Hot and Cold

This past weekend (plus Monday), I experienced the highs and lows that our modern entertainment industry could deliver.

I'm going to start with the particular event that really got my blood boiling: the 2009 NHL "All-Star" Game. For the first time ever, I did not watch any NHL "All-Star" coverage or even bother watch the highlights (perhaps lowlights would be the better word to use). This game has turned into a commercial farce which is surpassed only by the almighty BCS bowl games. Fans, players, and franchises really don't care about it anymore.

The first signs that trouble was around the corner began appearing at around the New Year when the starting lineups were announced. Remember that starting lineups are determined by votes cast by fans. I'll list the 12 players and their respective teams.

Eastern Conference

Sidney Crosby - Pittsburgh
Evgeni Malkin - Pittsburgh
Alexei Kovalev - Montreal
Andrei Markov - Montreal
Mike Komisarek - Montreal
Carey Price - Montreal

Western Conference

Patrick Kane - Chicago
Jonathan Toews - Chicago
Ryan Getzlaf - Anaheim
Brian Campbell - Chicago
Scott Niedermayer - Anaheim
Jean-Sebastian Giguere - Anaheim

You don't need to be a hockey fan to see the problem here. For the hockey fans that are out there, you have to shake your head. Where is league goal scoring leader Alex Ovechkin of Washington? Where are the players from the league leading franchises: San Jose, Boston, or Detroit? If the playoffs were to start today, Anaheim would barely qualify in their 8th place spot and Pittsburgh would miss the playoffs with their pitiful 11-11-2 home record.

I love democracy as much as the next person, but if the Bush years or the BCS did not reveal the shortcomings of democracy, then this certainly must. Thankfully, the remainder of the roster is filled by the NHL with the intention of making sure that every franchise is represented.

Detroit was very poorly represented in the game as a result of Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk (the only two Redwings to make the roster) removed themselves from the festivities in order to recover from injuries. The NHL made an 11th hour appeal to other Redwings stars like Marian Hossa and Brian Rafalski who did not make the roster. Unsurprisingly, these guys made the selfish choice of spending time with family and friends during the only extended break in the long and grueling NHL schedule. So, for the first time that I can remember, the reigning league champion was not represented in the "All-star" weekend.

In order to add salt to the wound, the NHL and Gary Bettman, in all their infinite and just wisdom, decided to suspend Lidstrom and Datsyuk for one game. If the game of hockey is in the sad shape that it is then how does suspending two star players from the model NHL franchise help? Clinging to a dead tradition that serves no purpose other than delivering stale 12-11 shootout games to the hosting city's fans and corporate sponsors is truly baffling.

In other hockey news, Michigan and Michigan State played over the weekend and then this happened...



Any respect that I hold for Michigan State athletics is quickly slipping away. Sure Michigan State is bad this year and they've been victimized by Michigan all season long, but that does not justify this ugly and shameful incident. Both Michigan State players, Conboy and Tropp have been suspended for the remainder of the season. In my opinion, those suspensions are not enough. The rest of Michigan State's season is meaningless, they aren't going to win the CCHA or go to the NCAA tournament (on a side note: hmm, another college championship determined on the ice/field and not by voters). These players should miss next season and perhaps they should be simply banned from playing in the NCAA.

The good news is that the Michigan player is going to be OK and back on the ice next weekend.

Moving away from hockey, I went to go see Defiance last weekend. I thought it was a fantastic movie and I would recommend that everyone go see it or put it at the top of your Netflix queue when the DVD is released. Most importantly, it made me forget about the disappointing Valkyrie. Apart from the story, to which I had never been exposed, my favorite aspect of the film was the sound. So often these days movies are heavily doctored and butchered in post-production, but Defiance had a very real and organic quality to the sound design. For me, the guns sounded rich and authentic and I doubt anyone will disagree if you see the film in a theatre.

On Sunday, I finally got around to watching a recording of last week's The Office. For the first time since I started watching that show, I felt depressed and empty. Apart from a few amusing moments, the overall episode was a huge disappointment. The Micheal/Dwight adventure was really depressing and the intra-office Hilary Swank hotness panel was uninspired and boring. If I want to be depressed, I'll watch Battlestar Galactica. I watch The Office to see an entertaining story and have a good laugh. At least Battlestar Galactica made me want to watch again next week.

Update:

Conboy and Tropp have left the MSU hockey team.

Overlooked

Yesterday was a busy news day. Between the fainting senior senators, forgetful Supreme Court Justices and marching bands playing some abominable song made popular by some abominable school in some abominable state south of Michigan, one news story did not get much attention.

Chrysler and Italian car maker, Fiat, announced that they had formed a new partnership. Fiat gets a 35% share of Chrysler and access to a number of Chrysler plants in the U.S. Chrysler gets someone to help them keep their heads above the water and a partner with expertise in cars that Americans love and need (i.e. fast ones and efficient ones).

Fiat also owns Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Ferrari, but as much as Americans love fast cars like...



the Maserati GranTurismo,



and the Alfa Romeo 8c, Fiat also brings cars like...



the Fiat 500 to the table.

My hope is that this partnership bears more fruit than the ill-fated DaimlerChrysler adventure. Chrysler already makes some of the best-looking cars in the U.S. and had gleaned some useful engineering ideas from the Germans. Fiat will add some Italian expertise and inspiration to the mix. At the very least, this will hopefully get the ball rolling on Chrysler's recovery and give the executives something to talk about at the next congressional testimony.

Khaaaaan!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7829807.stm

Rest in peace, Ricardo.

Update on NASA drama!

I've got two things to briefly (I promise) discuss today and they are follow-ups on a post from back in December.

First of all, the supposed tension between the upcoming Obama administration and the current NASA administrator Michael Griffin has slipped out of the control of the many PR people involved. Mr. Griffin's wife has begun actively lobbying for her husband with the hope of avoiding his imminent ousting. I have mixed opinions about Mr. Griffin. I have to give him credit for overseeing NASA's crawl from the stagnation of the post-Nixon space program. At the same time, all of Mr. Griffin critics can't be wrong, right?

For the record on the big NASA issues of the day, I think extending the space shuttles' service is a bad idea. It's an old, unreliable and expensive spaceflight system. I also think that scrapping the Ares program would be a terrible decision and would likely doom, or at least drastically delay, the future of manned spaceflight. Merging some parts (manned spaceflight, earthbound satellite programs, orbital and exo-atmospheric object tracking, etc.) of the DoD space budget and NASA budget is probably a good idea as long as funding for "science for science's sake" programs (deep space probes, planetary probes, orbital science platforms) is not slashed.

On the subject of money, projections for next year's budget deficit are in! Ouch...

Politically, Mr. Obama will be able to avoid most of the "tax-n-spend liberal" charges with his proposed tax cuts and breaks. However, I fear something worse - a continuation of Pres. Bush's "cut taxes and spend obscenely" policy which garnered rave reviews during the election season. With all of this proposed spending, remind me why everyone is so concerned about NASA's relatively small budget?

Lists

I'm not one of those people who likes to concern himself with making, keeping, or peddling lists. However, I can't come up with a good idea for a blog post and it has been a while since I made a post. During the many hours that I spent perusing the internet over the holidays, I came across The Nielsen Company's top 10 lists for the U.S. Needless to say, I had some thoughts...

• Americans, like Romans, are sustained, uplifted and defined by their bread and games (circuses for you historical purists).
• I had not previously realized the degree of box office dominance delivered by The Dark Knight. It's like watching the last three Rose Bowls...
• I'm going to avoid commenting on the music categories so I don't end up insulting someone. Honestly, if the Starcraft Terran theme can't crack the top 10 music ringtones, why even bother.
• Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope ranked higher in audio format than book format. I'm not sure what to make of that.
• Best-liked TV commercials is a great category, kudos to the Nielsen Company. The Bridgestone one is my favorite on the list, but it can't hope to surpass Terry Tate: Office Linebacker.

Trivia: The actor who plays "Terrible" Terry Tate, Lester Speight, also provides the voice for Augustus "Cole Train" Cole in the Gears of War video games. Clearly not much diversity in his roles, but he definitely does good work in his niche.

The video games section contains lots of juicy stuff, too:

• World of Warcraft dominates the PC game market, which should not come as a surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of PC gaming. What is surprising is the popularity of the first Halo game. I spent countless hours playing the original Halo in high school and I've been consistently tempted by the bargain bin PC version with free online matchmaking (unfortunately, this kind of matchmaking does not get me a hot date).
• Finally, Sony cannot be pleased with the console usage stats. They are in bad shape if the original Xbox gets more play time than their vaunted Playstation 3. Fanboys (a.k.a. fanbois) will contest the reliability of these numbers, but I don't have any reason to believe that the results are inaccurate short of gross incompetence or vast conspiracy. The other lists seem fairly reasonable and I have no legitimate reason to doubt those results (the contact numbers listed on the final page would be the place to go if I did).