The Hangover: Notes on a Weekend
posted in Word of Reason |
Have you ever had one of those watershed weekends where absolutely nothing happened, yet the whole time was filled up and you came out the other end completely exhausted? It’s a rare breed of weekend to be sure, but sometimes it happens. Sports, movies, and drinking all came together to create this amazing amalgam of time wasted and time spent living properly, or at least appropriately. But, in fitting fashion for the late-twenties malaise in which I find myself mired, nothing coherently gel;, it’s just a collection of rants and raves.
• My New Yorker arrived on Friday this week. For a magazine which hits newsstands on Monday, this is rather late. As well, this happens nearly every week, though usually not quite as late. But, since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve consistently not received my New Yorker on Monday. This is, without a doubt, the absolute worst thing about living in Brooklyn. One of the best, however, is a Ft. Greene restaurant that my girlfriend and I tried for the first time called The General Greene. I’m a pretty big Jew, but holy crap, if I don’t get some more of their thick cut candied bacon in my body this week I might literally renounce all I’ve ever known.
• Netflixed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and finally watched it Saturday. I had heard from many reliable friends that it was bad beyond belief, but I just had to see for myself. The sheer awfulness of this movie defies explanation. You can’t even begin to look at it critically, it’s absolutely that bad. The dialogue is absolutely retarded, the acting is awful, the story is so monumentally predictable and overused. The sheer number of movies that they took different story elements probably can’t be counted, Stargate and Alien Vs. Predator being relatively high on the list, not to mention Spielberg’s own Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Also, Spielber and Lucas have now fallen into the classic Tarantino trap of confusing allusion with meaning. In Kill Bill Part I, Tarantino dresses Uma Thurman in the same outfit that Bruce Lee wore once, so we’re all supposed to jizz ourselves over this amazing connection. Except it isn’t an amazing connection, it’s closer to plagiarism. So, when Shia LeBeouf rode onto the screen dressed up like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, I had to pause the movie and discuss in my head just how low American cinema had sunk.
• Not only was my new favorite bar featured in this week’s Time Out New York Bar Guide, but my bartender buddy was actually pictured. There isn’t too much of a story here, but if you find yourself on Smith street and have a hankering for either some scotch (they have the best selection around) or some cheese fondue (hell yeah) or both (the combination is mind-numbingly sublime) hit up the Jake Walk, on Smith and Sackett. If the bartender is a tall man with amazing mutton chops and a bowtie, you’re in good hands.
• I arrived at my gym sunday morning to find all the treadmills occupied, and while I do wish that the world would bend to my every desire, I’m well aware that one wouldn’t free up just because I had decided to grace the gym with my presence. However, I have to ask: What’s with people walking on treadmills? Obviously I’m being very judgmental by suggesting that a person’s regimen is illegitimate, and I don’t mean to be, being active is good and in general I commend people for getting off their asses and getting to the gym at all. But then again, we live in New York City, people. Walk on the sidewalk. Instead of jumping in a cab or taking public transportation, put on some sneakers and hit the pavement. There’s no need for you to take up valuable treadmills with something you can do anywhere else in the city.
• Two amazing things happened yesterday in the NFL, and no I’m not talking about the Giants shellacking the Ravens and their vaunted run defense. The truth is, I really shouldn’t be writing about this since I decided to take a year-long sabbatical from the NFL after last year’s Super Bowl turned out to be one of the top 10 sporting events of my life and my one-and-done story book fantasy football season, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, first, the Eagles and the Bengals tied. They tied. Same score at the end of the game. This is awful. Look, I like soccer and I understand that those games often end in ties, and I accept that I might seem like a hypocrite, but there cannot be ties in football. It’s just too crazy. In fact, the whole overtime element of the game needs to be revamped. The first to score sudden death style overtime that the NFL uses doesn’t accurately reflect a game that is a balancing act between defense and offense, two halves of a team that depend on each other but never interact. It means that the coin toss is too meaningful, the luck of who receives the overtime kick off more often than not determines the outcome of the game. They should be playing a 10 minute period without a first to score protocol. And no more ties. Games have winners and losers. If you haven’t won, but you also haven’t lost, then that’s tantamount to not having played at all. And where’s Arlen Specter on this?
The second amazing event from the yesterday’s NFL action was a last second touchdown by the Steelers that did not effect the outcome of the game, but was meaningful in another way. Let me set the scene for you a bit: the Charger are down 11-10 on their end of the field with 0 seconds remaining. They get one last snap off and do one of those plays where they run around lateral-ing the ball all over the field and running around all crazy-like. Eventually, Steeler linebacker Troy Palomalu (the guy with the awesome hair) catches the ball and runs into the endzone, securing the victory for Pittsburgh, though it was pretty secure already. However, the refs called it back for some reason, and ended the game at 11-10 as opposed to 18-10. The difference? With the extra touchdown, the Steelers beat the spread and that changes the gambling result of the game. If there was ever an argument for the Big Brother NFL that alters the outcomes of games for the purposes of financial gain, this is even better than all the suspicious calls this year. Stellar job, NFL, just great work all around.
Almost as great, sarcasm and all, as my weekend.
