Freestyle Video of the Day

Not really the original video for the song, but it's really cool nonetheless...

Rent - Can't We Try

Freestyle Video of the Day

Stevie B - Dream About You

The Wire

With The Sopranos, The Shield, Monk, Psych and Entourage all in hiatus, the only thing I watch on TV today is The Wire on HBO. I never followed this show until this year as there is nothing to watch on Network TV. It's really sad that all these reality shows and even new scripted shows all suck ass. No wonder I see more people say they don't watch TV at all than ever. The two new shows that had potential are Heroes and Studio 60. But Heroes has become a teen version of Lost, and Studio 60 is just way too much like The West Wing. Lost has become too annoying to watch. As for reality shows, the only reality show I watch is the one that follows paparazzi hunt celebrities.

The Wire is really interesting. It's set in Baltimore, and follows the city government, the police department, the school system and life in inner-city neighborhoods. It exposes flaws of social beliefs and theories of both conservative and liberals alike. Acting is pretty good, and while Law & Order and CSI franchise (and others) use sensationalized murders, rapes and one-liners (damn you, Horatio) to attract audience, The Wire relies on strong writing and more realistic plots. The show is also a lot less violent than its network counterparts. It's like comparing an indie-film with strong writing, plot and acting from no-name casts, to a big-budget "stuff-blows-up" summer flick.

One of these days I'll find the DVDs of early seasons and watch the series from the beginning.

Harsh Times

I went to get an oil change today. So with two hours to waste, and a movie coupon from a friend, I decided to go see a movie. I wanted to see The Departed or The Prestige, but it's an hour wait for either one, so I decided to see Harsh Times instead. What caught me by surprised was in the beginning of the movie, they kept playing Freestyle music. You rarely hear those on the radio, much less movies. But I guess the movie's Hispanic theme kinda fits in.

The movie is directed by the person who wrote Training Day. So as expected there are characters from that movie that's in Harsh Times. The ones the stood out are Noel Guglielmi and Samantha Esteban. In Training Day, Samantha Esteban played Letty, Guglielmi's cousin. She's the one who was almost raped and Ethan Hawke came to the rescue. Later on, his heroics came up useful when Guglielmi was holding him upside down on his bathtub and ready to blow his head off with a shotgun, until Guglielmi found out he earlier saved his cousin, so he let him go. In Harsh Times Guglielmi plays Samantha Esteban's boyfriend. Samantha Esteban's character's name is also "Letty" in Harsh Times.

Samantha Esteban is kinda cute and almost always typecast as Mexican, but she's actually mixed, and has Filipina blood in her.

Evangelicals and the GOP

Interesting article from a former Bush adviser about how he now sees as GOP using Evangelicals.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/archive/2006/11/13/findrelig.DTL

'Borat' Victims Upset at Being Duped

Here's a funny article from the Washington Post about people who felt they got duped by Borat.

Upset!

In probably the biggest upset since "Borat throw Santa Down the Well", scroll down to see what I mean, an unknown Democrat beat a 7-term Congressman, fat-Pombo.

Two years ago, Pombo beat McNerney easily, even after skipping their only debate that a local newspaper setup.

The only thing I remember about McNerney is that his son is serving in Iraq and his daughter went to my alma mater. The only thing I know about Pombo is that he's a close pal of Jack Abramoff, he wears a cowboy hat, he wants to eliminate the Engdangered Species Act, and he took his family on an RV trip around the country to visit National Parks, charged the bill to the tax payers and then he said his "research" tells that the National Parks do not need to be protected. The Democratic Party didn't even support McNerney, but the Sierra Club did.

Christmas Wish #1

The West Wing - The Complete Series Collection

Borat Throw Santa Down the Well

Probably the biggest upset since Buster Douglas beat Tyson, Borat out-grosses Santa Claus, $26M to $20M, in the box office even though it's released on less than 1/4 the number of theaters. It made up for lack of release with $31,500 per theater average vs $5,800. In the suburbia, where I live, they have five show times for Borat vs nine for Santa Clause. Borat was obviously pack. The movie received a lot of great reviews, and it's probably the funniest movie I've seen in years. There's a hotel scene that was so funny I was still laughing about it way after the scene was shown.