Why I respect A-Rod… well, kinda

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Alex Rodriguez, one of the best players in the baseball, has been accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs. OK, so nobody’s jaw hit the floor because of that, but be prepared to let it drop for this one: he’s admitted to taking them. The fact that he took the drugs shouldn’t surprise anyone — this was from 2001-2003, and everyone was doin’ it — but the fact that he has taken the high road and stated publicly that he took them is a little surprising. In fact, my respect for Rodriguez actually increased a little because of this whole event, and I’ll tell you why.

Aside: Don’t you hate when people end a statement with “and I’ll tell you why”? Why bother telling me that you’re going to tell me why? Why not just tell me why? Anyway, here’s why.

I’m not a huge fan of A-Rod. He’s probably the best all-around player in the game today, and likely one of the best of all time, but there have been a couple of incidents since he joined the Yankees that have tarnished my image of him. There was the one where he was running down the first base line and slapped at the glove of the first baseman who had already caught the ball. Then there was the incident in Toronto where he was running from second to third and yelled “I got it” while running behind the Toronto third baseman who was waiting to catch a fly ball. The third baseman, thinking the shortstop was calling him off, moved out of the way and the ball dropped. These are both silly and childish, and wouldn’t be tolerated in a Saturday beer league, let alone the majors. You can maybe see some rookie pulling stuff like that, not a multiple MVP-winning superstar who just happens to be the highest-paid player in baseball. Then again, firing his agent and negotiating his own contract with the Yankees was a bold move — anyone who tells Scott Boras to go F himself gets a thumbs-up from me.

There’s been a lot of talk in the past year or so about his relationship with Madonna, but I have no interest in his love life. Maybe he left his wife for Madonna, maybe his marriage was over anyway and he and Madonna hooked up after, I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t really understand why anyone else does either, but it seems that a lot of people care about a lot of these types of things that have no bearing on anything. If that weren’t the case, what would Perez Hilton do with his life?

As for the steroid thing, my impression of A-Rod didn’t get any worse after hearing this, mainly because it’s almost an assumption that at the time, everyone was taking something, so this is hardly a revelation. But (I’m “telling you why” now) at least Rodriguez had the stones to say “Yes I did it. It was stupid and I’m sorry” which is more than you can say for the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa. Yes, he was interviewed last year and specifically asked whether he took the drugs, and he lied. I’m not absolving him of that, but you can understand that nobody is going to admit to something like that if there isn’t any proof. But once the allegations came out, he did the same as Andy Pettitte and immediately came clean. With Clemens, Bonds, et al, there is proof, or at least very strong evidence, and still they deny taking the drugs. Who do they think they’re fooling?

Is it possible that A-Rod doesn’t regret a second of it and is just saying this because it’s what people want him to say? Absolutely. But even if his regret is fake, it still takes balls to say it knowing that now that he’s admitted it, thousands (if not millions) of baseball fans will never forgive him. Barring injury, Rodriguez likely has at least seven or eight years left in his career (there’s nine left on his Yankee contract) but is already a lock for the Hall of Fame. For someone in that position, admitting something like this could have serious repercussions on whether he gets in at all (just ask the aforementioned Mr. McGwire, although McGwire was never a lock in the first place even without the drug scandal) — as someone on SportsCentre said this morning, “sports writers have long memories”. For someone who has aspirations of entering the Hall of Fame (and what ball player doesn’t?), this kind of admission takes courage.

Now, it could also be argued that once the allegations came out, A-Rod had two options:

  1. Admit taking the drugs and look like a cheating douchebag, or
  2. Lie about taking the drugs and look like a lying douchebag since nobody would believe him anyway

so it’s not like he just called up SI out of the blue and said “Hey guess what? I did steroids!” But not only did Rodriguez do the “honourable” thing and admit wrongdoing, he did not blame his trainer or doctor or anyone else. He did not say that someone gave him this stuff without his knowledge or consent, or told him it was legal. He took responsibility himself, saying that he didn’t know exactly what the stuff was (i.e. the names of the drugs), but he knew full well that it was illegal (though technically not banned by baseball at the time) and he took it anyway. He specifically said during his interview that he did not take responsibility for every substance entering his body, and that was his own fault. While I can’t respect what he did, I do respect him for telling the truth, unlike so many of his fellow players.

Becks and Bucks

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On Prime Time Sports the other day, McCown and Brunt were talking about soccer, and how David Beckham is currently “on loan” from the LA Galaxy to an Italian soccer team. Now there is talk that he or the Italian team will ask the Galaxy if he can stay permanently, presumably dissolving his $20 million/year contract with MLS.

So let’s go over this: Becks signs a contract that makes him one of the highest paid athletes in the world, rivalling baseball players like Alex Rodriguez. This in a league where the minimum player salary is $11,000/year. Becks makes 15 times the salary of the second-highest-paid player in the league.

He played in MLS for one year. He was injured for much of the season and when he did play, he didn’t play very well, or at least not head and shoulders better than everyone else. His team finished tied for last overall. Then after the season, he went to Italy and has been playing like a star again, and now he may not return to the Galaxy at all.

Brunt says that the Galaxy may actually let him go, but the thing that stunned me was him saying that even if Beckham never returns to MLS, the deal was worth it because of all the publicity they got, as well as extra tickets sold and stuff. “They sold a lotta t-shirts”, Brunt says. How is the deal worth it? Sure MLS made a ton of extra money last season by signing Beckham (I’m assuming here that the extra revenue brought in last year was more than the money paid to Beckham), but what’s the long term impact? There were a lot of people who bought tickets and t-shirts last year strictly because of Beckham, and I’m sure that some of them will return as MLS fans this year even if he doesn’t come back, but I suspect that those that do return will be in the minority. ESPN has already cancelled their regular Thursday night soccer telecast because of declining ratings, and that was with Beckham in the league.

It’s all about perception. From an outsider, like me and the vast majority of North America, it looked like once Beckham got to the US, he realized how low the level of play was compared to Europe and as soon as a European club gave him a chance to play there, he bolted. If this happens, the league will look like a joke, and the MLS people will look like idiots for giving him this immense contract that turned out to be such a colossal failure that they cancelled it after only one year.

I suspect that if Becks does not return, MLS revenues next season will return to their pre-Beckham days, meaning that other than the windfall of extra cash brought in during 2008, the long-term impact of the Beckham contract was precisely zero.

Movie Reviews: Inkheart and Hotel for Dogs

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We saw a couple of movies in the last week with the boys. Last Friday we saw Inkheart, based on a very popular book series. Gail’s read the first book of the series, but I knew nothing about it going in. We were a bit concerned about this one, since Ryan is pretty sensitive when it comes to movies — he doesn’t like anything scary, and tends to really empathize with the characters, so if something bad happens to them, he gets pretty upset. Gail and I rented a movie called Bridge to Terabithia a little while ago to see if the boys would like it — we thought it was very good, and there were certainly parts that the boys would like, but one very sad thing happens in the film, and Ryan would have cried for a week. We won’t be suggesting that movie to him anytime soon. Anyway, like I said, we were a little concerned that this one might be too scary, but they were fine.

The plot was interesting — there are people who have the ability to bring characters out of books by reading the books aloud. Unfortunately, when they bring someone out, someone from our world goes in. Brendan Fraser is one such person, but hasn’t read anything aloud in nine years, after bringing characters out of a book called Inkheart and losing his wife into the book in the process. The character he brought out has been chasing him ever since, trying to get Fraser’s character to read him back into the book. Gail said that a bunch of things were cut from the book or rewritten, as pretty much always happens when making a movie from a book. Since I hadn’t read the book, I figure I shouldn’t have been able to tell what had been changed, but there were a few instances where I could, usually because things that should be quite difficult and time-consuming happened quickly and easily – Elinor’s change of heart for example, as well as convincing Fenoglio (who was very English for a guy with an Italian name living in Italy) that characters had been pulled out of his book into the real world.

ObNit: OK, this one is really pushing it. It’s never revealed where Fraser’s character and his daughter live, but considering they hop in the car and drive to Italy on a moment’s notice, it’s likely somewhere in continental Europe. (The book is German, so presumably the book’s characters live in Germany.) After twelve years of living in Germany, wouldn’t the father’s American accent change somewhat? And why would his daughter have a British accent after living in Germany with her American father (her British mother has been gone since she was three)? I agree, in terms of plot holes, that’s one pretty thin.

I thought the acting was very good, particularly Paul Bettany, who was excellent as Dustfinger (and completely unrecognizable from his Silas character from The Da Vinci Code). Fraser is no Dustin Hoffman, but he has become an actual actor, not just the doofus from George of the Jungle. Eliza Bennett (I got a kick out of the actress’s name) was also very good, though she seemed older than the twelve her character is supposed to be. Andy Serkis was suitably slimy as the bad guy Capricorn, and Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren were also good in smaller roles.

For a while, whenever I heard the name Brendan Fraser, I thought of movies like Encino Man, Airheads, George of the Jungle, Blast from the Past, Dudley Do-Right (to be fair, none of which I have ever seen). I would see his name on a movie poster and immediately think “OK, there’s a movie I can skip”. I remember wondering if I could ever take him seriously as an actor. But after The Mummy series, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now Inkheart, he seems to have done a pretty good job of reinventing himself as a real actor, not just a goofy guy that does physical comedy.

The other movie we saw was Hotel for Dogs, which we saw specifically because the kids wanted to see it. I had precisely zero interest in seeing this movie, but hey, when you’re a dad, that’s what you do. But it turned out to be a pretty decent movie. Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon (Matt’s brother) are very funny as wanna-be hair-rocker foster parents, though how they would remain foster parents once any child care worker sees their apartment is beyond me. The movie did have its silly parts (which is why the kids liked it), but the poop humour was kept to a minimum, and thankfully, there wasn’t a single scene where the dogs talked or winked or raised their eyebrows or otherwise had their faces digitally enhanced and anthropomorphized. I hate that. If you’re want to have an animal with human characteristics in your movie, make it animated (Bolt, Finding Nemo, a zillion others).

I do wonder why more wasn’t made of Bruce’s ability to conjure up crazy devices for entertaining the dogs. Bernie really couldn’t find foster parents to look after a sweet and caring girl and her genius brother? I also thought it was awfully nice of the unseen pet store owner to let his employees leave the store and use the van whenever they wanted. And where did the kids come up with the hundreds of dollars to buy all the required dog food? And who arranged (and paid) for the dumpster full of “doggy doo” to be picked up? Did none of the strays they found have fleas or any other condition that might require the services of a vet?

Near the end, when Bernie stood up and looked like he was going to make a speech, I was kind of hoping that he would explain some loophole in the law that got the kids off, or that he had purchased the hotel and so the dog catchers were on his property, or something like that rather than making a “Come on, everyone, just look at these adorable dogs! They’re a family!” type speech, but no such luck. But overall, this was less of a kid movie and more of a family movie. Don’t bother going without the kids — it ain’t that good — but kids and parents alike will enjoy it. Not like Curious George, during which Gail and I both fell asleep.

I suppose I really should just shut up and enjoy movies, rather than continually pointing out flaws. But I can’t.

Out go the lights

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I’ve written a couple of times in the past about environmentalism (here) and energy conservation (here and here), and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Humans have apparently used up about half of all the oil reserves on Earth. Not only are we using oil at an ever-increasing rate, which means we’re going to burn through the second half (see what I did there?) much faster than the first half, but second half of the oil reserves are much harder to get to than the first. Since we’ve only really been using oil since the industrial revolution, this means that we might have a couple of hundred years of oil left, probably much less. If we don’t find sustainable and renewable sources of energy by then, well, pardon my French, but we’re pooched. And then there is the added complication of global warming and carbon emissions. There are some that say that global warming may be happening but is not caused by humans. This is certainly possible, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on it, but I cannot imagine that the chemicals we’re regularly dumping into the atmosphere in unbelievable amounts are having no impact.

And yet, there are still people who don’t get the message, and we as a society don’t seem concerned. It’s February, for crying out loud, and there are still houses in my neighbourhood that have their Christmas lights on. I’m not talking about lights still being up (ours remain up until spring, when it’s safe to climb on the roof to take them down), I mean actually on.

We were in Brantford on Friday, and on the way home (around 9:30pm) we drove by a garden centre on Hwy 5 that had a big illuminated sign out front that said “Closed for the season”. I understand that they want to keep their business in people’s minds so that in the spring, people will remember that garden centre on Hwy 5 and go there. If the sign is off all winter, people might think that it’s closed permanently, or might simply not see it and therefore not register that there’s a garden centre there. In that respect, it’s in the business’s best interest to have the sign lit.

But the garden centre is closed from roughly October until April, so it’s possible that for seven months of the year, this sign is on all night every night, advertising a business that is closed. I suspect that the number of people who drive by that sign at 3:30am and think “Hey, there’s a garden centre here! I’ll have to come back here in the spring!” is pretty low. Perhaps I’m not giving the business owners enough credit; it could be that the sign comes on at dusk and goes off around midnight rather than staying on all night. This is certainly not unlikely. And perhaps they’re using very energy-efficient lighting — also not unlikely. And maybe there’s a little solar panel on top that gives some energy so they use less from the power grid. Hmmm…. possible, but probably not. Or maybe there’s a big solar panel on top that provides all the energy and this sign is completely off the grid. Now we’re getting into pipe dream territory.

On a somewhat-related note, the men’s bathroom at work used to have a sign by the door asking people to turn the lights off when they leave if there’s nobody there. For a few months, this worked — most of the time when I entered the room and it was empty, the lights were off. (There’s one light that stays on all the time, but the switch controls three or four other lights. I think that one light is fine by itself, so I almost never turn the lights on anyway.) Then the sign by the door fell down and vanished, and now when I enter the room, the lights are on about half the time. People: just because the sign isn’t there anymore doesn’t mean you need to leave the lights on!

Ship it now, test it later

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There’s a question on StackOverflow entitled “What real life bad habits has programming given you?”, which is quite hilarious for programmers. Answers include things like thinking 256 is a nice round number, wanting to use Ctrl-F on an actual book, or starting to count items at 0 and ending up with one less than everyone else.

This may seem unrelated, but bear with me. Shortly after Ryan was first born, I decided that children, particularly babies, were badly designed:

  • babies need to eat, but don’t know how right away, and frequently spit up what they’ve already eaten or refuse to eat. It takes years before a child can even make himself a bowl of cereal.
  • babies need to sleep, but getting them to go to sleep (or stay asleep) can be challenging. When Ryan was a baby, he wouldn’t go to sleep by himself; we had to walk with him until he fell asleep in our arms and then gently put him in his crib. If he wasn’t sufficiently asleep (read: unconscious), he’d wake up and you’d have to start all over. Sometimes we’d have to walk with him for 45 minutes before we could go back to sleep ourselves.
  • babies can’t roll over for a few months after they’re born, can’t crawl until six months, and can’t walk for the better part of a year. Baby deer are walking within minutes of birth.
  • children are self-centred. They have tantrums when things don’t go the way they want, even if the circumstances are beyond anyone’s control, or if getting their way would inconvenience or even hurt others. Older kids have been known to give their parents attitude (and I’m one of the lucky parents whose children have reached that stage), and teenagers sometimes take “attitude” to a whole new level.
  • some babies in the animal kingdom are on their own from the moment they are born. Others are under the care of their parents for a few years. Human children frequently live with their parents for twenty years (sometimes more), or about 25% of the average human lifespan.

Despite these challenges, parents continue to love and nurture their children, so obviously parents are generally better designed than children. However, children turn into parents without having been “re-designed”, so it occurs to me that the real problem is not with design, which means it must be implementation. Obviously babies are born before they’re really ready — before all the bugs have been worked out, before things have been streamlined and optimized.

The real problem is that babies are shipped while still in early beta.

Games people play

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I read an article on BoingBoing today called “The case against Candy Land“. The author writes (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) about how video games are far more educational for kids than some classic board games like Candy Land, where whether you win or lose depends entirely on the random arrangement of the cards, and not on any skill on the part of the player. If I play chess with my six-year-old, I can almost guarantee that I will beat him every time, because I have some skill at the game — very limited skill, admittedly, but more than him, which is all that matters. If we play Candy Land, however, he is just as likely to win as I am, since no skill is necessary. You don’t even have to know how to count. In particular, there are no decisions to be made.

I have noticed this with my kids’ games as they get older. The older the kids at which the game is targetted, the more decisions they need to make to be good at the game. As a kid, my sister and I played a card game called “war”. You shuffled the deck, then dealt out half the deck to each player. Each player turned over a card and whoever had the higher card won both cards. When you run out of cards, you take the cards you’ve won, shuffle them up, and keep going. If you both put down the same card, that’s a war. Each player deals out three cards face down, then turns one over, and the same rules apply. First one out of cards loses. It didn’t take long before I got completely bored with this game because even as a kid I realized that nothing I did mattered. There were no decisions to be made. Other than the speed at which I could deal the cards out or turn them over, there was no “getting good” at war. Candy Land is the same, as is snakes and ladders.

A game like Sorry or Trouble, or a similar game we like called Aggravation, also involves counting, but some decision-making as well. When you roll a one, do you bring out a new piece, or move an existing piece one space? If you have more than one piece out, which one do you move on any given turn? If you have the chance to either take someone out (“Sorry!”) or move one of your pieces into your safe area, which do you do? I really noticed the difference when playing snakes and ladders one day with Gail and Nicky. The phone rang and Gail went to answer it, asking me to play for her. I did and after three or four turns, she returned. It had never really occurred to me before, but that’s when I realized that the outcome of the game was going to be exactly the same whether I played her pieces or she did.

Ryan is starting to figure this out. There are some games, like snakes and ladders, that he used to like but doesn’t like so much anymore. I’m sure if I asked him, he couldn’t say specifically why; he’d just say that it’s a game for younger kids and he wants to play older kids games. I’m sure that the real reason is that he realizes at some level that what he does has no effect on the outcome of the game. When playing snakes and ladders once, I told Ryan that I could write a computer program to play this game and it would be just as good as any human player. I think he was impressed by that, but someday he’ll realize that it’s really not that impressive. It’s not that I can do it because I’m a great programmer — I couldn’t write a similar program for Monopoly, for example — but because it’s purely an algorithm with no decisions. Pick a random number from 1 to 6, move that many squares, go up a ladder if you’re at the bottom and down a snake if you’re at the top, and repeat until you get to the top.

As you get older, you get into games where more decisions are necessary, from Uno to checkers to Monopoly to backgammon to the game where all you do is make decisions, chess. In fact if you get to a point in a chess game where you don’t have a decision to make about what to do, you may be in check and are very likely in deep trouble.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that games such as Candy Land serve no purpose. They teach things like playing nicely with others, taking turns, and how to win and lose graciously. But if you’re over the age of 6 and looking for a challenging game, Candy Land may not be the one for you.

The Rock needs a Brian

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A couple of years ago, the Toronto Raptors hired Bryan Colangelo as their new president and general manager. Colangelo was a successful GM in Phoenix, and is widely respected throughout the league. He replaced Rob Babcock, a rookie GM who did a lousy job with the Raptors and made them into a laughing stock. Hiring Colangelo was seen as a very important move for the Raptors, showing that they were willing to spend the money to hire the best person to rebuild the team, regardless of how much it cost.

This past month, the Leafs hired Brian Burke as their new president and general manager. Burke was a successful GM in Anaheim, and is widely respected throughout the league. Ignoring Cliff Fletcher’s brief stint as interim GM, Burke replaced John Ferguson, Jr., a rookie GM who did a lousy job with the Leafs and made them into a laughing stock. Hiring Burke was a seen as a very important move for the Leafs, showing that they were willing to spend the money to hire the best person to rebuild the team, regardless of how much it cost. (It also showed that they were willing to give Burke complete control over the hockey operations, something that Ferguson did not have.)

The Toronto Rock currently have Mike Kloepfer as general manager. This is his first such job in the NLL (i.e. he was a rookie GM when hired), and he has done a lousy job with the Rock, turning them into a laughing stock. Superstar Colin Doyle was traded away because he didn’t get along with rookie coach Glenn Clark — this before Clark had ever coached an NLL game. In return, the Rock got Ryan Benesch, who went on to be named Rookie of the Year in 2007. But Benesch was inexplicably benched for the last two games of 2008 and the first two games of 2009, and then traded to Edmonton for draft picks. Once in Edmonton, Benesch admitted that he had also had disagreements with Clark, and so he was also shipped off. The inescapable conclusion: “Disagree with Coach Clark, and you are outta here. We got rid of Doyle and Benesch for doing it, so don’t think your job is safe, regardless of how good you are.” The Rock are in trouble if Luke Wiles or Lewis Ratcliff (or, God forbid, Bob Watson) have issues with Clark. I wonder if Rock management has considered the possibility that if both Doyle and Benesch had issues with Clark, maybe it’s Clark who should have been fired?

See a pattern here? In all three cases, a rookie GM took over and screwed up the team. In two of those cases, he was then fired and replaced with someone who is successful and respected. And the guy’s name was Br[i|y]an. We can only hope that the Rock will follow the same pattern (even though they’re not owned by MLSE like the other two). So who’s the Rock’s Br[i|y]an?

The best GMs in the league right now would have to be Darris Kilgour and Marty O’Neill. Darris (who’s a helluva coach as well) is likely a Bandit for life, and I can’t imagine the Rock being able to lure him away from Buffalo, so count him out. Marty O’Neill has been named GM of the year for two straight years. He’s the original GM of the Minnesota Swarm, and they have improved every year. It’s likely that O’Neill won’t want to leave Minnesota while the Swarm are still improving, so until they’ve peaked he’s not likely going anywhere. Now, it’s possible that having my vote to win the west this year is not what O’Neill would consider to be the aforementioned peak, so he is probably out until at least the end of this season.

Would the Rock follow their fellow Toronto teams and grab a name from the past (Cliff Fletcher, Don Matthews, Cito Gaston)? There are three former Rock GMs currently in the NLL: Ed Comeau in New York, Johnny Mouradian in San Jose, and Terry Sanderson, who’s an assistant coach in Calgary. It’s unlikely they’d go back to Sanderson (who’d immediately trade for Josh again) since they only fired him two seasons ago and replaced him with the current guy. Comeau was never really given a chance — after only six games, he was fired and replaced with Sanderson. Mouradian is the only real possibility here, since he is the only one who wasn’t fired; he left to become the San Jose GM and coach. He’s since been named GM of the year and inducted into the NLL Hall of Fame.

Other possibilities:

  • there is a Brian that has experience in the NLL — Brian Silcott. He’s never been a GM, but he has been an NLL and MLL player and MLL head coach, and he is the VP of the Portland LumberJax.
  • Brian’s brother Kurt Silcott was the GM of the both the Buffalo Bandits and the Calgary Roughnecks. He’s currently employed by the Knighthawks, though not as their GM.
  • Jamie Batley was GM and head coach of the Chicago Shamrox, and has also been the coach of the Colorado Mammoth.
  • Chris Hall was the head coach of the Calgary Roughnecks for several years, though he’s never been a GM.

I know! I have the solution. It’s foolproof. Hire Whoopi Goldberg and have her channel the spirit of the late Les Bartley. She’d have to change her name to Brian first.

Update: Less than four hours after I posted this, the Rock have fired Glenn Clark and hired Jamie Batley as head coach. No mention of replacing the GM, and no mention of what’s happening to assistant coach Jim Veltman.

The planet’s really bad now because of the Dark Side

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For any Star Wars fans out there, like me, this video really made me laugh. It’s a video of someone who hasn’t seen Star Wars (“I’ve seen bits of it”) telling the story of Star Wars. Her retelling of it is very funny, but the animation is priceless.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Another stupid trade

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The Rock made another stupid trade today. 2006 2007 Rookie of the Year Ryan Benesch, who the Rock received in the Colin Doyle trade, and solid defender Derek Suddons were sent to the Edmonton Rush for a couple of draft picks. Benesch was benched for the last two games of last season and the first two of this season, but during the off-season, Rock GM Mike Kloepfer was quoted as saying that there was no problem with Benesch, and he was an important part of the Rock’s future. Guess not.

I don’t understand this move at all. First off, Benesch had a great rookie year (did I mention he was Rookie of the Year?) and his numbers did drop last year, but it’s not like they fell off substantially. He was still the third leading scorer on the team. Good defenders are never flashy and don’t put up big numbers, but Suddons was one of the better defenders on the team. And yet all the Rock get in return are two draft picks? Granted, next year’s draft is said to be one of the strongest ever, but still, you never know what you’re going to get with draft picks. And now, what do the Rock have to show for getting rid of Colin Doyle (who, incidentally was recently ranked number one on NLLInsider.com’s top 50 players in the NLL)? Chad Thompson, Cam Woods (traded for Kevin Fines) and a few draft picks. Thompson is decent and Woods is a very good defender, but I’d take Doyle over them any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I didn’t have a problem with the Wilson/Wiles/Hoar trade this past off-season, but after the Doyle/Benesch one, this one ranks right up there with the dumbest trades in Rock history.

Movie Review: Eagle Eye

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We watched Eagle Eye the other night. I was looking forward to it since it looked like a pretty good action flick and from an action point of view it certainly fit the bill. From a plausibility standpoint, however, it was just way the hell out there. I understand about suspension of disbelief and all that, but holy crap.

Without giving away too much, some of the things the lady on the phone is able to do are just way beyond belief. She can control every cell phone and security camera in the country, not to mention street lights, construction cranes, subways, and even the demo TVs at Circuit City. At one point Jerry (Shia) turned his phone off, and within seconds, the phone of the guy sitting next to him on the train started to ring. To make that work, she’d have to:

  • have a high-quality camera in the train car
  • use it to take a picture of the guy’s face
  • use facial recognition software to figure out who the guy is, with an accuracy of one person out of 350 million
  • find that person’s cell phone number

Or maybe she could analyze the GPS coordinates of every cell phone in that area and figure out which one was physically closest to Jerry’s. Which is off. On a moving train.

In another scene, she kills someone by somehow causing a power line to break. The broken wire falls and fries the guy. Even with complete control over the power grid, how could she cause a power line to break? And assuming she could do that, how could she do it in such a way that she knew that it would fall and hit the guy, who happened to be running at the time? Later she has Jerry and Rachel rob an armored car for a briefcase with a time-release lock that they risk their lives several times to try and protect. And when you think about where they are when it opens and what’s in it, you realize that there were a thousand simpler ways to do it, all of which are less likely to fail that the one she chose.

One of the reasons she needed Jerry in the first place (to impersonate his twin brother) is moot, since the FBI would have revoked all of his security codes once he died. This part did make me wonder, however, if the real-life military (or CIA or FBI or whatever) would give top secret clearance to someone who had an identical twin, just for this reason. Their fingerprints and retinal scans would differ, but their DNA would be identical. Don’t know about voice prints or even how accurate voice print identification is.

Anyway, LaBeouf was pretty good, though his character seemed unnecessarily abrasive at times. If someone put $750,000 in my bank account and filled my apartment with stolen military stuff and then I was arrested because of it, I might decide that being a dick to the FBI agent who’s interrogating me would be a bad idea.

Having said all that, I have to say I did enjoy it. There were lots of car chases and explosions and overall, it was fun, if silly.

On a side note, I cannot watch a Shia LaBeouf movie without thinking he looks like Wil Wheaton:

Shia LaBeouf Wil Wheaton
Shia LaBeouf Wil Wheaton