1. It's the heartwarming story about how a few statisticians with a dream transformed baseball from a game of inches into a game of computer-generated statistics and analytics-obsessed number crunchers. In other words, about how two nerds turned the greatest game ever invented into a spreadsheet, leading to more intentional walks, overshifts, and pitch counts than any of us who grew up with baseball in the 20th century care to count.
2. It's also the amazing story of how the same two nerds turned a small-market baseball team that used to win World Series into one that could accomplish the amazing task of pretty much never making the playoffs anymore on an even smaller budget using those aforementioned "analytics." I mean, it's pretty remarkable how far the A's have gone with so little money in the 21st century, isn't it? Surely their empty trophy case is the envy of every other team in baseball. Whatever.
1. So the plot involves a drug dealing Central American general/gangster/whatever being extradited to the United States, and a terrorist group's plan to rescue him as he arrives at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia (Washington, DC suburbs.) Ok- I've seen this film at least a dozen times (I managed a video rental store in DC when it was released on VHS and it was a popular title to show on the store's tv) and I still don't really understand how the bad guys could be so stupid in so many ways. First, their plan involves seizing control of one of the largest airports in the United States, which in turn involves hiring dozens and dozens of mercenaries who are embedded into American SWAT teams- what kind of long con is this? Second, the plan is "successful" when they get the general on board a plane and take off from Dulles- but why do they think they are safe at this point? Why don't they think they'll be forced down by a military jet as soon as they are over open water? Can someone explain this to me?
2. The plan gets messed up right away when John McClane asks for I.D. and gets shot at instead. So if these brilliant terrorist masterminds had just remembered to fake a few airport I.D.'s, the plan would have worked to perfection....so they never imagined that at any point anyone would ask to see I.D's, or figured if anyone did, they'd just open fire....what the hell.....
3. A major plot point is that a dozen or so jumbo jets are circling Dulles throughout the entire film, unable to land because of weather conditions and Other Reasons. These jets are running out of fuel as they circle, and ultimately come in - we are told by one pilot- "on fumes." But why do they spend hours circling Dulles when there are a dozen airports in the vicinity perfectly capable of accommodating jets of that size; locally there's Reagan National and BWI, but let's assume the blizzard is also impacting those airports. Just up the coast there's Philly JFK and LaGuardia and Newark and Logan. Off to the west there's Pittsburgh. To the south there's Charlotte. Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago are all closer than the "hours" the planes are pointlessly circling Dulles as they run out of fuel. There's even Andrews,* which is big enough to handle Air Force 1 so is certainly capable of handling any passenger jet. I mean, this is really dumb- the movie wants us to pretend that if the planes can't land at Dulles, they are going to crash.
I actually liked this movie better than the first Die Hard film- and it's the last of the Die Hard films I liked at all. But man it asks the audience to suspend a lot of disbelief, especially if you live in the DC area like I did.
*speaking of which, why is a general/gangster/drug mastermind entering the United States at a freaking civilian airport in the first place?
Even if you down this warm toxic sludge with a diet soda, you're still satisfying your "craving" (not "hunger"*) with roughly 1000 calories of nutrient-deficient grease, cheese and empty carbs. Meanwhile your heart is busy craving relief from your brain's cravings, you've once again trained yourself to respond to any notion that you haven't eaten for several minutes by piling in the cheapest, most palatable junk available, and you've gulped down something that is just going to make you sluggish and sad if not downright exhausted (just in time to hit up Starbucks for a sugar rush!) within minutes after hitting the bloodstream.
Yeah, looks so much fun. Especially when we get still shot after still shot of people jamming this poison into their face holes. Thanks, Taco Bell, for remaining a great big part of the problem.
*as if there is any difference between "craving" and "hunger" in America today. Most of us walk around dehydrated and confuse thirst with hunger, so why not just confuse cravings with hunger as well? After all, this slop is cheap and available within two or three miles of pretty much everyone in the United States- if not Taco Bell specifically, some other sugar and fat merchant ready to take your order. F--k your heart; what has it done for you lately?
It took me a while to figure out what I truly hate about this commercial, which just sets me off every time it comes on the air (and that is often.) I finally figured it out: It's the fact that this commercial makes having high blood pressure look like fun.
These people are having an absolute ball because it's so easy for them to check their blood pressure; for some reason, they are dancing all over the place- maybe because they just checked and found that their resting heart rate was nice and low and decided that was too boring. Great message- "if you've got high blood pressure, don't sweat it, just get this gizmo and you're good."
Um, no. If you've got high blood pressure, get control over your diet, get on an exercise program, and fix that issue before it Ends you. Being able to monitor it is nice and everything, but this is basically the same as being able to check your blood sugar any time you want- and then going ahead and stuffing yourself with cake and seeing that Hey Isn't That Interesting, My Blood Sugar is Spiking Go Figure. Personally, I don't worry about my blood sugar levels because I don't eat sugar. I don't worry about my blood pressure because I keep myself at a healthy weight, exercise my cardiovascular system* and don't eat crap. I guess the alternative is to just get one of these stupid things, except that they don't fix any problems. They just give you a fun way to watch yourself fall apart.
Don't stop dancing, because that's pretty good exercise. But get those stupid-ass grins off your face and stop thinking you've accomplished something because it's easier to monitor your descent into bad health.
This is getting depressingly common- more and more gadgets and more and more drugs and less and less simple advice to do things that kind of require personal effort. Doesn't bode well for the future, but I guess a lot of these people won't be around in the future anyway.
*Sometimes I even dance, though I prefer running and hitting my heavy bag. But to each his own.
For anyone who grew up in the 1980s, the Indiana Jones Trilogy was one of those things that truly defined the decade. I saw the original- when it was called "Raiders of the Lost Ark"- in 1981 with my father at the Paramount Theater in Barre, Vermont. We loved every minute of it (I mean, really, what's not to love?) Years later, my college girlfriend insisted on watching it over and over again whenever she came over for a date. Just can't think of the 1980s without being reminded of Indy, his whip and his Fedora.
The series came to an end in 1989, and we all knew it. Reagan's presidency ended that year, too, and there was a pretty strong sense that not only a decade but an entire era was ending. The Berlin Wall was falling, bringing a close to the Cold War that a lot of us thought might turn very very hot when the decade opened. That summer of 1989 was probably the biggest for summer blockbusters in the history of Hollywood - not only the last of the Indiana Jones films, but Batman, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, a Bond film, two Undersea Monster flicks....that summer was packed. If you were in the United States you were going to the movies every weekend and seeing something everyone else was seeing, too. And maybe the biggest moment in film was watching Indy and his dad ride off into the sunset.
Well, we know what happened almost two decades later- 1980s nostalgia was all the thing and we got unwanted remakes of Total Recall and more Alien films and a Ghostbuster reboot nobody asked for and another Independence Day and yet another Star Wars Trilogy basically every time we turned around we were being assaulted by reminders that we had left our youth in the last century. Worst of all, we got some god-awful mess called Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull or something like that and it was lame and lazy and CGI-infested crap.
Harrison Ford is past eighty years of age, but I guess he's borrowed Tom Cruise's age-defying camera filter and is ready to pretend to be young again like we'd all like to be, and despite the steaming pile of craptitude the fourth film was I'll probably watch this one because Child of the 80s and all that. It doesn't have Shia LeBouf, after all. That's something. But gosh am I tired of being reminded that I'm a product of another era who is supposed to have extra cash in his pocket to hand over to movie studios that ran out of ideas when Ronald Reagan, and Harrison Ford, rode off into the sunset.
Seems to me that if Jesus Botherers can afford to spend $20 million* on a 30-second ad to play during the Great Big Sportsball Game, they can afford to pay taxes. Why are churches tax-exempt if this is how they spend their money?
Maybe Jesus gets it. I don't.
*reportedly part of a $100 million ad campaign. Yeah, these guys need tax-exempt status. Um, because they do Charity. Yeah, that's why. What a racket.
So the entire point of this stupid ad for Doritos Obesity Chips is that they are shaped like triangles.* It would make more sense if the point was that you're better off eating metal triangles than the carefully-engineered-to-be-addictive Death Crunchies being pitched in this Hi-LARIOUS commercial that loses any semblance of cleverness roughly 8 seconds in but keeps going and going and going for so long you'd be excused if you thought that the Energizer Bunny was going to make an appearance.
*shaped like triangles, not actually triangles- unless triangles normally come bent, broken, and looking more like soggy tissue paper than anything with three straight sides.
