HI

What took me so long to do this? All I do is bitch about stuff to people who, for the most part, don't care. Is there a better forum for this than a web-log? Anyway, for those of you who don't already know, I tend to have very strong and usually unsupported opinions about everything from sports to how much people suck. If you have a problem with that, awesome, and away I go...

I am starting to give up on college basketball from a quality of play perspective. That's not to say that I'm giving up watching it, it just means that I don't think it can improve. The product is total crap. Sure, we had some sick buzzer-beaters and solid OT games during the first two rounds of the NCAAs, but overall it was hard to watch.


The problem is that there is a formula to winning: all you need to win is a good point guard who can start the fast break/protect the ball/draw fouls in crunch time, two guys (could include said point guard) who can hit 3's/free-throws and a big man to protect the rim/rebound/clog the paint. Does this remind you of every "good" Duke team in the last 15 years? Yes! Am I a bitter UNC fan? Yes, but that doesn't mean I'm not right. There is very little pick-and-roll, mid-range shooting and general individual brilliance in the college game. You could argue, of course, that basketball is a team game and individual performances only cast an ugly cloud over that, and you'd be right. Unfortunately, the NCAAs have something I call "individual cluster-fuck," and they have it in spades. There were countless games when a team's entire half-court offense consisted of their "star" or their point guard dribbling for 20 seconds and either and turning it over or chucking up a horrid shot (usually a three). Wait, I think I just described the UNC half-court set from 2009-2010. So, so bitter...

I would expound on my reasons why the game is this way listing everything from rules and poor coaching to the psychology of the average NCAA basketball player trying to make eight figures in the NBA, but I don't like defending my arguments, I just make them. Moving on...

I watched The Hurt Locker again this weekend and noticed some new things about it: The psychologist/Colonel/Ice Truck Killer from Dexter got exactly what he deserved. I felt bad for him the first time I watched it, but no more. He's telling a bunch of Iraqis who either don't speak English (or who do and are pretending they don't) to move their cart because it's not safe "today." Really? It's not safe in downtown Baghdad in 2004? What a doofus. How the hell did that guy become a colonel in the US military? He apparently never really went out into the field and saw real combat and now he's counseling 18-year-old kids who are stuck in the desert dodging bombs from insurgents...huhh? No wonder they all have Gulf War Syndrome.


This leads me to my second observation: why the hell was Eldridge such a baby about it when he died (and how did I miss him being a total sodding wet blanket the first time around)? He saw his first team leader/guy from Memento/guy from LA Confidential die from a bomb and it was because he (Eldridge) was unable to kill the guy who triggered it. You would think he'd be a little more distraught about causing the death of his team leader than some Iraqi grandfathers outsmarting some paper pushing, ass-kissing doctor-made-Colonel. When Sgt. James wanted to go "Haji hunting," Eldridge said he was down to party (paraphrasing), but when he goes and gets captured like a loser and accidentally gets shot by James during the (successful) rescue, he get's pissed at him! Would he have preferred to let the two insurgents take him to a basement, put a flag on the wall behind his head and start chopping? Did he even thank James for rescuing him? No, he just blamed him for shattering his femur and putting him on the shelf for six months. Sorry about your vagi-, I mean, femur, douche, but maybe you should have voiced your concern before you went out in the dark trying to seek revenge on the guys who killed your gynecologist. Will James got a bad rap, man, I tell ya...


My third observation was already known to me, but it only strengthened my previous notion that Kate from LOST is totally useless in all situations. I hope she dies soon (on the show), she can do NOTHING right. James was getting all excited about people getting exploded in Iraq and how they need more bomb techs like him, and she (playing the part of his wife) tells him to cut a carrot. Really, you're going to be passive aggressive about not wanting your husband to go back to disabling bombs in Iraq? Don't you think and old-fashioned tantrum (shake the baby, pretend to kill yourself, offer sexual favors) would work better? No wonder the guy ended up back there. The irony of all of this is that it's the exact opposite of how LOST Kate would have acted. She would have agreed that he should go back to Iraq and then complained when he didn't let her come. She would have then pretended like she was over it and then come anyway. Then she would have interfered while he was trying to disable a bomb and gotten them both killed. Would that have made the movie better? Worse? Who knows, but at least we know that Kate sucks and to never fall for her venus flytrap-like personality.