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+ World Trade Center trailer. If you don't want to download, you can stream it (here). I ended up making the decision not to see United 93, didn't think I would be able to handle it in a theatre full of people, but I look forward to WTC, I think. For one, WTC features a cast of recognizable faces, as opposed to United 93's cast of unknowns, so I should be better able to realize at all times that what I'm watching is a movie. Not just Nic Cage, but Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal. There's the locksmith, from Crash, whose name I should learn, apparently. The other port authority officers are all familiar faces - guys who have been playing New Yawkers on tv for ages. And second, I believe both Port Authority officers depicted in this film worked alongside the creators of the movie, so I feel like it'll be more directly drawn from their actual experiences on 9/11. Which is not to say United 93 pulled its depiction of what happened out of the air, but at the end of the day, it just didn't sit so comfortably with me, how much of the interaction and exchanges in that film the creators must have extrapolated based on what little evidence they had of how things went down. And I'm not gonna lie, I had no real interest in sitting in a theatre, watching extremists threaten a planeful of innocent people for 2 hours. I really enjoyed Munich but I don't think I've ever been as uncomfortable in a movie theatre as I was during the first 15 or so minutes, which depicted Black September's assault on the Jewish athletes.

I don't think I could go see WTC if the story had been about the two firefighters who were found dead, locked in an embrace. But it's about two Port Authority officers who survived, and that's a story I want to see, and hear.

The WTC trailer reminds me a lot of the Pearl Harbor trailer, which I thought was beautifully striking. The shot of the young boys playing baseball looking up at the sky to see the Japanese bombers got the same reaction out of me as the Port Authority officer looking up from the tourist's map at the sound of a plane flying over.

+ If you don't have the MLB All Access Sound 2003 dvd, Bri ripped and uploaded the footage of the ride-along with Zito.

+ I fell asleep on all my ballgames yesterday! Which is fine, as it turned out, since almost none of them ended happily for my boys. Missed the NYY comeback, which looked pretty cool, though I'm not inclined to rewatch the entire broadcast. But I do love that about baseball, the dramatic comeback, even when it's the Yankees.

Speaking of rewatching broadcasts, I was watching Haren's start, and saw Scott Erickson come out of the bullpen for the Yanks. Creeeeepy. And the Yankees announcers were wistfully remarking how strange it was to see the number 46 on a right hander, and I ALMOST felt bad for them, but then they should know that feeling, because it weirded me out when Towers wore 35, and it still weirds me out every time Cabrera rolls out in number 35, so yeah, guys, that's how the rest of us feel when you seduce away our franchise faces.

Also, they went on this little tangent where they started counting how many guys on the field in that inning had been on People's 50 Most Beautiful list, and carrying on about the Yankees being the best looking team in baseball, at which point - with apologies to the Oakland hitters - I had to skip ahead to the next inning.

+ In other news, since I'm all caught up on The Office-US, I decided to download the last 10 eps of Supernatural. I think I might also finally crack the seal on season one of Veronica Mars. Whoo new fandom.

I've read like 10 pages of Three Nights in August in the past week :P At this rate, I'll be finishing it up in August.

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+ Has anyone read James Patterson's Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment? The premise seems vaguely Koontz-esque (a secret government agency genetically engineers children with wings, for some nefarious purpose, I'm sure), and I enjoyed the few Alex Cross mysteries of Patterson's that I've read. But I confess I'm a little wary of the fact that the book is categorized as "teen fiction." I mean, I'm not too far removed from my Lois Duncan years, but still...

Also wondering if anyone's read Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down? (Seeing that he's written a new book reminds me - I never did finish How To Be Good.)

+ I was at BJ's Wholesale Club, running errands for me ma and I saw the first three seasons of The X-Files available for $29.99 each. I'm fairly positive that when XF sets first hit the streets, they were priced around $100. Any XF fans know if these cheaper sets are repackaged releases, or are these the same $100 sets priced down to something I can actually afford? (Btw, I saw that the SG-1 boxsets had also been marked down to $29.99. If I could get these wholesale joints to mark down B5, I would be SET.)

OH I ALMOST FORGOT - Con Air was re-released this week with bonus footage! Like, happy early birthday present to me. It's only seven extra minutes of footage, no commentary, no featurette, BUT STILL. I guess this is as good as it gets, which means I should go ahead and buy this movie on dvd already. So yes, the special edition of Con Air is a little lacking, but I remain unswayed in my conviction that a fully loaded special edition of Face/Off will eventually be released. From my keyboard to the dvd gods' mainframe.

+ I am, at this very moment, downloading the pilot episode of Life on Mars, which is another one I've heard a lot of hullabaloo about. I'm all about shows with Mars in the title, all at once.

+

The rivalry between the Cubs and the Cardinals is probably the oldest and perhaps the best in baseball, no matter how the Red Sox and Yankees spit and spite at each other. That's a tabloid fueled soap opera about money and ego and sound bites. That's a pair of bratty high-priced supermodels trying to trip each other in their stilettos on the runway. But the Cards-Cubs epic is about roots and geography and territorial rights. It's entwined in the Midwestern blood and therefore refreshing and honest and even heroic.

Oh, Buzz Bissinger. You had me rolling and sorta willing to follow your lead...until that last line. Um, what? Someone please explain to me how the holier-than-thou attitude of the Midwest is in any way more attractive than how admittedly self-impressed East Coasters are. I mean, really. Buzz Bissinger, you can kindly 'refreshing and honest and even heroic' deez nuts, as the kids say. Or, in the parlance of more of my f-list: EM ETIB.

(Though that 'bratty supermodels' characterization of the NYY and BOS organizations is completely hilarious, you must admit.)

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I'm awful, just awful. I give up to [Bad username or site: avaio / @ livejournal.com] one Michael James Jacobs, who couldn't hit to save his life with men in scoring position, and he has a career night with six rbi. I officially take under my wing one Hanley Ramirez, and he strains his shoulder while striking out. [Bad username or site: lovingthecubs / @ livejournal.com], you may be amused to know that Andino (the young wannabe member of the CC Hat Brigade) was called up. [Bad username or site: angisageek / @ livejournal.com], you didn't end up adopting him, so you may not care, but Eric Reed was sent down. I'm sure that was in no way a consequence of you tossing him by the wayside for the dumbass who set himself on fire :P

So I decided I was pretty over getting spammed by images of teams and players I'm not all that concerned about, so I'm personally dumping [Bad username or site: mlbphotos_yahoo / @ livejournal.com], and I set up new team-specific feeds, because, yes, if there's anything LJ needs, it's me creating more baseball related syndicated feeds >.> If you're interested:

[Bad username or site: espn_flaphotos / @ livejournal.com]
[Bad username or site: espn_oakphotos / @ livejournal.com]
[Bad username or site: espn_houphotos / @ livejournal.com]

They're just team-specific AP photo feeds through ESPN. The big reason I originally set up the Yahoo feed was because they occasionally carry Getty images, but I figure I can just check in every now and again. Also, it may just be my eyes, but it seems to me that the ESPN pics are slightly better resolution than the Yahoo images, so there you go.

Gary Matthews, Jr. was on MLB Midday ^_^ Yay. I liked Gary.

[Bad username or site: rickenbacker / @ livejournal.com], it looks like NY is off; we're gonna do the Marlins DH in Philly instead. Which means KC is almost definitely, certainly, on. I'll try and get an answer out of ResLife tomorrow, on when I could start moving into my dorm room; if it's early enough for me to unpack before the weekend, hopefully I can buy my tickets and we can talk about hotel arrangements and the like. **crosses fingers**

eta: Also, my dad's SI arrived today, and Pujols is on the cover for like the 817th time this spring, don't ask me how he managed that. But INSIDE there is a profile of Josh Willingham (married, incidentally, to a woman named Ginger. Sorry, Bri) and Huston Street rates the Street Bobblehead a 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 4. There's also a completely unnecessary two page close up of Hideki Matsui fracturing his wrist :/