I wrote this the first week of April 2012, almost a month to the day I was scheduled to run my first marathon. The good news is, I finished. The better news is, hammering my legs for 26.2 miles for nearly 4 hours in the hot May sun of Pittsburgh might have occasioned some post race fatigue (and pepperoni pizza), but it only deepened my enthusiasm for running races. So while now I’m a bit wiser and more seasoned runner than the person who wrote this, I still feel like discovering running was like finding a great secret that I immediately want to share with everybody. And for someone that is supposed to be a “contrarian,” it’s nice to build up something rather than cut it down. -Joe Rusin 7/29/2012 Spring is in the air. It’s also on the calendar, and for many allergy suffers it is up their nose. As the days grow both longer and warmer, there is an increased sense of social pressure to get outside and enjoy the freedom of getting outside and moving. The seasonal starting gun has fired. It’s the perfect time to sign up for an organized race. Most people tend to fall into one of two categories—those who run, and those who don’t. Those who do tend to overemphasize the positive impact running can have on a life, obsess over mileage and personal bests, know what hill repeats are, and view a race as a fun event. Those who fall on the other side of the divide tend to view running as hard, boring work that is not fun, and might even be harmful to joint health. I have at one point been on both sides of this divide. For a long time I thought of...

The Stanley Cup Finals are upon us, and beginning tonight the Los Angeles Kings travel to the fetid swamps of New Jersey to take on the Devils in a best of seven series to decide who gets to skate around carrying a gigantic, funny-shaped cup. It’s a beautiful time for any person with even a passing interest in sports. To a hockey fan, it’s what we live for. No sport has a more grueling playoff season than the NHL, and no sport has a more storied trophy. Every other sport the champion team gets a version of the trophy to forever store in their clubhouse. Not so in hockey—there is only one Stanley Cup, and the team must return it the next year, but the victors leave their mark on the Cup by having their names engraved in it for all times (or at least until it fills up and they have to add more blank space to it). But what team most deserves it this year? Obviously, the best thing about sports is that they have to play the games to determine that, so unlike, say, the Oscars, there’s not really much room for differing opinions afterward. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the better story this year would be for Los Angeles to bring the Cup to Hollywood. I do not say this as a resident of L.A., nor because I am a pledged hater of the Devils (who are division rivals to the team I follow—the Pittsburgh Penguins). I say it because people who don’t know what they’re talking about tend to scoff at the idea of hockey in Los Angeles. What business does a city in which ice is not a natural occurrence at...

Sometimes you have to capitulate to the cultural zeitgeist, if only to have an informed opinion on the major movements in our (pop) culture. An English teacher of mine once encouraged us not to actually read the great works of literature (that would take far too long) but to instead develop a nodding acquaintance with them (Cliff’s Notes would suffice). While I think that was a horribly irresponsible message for a high school teacher to be putting forward, she had a point—if you’re not going to really learn everything to have a complete understanding of a topic, it’s at least a good idea to know enough to be able to fake it. (This movement toward superficial understanding of things has arguably become one of the most destructive forces in education, journalism, and our general cultural understanding, but that’s a log for another fire.) So it was that in pursuit of general understanding of an apparently important cultural moment, I found myself sitting in a movie theater preparing to experience THE AVENGERS. I had no connection to the material, having never read the comics or feeling any real connection to the characters other than seeing most of the previous blockbuster superhero movies in which they appeared. Still, I had been hearing nothing but positive things about the movie, I had reasonably enjoyed some of the individual Marvel Comics movies, and most of all I was beginning to feel really left out since it seemed everyone else in the world saw the damn thing on opening weekend. So off I went, plunking down my $20 (or however outrageously high the ticket price was) and settling in for what I expected would be a positive communal experience. The crowd was certainly into it. A week after opening...

This column first ran in October 2011. As Joe Rusin prepares to run his first marathon this weekend, we meditate on his former form in this Fierce Encore! A few weeks ago, some generous soul saw fit to bring in a box of extremely delicious buttermilk donuts to be shared by everyone who works in my office. Extremely delicious translates to heart clogging, gut expanding, sleep-inducing goodness. Some office mates sensibly took only small portions, cutting the donuts into pieces for a nibble. Being capable of great gluttony, I of course took the whole thing. As I was taking it, I made a comment to someone about how you could tell by looking at me that I enjoy my sweets. In response I got an incredulous and slightly annoyed expression as my coworker commented, “What are you talking about—you look svelte.” Here’s the thing. She wasn’t just being kind. I actually am fairly trim right now. I’m not skinny by any sense of the word, and I still have a roundish quality, but even according to the body mass index I am at worst just over the edge of “overweight” and actually usually fall into the category of “normal” (and keep in mind, those BMI calculators are cruel—if you’re trying to lose weight and you want a disappointing shot in the gut, check one out to see how far you’ve got to go. It always seems a little unreasonable.). This is not a column to brag about weight loss, though (even if I did find a way to work it in). What I find interesting is that when I made what I thought was a self-deprecating comment about my size, I completely believed it. I wasn’t looking for a compliment—I had forgotten that when...

Some people were just born in the wrong time. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old now, but I look at these high school nerds today and they don’t know how good they have it. The mainstream has entirely embraced their culture. Superheroes and fantasy adventure, once the lowest of the low, is now embraced by all, especially Hollywood, which spends top dollar on translating books I once felt subtle shame reading publicly into high budget tent pole blockbusters. And now there’s even a legitimate political movement to curb the bullying, once the ultimate Darwinian equalizer in the social order of young people. We are truly in the Golden Age of the Nerd. Oh to be young and nerdy again. Case and point, one of the best shows on television right now, GAME OF THRONES, is not only amazingly well produced, acted, and written, it also follows faithfully the fantasy adventure novels of George R.R. Martin. And it’s POPULAR! This isn’t some niche show that airs late night on Fridays. This is a multi-million dollar production that is arguably HBO’s flagship show, and now it occupies the Sunday night time slot once tended by THE SOPRANOS. This is fantasy taken seriously. The show is epic in scope, but the complexity of its plot and social dynamics, as well as the richness of its characters reminds me of nothing so much as a medieval fantasy version of THE WIRE. It’s got intrigue, violence, intelligence, magic and monsters (although they are never the focus), larger and more substantial roles for women than is common in the genre, and if that wasn’t enough, a surprising amount of gratuitous nudity and “sexual situations.” There really is something for everyone. Spurred by the fantastic first season that aired last spring...

Sarah Vowell is one of my favorite writers. Period. When I first heard her read some of her work on THIS AMERICAN LIFE, I found her voice annoying, and ignored her for a long time. Then I forced myself to actually listen to her, and fell in love with her essays that mix humor, personal experience, and American History. In her telling of one historical event, General Lafayette’s tour of America during his twilight years, she reduced me to tears. And I’ve re-listened to it, and cried again. And again. Not because it’s sad, but because she manages to find in history the human soul. And she makes me so pleased to be an American, embracing both our historical shames and triumphs. She is a writer of ideas and heart, and can be as funny as David Sedaris, but also much more poignant. And after reading her and listening to her again, I find her voice isn’t really that annoying, it’s just different. And in Sarah Vowell’s America, there is plenty of room for people to be...

We’re in that odd time of the year right now for sports, when nothing is happening and everything is happening. The two active professional sports, basketball and hockey, are coming into the final stretches of their regular seasons as teams start getting serious in jockeying for playoff positions. The NFL is getting ready for free agency and the draft. And baseball is starting its spring training, for anyone over 40 or the lame-o stat heads with social disorders who still watch that played out pastime. Oh, and March Madness is about to start. Everything is about to happen, but nothing is actually happening at the moment. It’s like the scene in THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS when all the orcs march up to walls of Helms Deep and just stand there looking up as the defenders on the walls look down on them. We’re so intent on what’s about to happen that there is not time to consider how we got here. But in this “deep breath before the plunge,” I’ve found the rare opportunity to evaluate my sports enthusiasm from a more rational and logical position, and have come to a realization. While pragmatism and logic must be deployed by the owners and general managers of sports franchises across the country, they have no place in fandom, and trying to think about why you love the teams you do will only make it apparent that you have devoted an inordinate amount of your life to watching and thinking about something that doesn’t make much sense. Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is an absolute need to occupy our time with things that are inconsequential, especially in a modern world when our minds are free of spending every moment...

February rolls on, and now that the Punxsutawney Phil is back in bed, the Valentines are opened, and the Presidents commemorated, the only big event still looming for the month is the forced pageantry of the 84th Academy Awards. I wrote a column last year about breaking up with the Oscars after having a devoted relationship of over 15 years, but somehow the split has not slowed Oscar’s social life. She (or he) just keeps going on, as though I was never needed to begin with. So, in the spirit of stalking an ex, I’ve been thinking a lot about the movies Oscar sees fit to bestow its highest honor on. The Best Picture award might be the most controversial award given, since very rare is the year when everyone can agree upon what was the best movie. We can disagree on the other awards, but ultimately at least someone is happy to get the golden statue, and we can feel good about the joy of another person on a human level. The best picture award is the only one of the major awards that is bestowed upon a thing—not a person. Yes, the film’s producers receive the award, but the record lists the movie, not the people. It’s hard to feel good for a winner you didn’t like when it’s not a person, even if the Citizen’s United decision wants us to think of companies as people too. Anyway, we wait the whole show to see what wins Best Picture, and we are either bored (because we expected it, as with most recent years) or shocked that that they could pick such a turd (as with CRASH). In the case of the latter, there is the lingering feeling that we wasted an entire...

I’m told it’s “Love Week” at Fierce and Nerdy. I’m assuming that means romantic love, as Valentine’s Day is upon us, making those of us in good relationships feel great, those of us in a so-so relationships feel anxious but relieved we’re in a relationship, and those of us not in a relationship feel like the Jehovah’s Witness kid at the kindergarten Halloween Party (that is, left out, embittered, but perhaps with a slight sense of superiority). Romance is wonderful, both the capital “R” and the lower case versions. However, I was never one to go completely with the program. I think I’ll take the road less travelled and explore a different kind of love—the kind of love that comes to be as the result of romantic love (or poor judgment). I’m talking about parental love. Ah babies. They’re so polarizing, and yet we have to pretend they aren’t. No creature in existence can be at once completely helpless and at the same time wield such absolute control over the dominant species on the planet than the human baby. Just to make it clear from the start, I am not a parent, nor am I expecting to become a parent anytime soon. I am an uncle, though, and I’m also reaching the age where many of my friends are married and having children of their own. So while there are no babies front and center in my life, they seem to be around my perimeter, like the Pacific Ocean is to Los Angeles, or prescription drug abuse is to Utah. Now let it be known that I am not a baby guy, but I like kids. Once they are little people, anywhere from 2 onwards (really whenever they can kind of talk), they are...

It’s been a tough year to be a contrarian. It was just too hard to feel very strongly about anything. Sure, on a geopolitical scale the year was pretty momentous, particularly in the Middle East and in “occupied” city commons across the U.S. But for those of us who escape from the real issues of the world into the succor of Popular Culture, this seems to be one of the blandest calendar years I can remember. What happened this year after all? What movies will we be talking about? What songs from this year will one day inspire fond thoughts of Obama’s America? It’s been tough to be a contrarian because there has not been much to get excited about either pro or con, and the general consensus of the public seems to share that notion. There is of course a slight possibility that something magic will happen in the waning weeks of the year to turn it all around, but I’m getting the feeling it’s too little, too late. I know I said before that a strong ending can make up for weaknesses leading up to it, but there has to be come kind of limit. If a movie bores you to death for two and a half hours, an exciting final minute won’t turn it around—it’ll just make you wish you hadn’t passed up the concession stand to get into the theater on time. Let’s do a quick rundown of how American Pop Culture let us down this year: MOVIES According to boxofficemojo.com, the top ten grossing films of the year were all either sequels or spinoffs (I’m counting THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA as both, since they proceed from the Marvel Comics Universe and were really only developed to help make sure...

(NOTE: Don’t worry if you’re not caught up on THE WALKING DEAD. The following is SPOILER FREE!) Ah, the best laid plans…yadda yadda yadda. I had been trudging through this lumbering season of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD confident that I could finally write off this show—a show I was never overly enamored with in the first place. It really is just a drawn out version of one of the classic George A. Romero zombie films, and though I love those movies, they tend to be as slow moving as their monsters. Dragging out a slow 2-hour movie to a multiple season television series. Yikes. The word I would use to describe THE WALKING DEAD this season would be glacial. And then they wrapped up the first half of this season with a bang—or rather, many bangs. Now I have to reset my DVR to keep recording the show when it returns in February. What I find interesting about my entire reaction was that I was not enjoying the show this year. I found myself DVRing many episodes and fast forwarding through repetitive boring conversations between the characters philosophizing on life after a Zombie Apocalypse. (Note to whomever is writing the show now: please limit yourselves to no more than one of these conversations per episode—there are zombies to kill for heaven’s sake. Less talk, more splatter.) However, it never once occurred to me to simply stop watching the show. I was in, and was going to see it through, at least to some sort of resolution. This brings up an interesting issue with television shows. The usual thinking is that it is much more difficult to create successful serialized show (one whose story continues and grows from episode to episode, ala BREAKING BAD, GAME...

Happy Book Week! Here’s why you don’t have to read books anymore. I’m kidding, but only a little. Like many people who choose to write things for the Internet that exceed 140 characters, books are and have always been an important part of my life. Books are the ultimate comfort form of entertainment, because they not only pass the time better than any other diversion, they give the sense of enriching it as well. Of course movies and television can be enriching and informative, but there was never a deliberate campaign aimed at young children that offered free personal pan pizzas for watching more T.V. (Thank you Book It!) Throughout my early childhood, our school always pressured us to read, which was really no pressure at all, since I loved to read. I was a little annoyed when they were pushing for Beverly Cleary while I was much more interested in Tolkien, but somehow we got by. Then in high school we seemed to hit the brick wall that was standardized testing. My high school didn’t read. We weren’t often assigned books, and those we were assigned were always short and usually more suggested than actually explored (I don’t ever remember discussing anything longer than a short story other than for extra credit). What time did we have to read novels when my rural Western Pennsylvanian school district was busy trying to cut costs and get more funding by forcing us to take standardized tests constantly? (This irks me more in retrospect and was a reason that I was against Dubbya’s “No Child Left Behind” before it was cool to be against it.) Besides, we were mostly being counseled to go technical and trade schools anyway. In desperate hope to force myself to have...

Breaking Bad is hands down the best show on television right now, and maybe the best ever. It certainly ranks up there. No show has been able to sustain such dramatic momentum and continuously improve from season to season quite so well, without devolving into a soap opera or throwing out random subplots. Most impressively, unlike the other shows considered the greats by elitist television viewers (a label that would have been an oxymoron 15 years ago)—shows like Mad Men, The Wire, The Sopranos, et al—Breaking Bad has done it with a very small cast of characters and essentially one story line. Yes, the show takes twists and turns, but the entire story of Walter White is about a high school chemistry teacher learning that he is dying of cancer and making the choice to cook crystal meth to earn money for his family. Everything else in the series follows this choice. Series creator Vince Gilligan has said he wants to turn Mr. Chips into Tony Montana. Structurally speaking, it’s really one big movie told over multiple seasons that will culminate in the ultimate fate of Mr. White. Oh what a ride it’s been so far. Each episode is about as visceral an experience as I’ve ever had in front of a television set—and I’m a sports fan. It’s the only show I’ve ever watched that actually provokes a vocal response from me other than laughter (although there’s plenty of that in the show’s underappreciated comedic side). I don’t think I’ve actually been moved to speak to a show like this before (unless you count hurling insults during my attempt to watch the show Glee, but that’s another column), alternating cheering, shouting warnings, and using a lot of profanity. In case you can’t tell,...

There is nothing quite so bittersweet as seeing time wear down the virility and effectiveness of the people we look up to in our lives. We see our grandparents and then our parents slow with age, and go from towering, irreproachable figures of strength in our lives to, well, human beings. This happens much more quickly in the world of sports, where the top athletes usually have about a decade of dominance before they face the inevitable decline that the physical toll of any professional sport takes on the body. We thrill to the brilliant performances of Mario Lemieux, Michael Jordan, or (gag) Brett Favre, but inevitably we have to see their abilities decline in their last years before they retire from their respective sports, often staying longer than they should and somewhat tainting our memories of their younger brilliance. This isn’t news. Everybody gets old, everybody burns out, everybody fades. But one place we never seem to acknowledge it is in the realm of critics. Movie critics, theater critics, literary critics, and music critics might have more in common with professional athletes than it might seem. Ryan Dixon’s review of Roger Ebert’s autobiography got me thinking about this, and how Roger, who was once such a towering figure and whose opinions greatly influenced my film consumption has become someone whose reviews I have a hard time reading these days. Let’s start with early career. A young athlete will come into their league hungry, bursting with talent, but not yet seasoned through experience. A critic will come in the same way—hungry to establish esteem among readers, or at least to stand out from the pack of film studies or philosophy majors desperately trying to make a living with their degrees. Younger critics are not...

The point of Labor Day weekend has always flummoxed me. Why do we need a holiday weekend at the end of August? Presumably we’ve been taking our vacations sometime over this period, and enjoying those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Yet apparently we need a break after all of that, a break that completely robs the week we now find ourselves in of any momentum. In school, we’d often start classes the week before Labor Day, only to immediately go into a 3-day weekend, completely throwing off class schedules right when they should be getting started. I’m not against holidays, and certainly not against the labor movement that this most recent holiday commemorates (unions helped put food on my table throughout my childhood). But there does seem to be a prevailing notion in our society that encourages us to take breaks more often than we need them. Advertising constantly encourages give ourselves a break, or have a treat. Self-help books and novels encourage us to find ourselves on vacations—to escape from the stress of our busy days. But how busy are our days, really? Certainly there are those out there who work 60 hours and more a week, who struggle through multiple jobs to support family or maintain a decent quality of living. But those people probably aren’t taking breaks—they can’t afford to. For the rest of us who work closer to 40 hours (or less) we probably tend to give ourselves too many breaks. Ok, I give myself too many breaks. I’ve never found it difficult to stop working and take it easy. It’s getting going again that is the real difficulty. There is nothing I have found that is more addictive than complacency—it’s really the root of all continuing bad habits....

As anyone with cable can attest, we’re currently in Renaissance of television, with some of the most insightful, original, and exciting storytelling ever produced not just for the small screen, but for any screen. Anyone who doesn’t get cable probably doesn’t watch television, since the most broadcast network fare is the exact opposite—bland, formulaic writing that doesn’t take chances and is soon to be canceled in favor of the next reality show singing/dancing/cooking/dating competition show. People who complain about not liking anything on television are like people who say they don’t like wine but have only tasted one varietal of Chardonnay that poured from a cardboard box. With so many fantastic new shows popping up all over cable, the race always seems to be on to declare each one the “best show on television.” There’s the MAD MEN people, the BREAKING BADers, the TRUE BLOODiers, DAMAGES peeps, and now the GAME OF THRONES folks. I myself can enjoy all of them, though I know nothing will ever surpass THE WIRE. However, there are other shows that really have no claim to being the “best show on television” (a dubious and too-subjective title anyway), but are nonetheless essential viewing. One particular show is fraught with inconsistencies of tone and storytelling, but might just be the most interesting program available right now. LOUIE. The show’s premise is not all that dissimilar from SEINFELD, in that it follows the stand-up comedian Louis C.K. (playing himself) as he deals with the issues of his life and applies his experiences to stand up bits that we see during the show. That’s really where the parallels end, though. Louie C.K. was a comic’s comic for years, and a number of attempts were made to translate his act into the mainstream...

About a month ago, the video rental and streaming subscription service Netflix announced that it was nearly doubling its charges for its most popular subscription plan from $7.99 a month to $15.98. Upon hearing this news, we all went ballistic. I certainly did. I’ve been a loyal customer for years, and now they want to raise my rates simply because they can? Well, screw you, Netflix! How about I just cancel my membership altogether? Suck on that! This was my initial reaction. Of course with time I learned that the plan wasn’t really changing. I could keep getting the one disc at a time for the same price, or for the same price I could simply go without discs and have unlimited streaming of movies. I just had to pay more if I wanted to keep both. And I never actually signed up for both—I just got the free streaming when they added it for no additional price and soon found myself using it more than the discs I get in the mail. So really, they’ve been giving us something for nothing for a while, and now they just want to start charging for the extra stuff. What I find interesting here is not the story of Netflix or iTunes or the New York Times, or any other Internet content provider that suddenly decides it needs to charge more for its material. What is interesting is how it feels like such a violation to us as consumers—a betrayal of charging more for our basic content consumption necessities. Yes, necessities. Because with most forms of entertainment today, especially entertainment that is regularly fed to us in our homes or on our mobile devices, things have evolved from being exciting frills to our lives to basic...

What is the one constant in life? It’s not friends and family, it’s not career and it’s not death (which technically would be the end of life, so hardly a constant). Don’t even bring up taxes—they’re always there, but there are plenty of ways to cheat on them or ignore them until the IRS comes after you. No, nearly everything in the world can be cheated but one thing. Traffic. The ultimate equalizer. The punishment for all of the convenience of our modern lives. If Dante were writing INFERNO today, one of the circles of hell would have to be a traffic jam that lasts for eternity, during which your car’s A/C goes out and you have to pee. As an apartment dweller in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, I spend a sizable amount of time sitting in traffic in order to make it to a job, which I have simply to pay for said Valley apartment. Vicious circle, no?  At times, I can spend up to three hours (an eighth of a day) just trying to get to, or from, the office. And while that can give me a sense of righteous indignation for my sorry lot, I realize there are those who commute much further. This is actually infuriating because these super commuters never seem to complain, diluting my self-image as a traffic martyr. I can only assume they have much nicer homes than mine. They must have, right? I really have no cause to complain. I choose to live in Los Angeles, and when you do that you simply have to accept that traffic comes with the territory, just as rain comes with Seattle, wind comes with Chicago, and a strong odor of garbage comes with New York...

I don’t want to belabor this point, but after witnessing a hipster cyclist run into a nice (I assume) Mexican family on a Burbank sidewalk, I feel my cry for sanity in keeping these crazed pedaling freaks off our streets and sidewalks has gone unheeded. I choose to reprint it here not for myself, but for the sake of the children. Originally published on o5/04/11 Let’s get this straight from the start. I do not have a problem with bicycles. I think they’re great fun, good exercise, good for the environment, and wonderfully clever machines. I spent most of my early childhood summers perched on the back of one, and have nothing but fond memories of racing it up and down Long’s Road to the homes of various neighbor kids. When I first saw PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, I didn’t find anything strange about the main character going to such lengths to recover his beloved bike. I felt the same attachment to mine. Then I grew up, and discovered an even better invention—the automobile. Between my own two feet and a car, I found little need for a bike to get me to where I was going. If it was close enough to ride to, it was probably close enough to walk to, and if not, it was just better to drive. Really, a bicycle fits into a very niche distance—over a mile or two it makes sense, but over 4 or 5 miles it would seem a car (or public transportation) would be the better conveyance. My getting away from the bike didn’t change my feeling about it—I just didn’t have any use for one any more. It wasn’t until I moved to the city for college that my antipathy for the bicycle began....

Everyone wants to be cool. Everyone wants to feel like they’ve got things figured out, that they fit into their chosen niche. Even if that niche is to define oneself as “uncool,” it’s still the same impulse. That’s how we had the boom in pop culture of cool “nerds.” It’s how this website exists. But one of the hallmarks of being cool is the sense of being in the know, of being ahead of the curve when it comes to pop culture, be it movies, music, or literature. I’ll admit it, there is a tremendous surge of inflated self worth when you discover a little indie band and listen to them just before they get popular, or see a film months before it becomes a phenomenon. If you’ve ever had that feeling, you know how empowering it is, that sense of wise superiority you lord over those lesser people who didn’t have a friend to get them into an early movie screening, or hadn’t put the time into figuring out the right bar to patronize to hear the next great band. You also probably remember that the feeling was fleeting. That’s because by its nature, being the first one in on something is only great until the rest of the world discovers it. Then you cease to be special. Who cares that you read the script to AVATAR three years before it came out? Everyone’s seen it now. Who cares that you were on the Jeff Tweedy bandwagon in the 90s—anyone who would care has gotten into and gotten over Wilco by now. When something you were first to love becomes loved by the masses, all that sense of personal ownership vanishes, and suddenly you can start to resent the very thing that had...

I never played little league. Baseball was never a presence in my life. My father was a hockey fan, my brother played football in high school, and when we played anything around the neighborhood involving bases, it tended to be kickball. Later I would be a hockey player, with some minor dabbling in basketball and soccer before giving up playing sports all together in high school. All through that time, baseball never had any kind of sway on me, except in movies like FIELD OF DREAMS. I found it boring and the clothing unpleasant, and I was just bad at the game. As I’ve gotten older, I have fashioned myself into a sports fan, learning to care about games that had previously seemed a waste of time to me. I’ve become obsessed with football, gotten back into hockey, given basketball some attention, and even managed to drum up a little soccer interest (at least during the World Cup). However, I cannot make myself care about baseball. Watching a game is dull to me, and while I like the experience of attending a live game, I tend to get more excited about the hot dogs and pierogi races than the actual game. Why can’t I make myself like “America’s Pastime?” Maybe it’s my politics. I’ve recently been making my way through Ken Burns’ exhaustive 18-hour documentary BASEBALL. I may not like the game itself, but the history is fascinating, and the great thing about Burns’ films is that you can have them on while you’re doing other things. The documentary is rewarding (if laborious) from the perspective of history. Making my way through it I started to notice a pattern in the outlook of the game that bears a striking resemblance to a political party...

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need. Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards were on to something (though I prefer my punctuation to their delivery). It is a reassuring statement on the surface, but if you analyze it closely, you’ll see there are some qualifiers in there. “Sometimes” you’ll get what you need. Not always. The way the Rolling Stones sing it, it sounds more like you only need to try sometimes, and as long as you occasionally give a little effort your needs will be met. My version is cautiously optimistic, while still leaving the possibility that incredible effort could be met with failure to even achieve the basic necessities. I like to call myself an optimistic pessimist. When offered the old glass of water test, I tend to see it as half empty. However, it is only half empty. It could be worse. It could be mostly empty. It could even be spilled and have nothing in it. In current culture, this approach to life is referred to as “defensive pessimism”—preparing for the worst as a way to never get blindsided by it. I prefer the “optimistic” to “defensive,” partly because as a contrarian I like paradoxes, but more so because it feels less calculated. Anyone can plan for the worst possible conclusion to be prepared for it—it’s a rational approach. But expecting the worst and then finding the bright side once those expectations are met—that’s a skill. Which brings me to the NFL Lockout. I feel like I’ve lost all non-sports fans at this point (if they even made it this far after that headline), but just in case here is a quick recap. The NFL makes a boatload of money and...

It can be a difficult (and exhausting) prospect to take contrarian stances on everything. I’m not someone who actually looks to be against things (not consciously at least). I’m just skeptical of popular notions and how they affect our feelings toward things before we even have the opportunity to have our own honest, personal reactions to events, the arts, and culture. Nowhere do prevailing feelings come into play more than in the choices we make when venturing to the movie theater. Politics is the only other arena where you can find people willing to make so many broad assumptions about material they have no first- hand knowledge about. Through reviews, trailers, even posters we tend to decide what the quality of a film is without ever seeing it. Obviously, we have to make these assumptions sometimes because we can’t see everything, and the greatest part of the time these assumptions turn out to be true to what our actual reaction to the film is. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a chance every once in a while. This past Saturday, I took three (with the help of a little peer pressure) in an orgy of movie going overindulgence, and found that contrary to my expectations, I had something to learn from each. 3 LESSONS FROM COMPULSIVE MOVIE GOING: DIE WALKÜRE – Opera can be fun in a movie theater. If you have ever gone to one of the larger movie theater chains and taken your seat early, you’ve probably sat through a lot of commercials. Amongst them are often ads for upcoming “live in theater events” put on by distributors like Fathom Events. These are usually live concerts, sporting events, or opera performances. I can honestly say whenever these came on, I always...

Lately I’ve been noticing on Facebook the proliferation of programs that allow you to uncover who searches you the most, or who views your page most frequently—your top “stalkers,” if you will. My immediate reaction to these programs (before finding out that they were all pretty much a scam) was to be unsettled, which then made me wonder why I was unsettled. Am I trying to hide something? Not that I know of. While I regularly check Facebook, I do not often spend long periods of time on it. I stop in to see any witty status updates, if someone has posted on my wall, or if I have been tagged, poked, or written upon. And yes, occasionally I’ll look up some old friends to if there is anything new on their page. Nothing about my Facebook habits would embarrass me if everything I did on it were published on my wall. So why did I care about these “stalker tracker” programs? Because I’m sure that not everyone is as comfortable about his or her surfing habits as I might be. As much as we talk about social networking as a way to bring us all together, the real strength is in its ability to control our interaction. Many people with no interest in being social are rabid consumers of social networking. It’s like a video game of socialization, without the nuisance of having tradition relationships with other human beings. I’m not criticizing this, it’s simply another mode of interaction. And for those who choose to make it their primary mode, it seems like their ability to view from afar is part of the appeal. Facebook and social networking is all about choice. We choose what we want to display, who we want to be...

The NCAA Basketball Tournament rolls on this week, as any American should be aware. I say this because not only sports fans, but also anyone who reads, watches, or listens to the news cannot miss the coverage of the college hoops championship. It has been an eventful few weeks in the news, with the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown, the air strikes in Libya, congressional budget crises et al, and yet even National Public Radio found time to devote long stories to March Madness (of course, maybe this is just NPR trying to expand its appeal to more members since Congress voted to cut their funding). For some reason this basketball tournament catches the American zeitgeist more than any sporting event outside the Super Bowl and the Olympics, which is all the more impressive since for the most part the country does not seem to care much about college basketball during the other 11 months of the year. The college basketball season starts in November, when we’re in the midst of sports overload (NFL, NBA, NHL, and sometimes even the tail end of The World Series games are being played). Throughout the season, the only real meaningful goal for each team is to make the tournament, which is possible without winning their conference, so every game does not have the life and death stakes of, say, a college football game. Players on the college teams might be good, but if they really have the potential to be future superstars in the NBA they will likely be gone after their first year (since the NBA only requires one year of college to be draft eligible—still an improvement from when they were plucking kids out of high school). There is no storied trophy like the Heisman for college...

In the wee hours of the morning this coming Sunday, a terrible thing is going to happen to the majority of Americans. No, I don’t foresee a terrorist attack or anything like that (though the Homeland Security threat level is at “High” or “Orange”, if anyone still pays attention to that). What will happen has happened before, and will happen again. On Sunday, Americans living in 48 states will all lose one hour of their lives. It’s Daylight Savings Time, the day we “Spring Ahead.” Of course, we don’t really lose the hour. We put it in some kind of temporal lock box and store it away for winter. We get it back the first Sunday of November—a Sunday morning that always feels like the greatest day of the year until we leave work on Monday evening to find it’s already dark. But that seems so far away now. Throughout the summer, most of the Northern Hemisphere operates on borrowed (or maybe its loaned) time. Why do we do this? Giving an extra hour of daylight for retail, farmers, etc. is often given as a reason, as is the idea that it can save energy (since presumably people won’t need to turn on their lights until later with the sun up so long—though I would think this would be offset by people taxing their air conditioners longer). These reasons seem rational, but if you really think about them they don’t make any sense. When I was in high school I used to set the time on my alarm clock fifteen minutes ahead of the actual time. I wanted the extra time to get ready in the morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to set an alarm to go off before 6:00am, so I just...

It’s Oscar week! Did you notice? I sure didn’t. I have been conscious of the date of the show and the nominees ever since they came out. I’ve seen nearly all of the nominees (and all 10 of the potential Best Pictures). But it hardly feels like the week leading up to the biggest awards show of the year. There just doesn’t seem to be any excitement. And I live in Los Angeles. Granted, I don’t work at a company that has any dogs in the race. I’m sure people at Sony or The Weinstein Company are hurriedly adding the final touches to any last minute promotions to capitalize on potential wins (since it’s a fair bet all of the votes are in for the awards, any Oscar campaign ads at this point are purely symbolic), and assistants for the big shots are scrambling to ensure all arrangements are made for the marathon of events on Sunday. But to me—an informed and generally enthusiastic spectator—my feelings for the awards can be summed up in one word. Meh. This is actually kind of a big deal, considering the Oscars used to be bigger than the Super Bowl to me. I didn’t care so much about the show itself with the presenters and performers, but I was obsessed with the build-up campaigns and the announcement of awards. Throughout high school it was just too bad if I had a test on the Monday after the Oscars, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to be cramming the night before. I would read everything I could on handicapping the awards, and would go out of my way to see all of the nominees, praying they would come to a theater near enough for me to get to...

So that was it. NFL football is no more, possibly for much longer than the scheduled seven months if the probable lockout happens. It was not a happy note to end on for a Steelers fan like myself, watching the team lose while a cheering national media favored the Packers. There was the sense that the once-respected Steelers were the villains of the game. After the game it didn’t take long for me to start receiving gloating messages informing me that I deserved this disappointment since I was “cheering for a rapist.” Which is, of course ridiculous. I was cheering for a team, not for a rapist. He’s just a player on that team. For any non-sports fan that spent the last year on Mars, the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger, was accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old college student in a small town Georgia bar last May. No charges were filed, but Big Ben’s image went into the toilet, culminating in a four game suspension for violating the personal conduct policy of the NFL. Soon after this happened, non-Steeler friends of mine started jumping all over me, wondering how I could continue to support such a despicable human being. This was really disturbing, because I didn’t want to support a rapist, but I still was behind my Steelers. What a conundrum. Thankfully, it all went away once the games started. This is as it should be. For the sake of this argument, let’s assume that Roethlisberger is guilty, putting aside the fact that charges were never filed (based on the accuser’s wishes), the police report makes everything seem a lot more complicated than it was reported, and none of us were actually there to confirm what happened. At the very least,...

Wondering how long it will take me to stop writing 2010 and then having to delete and correct with 2011. So far I’ve made this mistake four weeks and counting. Sad. How are you all doing with this? Other than that, let’s get into my notes re this week at Fierce and Nerdy. 1. Missy’s meditation on the fact that her partner, Raoul only uses cash made me realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I used physical cash other than coins to pay a meter. I hate dealing with it now. I judge (and don’t return to) retailers and restaurants that don’t accept credit cards. Same goes for the coffee shop that charges a $10 minimum to use one. I’ve seriously considered changing doctors, because she’s in one of those cash-only parking structures, and I’m tired of asking my husband for a five every time Betty or I have an appointment (but I won’t because she’s awesome and has a knack for spot-on referrals). I’m just wondering when we’re going to get technology that allows us to transfer money to our friends in an easier manner. For example, a fellow author invited me out to a movie on Wednesday, and got a bucket of popcorn to share and a soda for me. I hadn’t thought to get cash before leaving the house, so I couldn’t pay for my half of the popcorn or the drink. Surely they should come up with an app for that. [Dork Lifestyle: Raoul is so retro] 2. Hey Amy! I’m listening to ONE DAY by David Nicholl’s in the car right now, and you are correct. It rather eerily nails twenties angst and stupidity — so much so, that as a person who both wrote plays and...

I love independent film. I really do. Not just the spirit of adventure and creativity that needs to go into even getting them made or distributed in the first place — though I can always appreciate that. I like that they can be about characters, emotions, and stories that are not for everyone. They can be raw, poetic, genuine, artsy, stylized, or sometimes all of the above. Unlike most big budget studio fare, they can even be surprising, taking the story where it wants to go rather than directions that focus groups or marketing departments think audiences want them to go. Independent movies can be the most thrilling experience you can have in a movie theater. They can also be a real drag. My case and point would be BLUE VALENTINE. On paper this should be a home run—a heartfelt indie drama exploring the growth and deterioration of a young married couple. It has two great young actors in Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams (who just received an Oscar nomination for her role), a concept ripe for good drama and character exploration, and a wave of critical accolades (currently 89% on Rotten Tomatoes). It could have been so sweet. Yet I hated it. Why? Well, I’m sure some of it has to do with the fact that the movie is a deeply flawed exercise in emotional naval gazing, and its performances (while brave) add up to little more than a series of open scenes, the like of which you can find at any community college acting class (albeit played here by more attractive professionals). Its emotional tactics are well trodden by dramas of the past. Watching the scene of the arguments about the husband drinking, the boss awkwardly hitting on the wife, etc, I...

So we’re well into the second week of 2011. Are you still holding to your New Year resolutions? On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t really want to know. In fact, no one does. I completely understand the impulse for resolutions. There’s always something we can do to improve ourselves, and the changing of the New Year is as good a time as any to try to make some improvements. Good for you in setting some goals and striving to reach them. But please, keep them to yourself. There seems to be an impulse for a lot of people to crow about all of their new years resolutions, tweeting them, posting them on Facebook, or bringing them up unsolicited into conversations. (There’s also the obvious reverse tactic of asking everyone else for their resolutions as a ploy to talk about one’s own).  This could be a tactic for enlisting the pressure of other people to force one to stick to it. That would be good, and everyone needs support, but somehow I doubt that is the real impulse behind the resolution lists I’ve been subjected to. I think for some people, just saying what they intend to do excuses them from actually doing it. What does announcing your resolution actually do for other people? Assuming the person hearing it cares at all, there are two responses—expectant belief or secret wishes for failure. Presumably, you are telling them because you expect the former, but you’re probably more likely to get the latter. I used to hold back my annoyance with people’s proclamations of how they are going to change their lives because I knew it was coming from a place of envy. What if I don’t want to make a resolution that I have...

When I was a kid, I loved everything about Christmas—the weather, the pageantry, the food, but most of all the annual Christmas specials that aired on T.V. All, that is, save one. I could not understand the appeal of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. I was much more of a fan of Rankin and Bass cartoons and claymations like RUDOLPH, SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, and THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS. They had simple morals and lovable characters. Best of all, they always had a life affirming (and Christmas affirming) ending in which the world was set to right. CHARLIE BROWN had none of this. No Santa. No magic. Mean kids who never have any kind of comeuppance. A brooding and self-pitying main character. It didn’t even have much in the way of festive songs, opting instead for a downbeat jazz score. Most of all, it was depressing. And how was that Christmas-y? How could anyone be sad when Santa was coming to bring the payoff for another year of (perceived) good behavior? Oh how times have changed. I still love Christmas, but now I realize that Charlie Brown’s story wasn’t for me when I was little. It’s for me now. It is the special that is perhaps the best in any medium at capturing the adult experience of Christmas. Charlie complains throughout the special about Christmas going commercial. We still hear that worry espoused. However, for my generation (and probably all generations since the Industrial Revolution) Christmas has never been anything but commercial. As a kid I dreamed not of peace on earth, but the cornucopia of presents awaiting me under the tree the morning of December 25. Sure, there was usually some Church service involved the night before, but the real heart of...

Happy book week, Fierce & Nerdy! This being the holiday shopping season, books are on my mind even more than usual. That’s because bar none, hands down, books are my favorite gift to both give and receive. This opinion might soon be antiquated, however. Electronic reading devices like Amazon’s Kindle are this seasons hottest gift, and now that they are becoming reasonably affordable people are starting to proclaim the obsolescence of traditional books. The obvious parallel to the rise of e-book readers would be the iPod and how it completely changed the music business. Both are sleek electronic devices that allow for instant gratification in buying product online and experiencing it immediately on the device. Both make it possible and efficient to transport a huge library of music or reading material while taking up very little space. And both are really well designed gadgets that are pleasurable simply to hold and play with. But wait. This parallel does not hold up, because books are not the same as records, CDs, or DVDs. Those items are merely delivery devices for content. We don’t care much about the packaging and feel of a compact disc—we want what is on it. The same can be said of the movies on DVDs, which could explain why DVD sales are down in favor of streaming and On Demand services. These items are packages for content the way the can is for a Diet Coke. We don’t care about the container—we just want the Coke. Books, on the other hand, are not simply about content. If they were, then the book business would have suffered through the years from the public library system, which allows free and easy access to any book. Yet we continue to buy books, and many...

If you’ve ever traveled by car any kind of distance in the American Southwest, you are aware that a certain degree of forethought must be given to carrying enough fuel when crossing the great expanses of unremitting desert that lie between the rest stops. There are long stretches of nothing, and just when you feel like you’re never going to see another town again, there will appear a sign that tells you “Next Gas 50 Miles.” This can be especially disconcerting if the needle on your fuel gage is already leaning on E. Really, the desert portion of Eastern California has not changed much since the days of the Joad Family’s difficult crossing. A few years ago, I was riding back to Los Angeles with my friend Diane after we had visited a college friend in Phoenix. In what seemed like the middle of nowhere, we noticed the fuel gage dipping down, and as a few minutes became a half hour with no gas stations in site, we started to get a little nervous. As the passenger, feeling completely helpless I nevertheless affected the illusion of being useful (to myself at least) by reading aloud the distances on every road sign we passed. After seemingly forever, I finally was able to “helpfully” announce that I had spotted a sign for an upcoming gas station. When we reached it, we were more excited about pulling into a gas station than a person who doesn’t have to pee should ever be. And our excitement was only beginning. For this was not just any gas station outside of Palm Springs. This was an oasis, a destination, where giants stood upon the earth. We had stumbled upon the home of the World’s Biggest Dinosaurs. What is this place?...

It’s getting to be that time of year again with the elections over and the holidays still a month off, we Americans need to find something to argue about. Luckily the BCS has started publishing its poll of standings for College Football, an annual hot topic for debate for anyone whose alma mater of choice is not an automatic Bowl qualifier (or is outside the SEC). For anyone who is not familiar with college football, I’ll lay out the basics here. College Football has no system of playoffs at the end of the season. The rankings of teams are governed by an organization called the BCS (Bowl Championship Series), which creates a poll of teams ranked by power each year. These rankings are determined by college coaches, writers, and also have some kind of computer algorithm that determines what order teams should be ranked in. This takes into account things such as total wins and losses, the competition (how good were the teams you played against), and strength of victory (how much did you win by). The problem is, every season there are several teams that have identical win/loss records at the end of the year and have never had the chance to play against one another. These teams can be ranked very differently. For instance, a small college might win all of its games, but be ranked lower to a team that has lost a game but is deemed by the computers to have played against stronger opponents. Boise State University has had this very thing happen to it several times. No matter what they do, they simply are never given the opportunity to compete for a National Championship on the field because polls or a computer algorithm determines that they are not...

To celebrate Halloween, all week Fierce and Nerdy is proud to present the online premiere of John Dunn’s Last Run, a darkly comic psychological horror film written and directed by Hell House: The Awakening co-author and F&N contributor Ryan Dixon and produced by F&N writers Zachary Halley, Joe Rusin, and Jersey Joe (with Yasmina Jacobs). Today is the conclusion of the 26 minute film about John Dunn, a former high school teacher with a mysterious past who takes a late night run only to discover that he’s on no ordinary running trail. His run turns into a nightmare as specters of his dark past appear before him and threaten to consume his sanity — and his life. Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 Click here for Part 3 Click here for Part 4 And watch the final installment of John Dunn’s Last Run...

To celebrate Halloween, all week Fierce and Nerdy is proud to present the online premiere of John Dunn’s Last Run, a darkly comic psychological horror film written and directed by Hell House: The Awakening co-author and F&N contributor Ryan Dixon and produced by F&N writers Zachary Halley, Joe Rusin, and Jersey Joe (with Yasmina Jacobs). Today is the fourth part of the 26 minute film about John Dunn, a former high school teacher with a mysterious past who takes a late night run only to discover that he’s on no ordinary running trail. His run turns into a nightmare as specters from his dark past appear before him and threaten to consume his sanity — and his life. Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 Click here for Part 3 And watch Part 4...

To celebrate Halloween, all week Fierce and Nerdy is proud to present the online premiere of John Dunn’s Last Run, a darkly comic psychological horror film written and directed by Hell House: The Awakening co-author and F&N contributor Ryan Dixon and produced by F&N writers Zachary Halley, Joe Rusin, and Jersey Joe (with Yasmina Jacobs). Today is the third part of the 26 minute film about John Dunn, a former high school teacher with a mysterious past who takes a late night run only to discover that he’s on no ordinary running trail. His run turns into a nightmare as specters of his dark past appear before him and threaten to consume his sanity — and his life. Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 And watch Part 3...

To celebrate Halloween, all week Fierce and Nerdy is proud to present the online premiere of John Dunn’s Last Run, a darkly comic psychological horror film written and directed by Hell House: The Awakening co-author and F&N contributor Ryan Dixon and produced by F&N writers Zachary Halley, Joe Rusin, and Jersey Joe (with Yasmina Jacobs). Today is the second part of the 26 minute film about John Dunn, a former high school teacher with a mysterious past who takes a late night run only to discover that he’s on no ordinary running trail. His run turns into a nightmare as specters of his dark past appear before him and threaten to consume his sanity — and his life. Click here for Part 1 Watch Part 2...

Just in time for Halloween Week, Fierce and Nerdy is proud to present the online premiere of John Dunn’s Last Run, a darkly comic psychological horror film written and directed by Hell House: The Awakening co-author and F&N contributor Ryan Dixon and produced by F&N writers Zachary Halley, Joe Rusin, and Jersey Joe (with Yasmina Jacobs). In the 26-minute film, which will broken into five parts airing each day this week., John Dunn, a former high school teacher with a mysterious past, takes a late night run, only to find that he’s on no ordinary running trail. His run turns into a nightmare as specters of his dark past appear before him and threaten to consume his sanity — and his life. Watch Part I...

Ask any technological prognosticator, and they will assure you that the next major change in our home consumption of entertainment content will be the merging of our televisions with our computers. We already see it happening, what with our cable services also being our Internet providers, and with On Demand and streaming videos playable on both our laptops and our flat screen TVs.  But soon, all programming and content might be on one device—an entertainment super hub that will be the center of our homes and the center of our lives. This prospect terrifies me. This isn’t going to be a cute and benevolent hybrid like a labradoodle. This is going to be a monstrous mutation like Brundlefly. I say this because my computer is already a kind of monster. Like the majority of people working in the developed world, my computer is the center of my life. It’s my typewriter, library, phone/mail service, stereo, photo album, video editing suite, newspaper, calendar, and (thanks to streaming video) home movie theater. Oh, and let’s not forget social life (thanks Facebook). I try to sit at my computer and focus on writing, or sending an email, or whatever single task I have sat down to do. But it never works out that way. There’s always some article to read, some video to stream, some Facebook friend to “check up on” (stalk). And I’m not even getting into Wikipedia, on which time spent is calculated through Relativity. Like an astronaut moving at the speed of light, when I start trolling Wikipedia I might only experience a few minutes, but for the rest of the world hours have passed. I am not even half as productive as I used to be. And I honestly can’t help myself. I...

A crisp autumn wind blows sweeps across the land, supermarkets bulge with pumpkins, and seasonal “Halloween Headquarters” stores magically appear in malls across the country. Nothing like the start of fall to put you in the mood for an indoor sport played on an artificial ice surface. Wait…hockey season is starting this week? Indeed it is. Ridiculous as it may sound, the regular season for the NHL kicks off this Thursday with my beloved Pittsburgh Penguins facing the evil (no other word for them) Philadelphia Flyers in the inaugural game of Pittsburgh’s new Consol Energy Center arena. Unfortunately, it’s hard to feel very energetic about watching hockey when we are a little more than a month removed from public pools being open. I love hockey. Growing up it was the only sport I cared about (and the only one I played for more than a year). I played on the same ice that the movie SLAPSHOT was shot on, and Steve Hanson himself was my coach at hockey camp. I even cut school (with full parental support) to go with my big brother Chris (also one of my hockey coaches) to the rally the Pittsburgh Penguins put on the day after they won their first Stanley Cup. Hockey was a central part of my life throughout grade school. My favorite quote at age 11 was the late coach Bob Johnson’s mantra, “It’s a great day for hockey.” I left the sport for a number of years to come to terms with my inner nerd, but I returned like the prodigal son in my mid-20s and never plan on wavering again. My love of puck being thus established, my case against the regular season starting this week should not be seen as an attack on...

Greed isn’t good, and neither is making a sequel of a movie over a decade old. An economic downturn leading to a recession and millions of Americans out of work—what a perfect time for the return of that great anti-hero of business Gordon Gekko! Well, actually, his timing could have been a little better, maybe back when WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS was originally slated to be released this past Spring, when the economy was on everyone’s mind and Michael Douglas was on the cover of VANITY FAIR. The sudden move of the film from March to September does not bode well for the studio’s confidence in its product. However, you shouldn’t need this to indicate something is amiss. The fact that it is a sequel to a 23-year-old film should tell you that. Let me just establish some things. I have not yet seen the new WALL STREET. I will see the new WALL STREET. I am looking forward to seeing the new WALL STREET (as I was in March). That being said, I have no illusions that it can aspire to be anything more than a passable movie experience that will quickly be forgotten within a week of my trip to the theater. There could be a number of reasons for this (not the least of which is I always approach movies expecting to be disappointed—that way I’m often pleasantly surprised), but the main reason is a theory that I have developed and would like to put forward here. Once a film is made and successful, there is a 10-year window during which a satisfying sequel can be made. Beyond that time, any sequel will always be inferior to its predecessor. Think about it. What was the last long-awaited sequel that was...

“I love the preseason. Give me more!” –Mike Tomlin, Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers Far be it for me to disagree with the youngest Head Coach to ever win a Super Bowl. The NFL Preseason is unfairly maligned. It’s a great system that eases both the players and the fans into what is by far the most intense sporting season in North America. People argue that the long August of “meaningless” games is wasteful, but I find myself taking the old man stance of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For football outsiders (a classification I would have used to describe myself a few years ago), the NFL runs a regular season of 16 weekly games. Before that season starts, however, the teams play a month of 4 preseason exhibition games that have no meaning to a team’s record and are strictly to get the teams ready for the games that matter. They’re like the previews for a Broadway show—they get the production on its feet in front of a crowd but leave room for changes and improvements before things get real. Now many football fans complain that 4 preseason games are far too many, and the suggestion has been made (and probably will soon be carried out) to swap two preseason games for regular season games (shortening the preseason to 2 games and extending the regular season to 18). This is all about money, since regular season games almost always sell out and attract huge television audiences while only slavish fans tune in to the preseason games (which usually only feature the superstar players in the game for a few minutes). I suppose I understand the money, but really it’s the only reason that makes sense for changing the system. Despite...

. a favorite argument by Joe Rusin Joe Says: The column below feels the most pertinent, since FaN is taking a vacation itself. The best part of the FaN vacation will definitely be when it’s back, though. From July 28, 2010 As summer passes its midpoint, many of us have been engaging in ritual summer vacation—taking some time and fleeing our ordinary lives for a slower, relaxing set of days. Maybe we go to the beach. Maybe we travel and sightsee. Maybe we go camping. Whatever it is, we feel the need to get out and ‘recharge’, even if this time is spent in our homes away from work. I myself have recently returned from my vacation, so I have been giving a lot of thought to the nature of vacations, and I’ve come to a conclusion. Living in the moment is overrated. Especially when that moment is so much better remembered. Let me explain. I am not anti-vacation. If I could, I would reverse my personal ratio of work to vacation, so that the majority of my life would be spent reading books and traveling around, but a few weeks a year would be set aside for some hardcore work. So I like my free time, and I think everyone else should, too. But our vacations are so rare and precious that we tend to build them up. We look forward to them for months. We plan them obsessively, trying to squeeze as much rest and relaxation (or adventure and experience) out of those few days. When we actually go on them, it’s almost impossible for them to live up to the hype. I’m not sure about everyone else, but get a little stressed when I’m on vacation, constantly reminding myself to enjoy...

. a blogumn by Joe Rusin Seriously. Stop. Every where I go this summer, when the conversation turns to the subject of movies, people always are whining, “There’s just nothing to see. It’s a terrible summer for movies.” I don’t necessarily disagree. With a few exceptions (notably an INCEPTION) this summer has given us a lot of bad movies. But every summer does that. Sure, last year gave us THE HANGOVER, UP, THE HURT LOCKER, DISTRICT 9, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, but it also delivered the forgotten flops YEAR ONE and LAND OF THE LOST, the boring PUBLIC ENEMIES, and a TRANSFORMERS sequel that was so bad that it went past good and back to bad again. But it’s summer. Shouldn’t we be out doing something other than going to the movies? I understand that last question is a bit heretical to cinephiles like myself, but we should know by now that summer is the time for tent pole films that try to make their money in a weekend or two. They’re really just concerned with making a movie with enough trailer moments to get people into the theaters fast. Playability is not much of an issue, since there will be another giant movie coming out the next week that will take away most of the attention and the business anyway. If a movie doesn’t find its audience immediately, it goes the way of the A-TEAM (wait, did that come out yet?). The truth is, summer movie going is kind of tiring. There is a sense of obligation to get out to the multiplex every weekend to see the new big release just to keep up with everyone else. I’m often not very enthusiastic about the movie before I see it, and many tent poles...

. an argument by Joe Rusin As summer passes its midpoint, many of us have been engaging in ritual summer vacation—taking some time and fleeing our ordinary lives for a slower, relaxing set of days. Maybe we go to the beach. Maybe we travel and sightsee. Maybe we go camping. Whatever it is, we feel the need to get out and ‘recharge’, even if this time is spent in our homes away from work. I myself have recently returned from my vacation, so I have been giving a lot of thought to the nature of vacations, and I’ve come to a conclusion. Living in the moment is overrated. Especially when that moment is so much better remembered. Let me explain. I am not anti-vacation. If I could, I would reverse my personal ratio of work to vacation, so that the majority of my life would be spent reading books and traveling around, but a few weeks a year would be set aside for some hardcore work. So I like my free time, and I think everyone else should, too. But our vacations are so rare and precious that we tend to build them up. We look forward to them for months. We plan them obsessively, trying to squeeze as much rest and relaxation (or adventure and experience) out of those few days. When we actually go on them, it’s almost impossible for them to live up to the hype. I’m not sure about everyone else, but get a little stressed when I’m on vacation, constantly reminding myself to enjoy every moment for everything it’s worth, and unfailingly allowing my mind to occasionally wander to all of things I’m falling behind on in my regular life. My recent vacation was a long-planned backpacking trip with...

. a blogumn by Joe Rusin (Warning: Contains spoilers) Pixar is good. As movie production company, they’re about as good as they come. They’ve never made a bad movie, and from my perspective they’ve really only made one or two movies that I haven’t cared for. They are masters of the traditional Hollywood story, but take risks in the material (the protagonists of their last three films were a hobbled old man, a faceless mute garbage robot, and a French rat—not an all-star list of desirables). They have been justly lauded by critics for their efforts, and compensated handsomely at the box office. So now comes TOY STORY 3, a film that astoundingly carries a 99% rating on Rottentomatoes.com. Only curmudgeonly (and some would say insane) critic Armond White speaks against it, and he has a history of going against Pixar films on principle. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say TOY STORY 3 is an awful movie (White suggests SMALL SOLDIERS had more depth), I would say it is an incredibly overrated rehash of the first two TOY STORY films.  And frankly, I’m tired of feeling like a misanthropic social mutant for not falling in line with “critics and audiences alike.” Just because Pixar has found the g-spot of the critical community doesn’t mean we all have to get off on it. Let’s look at the plot. Basically it’s the same as the first two films. Some misunderstanding separates the toys from their owner Andy, and they have to try to get back home. In the first two it was Woody trying to get back, in this one he’s the one trying to get the rest of the toys back, but same idea.  They encounter other toys along the way, have a...

. a new blogumn by Joe Rusin Arguing against the big things, the little things, and mundane things…so you don’t have to… The World Cup has bullied its way into our national sports coverage. I say bullied because Americans by and large really don’t care about the sport of soccer.  In fact, we care so little about it that we have to use an obscure nickname for the sport that no one else in the world uses, because we want to save “football” for our most popular sport (which is really a modified form of rugby that involves very little interaction between feet and balls).  Soccer is a word with its origins in the Oxford colloquial abbreviation for “association football.”  I’m no linguist, but to put it into perspective, referring to the sport as “soccer” would be akin to someone referring to our American Football as “gridiron.”  It just sounds wrong, but for the most part Americans don’t care. However, the World Cup is a really big deal to most of the world, and every four years we masters of the universe come down with a case of “superpower-guilt”, and will at least try to watch a sport that seems to mean so much to everyone else.  Also, with the NBA playoffs now over, our only alternative is midseason baseball, which is not only boring but for the most part meaningless. (Sorry baseball fans—shorten your season by half, cut the length of your games to 7 innings, and shrink the number of MLB teams and baseball will still be boring—but less so.)  So we dive into the World Cup tournament, and sports writers insist to us soccer-novices that this is “the beautiful game.”  But all one has to do is tune into any match...

. another substitute blogumn by Joe Rusin FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Nothing I’ve got nothing.  Last week Ryan Dixon used his one phone call from a Georgia Correctional Facility to ring me up.  He asked me to 1) bail him out and 2) cover his Fierce Anticipation column again.  I refused the first (who’s got the time really?) but agreed to the latter. Unfortunately, as this week wore on, I slowly came to the realization that there is quite literally NOTHING that I am fiercely anticipating. Springtime is a wonderful time of year, but not a particularly exciting one.  We’re not to the NBA or NHL Playoffs yet, and my Pitt Panthers didn’t make it beyond the second round of this year’s NCAA Tournament.  Baseball hasn’t really started, and I wouldn’t care if it had, since sitting through those games is as tedious as the 4 hour cut of Steven Soderbergh’s CHE.  Health Care has passed, and now it’s just the ugly boring partisan fights afterwards.  There’s some good television (AMC’s “Breaking Bad” is one of the most exciting and unpredictable shows on TV) and movies (Greenburg is a great indie comedy), but nothing too exciting (HBO’s “The Pacific” miniseries feels too good for you to be enjoyed—like a big salad without any dressing or bacon bits).  Exciting movies, sporting events, concerts, plays, etc. all seem to be some time away (i.e. not before another edition of Fierce Anticipation).  For the coming week, there really seems to be…well, nothing. Is that a bad thing? People say that in order to be happy you always have to have something to look forward to.  I really am not looking forward to anything right now. And I feel great.  You should, too.  Why? There is a great quote in...

. a substitute blogumn by Joe Rusin This is not Ryan Dixon.  Ryan is currently on a mysterious hiatus, perhaps dealing with a lawsuit filed by the recently defamed Fitzgibbon family (or recovering from a particularly nasty case of “Fitz germs”).   Fear not, for he will doubtlessly return to these margins shortly. Until then (or at least for this week), you’re stuck with me.  Joe.  Rusin.  Or, as I am periodically referred to here as  “my roommate Joe.”  I find it a bit odd to be filling in on a column that is really about the obsessions of its author, but I will do my best to keep within the parameters of this (gag) “blogumn” even if it means employing that word. So for those of you who are still with me… FIERCELY ANTICIPATING SUPER BOWL XLIV It’s that time again.  Time for people who don’t know the difference between a zone blitz and a wing takeout place to take an interest in the sport of American Football, and for those of us who have spent (wasted?) countless hours throughout the season watching and tracking games, players, and stats to feel a sense of superiority and, yes, disdain toward these bandwagon interlopers.  This is, of course, ridiculous.  Especially for me, who until the year 2005 was one of said interlopers.   In undergraduate college in Pittsburgh, I never followed football, or any other sport for that matter.  I was into the arts—film, theater, music, and pontification.  There simply wasn’t time or interest in my schedule to set aside three or more hours a week watching people play a game.  There was bad theater to see and criticize.  Or long debates to be had about which roommate’s soiled cereal bowl had been fermenting in the sink...