Pretend Like You Care

I like that movie. It makes me laff. I like it when they kiss. That is hot.

BTW. I have it on good authority that James Bond is over. There will be no more movies. This seemed like a good place to mention it. The thread that exists solely to taunt those of us who weren’t at last night’s bun fight in Sandy Eggo.

@Benedick: Last I heard, the deal was that MGM owns the distribution rights and financing cojones for Bond, and MGM is going tits-up again, so no new Bond until that mess gets straightened out.

In related news, Guillermo del Toro gave up on the Hobbit movies.

@Benedick: Oh, and this thread exists because I can’t work up an angle on everyone claiming to sleep with South Carolina’s GOP governor candidate.

@nojo: Remember that movie, maybe 12 years ago, about the VP candidate, female, and the gangbang movie supposedly from her college days, that she was being blackmailed with?

Its hard to come up with an angle on that one, the absurdity of these dudes squeeling, especially this new one, his story is for shit, about his conscience bothering him, when its just the ugliest example of ugly, vicious, ugly nasty politics going on.

@nojo: You mean “Darling Nikki”?

@nojo:

People have been trying to pump that old lion for what little it has left for years.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: And the grand irony, as you know, is that MGM is where UA ended up after Heaven’s Gate.

@nojo:

That blows, I was looking forward to that.

Too bad we have Tim Burton, he would be interesting in that seat…

Hobbitts. They’re the short ones, right?

These people in S Carolina. Are any of them pretty? I refuse to look at any more politicians unless they’re pretty. And take their shirts off.

Meanwhile, looks like Amazon has a one-day special on a boxed set of The Wire for $90. This here’s the Stinque Linque, if you go for it and wanna cut us in.

If you don’t, we’ll send Omar after you.

Oh, and Google sent moi a check for $100 yesterday. Somebody’s clicking, bless your hearts.

@Benedick:

You’re in for a long hiatus from the political arena.

Hobbits are the ones that look like tiny, hairy Michael Moores.

@nojo: And Amazon has a pre-order available for the Max Headroom DVD set. Be still my beating heart, I’ve only been waiting for decades.

@IanJ: US or UK version? (Is there a UK version? Memory fails. But the name “Max Headroom” is a UK joke.)

Still: Netflix first, for moi — not sure I’d want to own it. Although I did spring for the Police Squad! set last year.

@Prommie: The Contender. I probably would never have heard of/seen it were it not for my high school government and politics teacher recommending it.

Oh, Nojo! >:-/

Et tu, Nojo? I’ve been ignoring half my Facebook feed today because of this Sport incident. In the name of balance, I’m once again calling on the Dept. of Lady Bits (aka Lefty) for a Hamm post. I’ll even settle for a few of HF’s International Men of Leather. For FSM’s sake, don’t make me go find out what Shelly O. was wearing yesterday!

@flippin eck: Slow day. And the Real World South Carolina is too confusing.

@nojo: Oh, I’m sure that’s what they’d like us to believe, but we know it was the blond that killed James Bond.

@Prommie: Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges as the president who kept trying to stump the WH chef. Never has a shark sandwich been so loaded with meaning.

BTW, I care. Even though it’s the AL, I care because this is 2010, goddamnit, and it’s absolute bullshit the way umpires are allowed to get away with this nonsense. It’s telling that John Roberts most famous quote to date is equating Supreme Court justices with umpires. They’re both mostly arrogant assholes who refuse cameras in their courts and act derisively toward those who challenge their delusional sense of infallibility.

@flippin eck: Alternate distraction: New post at I’m-so-jealous-of-that-dude 27b/6. “Squirrels can also be taught to weld.”

@nojo: “I assumed from your initial offer that wasting each other’s time was the premise of our relationship.”

Excellent counteroffer, thanks!

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: What also shocked me is how many no-hitters and perfect games we’ve seen lately. What’s up with the hitters? Did getting off of steroids make their bats droopy?

@Benedick: That’s good news re Bond. I tried once to read an Ian Fleming novel and couldn’t get past page 2 or 3. (That’s more than I could stand of a Barbara Cartland novel i picked out of a recycling bin, just to see what the fuss was about. Good God! Fleming at least appeared to have been educated past the first grade.) Sean Connery was the only reason to ever watch more than a few minutes of a Bond movie, IMO.

@lynnlightfoot: True. Fleming sort of invented the brand-name novel that Brett Easton Ellis used to such hilarious effect in American Psycho. The one I really hate is Agatha Christie. The plays are absolute hell.

@Dodgerblue: Not for Rafael Palmeiro.

@Dodgerblue: My theory is steroids made hitters lazy. They became more inclined to play long ball and if you don’t have the juice to send it out of the park, you become an easy out. Maybe now, we’ll see a return to strategy hitting to move runners forward than just relying on homers.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Bonds remained a great hitter (and runner) even as his back blossomed with ‘roid pimples. And Bonds leaving the Pirates led to Leyland going to Detroit via Florida, along with Andy Van Slyke, which is why I care at all about this perfect game story.

ADD: @nojo: Now I feel guilty for even thinking about buying the “original copy” of the box set over here for $30.

@Nabisco: True, but my point doesn’t really apply to pre-steroid era hitters like Bonds. Dude was really good/great before he juiced. I’m talking about the ones that never really mastered the fundamentals of the game – the ones who saw Bonds, McGuire, Palmeiro, and Sosa in the late 90s onward and emulated them thinking that was the only way to get to the show.

ETA: I don’t just blame players for this either. The “chicks dig the long ball” environment was not solely created by MLB hitters. Owners who loved the money coming in after 98 because home run records were challenged made this whole thing worse.

Ultimately, isn’t a better for this pitcher to be remembered as “the guy who would have had a perfect game if not for this bum call” than one of 28 guys who had a perfect game? Can anyone actually name any of those 27 other guys?

@nojo: You know, UA was founded, this is from my poor recollection of a shallow reading of movie history, by a group of the biggest stars of the day, taking back the production side, almost a commie thing, the workers taking over control of the material means of production.

It suddenly hit me, reading your post that mentioned UA, that todays big money makers among the actors, they have the capital to do it again. But they won’t. Collectivism is out. And though many of them are stunod, there money managers are smart enough not to invest the money they earned from movies, in something so risky as movies.

@mellbell: Ding ding ding. I thought it was an OK movie.

@Benedick: Fleming is right there with Tom Clancy, its techno-porn. He would spend a page describing in loving detail a gun or some secret spy-weapon, nothing for character development.

John Le Carre on the other hand, takes the spy novel genre to true literary heights, noone’s ever done a good movie of his novels, though. Still, The Tailor of Panama was good, and I thought The Russia House was, as well.

@SpongeBobtheBuilder: That Philly dude Holliday just last week, but yeah, good point. Everyone remembers Maz for his ’60 series winner, but not for the hoover of a glove he had at 2nd base.

One funny thing, when the juiced batters started shattering all slugging records, the official story was that pitching talent lagged behind hitting talent, there just weren’t enough good pitchers. But now, with, I assume, steroid use waning, all of a sudden we see what is it, 3 perfect games in a year? Coincidence?

@Promnight: Ironically, I think Cruise was given UA as a vanity label a year or two back.

But let’s try this from memory: United Artists was founded by Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, and a player to be named later.

@Benedick:

Oh come now. Ten Little Indians is charming. Sorta. Mostly as closet drama.

@Promnight: When someone drops acid and pitches a no-no like Doc Ellis*, I’ll start watching baseball again.

*Three Pirate references in one coffee-filled morning, a new personal best!

@Nabisco: I love you. And the rest of you, inglorious stinque basterds.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: It’s a fucking nightmare of horror.

@Nabisco: Sport is all about body memory, zen. Not ever thinking, just doing, practice until the body knows, so the mind does not have to. There’s truth in what Chevy Chase’s character said to Noonan in Caddyshack, be the ball, see the succesful shot, see it, visualize the shot you want to make, and your body will make that happen. Too much thinking, failure to allow the body to take control and do what it knows how to do, seems to be a large part of the struggle at the highest level in the skill sports. Considering that there have probably only been a very small number of games pitched by tripping pitchers, and yet, it seems that every pitcher who ever pitched a game tripping did very well, it seems reasonable to conclude that hallucinogens don’t interfere, maybe even help, in getting to that zen, body-memory state where the mind doesn’t interfere.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: @Benedick: Bless you both for carrying on with theatre talk in the midst of this distressingly on-topic discussion of the World’s Most Boring Sport. Yes, I’m including cricket.

Agatha Christie’s mysteries are the soothing chocolate bar of reading for me–the ultimate comfort read. The plays I find a bit dull.

Ok, my effing computer just ate my comment, so my apologies if this is a double-post.

@Mistress Cynica:

I just re-read The Man in the Brown Suit. Love it! It really demonstrates her wit and self-deprecating humor.

Wouldja be surprised to know that it was made into a teevee movie in 1989, starring hilariously miscast Stephanie Zimbalist *and* Rue McClanahan? (Which of course I own on VHS).

@Promnight: That theory certainly explains Jim Bunning, Kenny Rogers, and Larry Dykstra.

Also, my golf instructor actually told me to stop thinking so much, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all that Brian Doyle-Murray (who caddied in his youth) wrote that be the ball scene knowledgeably.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: You don’t comment enough. You funny. Lenny Dykstra, though. I hate basu boru, watching it, anyway, I love playing softball, baseball for drunkards. Citizens of the world.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I once cared about my golf score, and I read one of the zen golf books, “Golf and the Kingdom,” I think, something about the kingdom, anyway, it was written by the dude that founded the Esalen institute of Hippie eastern-religion-lite new-wavyness, and you know, I saw, its not BS, this is sad, but I discovered Buddhism, through reading zen-golf books. From that, I went to Zen and the Art of Archery, and from there, you are gone, its over. The scenes in caddyshack that parody the zen-golf connection, they are straight from Golf and the Kingdom.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Its Golf in the Kingdom, and you have to understand, the Buddhist and Zen Buddhist teachings in the book are for real, not pop sports pyschology shit. Golf is a sport where your only opponent is yourself, and this book just works. Opened my eyes, seriously.

@Mistress Cynica:

Someone was talking about sport in our theatre thread? The nerve!

@Promnight: I haven’t played golf since I bought my house. I should go dig my clubs out of the garage and go hit some balls tomorrow. I sure as hell don’t have anything better to do.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I took a semester of golf in high school back when they gave us choices in PE, and enjoyed trying to whack that fucker on to the interstate. I’ve played one round of 9 holes in my life, and that was because I was in Minneapolis and hungover from a wedding party for a woman I had slept with dated. It was a great way to walk off the hangover, but I didn’t like the serious knuckleheads who kept trying to play through. It’s a municipal course, fuckers, let me get my money’s worth here! Going to the driving range with my dad as a kid to hit a couple of buckets of balls was loads of fun.

@Promnight: Some claim the Doc Ellis story is apocryphal, but he was quoted as saying that there were times when he really had no sensation at all as far as what his body was doing or where the strike zone (or batter) was. He was terribly erratic, but who can hit a lysergic curve, after all?

@Promnight: “Nails” Dykstra represents all that I detest about Philly baseball. Glad that fucker got nailed on his ponzi scheme.

ADD: just got out of a “senior staff strategy” meeting at the boss’s house, there was wine for lunch, we got pretty looped and I wish the rest of you stinquers were up right now for a special Stinque After Dark thread. The sun is shining here and I have a tremendous desire to strip naked and go for a swim, unfortunately pretty much all of Bollywood is at the hotel next door and they might see me if I tried to do that at my apt. pool. And the beach here is polluted as all get out. Maybe I’ll just take a nap…

I take issue with the alt.txt.

you got Trey and Matt AND Little Bitch.