Greek Pirates, Peyton's Place, and the NCAA

Avast ye Greeks! Reuters has a bizarre way of looking at the Greek economic problem involving a kiddie pool, a pirate ship, and some rubber duckies. Certainly it oversimplifies everything about it but it's at least entertaining. I wish it had a bit more of a substantive discussion of what's going on because it doesn't address the proposals and interests of the parties as much as I'd like. I know very little about what's going on, but personally I feel like they're just trying to avoid the inevitable: a Greek default. Frankly I've been saying I'd probably rather they just go ahead and default already because I think that ship is going to sink either way, so why not save some cost and just get it over with already? Hopefully they prove me wrong.

Hitch did it best. Hitchcock really was a master at movie making and a very entertaining guy. Here's a list of quotes from Mental Floss. My favorite was "One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs." Very amusing list, just like his movies.

I miss 18. So Dave's Art Locker did me a favor by taking Peyton Manning's face and mashing it with every single NFL logo. Fabulous.

Saying goodbye is the hardest part. Great look at the pains and struggles of facing retirement as an NFL player. I still remember being in the locker room for our last high school football game and having our coaches mention how that was probably the end for pretty much all of us (especially me because I was terrible) and it was a somber, surreal feeling. I miss it every time I smell the fresh cut grass.

I really, really, really hate the NCAA. As an institution that is and I'll detail some of my thoughts about that in a second. But here's an interesting piece about a journalist declaring war on the NCAA and their retaliation in response. In all honesty I can't blame them for this retaliation, it seems like a wise and fair move based on what is going on. I know Jay Bilas feels like questioning this guy's motives isn't fair, but I do think that is a legitimate thing to bring up (although I doubt that's guiding what he's doing). It's an interesting battle and I'm curious how this all ends up since the NCAA has a lot of money and power, but it's also experienced a lot of ill will. That being said, those ratings still keep climbing so clearly it doesn't mean that much.

As far as my NCAA hatred, I could go on forever about it but here's some of my basic thoughts. The NCAA itself as an institution is a farce and it needs to seize power back. It is a centralized body that comes up with a lot of silly recruiting and other rules, but doesn't ever really bother to enforce them. Who cares about an organization that doesn't really have any real teeth? There needs to be greater scrutiny served by the NCAA upon schools.

Also, conferences as separate institutions need to be abolished. I understand what the functional purposes were as collegiate sports grew, not unlike the beginnings of many of the professional sports leagues. However, they've long outgrown their usefulness and there is too much power in the conferences and not enough of a sharing of the pot of money. I'm fine with keeping conferences for structural matchup purposes, but conference commissioners hold too much power and keep the NCAA sports from developing into what they could be.

As part of fixing conferences, officiating needs to be based in the NCAA. How silly of a farce is it that the NCAA has refs but they really all come through the separate conferences? You can't tell me that an SEC ref has a bias against even other major conference teams, much less mid-major or minor conference teams. How idiotic is it to incentivize refs to have a built in bias based on who their paycheck is really coming from?

Finally, abolish the BCS, but even the conference commissioners seem to realize that's one they can no longer resist.

Tweet of the day. Courtesy of Yahoo!'s Shutdown Corner NFL blog's Doug Farrar, an evaluation of the Jason Whitlock incident from over the weekend. Whitlock is an inflammatory idiot and this is a great witness of that.

Journal choice. I need a new journal for taking notes at Church. I always like to have something fun/goofy. I had a Harry Potter one at one point and most recently I had a Tootsie Pop journal with Mr. Owl. Well that one is filling up so I need to find a new one. I think I've narrowed it down to these two: a sock monkey riding a Vespa or a Mork and Mindy one. Sorry to you kids that aren't familiar with Mork from Ork. Figure the Nanoo Nanoo probably won't be as popular but I got a kick out of it. I'm also open to other suggestions, but I'm trying to keep price reasonably low, so let me know if you know of any other cool one's out there.

Movie Review: The Creature From the Black Lagoon

So I have an interesting quirk about me: I love classic horror movies. And when I say classic, I mean classic. Vincent Price* is my favorite, by far. I don't know what developed this fascination, but I really do enjoy it. Now I don't do modern horror porn or anything really at all like that, that's for sure. So most really new horror movies I don't see. I'm not a huge slasher kind of guy, although stuff like the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th are all classic in their own manner (with TV edits of course, since I don't do the whole R-rated thing). But when it comes to real passion, it's more about older horror flicks. Like I said, I love Vincent Price's stuff and things like Hitchcock, Lon Chaney, or the original monster movies: Dracula, The Werewolf, and The Mummy. Well another one of these classic monster movies is The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

So I had never seen this movie before, but I knew of it's classic nature in American Monster movie history. I found a copy at the Provo Library (thank goodness for free rentals). It was really great. Now I don't think you can go into these kinds of movies thinking you're going to be scared much. First of all, the scare tactics weren't so refined for the most part back then. I think the most common scare tactic of any movie is the sudden "jump out of nowhere with a really loud noise" tactic (if anybody cares to give me an official name for that I'd be most impressed and I'll give you a hat tip for it). Undeniably that's a pretty weak tactic itself, but it's effective. However, I don't really recall it being in there, at least not to the drastic degree it is in so many movies. The "freak you out" tactics used in this movie are: lurking, eerie music, and the classic damsel turns and screams (yet again, hat tip to anybody who can get me official names). It's amazingly cheesy and fun at the same time.

 I definitely understand why this made its way into the American pop culture and the classic monster movies. The creature is something so poorly understood that likes to run off with pretty ladies for no apparent reason. Thus, for doing what it is meant to do, it does a great job. It fits its role to a T. Now I wouldn't say it's one of the best monster movies I've ever seen, but it's fun in its own way. The Creature was so popular that they made a few sequels (which were also included on my DVD so I will be sure to watch them as well, but I'm pretty sure I won't be reviewing those unless one of them knocks my socks off). But seeing as how this movie isn't necessarily a work of art in most ways, I won't dive into too heavy of an analysis on most things. The script is terribly cheesy (in a most delightful way), the acting could definitely use a little bit of help, the scenery is fantastically fake (mostly anyway), and don't expect much in the way of special effects (sorry, this isn't Transformers). The storyline is rather minimalist, but you get what you want out of it: an epic battle with some hideous, unknown creature. It's only a little over an hour so it keeps it short (now if Transformers had stuck with these dynamics or just worked on developing a real plot that might have actually been a decent movie [yes, I am going to take my shots at Transformers in this movie review]). The cinematography is really pretty good. They have some really cool underwater scenes and it was originally shot for 3-D so that's something to take into account as well. Overall, I think this is definitely a fun movie worth the watch and it is sure to provide a good time. Worse case scenario, I'm sure you could make a great Mystery Science Theater night out of it. Look for the release of a new edition of The Creature From the Black Lagoon in theaters in 2011.

Official Trailer

*Random side note, turns out Vincent Price once played Joseph Smith in a movie called Brigham Young done in 1940. Go figure.