This Derrick Rose and Katy Perry team-up is making me reconsider my “Buy American” stance.

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So at some point, perhaps when I was the owner of a Chrysler dealership while they were going bankrupt (Believe it or not, that is not a joke!  That is a thing that  actually happened!), I got it in my head that I should be one of those “Buy American” people.  One way in which this manifested itself was in my half-baked decision to only wear, like, Nike, Vans and Converse shoes and no longer support Adidas or Puma.

My aversion to Adidas was even more pronounced because I have an inherent distrust of German corporations, mostly because I assume they all used to provide material support to the Nazi Party.  UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIM BASED ON ABSOLUTELY NO INFORMATION ALERT!  When I brought up this attitude about the Germans to my wife’s father and told him I was thinking of buying a Ford instead of, say, a Volkswagen because of it, he pointed out that Henry Ford was a noted anti-Semite who exchanged correspondance with Adolf Hitler.  Or something.  So there’s that.

Another way in which I’m an idiot is that clearly all of these shoe companies are global corporations at this point, and they’re all manufacturing the sneakers in the same Indonesian sweatshops, and blah blah blah, I know!  I know, OK?!  I just said RIGHT AT THE START OF THIS PARAGRAPH that I’m an idiot!  Do I contradict myself?  Very well then I contradict myself, I am a large hypocrite.

Anyway, this new Adidas commercial features both my singer crush, Katy Perry, and my basketball crush, Derrick Rose, so I’m thinking of switching allegiances.  Sorry, Phil Knight!  And yes, I know, you hate Katy Perry, but I don’t care.  She’s really hot, you guys.  Plus, I know you hate her husband Russell Brand, too, but that doesn’t stop me from also really liking him.  So there.

As for the commercial itself, I think it might be slightly too frenetic for my taste, but the new Justice song it uses is pretty awesome, and it really makes me want to go care about something/work hard/never give up!  I’m not sure I’m going to go out and buy a new pair of Adidas shoes, though, because pretty much every pair that I’ve ever owned has sort of hurt my feet.  But if anyone could convince me to switch brands it would be Derrick Rose, on whom I currently have the biggest sports crush I’ve had since the heights of my Pujolsmania.  He’s so hard-working and humble and unselfish and amazing!  Did you see this article?  How could you not love him?!

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Speaking of my current love of Derrick Rose, I really need someone to talk NBA with.  None of my friends care, and my wife, God bless her, tries her best, but I get the sense that she’s just daydreaming about Kyle Chandler while I’m blathering on about how maybe the Bulls are better off with the 2 seed in the East as opposed to the 1 seed because then they would probably face the Heat in the second round of the playoffs instead of the Magic, and I really think they match up better against the Heat in a seven game series.  What’s that?  You’ve already stopped reading?  OK then, I’ll show myself out.

Movies, 2010

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I had such big plans for my Christmas in Boston.  We were going to see so many movies!  One every other day, or maybe even more than that!  I was going to see True Grit, Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, all the movies that aren’t yet playing in Chapel Hill.  I was going to really beef up this list and make up for the fact that I didn’t make it to the theater much this year.

Alas, time flew and whatnot, and none of this happened.  I did have a chance to watch the movie I have at number five below, so at least I got to round the list off with ten.  Because, honestly, I didn’t see anything else that really came close to warranting a spot here.  As it is, this is sort of a weak list.  MacGruber made my top ten, for Christ’s sake.  Anyway, let’s start things off by watching this montage of scenes from the many, many movies I did not see this year.

Now let’s move on to the very few movies that I actually did see.  As always, this is not a list of the best movies of the year, since I really don’t see that many movies and don’t feel qualified to write that.  This is just a list of my favorites.

10) MacGruber

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Like Hot Fuzz, this is a satire of action movies that pretends to be an homage to action movies.  I enjoyed Hot Fuzz, but I think this was quite a bit funnier.  It’s basically just a long series of gags, so it sort of is just the extended SNL sketch that its critics accuse it of being, but I thought the gags themselves were really pretty hilarious.

This was my dog’s least favorite movie of the year.  He normally completely ignores the television, but he lost it during the sex scene in this movie and would not stop barking at Will Forte’s over-the-top grunting.

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The MTV Movie Awards, 2010

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I don’t usually watch the MTV Movie Awards.  It’s not like I think I’m too good for it; I love these MTV train wrecks and was really upset when I realized I had missed the most recent VMAs and had to watch it online.  But the Movie Awards show just isn’t usually on my radar.

This time around, though, Aziz Ansari is hosting, and since I am both a fan and a Twitter follower of his, I’ve been looking forward to this.  As I was setting it up on the DVR it occurred to me that I should compete with Johanna in a winner-picking competition like we’ve done in the past with the Oscars, Grammys, and Golden Globes.  I went looking for a ballot online, but shockingly was unable to find one.  I guess not as many people participate in office pools for the MTV Movie Awards as they do for some of the other awards shows.  I decided to make my own ballot, so I went to the MTV site and looked up the categories.  And that’s when I really got excited about this.

Best WTF Moment.  Biggest Badass Star.  Best Scared-As-S**t Performance (MTV’s asterisks, not mine).  Plus, I’m pretty sure that the winners were all determined by online polls.  So, to correctly pick winners, I have to put myself in the mindset of a fifteen-year-old girl.  I haven’t even heard of some of these movies, let alone seen them.  This is going to be epic.

Just a warning, my usual strategy of taking photos of my actual television for these live events works out even worse when the show is not in HD.  And Time Warner Cable down here does not have MTVHD.

Let’s get started.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

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