The bizarre

Floyd Mayweather knocks out The Big Show, but not before playing up the drama for the crowd.








Years later, the theatrics of wrestling and the popularity of said performances don't seem to have changed much.







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The cast of the upcoming G.I. Joe movie includes:


Channing Tatum as Duke


Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander


Sienna Miller as The Baroness


Ray Park as Snake Eyes


Dennis Quaid as General Hawk


Arnold Vosloo as Zartan


Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty


Jonathan Pryce as the U.S. President


Marlon Wayans as Ripcord







Things I Like

* Modern Love, the weekly column in the Sunday Styles section of the NYTimes. I enjoy the introspective, confessional nature of each installment. This past week's column, "Mom, It’s Me, Your Son, Finally," was a good example of its tone. It's interesting to me how my tastes for various sections of newspapers and magazines has changed over time.


* New Balance 1220 running shoe series, of which the latest incarnation is the 1223. My flat, wide feet are thankful for shoes that, unlike Nikes, aren't made for people with perfect feet, narrow, high-arched. I guess that's to be expected from a shoe company named after a Greek goddess. The 1220's don't change too much from generation to generation, so when I walked into the store looking for a replacement for my 1221's, the saleswoman simply handed me the same size for the 1223s, and I walked out and was running in them fifteen minutes later. There's something to be said for product continuity in the shoe market.


I loved the Air Jordan VIII. It was the first pair I ever owned, and the day my mom bought it for me from a sports store in a mall is still a tactile memory. But subsequent models of the shoe changed so drastically that they just didn't fit my feet anymore.


* Runner's high (proof it exists?). I'd always thought runner's high was the occasional feeling that one could run forever without getting tired, but the definition in the article implies that it's something you always experience during running. Which may be why I have not experienced it in so long.


* Taco trucks. Seemingly an LA institution, the Hulu dev team seems to find a new one every week, each better than the next. I have yet to find one comprehensive listing of all taco trucks, though partial coverage can be found at The Great Taco Hunt and this Google Map.



Our Story Begins

Tobias Wolff, the writer who got me hooked on short stories when I rented a collection of his from Green Library while still a freshman in college, has come out with a new collection. It contains 10 new stories and 21 stories from his previous collections, some with edits.




The truth is that I have never regarded my stories as sacred texts. To the extent that they are still alive to me I take a continuing interest in giving that life its best expression. This satisfies a certain aesthetic restlessness, but I also consider it a form of courtesy. If I see a clumsy or superfluous passage, so will you, and why should I throw you out of the story with an irritation I could have prevented? Where I have felt the need for something better I have answered the need as best I can for now.

If you've never read any of his fiction, I give this collection my highest recommendation.



Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories



Juicy

Bill Richardson spoke to Hillary Clinton before announcing his endorsement of Barack Obama. Said Richardson:



"Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations."



James Carville, reacting to Richardson's decision:



"Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."




EW

Entertainment Weekly has an article on Hulu in today's issue. Online at EW.com, Ken Tucker created a list of 10 videos, personal picks, discovered as he surfed Hulu over a work week. It's a good list that I'll have to work my way through sometime (yes, as with being a film student and having no time to watch movies, working at Hulu leaves you with little time to watch much TV, except in your spare time, on Hulu).


Always exciting to be in a magazine that is such a pop culture touchstone, but especially exciting for Christina, our fearless PR leader.



The speech

I've read the transcript of Obama's speech a few times now. He's been attacked for being all talk, but this speech, said to be one that he wrote himself (unique only in how few of our leaders, political or business, write their own speeches and statements and quotes these days), reveals how and what he thinks. In that, words matter a great deal.


What do his words reveal? That he has a deep understanding and empathy for the racial hurt in this country, an unwillingness to reduce the complexity of these issues to politically digestible soundbites, and an honesty that has made him the most refreshing and exciting candidate in politics in my lifetime.


He speaks of Reverend Wright, denounces his pastor's' words, and yet does not forsake him. Who among us doesn't have one racist relation whose views have made us roll our eyes in exasperation or disgust, and yet in every other respect is a person we care for?



And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.


I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.


These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.




Slaughter rule

March Madness is a great sporting event, but as I've said many times before, a good percentage of the excitement lies in the format of the event, 65 teams, single elimination, tournament style (its suitability as a large-scale gambling event doesn't hurt, either).


If I were to improve the tourney, I might try to improve the quality of the 16 seeds. No top seed has ever lost in the first round to the 16 seed (Number 1 seeds are now 94-0 versus 16 seeds). A little dose of competitiveness from time to time in that game wouldn't hurt. UCLA won its first round game today 70-29. 70-29!


In an understatement, coach Ben Howland said of his decision to not play Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who sprained his left ankle last week versus USC, "I thought about it and I felt comfortable we would be able to get this one without him."



Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Happy day! Hulu added all of Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, maybe my favorite of all the seasons of the show. If you've never watched the show, you can catch up on the short 12 episode season 1 on Hulu and flow right into the full 22 episode second season.


The show's sophomore season is a television classic built on so many of the series' best romances: Buffy and Angel's tragic love affair, the beauty and the geek pairing of Cordelia and Xander, the odd couple of Willow and Oz, and even one between Watcher Giles and Jenny Calendar. As so many shows are working hard to crank out new episodes in the wake of the strike settlement, I can't think of too many better ways to fill your TV void.







Shout out from Gruber

Hulu got a nice little review from John Gruber at Daring Fireball today. It's always a bit more exciting to read about your work at a site you frequent in your own day-to-day life, and Daring Fireball is a daily read for me.



Hulu, the NBC-and-Fox-spearheaded free online video service, is out of beta, and it’s pretty sweet. The video quality is good, the selection is good, and the advertising is remarkably minimal — two mid-show ads of 15 or 30 seconds for a 22-minute show, for example. Individual skits from Saturday Night Live, like this one from Saturday’s show, are commercial-free. Real movies, like The Big Lebowski and The Usual Suspects have just two or three minutes of commercials — and are uncensored. They even have good URLs.


No download option, alas, so there’s no supported way to watch these things on your TV, but it’s pretty damn cool overall.




Why I wasn't wearing green

Because I forgot. My life contains no visible markers of upcoming holidays other than the commercial ones from retail stores. The only reason I know Easter is approaching is because the grocery store carries a lot of egg dye kits and those yellow gooey rabbits made of some unknown substance.


If I had remembered it was St. Patrick's Day, and if I were a woman, I would have tried to find an opportunity to send this e-card from someecards.