Awesome Old Song of the Week: "Popular" by Nada Surf

Nada Surf only ever had one popular single--Popular, released in 1996.  I've just learned that its lyrics are lines from a 1964 book by actress Gloria Winters, entitled Penny's Guide to Teen-age Charm and Popularity.

The song is obviously sarcastic, but as far as I can tell from five minutes of hard-target interweb research and fact checking, the book was apparently serious--which is weird.  I've always wondered where that line about washing your hair "at least once every two weeks" came from.  That's just gross, did girls not wash their hair in 1964?




Follow @LucidSportsFan

Awesome(?) New Song of the Week: "The Hanging Tree" by Jennifer Lawrence

I saw the new Hunger Games movie over the weekend (Mockingjay Part I).  It was a little boring, probably because it's only the first half of the book--how good can just the first half of any story really be?

My favorite parts were a couple scenes when unarmed citizens fought back against the "Peacekeepers."  During one of them Jennifer Lawrence sang a song called "The Hanging Tree."  It's from the book, with the lyrics written by the author, Suzanne Collins (the Lumineers helped write the music).  As I was watching I remember thinking "Huh, that song is actually kind of cool."

Apparently other people agree.  It just debuted at No. 29 on the British pop charts, and Billboard Magazine expects "The Hanging Tree" to crack the top 40 here in the U.S. when the latest numbers are revealed on Wednesday.  Here's a movie trailer with the song in the background:



And for super Hunger Games nerds, the complete song:



Follow @LucidSportsFan

Malt vinegar is an offensive condiment; reminds me of this scene from the movie "Big Trouble"

Usually if you're eating a meal in a restaurant you don't really care much about the condiment choices of the people around you.  If the lady at the next table wants to put way too much ketchup on her plate, what's it to me?  There is one exception to this rule however: malt vinegar.

If one person decides to use it, everybody in the room knows it.  Plain and simple, the stuff just stinks.  I actually don't mind the taste of it, and am happy to eat it with my fish and chips from time to time.  But it doesn't add enough flavor in my opinion to warrant subjecting everyone else in the area to its odor.

I propose malt vinegar should be banned from all restaurants for the common good of the people, kind of like smoking.  Obviously that's a huge jump to make (and this scene is an extreme example; Big Trouble is an underrated movie by the way, and a hilarious book by Dave Berry), but the principle is along the same lines.




  Follow @LucidSportsFan

I'm ready for a new series/genre of adolescent books to become ridiculously popular

First there was Harry Potter.  Then Twilight.  Last year Hunger Games took over.  I realize I'm probably being a little impatient since we still have a few more Katniss Everdeen movies left, and her reign is due to last for a while longer.  But I finished those books well over a year ago, and I'm more than ready to read the next big thing.  If it's already out there and I just haven't realized, please let me know; I keep my ear to the grindstone on these things though, so I don't think it is.

And while I'm on the subject, what will that genre be?  Zombies are played out already.  Time travel comes to mind, but that's too broad.  I'm thinking human clones (or maybe people with tracking chips inside them who don't know it?).  There was a great TV series on BBC America this past spring/summer called Orphan Black (and it's coming back in April) that somebody should definitely use as inspiration to write four to five awesome books that can be turned into five to six blockbuster movies (have you noticed that the last book in a series is always split into two movies these days?).



Follow @LucidSportsFan

If you insist on playing Quidditch, don't half ass it

Recently while going for a jog along the Charles River in Boston I came across some people playing "Quidditch."  This happened to me once before two summers ago; read this in order to get some background on the "sport," and my opinion of it.  In this particular case last week I was extremely unimpressed by the participants attempt to recreate the Harry Potter game involving balls and flying brooms. The players weren't wearing any sort of uniforms, and the "brooms" they carried between their legs didn't even resemble brooms, they were just sticks with nothing on the end.  Why would anyone want to hold a stick between their legs while running around playing a game?

If you're going to play (or perform?) Quidditch, it should go one of two ways: Either it's theater, or it's a sport.  It's not both.  If it's theater, that's great, but I want to see real brooms, robes, and logos commemorating Gryffindore, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw (for the record I remembered 3 of the 4 houses off the top of my head, I had to look up Ravenclaw).  If it's a sport, that's even better.  But then make it a sport.  Ditch the brooms and everything else altogether and just turn it into a crazy game of rugby/soccer/hockey/handball involving multiple balls and goals.  Doing it halfway in between just makes the players/actors look like a bunch of chumps.

   Follow @LucidSportsFan

The most oddly successful movie franchise I can remember

I can't imagine a more fitting photo for this movie.

I've seen a bunch of commercials on TV lately for a movie premiering on May 24th; Fast & Furious 6.  All I can think of is "how is this possible?"  And there's a 7th edition already slotted to come out in 2015 as well.  That'll be 7 films in 15 years, going back to the original from 2001.  Several of the sequels haven't even bothered to change the title.  And somehow they keep going.

There were 8 Harry Potter movies that hit theaters in a span of 11 years (also starting in 2001), but they were based on widely popular books and pretty much guaranteed to all be made the second the first one was signed off on.  From 1962-1989 a whopping 16 James Bond movies (and another 7 since then) came out, which is pretty much the gold standard in terms of movie franchises.  Other than that I can't think of any other film series to release so many editions in such a short time.  The fact that James Bond is the closest thing I can compare this Fast & Furious nonsense to is a little disturbing.

 Follow @LucidSportsFan

A couple unconvincing predictions for the AFC title game

Dan Shaughnessy and Terry Francona have written a book together, and it's coming out on Tuesday.  But this post is actually about football.  The book's publishing company has an office in the building above my bar, and because of that Shaughnessy has become a frequent guest.  Sometimes I chat with him about sports and such when he's not with people or on the phone.  Last week he wrote a story saying that the Houston Texans were terrible and the Patriots would destroy them. Texans running back Arian Foster turned it into a really big deal by posting some quotes from the article as his twitter profile picture.

So on Friday when I saw Dan I asked him if he'd written anything this week about Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice.  He laughed and said "I'm not going there again."  Before he left he asked me who I thought would win tonight.  I said I liked New England, but was a little scared by how well Baltimore has been playing since Ray Lewis announced his retirement.  Shaughnessy told me he thought the Ravens were a lot better than the Texans, but that he still liked the Pats in a close game.  Then he said something along the lines of "but I'm usually wrong about these things."  So there you have it, two fairly vague predictions for tonight.


   Follow @LucidSportsFan

Choose Your Own Adventure: Hurricane Sandy

For a while now I've been looking for a good reason to mention "Choose Your Own Adventure" books in a post; you know, just because.  So with people all over the east coast sitting at home today waiting for the power to go out, it seemed like as good a time as any.

185 of them published from 1979-1998

If you'd like to read about what preparations were going on last year when Hurricane Irene was coming, click here.  If you're more interested in a sarcastic take on Irene, and the storm the year before that (which both turned out to be busts around here), go to this page.  If you're curious about my crazy idea of how technology should be able to stop natural disasters before they hit, jump back to 9/2/11.  If you'd just like to be distracted and entertained (for both sports fans and not), read here to learn about which concessions the Fenway Park vendors probably like selling the most.  Or, if you'd like to know what it's like outside along the water in Boston right now, continue on to the next paragraph.

2:44 pm - There's some light rain.  It's windy.  Really windy.  An empty beer can flew by me, bouncing along 5 feet into the air down the sidewalk.  Below is a video clip of what's happening at the beach.  It's very loud, and there's lots of sand blowing around everywhere.

   Follow @LucidSportsFan

Abraham Lincoln killed vampires. No big deal.

This movie commercial has been running frequently the last few nights during the NBA playoffs.  And I love it.  It reminds me a lot of a film from last summer, Cowboys & Aliens.  I never actually saw that one, but I'm assuming it was pretty bad.  And I bet Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is terrible too.  But I like them both in principle just because "why not?"  Why shouldn't aliens invade earth and fight cowboys?  Why shouldn't Abraham Lincoln make it his mission to protect the nation from vampires?  There's enough crappy movies out there that I have to give credit to anything that is an original and weird idea, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.

Apparently this was a book first, and the guy also wrote one called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Awesome.  As soon as I am done with the three Hunger Games I am totally reading those.

  Follow @LucidSportsFan

My review of "The Hunger Games"

Let me start by saying it's good; as good as the book, if not better.  If you haven't already read the book, this won't be very helpful, but there aren't any real spoilers either.  The first thing I noticed was that the guy who plays Peeta seemed way too short to me, he's a few inches shorter than Katniss.  And soon after that I was very surprised to see Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, for some reason I was picturing an old fat guy.  But as the film went on, both actors grew on me.

Overall the movie does a great job of sticking to what happens in the book, and not leaving out anything too major.  Really my only gripe in this area is that because it's condensed (an inevitable dilemma when turning a book into a movie), everything happens too quickly during "the games."  Cold, hunger, thirst, and bad weather never become a factor, simply because there isn't time for them to.  This is a little annoying because one, it's called "The Hunger Games," and two, they make a point of saying during the training that many of the kids will die from these conditions, rather than at the hands of each other.

What the movie gives you that the book does not is a view of things from beyond Katniss' perspective.  Much of it is actually very reminiscent of The Truman Show.  From the fact that the games take place in a giant dome full of tiny TV cameras everywhere, to the ability of the producers to manipulate weather and daylight on a whim.  And most notably, the efforts made to force Katniss (or Truman) to turn around by creating a fire when she gets too close to the outer boundaries.  As a whole the movie puts a lot of emphasis on how the games work as a television show, something that is missing from the book.  One scene I particularly liked included a giant odds board of all the contestants and their chances of winning; i.e. "Rue: 60-1."  Unlike the book the film also gives you insight into how much the people in charge of the games actually choose who lives and dies.  Although my friends tell me I'll learn more about that when I read book number two.

My advice?  Read The Hunger Games first (it's super quick) if you haven't already, then go see the movie.  You'll like both.

Follow @LucidSportsFan

What if every MLB team that won 90 games made the playoffs?

Last week Major League Baseball announced that the Houston Astros will be moving to the American League West (giving each division 5 teams), and that another Wild Card playoff team will be added to each league.  Back in April when rumors of this first came about, I wrote that I didn't like it because of the small sample size of the playoffs.  St. Louis has managed to win the World Series twice in the last five years despite being the worst team in the playoffs both times.  One of my favorite quotes from the book Moneyball is "the average difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game."  And now it looks like the new Wild Card round may be just one single game.  Here's my hypothetical nightmare: an 84 win Seattle team knocking off a 97 win Red Sox team behind one great start from Felix Hernandez.

So what if every team that won 90 games made the playoffs?  There would always be dramatic finishes to the regular season.  No team would be out of it until they lost their 73rd game.  Not only would all the teams trying to get to 90 wins play hard until the end, but so would the teams who'd already clinched, because the seeding would become extremely important.  The playoff format would be different every year, and there would be no way to know for sure what it would be until the very end of the season.

For example, last year the Cardinals won the last game of the year for their 90th win, while the Braves lost theirs and finished with only 89.  So under this format, going into the last day of the season, there would have been the possibility of only 3 playoff teams in the NL, or as many as 5.  The top seeded Phillies might have had a bye while the 2 and 3 seeds played each other, or while the 2 played 5 and 3 played 4.  Or they might have had to play in the first round vs the 4 seed while the 2 and 3 played each other.  Some years maybe only 2 or 3 teams might make the playoffs in one league, while other years it might be as many as 6 or 7.  Obviously this will never happen.  But imagine how exciting it would be?  Chaos is fun.

Follow @LucidSportsFan

The Most Interesting Cat in the World

I have vague childhood memories of reading (or having read to me) the Puss In Boots story.  But is that something kids today know about?  I get the feeling there are way too many other entertainment options out there now besides Mother Goose fairy tales.  But then you have to wonder, is this even really a kids movie?  The commercials make it seem like the target audience is 30-45 year old men.  How many kids care about Dos Equis Beer, Wrangler Jeans, and Old Spice?  Maybe they are going after the dads.  Pretty witty and impressive marketing though.

I definitely like the cat better than Brett Favre.

This one is even better when you watch these two back to back.

I'd heard that people actually did this, but I guess I never really believed it

I've read about it, and I've seen clips on youtube.  So I know that it's real, but I guess part of me never actually believed it till I saw it with my own eyes.  Last weekend I was walking by Boston Common, and I saw people playing Quidditch.  And I'm not talking about a few kids messing around.  There were teams in uniforms.  Referees with whistles.  Even fans sitting in the bleachers and cheering.  I can't really fathom how this is possible.

On the off that chance somebody doesn't know, Quidditch is a FICTICIOUS game made up for the Harry Potter books, in which wizards fly around in the sky on brooms.  The problem is that in real life, people can't fly.  So the kids who play Quidditch just run around on the ground instead.  This makes sense to me, except for the fact that they do it while pretending to sit on flying brooms.  I can't imagine how annoyed, uncomfortable, and stupid I would feel trying to run, throw, and catch, while also holding a stick between my legs.  Whatever is going on the heads of the people who enjoy doing this is something I obviously can't comprehend.

Am I looking at it from the wrong perspective?  Maybe it's just theater, and not a competitive sport.  And yeah, I know the picture sucks, but I was kinda scared to get too close.

The "Moneyball" movie has no business not being awesome

Until recently I had never read the book "Moneyball."   All I knew of it was a basic one sentence plot summary: that it's about the Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane targeting cheap players with high On Base Percentages in an attempt to win games and stay competitive, despite a low payroll.  So when I heard there was a movie coming out, I was very skeptical that a book about analyzing baseball statistics could actually translate to the big screen.  Well, I just finished reading the book, and let me tell you, there are actually TONS of plot lines in it that make for a great movie.  Just to name a few:

- Billy Beane as a failed "can't miss" prospect turned GM who hired players the opposite of himself

- Chad Bradford making the Big Leagues as an underhand pitcher, in part because his father suffered a stroke which limited him to throwing underhand

- the author chronicling the A's during the 2002 season in which (SPOILER ALERT!!!) they had a miraculous 20 game win streak (that I remember well), punctuated by blowing an 11-0 lead in game #20, then winning it 12-11 on a walk off HR by Scott Hatteberg (that I had totally forgotten)

If this movie isn't great I am going to be so pissed.  There's also a million more things in the book I'd like to discuss.  The logic to it fits my brain perfectly, and a lot of the ideas in it about baseball are arguments that I make on my own all the time.  But that's another blog for another day.

Actually, this blog I wrote back in April about the problem with another wild card team is very Moneyball-esque.  And come to think of it, so are my thoughts about the Sox leaving 16 men on base against the Yankees in a game last week.