Acquired Tastes: Inside Stuff?

Henry Abbott over at True Hoop has come up with an amazing blog project that features previews for the upcoming season written by the best NBA bloggers. For those basketball aficionados who haven't stumbled across True Hoop, either due to a lack of familiarity with the Net, or sheer laziness (traits which used to apply to me prior to my renewed productivity on the Web, courtesy of my ubercool MacBook), it's one of the best written NBA blogs on the planet. Check it out by clicking on the link above, then hie over to the previews by going here. In the meantime, here's a preview of what awaits...in the preview:

"I can hear your groan, team president Steve Patterson. But Zach Randolph! you say. Yes, he has top-shelf post-scoring ability, a nose for the ball, and a mean ol’ work ethic. But I can’t tell if he’s a follower or an anti-leader off the court, ball movement goes to Zach’s house to die, and it’s debatable if anyone is truly top-shelf after microfracture surgery."

"Joe Dumars: collector of mediocre former head coaches

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After the offseason departure of assistant coach Sidney Lowe (himself a former head coach) to North Carolina State, Joe Dumars stated that the spot should be filled by someone who commands immediate respect from the players — not someone who would be learning on the job. Enter former head coaches Terry Porter and Dave Cowens.

If Ben Wallace’s tantrums last season proved anything, it is that a veteran team like the Pistons needs someone deserving of respect to get guys to buy into a system. Otherwise, minor problems with strong-willed players could become major. Porter and Cowens bring instantly respectable pedigrees and hopefully will not hesitate to get on guys if the effort is lacking. "

In related news, Charley Rosen and Bill Simmons have been producing some good stuff of late. Simmons trotted out another mailbag, while Rosen seems to be warming up to another year of curmudgeonly hoops analysis by making pointed (and largely insightful) comments on Jerry Colangelo, Shaquille O'Neal, the current NBA coaching lineup, and NBA franchises on the verge of either breaking through, or breaking down.

Photo Credits:

Picture of Bill Simmons courtesy of Charlie Powell in Slate.

Acquired Tastes: Spike Lee's Inside Man

I finally got to watch Inside Man. I found it rather interesting that Spike Lee managed to come up with perhaps his most engaging and satisfying full length feature film by deliberately eschewing pointed social commentary about race and New York (save for one interlude between Clive Owens' character and a feisty African-American kid, and a breezy conversation between Denzel Washington and a beat cop) and concentrating on New York. The city comes alive with a genial nonchalance, and a quietly understated statement of fact. Much like the edgy charm of Frank Sinatra's paean to the Big Apple, Spike Lee's New York charms and challenges. You really get the impression that if you make it there, you can make it anywhere. But it's not up to you: it's up to New York.

All in all, Inside Man is a wonderfully light, satisfying heist flick that is certainly worth checking out, if only for Lee's rediscovery of the smooth, iconic visual charm of New York. For full details on the movie, click on IMDB.

Photo Credits:
Poster of Inside Man comes courtesy of WorstPreviews.

Terribly Quiet...Again

"And how does your commerce go, you strange guardian of the past?" said Wayne, affably.

"Well, sir, not very well," replied the man, with that patient voice of his class which is one of the most heart-breaking things in the world. "Things are terribly quiet."

Wayne's eyes shone suddenly.

"A great saying," he said, "worthy of a man whose merchandise is human history. Terribly quiet; that is in two words the spirit of this age, as I have felt it from my cradle. I sometimes wondered how many other people felt the oppression of this union between quietude and terror. I see blank, well-ordered streets and men in black moving about inoffensively, sullenly. It goes on day after day, day after day, and nothing happens; but to me it is like a dream from which I might wake screaming. To me the straightness of our life is the straightness of a thin cord stretched tight. Its stillness is terrible. It might snap with a noise like thunder. And you who sit, amid the debris of the great wars, you who sit, as it were, upon a battle-field, you know that war was less terrible than this evil peace; you know that the idle lads who carried those swords under Francis or Elizabeth, the rude Squire or Baron who swung that mace about in Picardy or Northumberland battles, may have been terribly noisy, but were not like us, terribly quiet."

G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

It seems that every few weeks or so, I find myself apologizing for the lack of activity in my blog. Since my readership has quadrupled to around eight, it becomes more important to apologize to my readers, since I am related, by blood, to roughly 75% of my readership. With the Yuletide season fast approaching, I don't think it would do to antagonize any family members. There's this disconcerting rumor running around about how the dismal state of the Philippine economy is spurring renewed interest in recycling the nine known fruitcakes that actually constitute the entire fruitcake population of Metro Manila. It looks like these valiant fruitcakes will be gifted and re-gifted even more this holiday season.

Truth be told, it has been a rather hectic week thus far, and the sites I normally peruse for either entertainment, relaxation, or indulgence have been unconscionably blah lately. Still, I came across a good read in, of all places, The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty entitled C.S. Lewis and Materialism. It's a little on the academic side, but for those people with a passing familiarity with one of Christendom's most engaging advocates, it's worth noting that what makes his literary works fun to read is what makes his unabashedly Christian worldview so compelling.

Photo Credits:
That Hideous Strength courtesy of Amazon.

Braveheart? Go Tell the Spartans!

As expected, soon after my quasi-depressed entry of a couple of days ago, things have turned, if not entirely for the better, then certainly in a direction other than utter wretchedness. Thus, I've had time to both do what I have to do for work, as well as marvel at the colossal lack of sense exemplified by Mel Gibson, who, so soon after being accused of anti-Semitism after being taken into custody for driving under the influence of alcohol, can't bring himself to make amends with any degree of certainty or coherence. It's not as if the entire world is waiting with bated for an apology that spans the wide theological differences between similarly montheistic religions. We're just interested in seeing if Mel can offer an apology that makes sense.

Mel, of course, doesn't help at all, what with sparkling examples of definitive intent such as: "What I need to do to heal myself and to be assuring and allay the fears of others and to heal them if they had any heart wounds from something I may have said." Or, one could always hold out hope that Mel spews out more gems such as the following observation regarding his falling back into the clutches of alcoholism: "Years go by, you're fine. And then all of a sudden in a heartbeat, in an instant, on an impulse, somebody shoves a glass of Mescal in front of your nose, and says, 'It's from Oaxaca'. And it's burning its way through your esophagus, and you go, 'Oh, man, what did I do that for? I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'"

I went through the panoply of websites that I visit regularly, and found an interesting link in the videos section of Fark. For avid readers of historical fiction, very few authors could hope to equal Steven Pressfield's epic retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, Gates of Fire. When Hollywood (in the person of Bruce Willis) failed to come to terms with Mr. Pressfield regarding a film treatment of the said novel, Hollywood (in the person of director Zack Snyder), wisely turned to comic book legend Frank Miller, who had already received much critical praise for his graphic novel on the Battle of Thermopylae, 300.

I'm sort of interested as to how this movie plays out. On the one hand, it makes sense to ask someone used to dealing with a predominantly visual medium to assist the transition of an epic story to the big screen, and Frank Miller, whose stark reimagination of the Batman mythos inspired Tim Burton's first two Batman films, and to a certain extent, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, is an old hand at the particular kind of deft storytelling that lends itself easily to cinema. On the other hand, if Miller's role as executive producer on the film consisted largely of selecting a vacation home in the Caribbean and checking every two hours as to whether "The check's in the mail, right?" then this version of Thermopylae may be considered dead in the water.

Anyway, you can find the trailer to 300 here. Enjoy!

Photo Credits:
Picture of Leonidas comes courtesy of WorstPreviews

My Life as Jim Belushi

I would like to apologize in advance for this entry. I just realized that it's a shame that more people haven't been reading my blog, because if anyone ever stumbles onto my blog and reads this entry, I don't think they'll make an effort to stumble over here again.

What do a sick wife, a hyperactive two year-old and a precocious eating and pooping machine with a fantastic proboscis have in common? If anyone thought, "Wow, sounds like another failed fall pilot starring the wildly untalented Jim Belushi!" then I would seriously encourage you to get off the couch now and try to get some exercise. There's more to life than cable television, Ralph. The correct answer is: they're all surnamed Borra, and they couldn't have come together as a stereotypical sitcom family at a worse time. Despite the prodigious talents of my wonderfully able teaching staff at St. John (Papot and Concha), the welcome digital prestidigitation of Franco, and the ambling, folksy humor of an upright Ralph Lumo, I had a hell of a day managing my duties at St. John and discharging some of my obligations back in UA&P. I've taken great pains to be more patient, organized, and strategic in managing my time and the amount of effort that I put into what I have to do, but the work doesn't seem to stop, and even scarier, I find myself sometimes wishing that it never does.

Still, I normally manage to get over my creepy metamorphosis into some sort of stress-addled workaholic by the time I get home. There is very little, I imagine, that can compare with the sublime satisfaction of being greeted by one's family at the end of a hard day's work. Today was a little different. Instead of being met by my cheerfully exasperated wife, who oftentimes begins our joyful mini-reunions at the end of every working day with a mock-serious "Guess what our sons did today...", I was met by a very tired mother who valiantly tried to stave off a particularly nasty cold just to feed our ever-growing, newly baptized bundle of joy, Manuel.

As I tap out this entry, my grand vision of nurturing our fledgling St. John into a premier learning institution is swiftly, and cruelly, supplanted by the need to change my son's diapers before his poop spills out and contaminates our already fragile ecosystem.

I'm quite sure that by tomorrow I'll be able to convince myself that "this too shall pass", and that it surely is true that "the course of true love never did run smooth", but right now I'm so pooped that I can't even bring myself to compose a witty retort at my own self-conscious attempt at weak punning. Yes, tomorrow...

Scrubbed on the Net

I found some hilarious stuff, courtesy of our friends at Fametracker about Scrubs star and current indie film darling Zach Braff. Head on over here for their take on Dr. John "J.D." Dorian.

It seems that there's a little Braff-lash going on, as our friends at Slate aren't too impressed with my almost namesake's current mainstream success, as you can read in this particularly this generation, angst-driven diatribe .

Photo Credits:

Zach Braff photo comes courtesy of Mooshra

Kiddie Station!

Finally! The past couple of days have been hectic, so I haven't been able to steal time and update this blog until now. My apologies to the barely-there plurality that regularly visits this blog. At any rate, to celebrate my return to the blogging community (which, in a rare show of restraint, did NOT round up a search party to look for signs of any blogging activity on Flowers from the Rubble), here's a link to myself and Juan horsing around in the Kiddie Station, Valle Verde Country Club as well as some video finds around the Web:

This is an overview of the inimitable William Shatner's singing career. Conan O' Brien presents characters too lame to appeal to any fan-boy clique in the X-Men. Plus, here are some pathetic, engrossingly watchable doofuses trying to be the next Jet Li.

Enjoy!