Pigskin Zen 12.04.08

The Bird(s) is the Word
by Gary Zeidner

Damn you Family Guy! Sure, the title for this column makes sense because the column is about my beloved Birds, the Philadelphia Eagles, but in all honesty I haven’t been able to get that stupid “Surfin’ Bird” song out of my head since last week’s episode of Family Guy. I’ve tried getting blackout drunk, slamming my head repeatedly into a cinderblock wall and listening to my alarm clock screech at me for hours on end, but nothing has helped rid me of that awful, awful song. You win this round Seth McFarlane, you dick.

As for the Birds, well, they’ve been struggling with a mighty case of multiple personality disorder these past few weeks. After dropping a shit bomb so large against Baltimore that Big Red had to bench Donnie — for the first time in his professional career — the Birds rallied to beat the division-leading Cardinals 48-20 on Thanksgiving. This win kept their playoff hopes alive, and for that I am truly thankful.

Maybe Donnie needed the wakeup call that riding the pine for a half provided. Maybe Andy getting so pissed off at his team’s lackluster play that he — for the first time in his career — actually raised his voice and made some threats against his players’ careers did the trick. Who knows? All that may be said for certain is that the Eagles need to win out to have a shot at that big, brass Super Bowl ring.

It is the holiday season and, therefore, a time for miracles, so I say, “Go to it!”

E-A-G-L-E-S . . . EAGLES!!!


Suicide’s an alternative

A few weeks ago, some kid here in the U.S. of No Way! became the first American that I’m aware of to publicly kill themselves in real time on the Internet. That kid should get the Nobel Prize for Entertainment (would that there were such an award). With his act of public self-destruction, that kid singlehandedly laid the first paving stone on the boulevard to televised executions, Running Man-style game shows, convict versus convict death matches and the like. Way to go there, dead boy!

Before you go getting in the spirit of the season and dropping by my house to crucify me for that last paragraph, hold the fuck on for a second. For all you or I know, that kid was a heartless child rapist who killed himself out of remorse for his many heinous crimes. Ever think of that, Judgy McKneejerk?


Bourne, James Bourne

After four, and I mean a literal four not some pussified figurative four, attempts to go see Quantum of Solace at the local multiplex — which is, by the by, the worst excuse for a brand-new movie theatre I have ever seen — I finally found my ass in a seat not in the first two rows as the lights went down on this latest Bond epic.

I thought Casino Royale was an excellent reboot of this flagging franchise. It gave the world a harsher, more visceral slant on the super-spy we all know and love. It succeeded because it took Bond, the man, in a new direction while retaining many of the staples of Bond, the movie series.

Solace, which picks up immediately after Royale (but without cheese), once again gives us a coldly brutal Bond the likes of which we’ve never really seen, but it throws the rest of what makes a Bond movie a Bond movie into the passenger seat and ejects it straight out the sunroof.

This Bond is more Bourne than Bond, and while Solace doesn’t really disappoint it fails to add anything significant to the character or his myth.


DVDelicious

When Will Smith’s last box office assault, Hancock, came out this past summer, even I, a self-avowed movie junkie, couldn’t get excited enough to bother seeing it in the theatre. As sure as joy follows the arrival of a late period, Hancock is now out on DVD just in time for the holidays, so I went ahead and checked it out.

In all fairness, it’s only half bad . . . the second half. The movie opens quite promisingly with a brilliant premise. What if Superman wasn’t the cow-licked champion of all things pure and virtuous but was, instead, a drunken malcontent who felt utterly isolated by the fact that he’s the only one of his kind on the entire fucking planet?

Smith and the special effects crew pull off the setup but fumble their way through the climax. (Whoa, sounds like a few of my high school sexcapades.) Until someone shows me every version of the script from day one until opening night and proves me wrong, I will firmly believe that somewhere along the line a whole subplot was excised — and excised poorly with some sort of dull, rusty instrument — from this flick. (That subplot — SPOILER ALERT — revolves around Charlize Theron turning out to be the only other person on the planet to share Hancock’s powers.)

The saddest part is that had the makers of this movie let Hancock be only about Hancock and his arc from asshole to hero then tackled his relationship with Theron’s character in a separate, prequel-type movie, both films would have been immeasurably better than the one they ended up with.