Post Christmas

We had a great time celebrating Christmas twice. Our visit to Germantown felt very quick, heightened by the fact that we decided to return home on Friday night rather than Saturday morning, but that ended up being a good call on our part. We had finished all of the festivities at the McCandless house and everyone there was exhausted so Beth and I got on the road around midnight. It was great to be able to sleep in our own beds and wake up at home on Christmas Eve as opposed to getting on the road that morning.

I've seen two good movies recently...Walk the Line and Munich. I really enjoyed the Johnny Cash movie despite the fact that I'm certainly not a diehard fan of his music. One of the most amazing things about the film for me was that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon both did all of their own singing and did a fantastic job. This certainly helps keep you in the story of the film, as opposed to taking you out of it thinking "that's not really him." Good movie, well paced, with great performances. Witherspoon was really impressive.

We caught Munich yesterday and it was about what I expected. In fact, I'm not even sure exactly what I think of it yet, but that's probably the intended nature of the film. One thing Spielberg does consistently well is establish a clear, visual tone for his films and this one is no exception. I'm not a huge student of early 70s movies but this one flat-out looks like one. Eric Bana is very good in the lead role, and I was also intrigued by Daniel Craig, an actor that I've heard of but never seen before. I believe that he has been tabbed to be the next James Bond and it is an interesting, unconventional choice. The string of Pierce Brosnan Bond movies were completely underwhelming for me--I haven't even seen all of them and the ones that I did catch blandly run together in my mind. And this is coming from a huge Bond fan, so I hope that picking Craig means that the producers plan to reinvigorate the series. Craig kind of has a young Steve McQueen air to him. Give him the license to kill and get it started!

ASU won their bowl game last night and unfortunately we were subjected to the ever-inane Brent Musberger in the booth. He clearly did no preparation at all because he had no idea what he was talking about the entire time, and the only thread he was able to latch onto was the fact that just being there was a huge accomplishment for Rutgers because they have never won a bowl game before, essentially completely ignoring the rather compelling angle of ASU's freshman quarterback Rudy Carpenter throwing for over 400 yards and leading an offense that nearly tallied 700 yards of total offense in the victory. No, all that Brent and his cohort Gary Danielson could do was go on and on, slurping Rutgers for their huge moral victory. I understand that the Insight Bowl is a janky third-tier game but feel free to pay attention to the game as it develops if you're being paid to sit in the booth.

I'm saving some poker and Red Sox thoughts for later blogs but I've got some stuff to say about both.

Holidays

We're headed up to Germantown for a few days and returning to Little Rock on Christmas Eve. I hope that everyone is having a great holiday season. Hopefully I'll have more reasons to post somewhat entertaining or exciting stuff during the new year.

Go Pats!

Busy few days

On Thursday we got the first batch of notes on our script and I was really happy with what we heard. My expectations were pretty low, based on how many changes our producer wanted from our original treatment, plus the fact that we threw a ton of stuff into the first draft and worked on it very quickly. Well, it turns out that he really likes it. He didn't ask us to cut anything and he only asked for a few small changes here and there, some of which were things Johnny and I had already discussed. So we're very excited about the positive feedback and we're looking forward to quickly implementing the producer's suggestions into the second draft. Oh, and this is pretty funny: apparently the producer's next movie he's making is a zombie movie...and he wants me to be in it. Johnny the professional actor found this very humorous: "Nice that you're getting acting gigs out of this," he told me in an e-mail. I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen, but who knows. If I do end up in "Fist Full of Blood"--yes, that is the working title--I'll certainly write about it here!

On Friday night Beth's division at work had a group meeting in a luxury box at Alltel Arena (fittingly) for an Arkansas Rimrockers game. They are a minor league hoops team in the NBA's developmental league. Looking over the rosters I only recognized three or four names but it was still an entertaining game to watch. Not Memphis Grizzlies--blasting G'N'R entertaining, but still fun. And if you are headed out to an NBDL game anytime soon, it seems that there will be plenty of good seats available. The announced attendance was three thousand and change but it looked like about half that. And the luxury box is definitely the way to go for a game that you really don't care about--free food and free beer, enough said.

On Saturday we went to watch the Jermain Taylor fight at the house of one of Beth's co-workers. Now, I don't want to say that this friend lives out in the middle of nowhere but the directions included things like "turn after you pass the three trailers on your right" and "if you see a toothless guy with a banjo you went too far." Truly it was only 20-30 minutes away but it felt like more. But it was fun to get to watch the fight, although we won't be seeing this bout on ESPN Classic...well, ever. But hey, the hometown hero of Little Rock got the job done and retained the title. I bet he'll end up facing Winky Wright sometime next year.

Nice win for the Pats on Sunday. Sure, it was pretty ugly again and the Jets truly suck but I'll take them any way I can get them right now. My theory is that Coach Belichick is playing a little bit of rope-a-dope, knowing full well that we're going to win the division easily and we don't need to do anything tricky or exotic to get there, and then when the playoffs roll around, anything can happen. And if we can keep Cory Dillon and Kevin Faulk healthy, well, then we might actually have some semblance of a running game for the rest of the season.