I have recently been riding my bicycle to work. No, it's not because I am trying to "save the environment." It's not that I don't care about those issues, but I'm just not naive enough to believe I'll have some sort of grand impact on the Earth's carbon levels by not driving my car every other day. No, I have more self-centered reasons for my choice of transportation.
The first motivator is my own narcissism. Over the last year, I had gained 25 pounds and it was starting to show. I started to avoid looking at myself in the mirror when my shirt was off. This was the first significant weight gain since I was finishing up puberty back in high school. I had managed to stay the same size all the way through my college and post-college years until I moved out to the suburbs last summer.
What does living in the suburbs have to do with it? Well, I used to be able to walk everywhere when I lived in Loring Park. I walked to work and back twice during the day because I would usually hike home for lunch each day, too. Not only that, but my trips to Target and Blockbuster were walkable because the stores were within a half-mile of my apartment. I'd also walk to bars and restaurants in the Downtown and Uptown area when going out with friends. On top of all that walking, I'd even work out by running and biking every other day, too.
When I moved out to St. Louis Park, I found myself driving everywhere: to work, the grocery store, and the bars. I no longer had all of that daily physical movement. The running or biking every other night wasn't enough to combat the weight gain. It sucked. For the first time in almost a decade, I was going to have to buy new pants because my old ones were too small.
Biking to work has now got me back to that daily physical activity. It really helps that my office is over 10 miles from my apartment, and the last stretch of road has about 10 good sized hills I have to climb. It's a good feeling coming home and knowing that you already worked out for over an hour and a half just by going to and from work. It's one hell of a workout, and any other physical activity occurring that night is just bonus points.
The second motivator for using my bicycle is the almighty dollar. Or perhaps I should say the almighty $4; as in $4 a gallon. Gas is getting damn expensive and I'm pretty sure it will remain that way for the rest of my life. By only driving to work every other day, I estimate I'll save $60, or one tank, each month in gas. That adds up to $720 a year. $720 adds up to a pretty solid weekend trip to Las Vegas.
However, I discovered a hidden cost of excessive bike riding which will lead to an explanation of this post's silly title: my jeans are rapidly deteriorating in the groin area. They haven't completely decayed, but they're going fast. If I have to dip into my gas savings to replace my pants periodically, it will take its toll on my Vegas fund. If anybody has some good tips on how to prevent crotch decay on blue jeans, I'd like to hear it.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Love hurts
So the Wolves selected OJ Mayo last Thursday in the NBA Draft, just as I had hoped they would do. As everyone drifted off to sleep with visions of OJ becoming the Rookie of the Year, the Memphis Grizzlies traded their #5 pick, Kevin Love, and three other players to the Wolves for Mayo and another three throw-ins.
This has been a highly divisive issue here in Minneapolis. Some are adamantly defending the pick, but the majority are kicking and screaming because they think Mayo is the next Michael Jordan.
Right now, this trade looks to be in favor of the Timberwolves. As I mentioned in a previous post, I would be all for trading this pick if they are able to dump Marco Jaric's terrible contract in the process. Not only did they do that, but they also got rid of some other big contracts in Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner. Here's how the trade worked out:
Jaric for Memphis's Brian Cardinal: They are both equally useless and overpaid, but Jaric has 3 more years left on his contract, while Cardinal only has two. Advantage Wolves.
Walker for Jason Collins: Both only have one year left on their contracts. Walker rarely played last season and was most likely going to be bought out this year or traded. In return the Wolves get a solid center with only one year left on his contract. This looks like an even exchange.
Buckner for Mike Miller: The Wolves got rid of a guy that rarely suited up last season and had three more years on his contract. In exchange, they received a starting forward/guard who averaged 16 points a game and shot over 40% beyond the arch last season. Advantage Wolves.
Mayo for Love: Here's the wild card. Jim Souhan put it best when he said the Wolves got the sweet end of this deal...unless Mayo becomes a huge NBA superstar and Love does not. There's really no way of knowing if that will happen. He could end up playing at the same level as Clyde Drexler, Ray Allen, or even Kobe Bryant. Or maybe his ceiling will be at the level of former Gopher Bobby Jackson.
That's why Wolves fans need to mellow out about this trade. If you all want to get pissed about something, then look to the trade they made to Miami with second round pick Mario Chalmers, a point guard out of Kansas. He was the floor leader on the team that won the NCAA Championship last year and was projected by some to be gone by the middle of the first round. The Wolves got some cash and two future second round picks from Miami.
At first, I was a little upset that they gave away a player that seemed to be a pretty good steal, but I understood that they were pretty jammed up at his position when they had Randy Foye, OJ Mayo, Marko Jaric, and Sebastian Telfair projected to be playing point guard. I still thought they should have been able to get something better than two future second rounders, though. Oh well.
But then the next morning came and I heard about the big trade that happened late that night. OJ Mayo and Marko Jaric were now gone. In addition to that, the Wolves did not extend a qualifying offer to Sebastian Telfair, making him an unrestricted free agent as of tomorrow. This leaves only Randy Foye left at the point guard position. In the matter of 24 hours, the Wolves went from having 5 players at the point guard position to just one.
As I said before, there's really no way of knowing how any of these rookies will pan out in the NBA. But as a Timberwolves fan, I feel a little more pissed off about losing Mario Chalmers then I do about OJ Mayo. Only time will tell.
This has been a highly divisive issue here in Minneapolis. Some are adamantly defending the pick, but the majority are kicking and screaming because they think Mayo is the next Michael Jordan.
Right now, this trade looks to be in favor of the Timberwolves. As I mentioned in a previous post, I would be all for trading this pick if they are able to dump Marco Jaric's terrible contract in the process. Not only did they do that, but they also got rid of some other big contracts in Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner. Here's how the trade worked out:
Jaric for Memphis's Brian Cardinal: They are both equally useless and overpaid, but Jaric has 3 more years left on his contract, while Cardinal only has two. Advantage Wolves.
Walker for Jason Collins: Both only have one year left on their contracts. Walker rarely played last season and was most likely going to be bought out this year or traded. In return the Wolves get a solid center with only one year left on his contract. This looks like an even exchange.
Buckner for Mike Miller: The Wolves got rid of a guy that rarely suited up last season and had three more years on his contract. In exchange, they received a starting forward/guard who averaged 16 points a game and shot over 40% beyond the arch last season. Advantage Wolves.
Mayo for Love: Here's the wild card. Jim Souhan put it best when he said the Wolves got the sweet end of this deal...unless Mayo becomes a huge NBA superstar and Love does not. There's really no way of knowing if that will happen. He could end up playing at the same level as Clyde Drexler, Ray Allen, or even Kobe Bryant. Or maybe his ceiling will be at the level of former Gopher Bobby Jackson.
That's why Wolves fans need to mellow out about this trade. If you all want to get pissed about something, then look to the trade they made to Miami with second round pick Mario Chalmers, a point guard out of Kansas. He was the floor leader on the team that won the NCAA Championship last year and was projected by some to be gone by the middle of the first round. The Wolves got some cash and two future second round picks from Miami.
At first, I was a little upset that they gave away a player that seemed to be a pretty good steal, but I understood that they were pretty jammed up at his position when they had Randy Foye, OJ Mayo, Marko Jaric, and Sebastian Telfair projected to be playing point guard. I still thought they should have been able to get something better than two future second rounders, though. Oh well.
But then the next morning came and I heard about the big trade that happened late that night. OJ Mayo and Marko Jaric were now gone. In addition to that, the Wolves did not extend a qualifying offer to Sebastian Telfair, making him an unrestricted free agent as of tomorrow. This leaves only Randy Foye left at the point guard position. In the matter of 24 hours, the Wolves went from having 5 players at the point guard position to just one.
As I said before, there's really no way of knowing how any of these rookies will pan out in the NBA. But as a Timberwolves fan, I feel a little more pissed off about losing Mario Chalmers then I do about OJ Mayo. Only time will tell.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
And now, a word from Chuck Klosterman
No, it's not a guest post. I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman IV, a collection of essays that were published in places such as the Esquire, Spin, and the Fargo Forum. I thought I would just share an excerpt from a column entitled "Cultural Betrayal" that was printed in Esquire in 2005:
Do you want to be happy? I suspect you do. Well, here's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to think Paris Hilton is interesting and deserves to be on TV every other day; the fame surrounding Paris Hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). Don't get pissed off because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't on the radio enough; you can buy the goddamn record and play "Maps" all goddamn day (if that's what you want). Don't get pissed off because people didn't vote the way you voted; you knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. Basically, don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it.
Now, it's quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. And if you do, I know what your argument is: you're thinking, But I'm idealistic. This is what people who want to inflict their values on other people always think; they think that there is some kind of romantic, respectable aura that insulates the inflexible, and that their disappointment with culture latently proves that they're tragically trapped by their own intellect and good taste. Somehow, they think their sense of betrayal gives them integrity. It does not. If you really have integrity--if you truly live by your ideals, and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large--you will never feel betrayed by culture. You will simply enjoy culture more. You won't necessarily start watching syndicated episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, but you will find it interesting that certain people do. You won't suddenly agree that Amelie was a more emotive movie than Friday Night Lights, but you won't feel alienated and offended if every film critic you read tells you that it is. You will care, but you won't care.
You're not wrong, and neither is the rest of the world. But you need to accept that those two things aren't really connected.
Amen, Brother Chuck.
Do you want to be happy? I suspect you do. Well, here's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to think Paris Hilton is interesting and deserves to be on TV every other day; the fame surrounding Paris Hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). Don't get pissed off because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't on the radio enough; you can buy the goddamn record and play "Maps" all goddamn day (if that's what you want). Don't get pissed off because people didn't vote the way you voted; you knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. Basically, don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it.
Now, it's quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. And if you do, I know what your argument is: you're thinking, But I'm idealistic. This is what people who want to inflict their values on other people always think; they think that there is some kind of romantic, respectable aura that insulates the inflexible, and that their disappointment with culture latently proves that they're tragically trapped by their own intellect and good taste. Somehow, they think their sense of betrayal gives them integrity. It does not. If you really have integrity--if you truly live by your ideals, and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large--you will never feel betrayed by culture. You will simply enjoy culture more. You won't necessarily start watching syndicated episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, but you will find it interesting that certain people do. You won't suddenly agree that Amelie was a more emotive movie than Friday Night Lights, but you won't feel alienated and offended if every film critic you read tells you that it is. You will care, but you won't care.
You're not wrong, and neither is the rest of the world. But you need to accept that those two things aren't really connected.
Amen, Brother Chuck.
Rating the Summer Blockbusters
The official first day of summer is a couple weeks away, but the summer movie season is in full swing. It'll be tough to follow up last year, when there was week after week of huge franchise blockbusters released (Spiderman, Shrek, Pirates of the Carribean, Fantastic Four, Harry Potter, Transformers) combined with not one, but two pictures involving Seth Rogen. Those are some big ticket sellers right there. While this season doesn't have as much depth as last, there are still some films I'm pretty excited to see.
Here's what I've already seen, in order of least impressive to most impressive:
Prince Caspian - An overwhelming "meh" on this film. I saw this movie at midnight on a Thursday evening, so maybe that clouded my judgement. As a book adaptation, it was great. Spot on. They covered pretty much everything. But as a movie, it lacked two key ingredients: writing and acting.
It's probably difficult when writing up an adaptation. You want to stay true to book as much as possible. The problem is the book didn't have much for dialogue. CS Lewis told his story with vast descriptions of what was going on. This puts the screenwriters in charge of having to create interesting dialogue without fabricating too much. They unfortunately didn't do that well.
What made it worse was the four kids they have playing the parts of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all are terrible. Maybe not terrible, since I've never seen them in anything else. But all of their lines seem awkward and unnatural. The lone bright spot amongst these characters is Trumpkin the dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage. You may remember as the little children's book author who runs across the table and attacks Will Ferrel in Elf.
If you've read the books or just like seeing medieval battle movies, then go see it. If you don't fit any of the aforementioned criteria, than wait until it's on DVD or cable.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - What can I say? It's an Indiana Jones movie. If you like the old ones, you'll like this one. If you don't like the old ones, then you might still like this one. My favorite thing they did with this was keep the time lines parallel. With the Chronicles of Narnia, the two worlds they jump between operate at different speeds. While only a year has passed in their real world, over a thousand years have passed in Narnia.
Not so much here. In our real world, it's been about twenty years since The Last Crusade was released. That's also about the same time that has elapsed in the movie world of Indiana Jones. The last movie back in '89 had Indy dealing with the rise of evil Nazis before WWII in the '30s. Now it's 2008 here and 1957 in Indy-world, where the new enemies are the Soviets and nuclear weapons.
The only thing I was disappointed with is the excessive use of CGI animation. I wished they would have done more live action stunts and blew up real props with real explosives. I understand it's probably cheaper and safer to use CGI, but doing some more things the old fashioned way would have helped capture the feel of the original movies. Instead, I felt like I was just watching another installment of "The Mummy,"(they are releasing another sequel to that later this summer).
Iron Man - Wow. Now that's how you do a good superhero movie: get some A-list actors, write enough witty banter without being too cheesy, and don't waste three quarters of the movie explaining the damn origin of how the hero came to be (they only waste about half the movie this time). In all honesty, I could have skipped the two movies above and just watched this movie three times. It was that damn good. SEE IT!
What I am looking forward to seeing:
The Incredible Hulk - I know it wasn't very popular, but I liked the movie done by Ang Lee a few years ago. I have to agree that this one looks like it's even better. It has a new cast, director, and storyline. At the end of the trailer, you can even hear a brief clip of the original theme music from the TV series.
Get Smart - I don't remember Anne Hathaway being this incredibly good looking in The Princess Diaries. Then again, I've never seen The Princess Diaries. Maybe I should have. Damn.
Wall-E - My girlfriend is all excited about this one, so why not?
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - I never read the comics, but I enjoyed the first one. So again, why not?
The Dark Knight - Yes. Yesssssss. YESSSSSSSSSSS!
Pineapple Express - Seth Rogen + stoner comedy = Box office gold.
Not much else to get excited about this summer: the aforementioned Mummy sequel, some comedy with Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly, a Ben Stiller comedy, and an animated remake of the Chris Farley classic, Beverly Hills Ninja.
Here's what I've already seen, in order of least impressive to most impressive:
Prince Caspian - An overwhelming "meh" on this film. I saw this movie at midnight on a Thursday evening, so maybe that clouded my judgement. As a book adaptation, it was great. Spot on. They covered pretty much everything. But as a movie, it lacked two key ingredients: writing and acting.
It's probably difficult when writing up an adaptation. You want to stay true to book as much as possible. The problem is the book didn't have much for dialogue. CS Lewis told his story with vast descriptions of what was going on. This puts the screenwriters in charge of having to create interesting dialogue without fabricating too much. They unfortunately didn't do that well.
What made it worse was the four kids they have playing the parts of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all are terrible. Maybe not terrible, since I've never seen them in anything else. But all of their lines seem awkward and unnatural. The lone bright spot amongst these characters is Trumpkin the dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage. You may remember as the little children's book author who runs across the table and attacks Will Ferrel in Elf.
If you've read the books or just like seeing medieval battle movies, then go see it. If you don't fit any of the aforementioned criteria, than wait until it's on DVD or cable.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - What can I say? It's an Indiana Jones movie. If you like the old ones, you'll like this one. If you don't like the old ones, then you might still like this one. My favorite thing they did with this was keep the time lines parallel. With the Chronicles of Narnia, the two worlds they jump between operate at different speeds. While only a year has passed in their real world, over a thousand years have passed in Narnia.
Not so much here. In our real world, it's been about twenty years since The Last Crusade was released. That's also about the same time that has elapsed in the movie world of Indiana Jones. The last movie back in '89 had Indy dealing with the rise of evil Nazis before WWII in the '30s. Now it's 2008 here and 1957 in Indy-world, where the new enemies are the Soviets and nuclear weapons.
The only thing I was disappointed with is the excessive use of CGI animation. I wished they would have done more live action stunts and blew up real props with real explosives. I understand it's probably cheaper and safer to use CGI, but doing some more things the old fashioned way would have helped capture the feel of the original movies. Instead, I felt like I was just watching another installment of "The Mummy,"(they are releasing another sequel to that later this summer).
Iron Man - Wow. Now that's how you do a good superhero movie: get some A-list actors, write enough witty banter without being too cheesy, and don't waste three quarters of the movie explaining the damn origin of how the hero came to be (they only waste about half the movie this time). In all honesty, I could have skipped the two movies above and just watched this movie three times. It was that damn good. SEE IT!
What I am looking forward to seeing:
The Incredible Hulk - I know it wasn't very popular, but I liked the movie done by Ang Lee a few years ago. I have to agree that this one looks like it's even better. It has a new cast, director, and storyline. At the end of the trailer, you can even hear a brief clip of the original theme music from the TV series.
Get Smart - I don't remember Anne Hathaway being this incredibly good looking in The Princess Diaries. Then again, I've never seen The Princess Diaries. Maybe I should have. Damn.
Wall-E - My girlfriend is all excited about this one, so why not?
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - I never read the comics, but I enjoyed the first one. So again, why not?
The Dark Knight - Yes. Yesssssss. YESSSSSSSSSSS!
Pineapple Express - Seth Rogen + stoner comedy = Box office gold.
Not much else to get excited about this summer: the aforementioned Mummy sequel, some comedy with Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly, a Ben Stiller comedy, and an animated remake of the Chris Farley classic, Beverly Hills Ninja.
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