Colorado at Boston-- 8:00 EST

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again."

Sometimes I worry about baseball. I know that's a funny thing to say. I don't worry about the people making millions off the sport, or steroid use, or many of the other troublesome things surrounding the sport.

I worry about the children.

Namely the children on the east coast, home to the most famous and successful teams. I worry that a 6 year old Red Sox fan can't watch his heroes in the World Series tonight because the game starts too late. Or worse, that he has to go to bed in the 7th inning of a tie game and misses a 14 inning nailbiter that ends when his favorite player hits a home run. Those are the kind of games that can turn a casual baseball fan into a lifelong baseball fanatic.

Baseball is sacrificing a generation of baseball fans for ratings. Starting a World Series game at 8 eastern makes sense for a tv network. You get prime time on the east coast and catch people coming home from work in the west. But it doesn't make sense for a sport desperately trying to gain more fans. I'm not saying this is going to be the death of baseball, but I can see it becoming more of a niche sport.

So what's the answer? Saturday and Sunday. Move the weekend games to 5 or 6 eastern so everyone can watch. Kids at school will talk about the games on Monday. They'll wear hats and jerseys to class. And people will still watch at the earlier time because it's the fucking world series.

Don't believe me? I became a diehard baseball fan in 1992. I'd always liked the sport, but never really had a favorite team. That changed during the 1992 NLCS. See I irrationally liked the Atlanta Braves and hated the Pittsburgh Pirates. And during the series the Braves jumped out to a 3-1 lead but the Pirates came back to tie the series with two straight wins. So for the second year in a row the two teams would play in a game 7 to decide who got to go to the World Series. The Pirates led 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth when the Braves mounted a comeback, scoring on a double, an error and a sacrifice fly. But Brian Hunter popped out to short, making the second out. It was up to Francisco Cabrera, the last guy on the bench, some dude I've never heard of. Of course he singles to left, scoring Dave Justice from third and Sid Bream from second. I jumped up and down and shouted and scared my mother who thought I'd cut a finger off or something.

I was a baseball fan.

The time that game 7 started-- 8:30 PM. Is it plausible that another 13 year old in Michigan who kinda liked the Braves watched the first 6 innings before his well meaning mother put him to bed? Is it possible that that kid never really became a baseball fan because he missed that game? I think so. Tonight that 28 year old is probably going to watch CSI: Cleveland instead of the World Series. That makes me sad.

Who wants to go see obscure japanese cinema?

I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself.

-Shohei Imamura

Shohei Imamura Retrospective @ Northwest Film Forum

In a perfect world I'd go see A Man Vanishes, Black Rain, and The Eel. But my job probably will require me to work Friday and Saturday nights. Is anybody up to seeing Pigs and Battleships and/or Why Not? I promise you they won't be like anything else you've ever seen.

Elizabeth and the Boring Pirate

OK guys, I promise this isn't going to turn into the blog where your friend Don bitches about movies all the time.

BUT.....

I watch a lot of movies. Less now than I used to, but I watch a lot. And the strange thing is that I have a really good memory about plots, lines, actors and actresses, etc. I can usually tell you if I liked or hated a film and why even years down the road. I saw Elizabeth in 1999 with my friend Michelle at the Lakewood 15. It was a late afternoon show. There was a scene with naked people in it. In the end Cate Blanchett was in white makeup and looked like a statue. It had that Joseph Fiennes guy I hate in it. That's all I remember. I don't know if I liked it. I don't remember the plot. I couldn't pick out any of the other actors and actresses in it. [even though looking at IMDB the cast is stacked with lesser known actors I love: Geoffrey Rush, Vincent Cassell, Christopher Eccleston, Emily Mortimer] It's just a complete blank.

I was thinking about this this evening before seeing Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Why was I here? Why was I strangely excited to see the sequel to a movie I'd completely forgotten?

Well, because I'm an idiot.

I don't hate E:TGA. I just don't care about it. It's pretty and empty. Cate Blanchett is amazing. I don't know when she took the crown from Julianne Moore as "Most compelling actress alive" [Hannibal, maybe?] but it takes a lot to make me not care about a movie she's front-and-center in. Clive Owen plays Sir Walter Raleigh, who apparently was the most boring pirate in history. I think Clive's probably at his best when he's playing distant, disaffected characters [see Children of Men or Croupier], but an adventurer like Raleigh couldn't have been this boring.

Some stuff happens. People ride horses, talk in hallways, dance, write letters, unlace bodices. Spain wants to take England over or something. A couple people are killed. Mary, Queen of the Scots of Scotland is executed. Raleigh knocks up some chick. Some ships start on fire. I yawn.

A friend of mine called about 2/3 of the way through the film. Normally I'd just wait until the end of the movie, but she was having a bad day so I got up to make sure she wasn't on a rooftop or something. But as I was talking I realized I didn't want to go back in. That's not the sign of me hating a film. Hating a movie is compelling to me because I try to decide where it went wrong, what bad decisions happened, or how I'd make it different. Instead of feeling that, I felt nothing. Which to me is the sign of a total failure.

"I feel like he could have been deader"

So, I just got back from Into the Wild.

It's stupid.

Now I've never met Christopher McCandless, and fully acknowledge that this film could be a total misrepresentation of his life, but as it stands it's the chronicle of a horribly misguided existence. Let's see, young Chris graduates from college, gives his savings away, and heads off into the great unknown because [stop the presses] mommy and daddy didn't get along. So instead of facing his problems like the rest of us have to do, he sheds off all human relationships and runs away to Alaska. Not only that, he's annoying-- full of that stoned 2AM philosophy that only makes sense if you're stoned and it's 2AM. And he reads Tolstoy. Anyone who claims to love Tolstoy and says that the best way to live is to shed all human relationships does not understand what he is reading.


And the music. Every time I felt like I could maybe be having an emotional response to the story EDDIE VEDDER STARTS SOME HORRIBLE CHANTING AT A LOUD VOLUME THAT MAKES ME WANT TO BLOW MY BRAINS OUT.

Sorry.

The main problem for me is that he doesn't seem to love anyone. He abandons his sister and everyone he meets along the road. He has an effect on their lives, but they don't seem to have any effect on him. How am I supposed to care about someone who is so untouched by the people around him and the experiences he has? I mean say what you want about how idiotic Timothy Treadwell was, at least he loved something. Even if that something had him for dinner.

When we were standing in line we saw the people from the previous show exit the theater and some of them were crying. I doubt they were crying because this poor boy wasted his life. They probably wished they could be that close to nature or shed all their possessions or some other hippie shit. Anyone who wants to emulate this asshole can go die in Alaska whenever they want.

Just don't expect me to care when I see the movie.

By the way I have a blog now.

I won't be angry all the time I promise.

It has begun!