The Week (give or take) That Was...

...in Mixed Martial Arts (aka, why should Sparkles get all the comments for boring people with his sport of choice?):

*In Hero's (sic) we learned that we were right all along about Akiyama, and that he will be a force to be reckoned with in the coming years. We learned nothing about Kid Yamamoto; he was a bad motherfucker before and he's a bad motherfucker now. We learned that, truly, nothing is holy in MMA as Sakuraba left Pride--the organization that he made and, in turn, made him--to join their main rival in the Japanese market. And if you know the Japanese you know they don't fuck around with those kinds of things.

As Sakuraba walked away, he turned back to look at the openly weeping Pride President Sakikabara and said: "Don't cry, baby. It's not you; it's me."

I have no proof of that last part. But I know it happened.

*In Pride we learned Overeem should have never left the middleweight division. We learned the weight of TK's heart is measured in metric tons. We learned that Mark Hunt will knock you down, walk away, wait for you to get up and knock you down again rather than get on the ground with you, and that it takes a supremely bad man to do that. We learned Barnett is finally ready to do what it takes to realize his potential. We learned Fujita is still the supreme Japanese Heavyweight, just like he was when he came this close to KO-ing Fedor. We learned that we were right about Minowa's prospects against Filipovic. We were similarly justified in our opinions of Nogueira v. Zulzuhino. We learned that rhythmic motifs in writing pieces, while desirable, can definitely be overdone and test the patience of our reader.

...in my career:
*At one point during a come-to-Jesus with the bosses at work, with my wife, I turned to my American supervisor and said "Dude, you've seen Office Space. You know where he says 'I only work hard enough to not get fired'? Well, I don't even have that because I hate this place and would love to get fired. The only thing I'm running on here is personal pride in my work."

At which point the Better Half chimes in and says, "Yeah, and he doesn't have that much of that."

I don't know how she can say things like that and make them seem positive at the time.

...in television:
*The newest season of The Sopranos continues to rival a work of Phillip Roth vis-a-vis its unwavering devotion to not commenting on anything but how much it sucks to get old. Hey, I get it. I'm 26 and I think it sucks to be this old. But I watch Sopranos for escapism. Howzabout we chop off somebody's head and put it in a bowling ball bag already.

...in the Playoffs:
*In the two North American sports I care about the least (hockey and basketball), neither of my local teams (Vancouver Canucks and Seattle Supersonics, respectively) made the playoffs, taking my interest in both the NHL and NBA Playoffs from benign disinterest to aggressive evasion tactics. If you're not an out-and-out aficionado/junky like Sparkles, there has never been a less compelling time for NBA basketball. The personalities? Frankly, there are none. The last five MVP awards have been won by men who seemingly actually underwent medical procedures to have anything interesting about them physically removed. I hear the Suns and the Lakers had a good series, but really, if I wanna see a Canadian go at it against date-rapist I'll go to Itaewon and tell a GI that that guy over there with the Maple Leaf sewn onto his bag just said that the US military is a greater threat to the modern world than fundamental Islam. Good times.

...in baseball:
*Do you think it's sad when you get stoked that your MLB team has climbed to third place in a four-team division?

...in film
*Inside Man is Spike Lee's best flick since 25th Hour, which, now that I look at IMDB, was actually only two movies ago. So, do I have a point? I'm starting to realize that maybe I don't. But I'll tell you this: between Training Day (how can an Oscar-winning performance be underrated? When everybody cock-mouths you and says how you didn't deserve it, that's how.), Man On Fire and now Inside Man, Denzel Washington is probably the best actor working. And don't tell me he always plays himself; if you think the simmering intensity of Creasy in Man On Fire is the same character as the ambitious but ultimately morally grounded hostage negotiator of Inside Man, you don't know what you're talking about. But that's your god-given right as an American (Canadian?): to spout off about things you really don't know what you're talking about. For evidence of this, see CNN/Fox News, which I can no longer distinguish from one another. (Did Lou Dobbs actually make a conscious decision to try to out-Nazi Fox News?)

*All anyone has to do to find out why I love MMA is watch a documentary called The Smashing Machine. Sheer genius film-making with an impossibly captivating subject. Like The Ultimate Fighter on 'roids. And opiates. And narcotics. Y'know what, Mark Kerr just did a lot of drugs, okay?

...in literature:
*I have fifty pages left in Infinite Jest and all I can think about is how Moses got to see the promised land but then dropped dead before he could walk into it. Do I think god has a similar plan for me? No. God liked Moses. I think god is going to fuck with me in a much more painful manner.

...in music:
*We now have a tentative release date of the Fall for Chinese Democracy. You'll excuse my skepticism, but the last time Guns n' Roses released an album, my favorite pasttime was jerking-off to the Nordstrom catalog underwear section. Nowadays I at least need Macy's to even get wood.

...in politics:
*To quote Woody Harrellson in Natural Born Killers: "The whole world is goin' to hell, Ma."

*This is what drives me insane: what has really changed between November of 2004 and today when Bush is flirting with an approval rating in the high twenties? I mean, if you read, you know about Plame and wire-tapping and everything, but anybody who cares about that already hated him long before those debacles. So just who is it slapping their heads in 2005/early 2006 and saying: "Oh I get it. He's a total fucking moron who works completely at the whim of the most evil and soulless men our country has ever produced in its history. Well, I believe that, to show my outrage, I'll really give those CNN/USA Today pollsters a piece of my mind when they call up."
Happy to have you there, champ. Coulda used you a couple of years ago.

...in blogging:
*I made a totally apt and insigtful post about the ridiculous resemblance of Sparkles to director Brian Singer (see two posts down) and all I got was a courtesy comment from the man himself. You people need your art spoon-fed to you (5 bonus points for the first person to tell me what movie that last comment is from).

*Some douche-bag took over my old blog address and turned it into a spamming site for insurance scams. I dunno why I care...

...in anti-climaxes:
*I dunno what the fuck I'm doing with my life. And the Missus says she doesn't know either. I think I'll join a cult just to, y'know, get some direction.