I don't enjoy anything.

I've come to realize that I do not like anything anymore.

Football: I get upset over stupid coaching and insane play calling, and bad officiating.

Movies: Cellphones are ruining movies for me at the theater.

Poker: I seem to have no patience, play is worse than ever, mine, and the <><

I'm angry all the time, I was reading, came across a mistake in a book, was so mad that I emailed the author, who wrote back to me, said it had been corrected in another editon and that he wishes that I'd give it another chance. (this was a while back) possibly the start of me hating everything.

NOTHING seems to make me happy anymore.

Movie Review: A Christmas Carol

I finally made it to see A Christmas Carol, I'd been anxious and waiting for it all year. I hate it when I'm so wrong.

I want to start by saying that I've heard that the IMAX 3D is fantastic for this movie, so I would recommend if you go to see it, to catch it that way.

The movie follows the basic story pretty well, but starts tremendously slow, and the animation is blocky/chunky/looks like it was done on a Tandy 1000. Yet in other places, looks fantastic, So my guess is that parts were polished for IMAX, and the rest was rushed to meet a production deadline.

Jim Carey does several of the movies characters, and as Scrooge does a fantastic job of bringing the old, grouchy man to life.

During my viewing, as the segment featuring the "Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come" A few families left with their young children, and I heard a couple of them mention how scared they were. It's not extremely intense but for the youngest of viewers, could be too much.

The performances in the film are right at par, and with the production values rushed in some places, I would am going to have to settle on 2.5 stars and a sad face :(

Who Are The Mountaineers?

If you follow West Virginia University football, you've probablly noticed that things are a lot different on the offensive side of the footbal this season. Even with the departure of Pat White, the offense wasn't expected to slow much this year. Jarrett Brown is a senior who acquired a good bit of experience backing up one of the best quarterbacks in school history. The season started off well for the Mountaineers, but after a concussion in the Marshall game, the offensive numbers have fallen faster than the dollar. Some put the blame on Brown, and the concussion, but I disagree.

When the conference season started, and the competition started to get tougher, the weakness of the offensive coaching staff started to show its ugly head. I think the biggest problem that the WVU offense faces is a lack of identity. Is WVU a passing spread team? A spread option team? A spread run team? A power I team? The spread that WVU ran under the previous coaches was sucessful because it forced you to defend every inch of the field. You had to account for everyone, on every play, especially the quarterback, be it Rasheed Marshall, or Pat White. The base of the offense was the "Zone Read". If the defense crashed on the running back, the qb read that, pulled the ball and took off on his own, if the defense stayed balanced, they were gashed in the seams when the QB didn't pull the ball. And if they started to show signs of slowing that down, a slot was brougt in to make it a tripple option, or some counters and other misdirection plays were ran to keep the defense as basic as possible.

Gone this year, is the read part of the zone read. Defenses are keying on Noel Devine, becasue they know Brown is not going to pull the ball. Defensive ends, linebackers, are filling the line of scrimmge, and the play is shut down. Its basically a halfback dive with no lead blocker. There is no misdirection to keep the defense honest and Noel has trouble getting the edge on the outside runs because the defense has nothing else to worry about, although sometimes Devine's natural ability and speed still gets him the edge, and its amazing to watch when he does. That takes Spread Run, and Spread Pass off the list.

More attention is being given this year to the passing game. And with Wes Lyons, Bradly Starks, Jock Sanders, and Alric Arnett all playing again this season, after their success last season you would think the passing game would be taken to the next level. Even with talent and size on the outside, and pure speed on the inside, the passing game is like running into a brick wall this season. Defenses have taken away the screen game with Jock Sanders this season, and rightfully so as it seems to be 75% of out passing game. Defenses still play WVU to run, and load the box with sometimes 8 men, playing man to man coverage on our recievers with no safeties in the middle of the field, allowing wide open spaces for crossing and post routes. Yet our basic offensive play calling never seesm to go to those. There have been a few exceptions, a deep post to Austin in the ECU game, and a few times early in other games, but it seems like we go away from the things that work early in games, and never get back to them. Part of the problem is lack of protection, yet rarely is an extra man kept in for extra protection. The passing game has shown some promise this year, but thats far from being an offensive identity, so scratch spread passing team.

Leading up to the Cincinnatti game, Coach Stewart said that he wanted to attack Cincy with the ground game, which made sense after UConn ran all over them with their power running attack. With Devine less than 100% with an ankle injury, Ryan Clarke saw some extra playing time. WVU used the power running game with good success at times in the game, and Cincy had now answer for it. In the middle of a series, Clarke and his lead blocker FB Ricky Kovatch would be pulled for a game, in favor of Jock Sanders, and while Sanders had some success early in the game, with TE Will Johnson coming in motion to block for him, Cincy soon made an adjustment, keyed on Johnson to lead them to the ball, and shut down the Sanders run. There were no other plays ran off of the action, and once Johnson came in motion behind the line, turned his shoulders to the line of scrimmage, everyone in Nippert Stadium knew exactly where the ball was going. There were at least three different offensive drives that started wtih Clarke and Kovatch leading the way, only to hit the bench at around the 50 yard line, never to return, and the drive stalling. So that eliminates Power Running.


Which leads me to what I see as the biggest problem for the Mountaineer offense this season, a lack of identity. Without an identity, the Mountaineers may as well be running into a brick wall, the defense can focus on one or two keys, and not have to worry about adjustments on the WVU side of the ball. Bill Stewart may have the best 23 game start in school history, and he is one of the few "nice guys" left in football the man's character is second to none, and I am proud that he brings a good light to the football program. However, the numbers are in a freefall on offense and defense, and as the extra pieces of the puzzle from the previous coaching staff start to vanish, so will Stewarts winning percentage if the offense doesn't find some sort of identity over the coming off season.

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Zombieland

I'm torn about what to write for Zombieland. On one hand, I liked it. Its a nice geeky zombie comedy. Jessie Eisenberg reminds me a lot of Michael Cera in his role, with the awkwardness that he shows in various situations, but at the same time it just makes me think, oh, that reminds me of Michael Cera.

Woody Harrelson is fantastic, but there are few laugh out loud moments in my mind, and more "smirks and giggles." (man I need to learn how to write a movie review, its hard because I don't want to get specific and ruin things for people, but my review is so vague) What I liked the most about the movie was the way the rules for survival are used throughout the movie, and not just something mentioned and wasted. The surprise cameo is nice, and I will not mention anything about that, it was a surprise to me, and I think if you know who it is going into the movie, it would ruin some of the best comedy in the movie.

I'm going to use a 5 star system here I think, and out of five I would give this one a 2.9 I want to say three, but it just was very uneven in some spots. Its worth a rent for sure.


I am sorry that this first review sucks so much. For one, I just wrote it off the top of my head, 2nd, I'm out of practice. I Promise better in the future, at this point I'm just trying to get myself back into the habit of writing.

What I really hate....

I hate letting this blog go. What I have decided? Well, I had some things arise, and was forced to withdraw what I had built up on full tilt, to put toward some unexpected things. So for the time being, poker is on hold.


I love to write, and I want to get this lil spot going again, so I plan to write about a bit of everything. Expect some movie reviews, from Blockbusters, to obscure, to slasher direct to dvd releases, and MST3k episodes. College football, maybe a bit of pro football.

I realize what I'm writing at this moment will most likely not even be read for a few months haha, but I want to build up a viewership. My original blog was pretty successful, man that was like 8 years ago though, where does the time go.


If I end up letting this go, and don't update it, I'll remove it. This is my last attempt at doing this. I refuse to let myself, and any potential reader down, by not living up to my end of the deal.

UPdate

I just passed the $150 mark. Not bad for starting with $10. Lets just hope that I can keep focus, instead of making stupid mistake after stupid mistake like I did the first time I got to $100.

Plugging along

Up to $77. My swings up and down have been a result of trying to play too many hands, and trying to push people off of weak hands like one pair. Micro stakes, if someone has to pair, to them its the nuts.

So i'm dropped my flop percentage down to about 15% from 27% and its made a pretty big difference.

Whew.

SO it has been a while eh?

After getting back to 66, I blew it all back down to 10. I needed to take a break, get away and refocus. I was trying to push people off of fairly weak hands in a 5$ game, and that just doesn't work. Just because I play every level as seriously as I can, not everyone else does, its the "meh, its just a couple dollars" syndrome. So they call call call. I need to stay focused, stick to the grinding game, and get going again.

I played a 2$ multi table tournament, and finished 7th out of 697. First place was over 300..so close, but I finish for about 50$ and my current standing is 57$

Ready to give it a run again. I just can't wait to get out of the micro's Even the 'low' stakes play a million times better.