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This week's soundtrack is Dropkick Murphys' I'm Shipping Up To Boston, because of course it is.
I was going to write something about the Boston Marathon, but then, like a marathon itself, it got long and dull and self-righteous, so if you want to read that, go here. Otherwise, on with the Offtopic...
With spring football over, we have officially entered the boring season of CU sports. Sure, you can watch hockey and NBA playoffs, but none of those teams are Colorado, so screw them. In honor of Boring Season, here are some other things I find dreadfully boring:
- Baseball. I used to like baseball. I played, it coached my brother in it, and my family had Rockies season tickets for a decade. But let's be honest- it's awful. There's a reason it's called America's Pastime- because that's what baseball does, passes time. And it's only getting worse. Yankees/ Red Sox games routinely take upwards of 3 days to complete. The Mets' goal this year is to see 150 pitches. What? The goal is to watch many pitches without hitting them? Baseball is no longer a sport, it's an exercise in watching squishy men do very little other than hang around a nice park in scratchy pants. You can get the same experience by going to your local lawn bowling club and cheering on grandpas.
- Talking about fantasy sports. Here's a good life lesson, if you ever have the urge to tell someone else about your fantasy team, take a deep breath and then do not do that. No one wants to hear about it. There's very little more boring than listening to some jerk from your office complaining that he lost his pretend game because some jerk tight end had 2 catches for 2 yards and 2 touchdowns. I used to play fantasy sports as well. I was in a fantasy football league that included offensive linemen. I was once in a fantasy cricket league, despite knowing literally nothing about cricket. And I still hated the people who would try to talk to me about their stupid fantasy teams.
- Watching someone else play video games. The only thing less fun than listening to someone talk about their fantasy sports team is watching someone else play video games. I don't care. No one cares. The only reason this ranks lower than fantasy sports is because you have to be actively involved in someone else playing video games. Otherwise, just get up and leave. I'm terrible at video games. I acknowledge that. But I'm even worse at pretending to care about how many aliens or Nazis or whatever that you can kill with your fake space marine. It's awful, and if you try to force me to do it, I will throw things at you until you stop playing your dumb video games and start doing something important- like paying attention to me telling great jokes.
- Weddings. I hate everything about weddings, but a lot of this stems from being (nominally) Catholic. A traditional Catholic wedding includes a full mass, and if there's anything more boring than mass, it's mass followed by 2 people telling each other how much they love each other for an hour while an open bar is so tantalizingly close. But beyond that, every wedding is essentially the same- same traditional vows, same random cousin reading the same verse from Corinthians, same weak kiss, same me pretending to care. This is followed by the same weak party with the same crappy music and the same fake smashing cake in each others' faces and the same creepy throwing of flowers and garters. Finished off by the same me crying because so very crushingly lonely going home with the hottest bridesmaid. So tedious (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID).
Perhaps you've been trapped under a rock for the last day with no internet access. If that's the case- first off, congrats on getting out from under that rock- but now go look at this thing. It's 8 minutes of Patton Oswalt improving the plot to the new Star Wars film he'd like to see on Parks and Rec. If you were not under a rock, then you've already seen it.
There are some things about sports that we, as fans, fully acknowledge are dumb and pointless, and yet wecan't help but click our clicking fingers to our hearts delight. These include mock drafts, "way too early" top 25 lists, and bracketology. Bracketology is among the stupidest things in sports, ever. And yet every year ESPN drags Joe Lunardi out of the vat of formaldehyde in the basement where they keep him so he can smile his creepy mortician smile and tell us that "Virginia Tech is definitely in" (when they never are), while some school you've never heard of like Belmont needs to win their conference tourna... blah blah blah. Go to hell Joe Lunardi. Welp, Joe Lunardi has managed to combine all 3 of these incredibly stupid things into his very first Bracketology! In April! For next year! Despite not fully knowing who's entering the draft! Seriously, Lunardi- straight. to. hell. If anyone cares, we're a 7 seed vs. 10 seed Boise State (I guarantee this will not happen).
There is a reason why the Offtopic was late this week (other than the above reason, of course). I wanted to wait until I had a chance to review Danny Boyle's new film, Trance. SPOILER ALERT: I thoroughly enjoyed Trance.I find Danny Boyle to be a generally brilliant filmmaker (except for Sunshine), and Trance followed up on Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours to be another film that was at times breathtaking, at times brutal, but always thoroughly engrossing.
That said, I can see where people would not like it. The plot is extremely easy to pick apart. Everything was too convenient, and there were probably too many twists and character turns. But for me, it was a hyper stylized psychological thriller with enough intrigue to keep me from thinking too much about the plot. The film was more about teasing the viewer with what is and is not reality than it was about a straight forward step one to two to three film. James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, and Rosario Dawson were fantastic, and you get to see Dawson's parts, if you're into that sort of thing (I am into that sort of thing). I've always been a big fan of McAvoy and Dawson, but this is only the second time I've seen Cassel. The first was another great performance in Black Swan (directed by the American Danny Boyle- Darren Aranofsky), so now I'm a big fan of his as well. Solid B