Monday Morning Brain Fart - 8/24

The Yankees - Red Sawx game Friday night was one of the most unwatchable games I have seen in a long time. Now don't get me wrong, it was phenomenal to see every single Yanks hitter beating the brains out of whatever pitcher the Sawx put out on the mound, but at the same time the Yankee pitching wasn't terribly great. Andy Pettitte struggled mostly through his 5 innings, which was fine because the Yanks already had a huge lead, but then Brian Bruney came in and it all went down hill. There are few things more annoying in life then watching a pitcher trying to nibble on the corners when his team has a 12 run lead. Just throw strikes, let them put it in play, and let your defense do the work. My old baseball coaches used to pull pitchers out of the game if they were walking batters when we had a huge lead. Bruney couldn't find the plate and began walking every Sawx batter in sight, giving them and their Masshole fans false hope that they could actually get back in the game. Damaso Marte then did his job, before Sergio Mitre came in and did his best Bruney impersonation. Truly awful to watch. But alas, a win's a win.

And while we're on the subject of the Red Sawx, how's all that "smart money" they spent in the offseason looking now? Everyone at ESPN was licking their balls over the money they spent on Brad Penny, John Smoltz and Jason Varitek, and how they were getting "better value" and other nonsense for their money than the Yankees, who spent a fortune on CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira. Well, Penny sucks, Smoltz was worse and has since been released, and Varitek is one of the worst hitters in the league. I don't care how well he can call a game, he is close to an automatic out in that lineup, plus he couldn't throw me out if I was trying to steal second, and I am fat and slow. And can he please take that stupid "C" off of his jersey? This isn't hockey. Meanwhile, CC is a Cy Young candidate, AJ is pitching great (before that debacle on Saturday of course), and Tex is in the running for MVP. Smart money, indeed.

We also watched bits and pieces of The Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men. First on The Dark Knight: I could watch this movie 5 times a day and it would never get old. It's shot beautifully and the score is absolutely incredible. But most of all, the acting is top notch. Everyone in the movie is great, most of all Heath Ledger as the Joker. It's a shame he had to go and kill himself, because I would have loved to have seen him in more Batman movies. As for No Country, I have to say that it's not as good as everyone makes it out to be. It's entertaining and the acting is good, but then the ending comes, and it just comes across as pretentious. Basically, everyone dies, the bad guy gets in an accident and disappears, then Tommy Lee Jones talks about a dream he had about his dead father. That's it, that's the end. It's trying to be too artsy for it's own good, just so people who think they know film can call the Coen Brothers "geniuses." I call them "overrated," at least as far as this movie is concerned.

We saw a little bit of the Vikings - Chiefs preseason game, which was of course Brett Favre's first action in a Minnesota uniform. First off, you all know my feelings on Mr. Favre and his annual ridiculous bouts with indecision, so I don't need to get into that here. But I will say that it looks incredibly weird seeing Favre wearing purple. It didn't look that strange last year with him in a Jets uniform because they were green like the Packers, but the Vikings uniform is different. If I was a Packers fan, I would have a hard time forgiving him for this, and if I was a Vikings fan, I would have a hard time rooting for him. That would be like Eli Manning choosing to play in Philadelphia or Dallas at the end of his career, or Tony Romo or Donovan McNabb coming to play for the Giants at the end of theirs. I'm not sure if I could handle that. Apart from this, the best part of the Vikings - Chiefs game was when the Chiefs came out for their first defensive series in a 3-4 defense. Color commentator Mike Mayock was saying something along the lines of how difficult it is to play center against a 3-4 because against a 4-3 defense, you have the tackles over both your shoulders, but against a 3-4, you "have a big sweaty nose tackle sitting right on your face." I don't know about you, but I would hate it if there was a big sweaty nose tackle sitting on my face. Ewwwwwwwww. I wonder if these commentators actually think about what they're going to say before they say it.

I went to Hoboken today for lunch with the woman. We went to the Mile Square Bar and Grill on Washington St., and the food was pretty good even though the choices were scant. The best part, aside from the company of course, was the Newcastle Brown Ale draught I had. Just an excellent beer. I highly recommend it if you haven't had it, though I assume most of you have. We then went to Cold Stone for dessert, which as I'm sure you all know is ridiculously delicious. I had a chocolate and peanut butter milk shake. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. The only downside to the afternoon is how incredibly humid and gross it is outside. I took 3 steps outside and I already looked like I had run around in a sprinkler. It certainly doesn't help that I'm a fat ass, but still, this is disgusting. The fall can't come soon enough!

I just watched The Mask on ABC Family channel, and during one of the commercial breaks, they advertised for one of their shows called The Secret Life of an American Teenager, or something like that. In an upcoming episode, one of the guest stars is Rumer Willis, who is the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Unfortunately for her, she got none of Demi's looks and all of Bruce's. Picture Bruce Willis with long chick hair, and you know what she looks like. Plus she has a very manly jaw. I know it's mean, but OUCH.

We're watching the Giants second preseason game against the Bears while we play a little beirut (also referred to as beer pong by people not in the know), and they look absolutely awful. Jay Cutler is carving them up, Matt Forte is running around wherever he wants, and it doesn't look like our special teams remembers how to tackle a kick returner. The offense isn't fairing much better either. It also looks like we lost Jay Alford for the year after another Giant was blocked into his knee and it got bent in a way that knees aren't supposed to be bent. Obviously at this moment, there's no certainty that he tore anything, but it didn't look pretty and would be a huge loss for us, not only because he's a big part of our defensive line rotation, but also because he's our long snapper on field goals and extra points. Not good. People need to stop talking about how great our depth is on the defensive line, because all of them seem to be getting hurt these days. The combination of this game and all of the injuries to the Giants during training camp is not a good sign for the upcoming season. But then again it is training camp, so we'll see!

A bunch of us went to the Jersey City Beer Gardens tonight, which, in my opinion, is as close to heaven as you will ever get here on Earth. I'll get into it in a little more depth in a later post, but the combination of good food, good people, huge screens to watch football on, more great beers than you can dream about and the fact that it's in New Jersey make it one of my favorite places to go. My pants are getting a little tighter just thinking about it. We followed that up with a little trip to the Golden Cicada, where we had some beers and watched our tennis-playing friend Joseph embarrass himself in Wii Tennis. Suffice it to say, his skills from the tennis court do not translate to the Wii. We then got A-1 and had our traditional late-night bacon sandwiches, then got home and watched some of Pineapple Express, which is a hilarious movie that has the most violence you will ever see in a comedy. Do yourself a favor and see it if you haven't already.

This afternoon we saw Inglourious Basterds in theaters, and it was AWESOME. It was very violent and bloody, but actually not as violent as I had originally anticipated. Brad Pitt was incredible, and Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa and Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus were even better. The movie was about 2 and a half hours long, but at no time did you ever think it was dragging. Great story, great acting, great everything. I absolutely loved it - go see it now. I also watched Beerfest this afternoon on Comedy Central, edited and with commercials (even though I own the DVD). A classic movie, and definitely Broken Lizard's best work. I don't care what people say about Super Troopers, Beerfest is the best.

HUGE HOME RUN BY A-ROD!!! He just took a hanging Josh Beckett curveball and lined it into the Green Mawnstah seats. Looks like the Yanks have Beckett's number tonight as they've already scored 7 off of him through 5 innings. Too bad I have to suffer through all the aspects of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball coverage that make it so torturous: the long commercial breaks and the horrendous announcing of Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Steve Phillips. Miller isn't terrible but can get annoying, Morgan is an idiot, and I'd tell Phillips to go back to being a General Manager, but he sucked at that too. The insight that Morgan provides during the game is priceless. For example, he told us tonight that "lots of bats have been shattering over the past couple of years." Really Joe? Bats have been shattering the past few years? I HAD NO IDEA!!!! THANKS!!!

A quick note here: You'll notice in my profile section on the upper right-hand part of the website that I now have an email address for the blog. It's jerseyisbest@gmail.com. So if there's anything you want me to write about, any questions you possibly could have for me, any guest-writer submissions you would like to send me, or if you just want to shoot me an email about how much of an idiot I am, that's the address to do it at. Keep commenting on the posts on the site though! Also, I'm thinking about caving in and losing a piece of what little manhood I have left by joining Twitter. Good idea?

Ugh. Another week of work.