International Sportscenter

Y2K

The Perfect Show

I started watching HBO’s The Wire thanks to a high review from PASTE Magazine.  I watched the first episode of season 1 last night.  It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t bad.  I’ll give it a few more episodes and see where it goes…

I’m also in the middle of season 2 of 30 Rock.  This show is amazing so far!!!

I’ll give more thorough updates when I complete the seasons.  All I can say now is that I love Tracy Morgan.  That’s all I’m watching right now besides The Office and LOST on real TV (what a drag!  It’s much better to just get things on DVD) and I occasionally watch a Doogie Howser episode on Hulu.com.

Marathon has now been submitted to 23 film festivals and we won’t be hearing back from any of them for a few months or so…I’ll report how we do (good or bad).  We submitted to some major festivals (LA, Cannes, USA FF, and Palm Springs) and some smaller festivals so who knows???

As far as books go — I’m completely obsessed with “Bowerman and the Men of Oregon” right now.  The stories from the early 60’s are amazing.  Not only running stories but Bowerman tinkering with types of track surfaces, mental aspects of coaching and treating different runners, and founding the company we know as Nike.

Musically, I’ve been listening to “Dark was the Night” - it’s a compilation album including Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and The National - and “Elvis Perkins in Dearland”.

Here’s a video by Elvis Perkins that a secret source led me to:

I COULD WATCH THESE ALL DAY!

Jimmy Rollins
Watching game footage 

Ozzie Guillen
Calling the bullpen 

Tiger Woods
The Gallery 

I’m not one to give love to commercials.  I hate commercials.  Even if there’s an obvious need for commercials (how else would our favorite shows stay on tv?)…I still despise them.  And with tivos and the emergence of hulu.com as well as other sites - the commercial can almost be ignored now.

BUT - I love commercials by ESPN.  In particular, I love the “This is Sportscenter” commercials.  I like them so much that I made my own in high school.  I’m hoping to dig that up sometime this week and put it up for the world to see.  But not now.

The marketing campaign for Sportscenter borders on genius.  So for the next few days I will post my favorite Sportscenter commercials and then, hopefully, post my own.  This should keep me busy since there is no LOST this week.

Let me know which are you favorites…

The New Kid - 1997
Obviously based on the parody of a young kid leaving college to early or jumping to the pros from high school.

The Closer - Year Unknown
Parody on baseball’s closer

George Muresan Dancing - 1997
7′ 7″ people dancing is always funny

WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE TO SIT AROUND ALL DAY AND COME UP WITH BRILLIANT IDEAS LIKE THIS!!!

I don’t watch a whole lot of television - I stick to LOST, The Office, and 30 Rock.  But I’ve seen the thousands of ads for the upcoming show Castle, which debuted on Monday night.  I was mildly intrigued because one of my favorite actors Nathan Fillion is the lead in the show (you may know him as the stud captain on Firefly or the as the evil  Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog).  But it still looked a little corny to me.

Well my wife watched it - so I went for it too.  And I must say that I was mildly surprised.  I liked it.  Fillion was better than I expected for the role.  From the commercials, I thought the role was strange for him but he pulled it off.  He’s really funny.

Fillion (far right)

The story is nothing crazy.  Fillion plays author Rick Castle who writes murder mysteries like my grandma would read.  He’s a best selling author.  He has a daughter and his mom lives with him.  In the first episode we learned that he has writer’s block.  On the other side of the story, there’s a female detective who is the lead on a case where they found a murderer who’s killing his victims just like in Castle’s books.  The female detective is played by Stana Katic.  So they bring in Castle to help solve the crimes.   She’s a big fan but thinks he’s kind of like a little boy - which he is.  He can’t take anything serious.  In the end they solve the crime and then the Mayor (who Castle has on speed dial) lets Castle stay on with the detective as he researches her for his next book.

It’s no Firefly, but we don’t have Joss Whedon here either.  It’s good for what it is…plus it was really clean as far as language and sexual references…check it out.

Unless you know me well, I’ve failed to mention that my favorite television show is LOST.  I’m completely addicted and a I spend a lot of time on the LOSTPEDIA Forums, which you can link to on the right.

So I figure every Thursday I should probably write down my review and thoughts of the previous night’s episode.

Last night’s epsiode was “LaFleur” and I thought it was absolutely brilliant.  We’ve confirmed my suspicions (from seeing Jin get out of a Dharma van two episodes ago) that the 815′ers are stuck in Dharma times (mid 1970’s).  Last night they basically took 42 minutes to fill us in on the 3 years that Juliet, Sawyer, and Miles spent with Dharma so we could hurry up and let Jin bring back Jack, Kate, and Hurley.

There were some awesome moments last night…such as when the 815ers hit a time flash right before Locke turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel (which I will refer to as the FDW).  In this 30 second span we got to see the 4-toed statue!

Pretty awesome, huh?  

Most people on Lostpedia are speculating it’s the Egyptian god Thoth or Anubis, which is interesting.  PICTURE BELOW.

What I find interesting about this picture is the cross in his left hand.  It’s the same cross we saw multiple times last night that Amy’s dead husband (who is going to Richard’s Army of Death) was wearing and that Horace showed Sawyer that caused the fight.

I’m curious to see if the Egyptian mythology has anything to do with anything in the end…maybe not.  LOST is big on Religion and Mythology, so who knows, but the Temple has tons of ancient markings on it, Ben’s house had ancient markings, etc…

Anyway, so it appears Horace is going to play a large role in the show, we’ve seen him a few times before but not nearly as much as last night and I had no idea he was the leader of Dharma.  A huge question that they left us is…what is the baby’s name?  Ethan?  Jacob?  Karl?

One of the most confusing things for me is the whole timeline of LOST, Daniel said that whatever happened…happened.  You can’t change anything.  But it’s still difficult to wrap your head around.  So technically Horace always met Sawyer in 1977, but Sawyer never met Horace until his natural timeline (which would be like 2008 or whatever).  Same thing with that Richard/Locke meeting.  Richard always met Locke in 1964 but Locke never had that moment happen until 2008.  It’s very strange.  And apparently the one exception is Desmond (because he’s special)…I suspect we’ll learn more about this as Daniel tries to talk to Charlotte to change things, but inevitably I assume he’ll tell her to never come back to the island (which she told us while she was delirious and dying).  We already saw (in the first episode) Daniel working down in the Orchid which we can guess is the state he’s currently in as he stays with DHARMA.  He’s probably going to cause “the incident” we’ve heard about from Marvin Candle for so long now…

Another thing that is interesting is that Bernard and Rose (and some red shirts) are still on the island somewhere.  Many speculate Bernard and Rose will be the Adam and Eve that Jack discovered in the caves in Season 1.

My final thoughts for the writers are to please give up on the love triangle - nobody cares.  Don’t make Sawyer care for Kate anymore (which he will) and even if he does none of us will care because you established Sawyer and Juliet’s relationship in 20 minutes.

Something I hope they answer in 2 weeks is why some of the Losties flashed back to 1977 and some stayed in 2008.  That will be interesting…my guess is that you can’t have two of yourself in the same timeline.  For example, Charlotte flashed back to current time on that last flash because her little self was in 1977.  Same thing with Ben…little Ben is probably running around with Miles right now or something.  We’ll SEE!