Ask a Celebrity: Today's Hot Sports Topic

Baseball tonight just did a long segment about the dangers of maple bats. Are they dangerous? Should MLB ban them? Could they wind up killing somebody? Let's ask our old friend Don Imus:





Imus: Are they black?

Indiana Jones and the Aliens of Stonehenge

Since I went on a two month hiatus it's time for a double dip of posting. The title of this post belongs to LCT, which is what he referred to the new Indiana Jone movie as we were walking out of the theater thoroughly disappointed. (Warning: this will completely spoil the entire movie)

Does this man look too old to be beating the shit out of big Russian dudes? Of course, he doesn't, but that is not even remotely the problem with the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull of the Aliens who Landed in Macchu Picchu in 1500 in Generic-Looking Flying Saucers and Were Made Out of Super-Magnetic Glass and Had Mind Control Powers and Bestowed upon Mankind the Gift of Irrigation and Plows and Love and Whose Secret Treasure Trove was Full of the Greatest Treasure of All, Namely Knowledge. I'm not sure if that's the full title, but let me reiterate: "THEIR TREASURE WAS KNOWLEDGE! KNOWLEDGE!!!"

Don't look in the eyes! Aaaaah!

I fucking loved Indiana Jones. That to me was the greatest trilogy of movies of all time. They definitely beat the shit out of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, in my opinion. Hell, between the ages of 7-11 I wanted to be an archaeologist. And now I just want to step on Stephen Spielberg's nutsack while wearing rugby boots. I have been hearing for years about a new Indiana Jones movie, and been patiently waiting as Spielberg and Lucas sifted through hundreds of scripts to find just the right one. And then they just said fuck it and did some stupid alien shit like they always do. As a stupid and entertaining summer movie, Crystal Skull is perfectly acceptable. But it is just so much worse than the other Indiana Jones movies. Allow me to explain:

• Indy is no longer an archaeologist. He is now Colonel Henry Jones Jr. of the OSS and CIA and Justice League




• Did I mention it's about aliens?




• The aliens look exactly like aliens, i.e. exactly like what all aliens in every movie ever always look like. Their spaceships are flying saucers.




• Soviets are a good foe. Except the super KGB task force with which Indy must do battle is led by a sword-wielding Cate Blanchett with a terrible accent. Not to be sexist, but a female villain just didn't do it for me.




• Karen Allen (the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark) left her acting ability behind in the 80s somewhere...perhaps trying to find her former talent could have been Indiana's quest.




• Shia LaBOOF plays Mutt Williams, Indy's greaser son. He is fine. Except at one point he swings through the Amazon on some vines a la Tarzan with a bunch of horrible-looking cgi monkeys and catches up to a speeding car. I'm all for action, even if it's a little bit dumb. But the action sequences were so over-the-top unbelievable in a way that makes the first three movies look like documentaries.




• The "history" stuff was just kind of thrown in. Obviously, the first three movies were not real history, but you sort of got the sense that Indiana Jones' background in archaeology and history was important to the plot. The history stuff in this one was: oh yea there was some conquistador and then...aliens!!!




• They threw so much random shit in there that half the dialogue seemed to be explaining exposition.




• You remember how in Last Crusade there were those dudes with the triple cross tattoo thing trying to keep the grail a secret? And they were really noble and shit and when the guy dies it's pretty sad. There are people like that in this one, trying to keep the Crystal Skull stuff a secret, except they're all scary looking "natives" and are ruthlessly slaughtered by both Indiana Jones and the Russians without a hint of remorse. Something tells me that if Indiana Jones was looking for the lost Dead Sea Scroll and its location was guarded by a secret legion of Heebs, Spielberg might have thought twice about the way those characters were treated in the movie.

Steeevee! I can haz job pleez?

I hear they're already working on Indiana Jones and the Goblet of Montezuma---it's about dinosaurs.

I'm back! And the Mets still suck

I have decided to make my return to redstripe and chonic due to the incessant clamoring of my reader(s). First off, I clearly have to talk about the Mets and this post is going to naturally be negative as they are fucking losing 10-0 to the motherfucking horrible Seattle Mariners. Let's actually clarify that a little more. Ollie gave up 5 er in 5 innings and 8 baserunners, and he's on my fantasy team and really can't suck now because Marcum and Zambrano (the one that I don't want to repeatedly punch in the throat) both went on the dl last week. Also, Gary Cohen just reminded me of something I read on metsgeek, which is that we are getting shut out by R.A. Dickey, a man who was born without his medialcollateralolioislal ligament. That's the ligament they fix/replace when they do Tommy John surgery and he doesn't even fucking have one. And the mets can't hit him of course...a team could come out with Dickey, Jim Abbot, Johnny Cancerboy Lester, the exhumed corpse of Mordecai "3-finger" Brown, and that kid Terry with one leg who almost made the Xavier freshman team and see how many times a cripple can strike out Delgado.

Anyway, let's get on to the now old news: the Mets fired Willie Randolph. As is the Mets wont, the Wilpons and the front office handled this with a complete lack of class, tact, or basic common sense. The Wilpons put the whole thing on Minaya, then repeatedly leaked things to the press hinting at Randolph's imminent demise in order to force Omar's hand. Then they made the man fly 3000 miles and fired him in the middle of the night after a win. Not that the win mattered, but really? You couldn't just fire him on Sunday and have started the road trip with Jerry Manuel? My problem is not that Willie got fired. He was not a good manager. But he was fired 9 months too fucking late, and at that point it just felt like a total distraction from the real problems of the team. The Mets have 5 good players that I can count: Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Santana, and Maine. Ollie is hit or miss, and Billy Wagner can suck a dick. Ok, so we'll call it 6 1/2 good players. Pelfrey may be added to the list at a later date. Willie Randolph did not sign those people. But Willie Randolph also did not refuse to find a solid backup plan for Alou or Delgado or Pedro. Willie Randolph did not pretend that the Milledge thing was a good idea just because Church played way over his head for two months. The fact that Ryan Church being hurt is such an enormous blow to the Mets lineup is retarded...and not Willie's fault. Willie Randolph did not ensure that Luis "Gimp" Castillo will be a Met in 2011.

Read my last sentence again. Look at the picture above. Now tell me who should be fired? Our biggest fucking hits this year have come from Fernando Tatis, Robinson Cancel, and Damion Easley. That is not a product of shrewd management and picking up overlooked guys. That is 3 lucky fucking hits from some of the washed-up schmucks with whom Omar Minaya has littered this Mets roster. Are you old (and preferrably Latino, though that's neither here nor there)? Were you once good like in the late 90s or somehow connected to the Expos organization? Are you out of work due to the fact that 29 teams have recognized your significantly diminished skills? Well come to the Mets! We have room for all of you! All of this means that the Wilpons fired the wrong guy. Or at least they fired one guy too few.

When LCT happily told me "thank god Pudge will not be the Tigers' catcher next year," I jokingly told him that he would be the Mets catcher... Except I don't know if I was joking.