17 minutes later took it out. It was really fucking awful. We watched Blue Jasmine instead and like it a lot. Brendan went back and watched Hustle again, got through it and really really fucking hated it. I trust his judgement, so I let it be. I’d eventually catch it down the line.

But after the Golden Globes and hearing all of the rave reviews, I figured I’d stick with it and give it second chance. It took every bit for me to make it through the movie.

On the most recent Jay and Dan Podcast, someone described the movie as a bunch of people standing up and talking to one another. That’s probably the most accurate description of the movie.

People are standing around and talking about how to scam people, scam politicians, scam the Feds, scam one another. It’s really fucking tedious especially if you don’t really care about anyone on the screen.

There are some good moments: the “science box” aka the microwave and the mishap that ensues. There’s Jennifer Lawrence kissing Amy Adams in the bathroom. And the final 30 minutes of the movie was pretty good.

But damn there was a lot of wasted celluloid in the first two-thirds of the movie.

I’m glad I gave this movie a second chance. Instead of really fucking hating it, I now merely don’t like it. And it makes me wonder just what the fuck the critics were watching. It still seems like a Martin Scorsese rip-off, and in a year we had The Wolf of Wall Street who needs it?

1. Going for it on fourth down. The first big decision in the game came at the end of the first quarter. The Panthers had the ball fourth-and-goal with only a yard to go for the touchdown. Trailing the 49ers 6-0 at that point, to go or not to go was the question. At least, some people thought it was a question.

I didn’t think there was a question there. You absolutely go for it. The best case scenario is you take the lead. The worst case scenario is you back your opponent deep in their end of the field.

As they changed sides for the second quarter the Panthers ran a quarterback sneak, a shit play call I thought, and Cam Newton was held out of the end zone. The 49ers still led 6-0.

No, because what happens next happens because they went for it on fourth-and-goal. The 49ers gained only two yards on their drive including a third-down throw that was nearly intercepted for a touchdown. San Francisco punted from their own end zone, and Panthers returner Ted Ginn ran the punt from the Carolina 45-yard line to San Francisco’s 31-yard line.

The first Panthers play was a long 31-yard Cam Newton throw to Steve Smith in the end zone for a touchdown. With the extra point the Panthers take the 7-6 lead.

Sure the Panthers might have taken the 10-6 lead had they went for the field goal in that critical play. But what if the 49ers scored on their drive? What if the Panthers got the ball back but deeper in their own side of the field? The variables and possibilities multiply from there.

2. Not going for it on fourth down. Later in the second quarter the Panthers were faced with the same exact decision. This time they had the 7-6 lead, and they seemed to have all of the momentum after proving they were “in it to win it” or something like that.

I thought it was a perfect time to go for a play-action pass on fourth down since each time there had a goal-to-go down they tried to either go for a power run or a quarterback sneak. A little deception would be good in that instance, maybe sneak a tight end behind the linebacker, or something. Anything.

Instead Carolina went for the field goal, and it seemed that the fire they had after going for it the first time around was extinguished here. San Francisco took the ball and scored a touchdown leaving only five seconds left on the clock in the first half with a 13-10 lead.

Carolina would never see the lead again in the game. After taking the points here are the drives from both teams:

Carolina: Punt, punt, interception.
San Francisco: Touchdown, end of half, touchdown, field goal, downs.

With the 49ers 23-10 win, we get an all-NFC West NFC Championship Game.

3. Vlade Divac would be proud. Here is what is perhaps the flop of the year:

4. Silly queen thinks he has a personality. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great troll job by Colin Kaepernick, but that doesn’t make him any less a silly queen.

5. Redundant idiocy. Even casual football viewers should know the yellow tabby things indicate how many timeouts a team has remaining. Then why do these broadcasts insist on tacking on an additional timeout graphic?

6. What a fucking miserable game. Peyton Manning. Omaha. Offsides. Phillip Rivers going redface on his team. That’s about all I took away from the Chargers-Broncos game.

What made this game unwatchable was the Chargers offense being a no-show for 45 minutes. Through three quarters they gained 81 yards. Sure, the Charger defense did a good job holding the Broncos to only 17 points for those three quarters, but if you’re not going to score points why even bother?

Well they finally showed up in the fourth quarter scoring 17 points including nabbing an on-side kick which made things interesting down the stretch. But Manning got the first downs in the final drive to get the 24-17 victory.

Also can someone turn Peyton Manning’s mic off? I don’t get what the fascination is with all of his audibles.

7. Peyton Manning can’t win. If the Broncos lost the game, Peyton Manning once again can’t win in the playoffs. But now that they won, oh well he was supposed to win. It’s clear that for the public it’s Super Bowl or bust for Peyton. How can he be great if his bum of a brother Eli has more rings than him?

I find those sorts of arguments trite and short-sighted. They’re on the same level as the supposed feminization of sports and other nonsense. Besides, it discounts the contributions of every other player on the field.

8. Who will Jim Nantz cheer for next week? It’s Manning v. Brady. Broncos v. Patriots. We might witness Nantz explode in the booth next week.

1. What the fuck was Marques Colston thinking? When Marshawn Lynch broke a 31-yard run for a touchdown with 2:40 left in the game to give the Seahawks the 23-8 lead, everyone figured the game was over. But Drew Brees didn’t think so.

Brees led the Saints on a nine-play, 80-yard drive that culminated with a Colston touchdown with 26 seconds left on the game clock. An on-side kick, some luck, a two-point conversion and the game would go to overtime. Colston recovered the on-side kick. With 11 seconds on the clock, Brees connected to Colston for 13 yards to the Seattle 38-yard line.

All Colston had to do was go out-of-bounds to stop the clock, and perhaps Brees could throw up a prayer to tie the game. But instead Colston did this (click to video because the NFL is too mentally retarded to allow embedding video).

So Colston scored the touchdown, grabbed the on-side kick, but all of that was for naught. Instead of going out-of-bounds, he tries a lateral that goes awry to put it generously. Despite all the good he did, the only question remains: what the fuck was he thinking?

2. This was only the ninth 23-15 game in NFL history. Here is the list of all eight previous 23-15 games in NFL history:

3. We’re halfway to an all-NFC West NFC Championship Game. In the 2010 season no NFC West team had a winning record. By default the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks was the playoff representative of the division. Also because they were a division winner, the Seahawks got to host a playoff game. Because life just isn’t fair, the Seahawks beat the Saints 41-36.

Three seasons later the NFC West has two of the better teams in the NFL. In fact, Arizona Cardinals went 10-6 and did not make the playoffs. Again, because life isn’t fair.

If the 49ers beat Carolina tomorrow, next week will see an all-NFC West Championship Game. Three years ago that seemed unfathomable.

4. Fox announcers trump the CBS announcers. Fox made the right decision to give Kevin Burkhardt and John Lynch a divisional playoff game. I suppose CBS also made the right decision in giving the retiring Dan Dierdorf a final hurrah. But thinking about it, I think Fox has the better announcing teams.

5. LeGarrette Blount’s Night. This is how I remembered first learning about Blount:

Funny thing was I thought he wasn’t completely wrong.

Anyhow he gets lost in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization, gets to the Patriots and voila! With four rushing touchdowns he came one touchdown shy of Ricky Watters’ record of five rushing touchdowns in a postseason game (1/15/94, SF vs. NYG). He also avoided a 19-way tie with players with three rushing touchdowns (which includes Shaun Alexander, Curtis Martin, Larry Csonka, Emmitt Smith, Otto Graham and Adrian Peterson.)

I’m not saying Blount is a good guy, that he changed his ways, that he’s reformed or anything like that. I don’t know the guy.

But he’s a good football player.

6. Luck v. Brady. Some people thought this game would come down to this.

Andrew Luck: 20/41, 331 yards, 2 TD.
Tom Brady: 13/25, 198 yards, 0 TD.

The Patriots won 43-22. Not included in the numbers above was Luck throwing four interceptions. That’s seven interceptions by Luck in two weeks in the playoffs after only throwing nine interceptions in the regular season. Ouch.

Although Brady would have a shitty fantasy game, with Blount’s four rushing touchdowns and Stevan Ridley’s two touchdowns the Patriots just stomped all over the Colts.

New England ran for 234 yards. With 267 rushing yards against the Bills in the final week of the regular season, that marks the only 200-yard rushing games the Patriots had. With 185 passing yards it also marked only the third game all season Patriots had more yards on the ground than in the air.

7. This was the only 43-22 final score in NFL history. That’s it.

So far, at least.

Female empowerment, a cautionary tale about the hubris of greed, a tawdry display of tits in all shapes and sizes, a fun frolic of spring break gone wrong.

Harmony Korine said in the press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival that he started the film with the idea of the girls on spring break robbing people and went from there. He also said that he tried to present the film as a painting without trying to shove a moral down our throats.

Natural Born Killers was made with hip-hop in mind — the movie itself was sampled and repeated over the soundtrack. Spring Breakers advances this idea almost 20 years later. This time it’s the hypnotic sounds of electronic music that underscores the lethargic drawl of the cast. “Spring break baby. Spring break forever.” It can get to be droll, but that’s the point.

What’s surprising is that there is hardly anything sexy about the film despite the breasts, breasts and more breasts. But then again I’m gay. Seeing bouncing boobs just gets me a bit dizzy, nothing more. Although I did find the scene where Alien (James Franco) fellating two guns as the most erotic moment of the film. It is also the tipping point of the movie where the girls take complete control.

Thanks to Amazon Prime, I’ve seen this movie three times in the last month. It’s always left me smiling. I mean, who can hate a movie that has Vanessa Hudgens proclaim, “Seeing all this money makes my pussy wet.”

There are only very few reasons to buy tickets and endure the stinky shitfest that is the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2014.

1. Outkast
2. Motorhead
3. The Replacements
4. The Knife
5. Mogwai

Yeah. That’s not going to get me itching to go. As I tweeted last night:

But rather than going on bitching about it, let’s go a different direction. Early on in college a bunch of us would talk about the lineup for our fantasy festival. Over the years the lineups would have inevitably changed.

Needing a broad range of performers from headliners to smaller acts, to hip-hop to rock, to retro and reunions, I think here is a festival I would go see:

• My Bloody Valentine
• Front Line Assembly
• Slayer
• Kanye West
• Unwound
• PJ Harvey
• Dinosaur Jr.
• Bauhaus
• Bjork
• Aphex Twin

This isn’t a complete list, but I would probably go to see this. Looking at this list a second time, it’s looking more like a lineup more suited for a county fair circuit. Jeez I’m not getting any younger.

Here is hoping that 2014 starting this shitty means it can only look up. If not, I’ll be dead by my birthday.

This is perhaps the best present I have received in a long while. It’s a picture of me underneath a Welcome to Texas road sign. This is on the border with Louisiana on the I-10 East in Orange, TX. Behind the Texas Welcome Center there is a bayou you can explore.

It documents perhaps the best two weeks of my life in a very long time. Best. Road. Trip. Ever!

I read in the LA Times that 1 in 200 American women claim to have become pregnant as virgins.

Women with “virgin pregnancy” were twice as likely as other pregnant women to have signed a chastity pledge, with more than 30% reporting they had done so. Their parents, in turn, were more likely to say they had trouble discussing sex or birth control with their children, the survey showed.

And my first assumption was that they had really bad sex.

“See, you want to have sex with her. I just want to fuck her anal.”

Walking towards STAPLES Center from the south side, there are always teenage boys skateboarding. Usually they’re focused on skateboarding, making fun of each others follies and other nonsense, but I usually never hear their conversations. At least, usually their conversations don’t make any impressions with me.

But this one had me giggling. I actually had to stifle a laugh as I walked past them taking a break from the action on a planter. I thought it was a lovely holiday-themed conversation to have with friends, but it had me wondering.

Isn’t it easier to convince a girl to have vag secks rather than butt secks? Girls don’t have prostates, so when penises go up their bum there is no pleasure center for the penis to hit.

Then a friend with a protected Twitter account sent me this gem:

Wow.

I’ve heard of this phenomenon of girls preferring anal in order to keep their virginity. It’s not a foreign concept to me, but I thought it was more of an urban myth. But I talked to several heterosexual media folks last night about this, and they confirmed that this was true. One said it was mostly catholic girls who followed this practice. Figures.

Wow! Just fascinating. Straight people CAN be interesting after all!

But it does raise a very important question: does this make me a virgin?

Saturday I woke up finding out the Kings game against the Colorado Avalanche was at 1 p.m. not 7 p.m. Oops. This was the best thing to come from it:

Watched The Great Dictator and A Woman Under the Influence Saturday night.

Today I had a Santa Barbara reunion with Derrick, Skick, Staci, Kevin, Matthew, Antonia and Daniel. Skick and Derrick got me the candle shown above for Xmas. Ho-ho-how lovely I said.

I am now dead.