ajzepp

HFBD, KD!!!!

wow, I'm about 42 mins into Cloud Atlas and I'm exhausted! All this damn jumping around and tons of different characters thrown at you at once...ugh! Going to take a break and then continue with it...hopefully I'll feel different when it's over, but typically this is the sort of movie I have a hard time enjoying...way too much damn work!

I'm looking forward to a couple of guys who need to take the next step and who, seemingly, are poised to do so. Troupe, Bradham, Carrington, and yes, even Easley.

No doubt....I learned that lesson the hard way when I had a dispute with my landlord this past February. Sure enough, they showed me in the lease where I was wrong, so I just had to take my medicine. It was sort of funny, cause I had been very calm and professional the whole time, and once I saw where I needed to admit they were correct, it was almost like they had more respect for me than if I had actually been corrrect! Apparently people still argue and B word even when proven wrong. A little integrity goes a long way sometimes...sort of a sad testament, but true in this case.

"They signed the documents without looking. They said what usually their borrowers say in court: 'We have not read it,'” says Mikhalevich.

I just watched "The Place Beyond the Pines" last night, so might as well make it an "intense" double feature!

very cool, that makes me more interested in seeing it...I have a long weekend, so going to try to check it out tonight or tomorrow. I've heard mixed reviews on it, but I have a feeling it's going to strike a positive chord with me...

I love when the NFL Network does this "bounce around the league" thing when the games are on...and having the games staggered with start times of 730, 8, 9, and 10 makes for some really fun viewing. Gets me in the mood for the RED ZONE CHANNEL, BABY!!!! Thank God for football...we're good allllll the way until February.

Okay, good...I agree lol

lol, exactly...but would you laugh if that was a Bills coach?

If you're getting the impression that I didn't like the Matrix, I'm not doing a very good job of articulating my position...I LOVE the Matrix! And c'mon man, you can't be serious about the Jedi thing lol

That's exactly why I brought up the topic, but I guess that's what happens when you're more focused on making stupid comments than actually contributing something meaningful to the discussion. Anyway, I actually realized that I had another NFL contact through a friend of mine, so I reached out to them last night...he's been in camp with the Falcons, Bengals, and Dolphins. He said that the focus now is different than it used to be since it's much more of a year round business. The majority of players come into camp in pretty good shape, so they just need to get acclimated to the hitting and the game speed again before the regular season. He said there is usually a significant psychological component for those who had any sort of serious or season ending injury the year before...often times camp for them is therapeutic and they have to learn how to allow themselves to play at full speed again. Sometimes it takes peers/coaches to point out to them how they are still showing apprehension or holding back even when they don't realize it. But the intensity of camp has really been toned down from where it used to be, and he mentioned the Kory Stringer death as something every player is mindful of even though it happened years ago. I told him the stories I heard through Stepnoski from Camp Jimmy, and he said he thinks that was probably much more intense than anything he's been a part of, and then reiterated this was mainly because of a greater focus on year round conditioning. I asked him about the goofing around specifically and he said that the rules are sort of different depending on the player. Typically the vets have far more leeway in terms of attitude, but everyone is expected to be focused during team drills since it can put others at risk if one person isn't paying attention to what they're supposed to be doing. As others have mentioned, though, there is often a lot of goofing around during down time and sometimes it can appear that they're not entirely focused, but it's not something the coaches allow to go unchecked if it's an issue. That's all I can remember off the top of my head... Exactly, that's why I became interested after the other night's episode. All these teams are, reportedly, avoiding Hard Knocks like the plague, so that just makes me all the more curious as to whether it's a distraction to the players. Obviously many of them play to the camera, so it's interesting to know to what degree they have to account for or deal with that variable. The one thing that really was interesting to me was the way the defensive coach interacted with Harrison. He basically told Harrison to take it easy on the "merchandise" or something like that, referring to AJ Green, and Harrison essentially disregarded that and said if he did that it would look like he wasn't doing HIS job. The coach was sort of laughing it off while trying to get his point across at the same time, and the whole thing just looked awkward. I just was contrasting that with Mario Williams, since he's our most identifiable player on D, and his comments have always been indicative of compliance with what the coaching staff directed him to do. Having a chip on your shoulder is one thing...that can serve a purpose....but that looked borderline insubordinate to me.

I tweeted him about that a few days ago...both he and Burmeister said the same thing, that the Bills traded up for EJ so they think he should be the starter. Great report, as always...thanks for the hard work!!

Yeah, I wish I didn't feel that way...lol If you take the level of hatred for the Vader "Nooooooooooo!!!" in Sith, it's x100 for me when Neo was outside the Matrix and all of a sudden had magical psychokinetic abilities to just knock drones out of the sky with his mind. It just was a singular moment that represented the frustration that was building up by the time I got about half way through part 3. I've seen them both several times over the years to try and reconcile my hate for them, but ultimately it's a fail by the end every time. I can enjoy the second one enough in terms of how cool the effects are, but I'm always left with, "I know where this is all going.." and I just can't get away with it. I'm actually planning to watch the Wachowski's latest film, Cloud Atlas, pretty soon...so hopefully I can put the Matrix sequels behind me and get back to enjoying their work...cause I do find them both very interesting, and I'm grateful to them for giving us the first Matrix film to enjoy

"That's right...you show that turd who's boss!" I vote for Astro, as well, btw...love reading the camp feedback, especially from someone in position to really add some legit insight.

Okay, Im officially sick of Amanda now...I'm glad she's having a meltdown...maybe now McRae will get back to playing the game instead of sleeping all day.

I'm 6'2" and built like an NFL lineman...I doubt I could even get half of that thing down in 40 min...would be fun to try though! I wonder if it would be delicious, or if it would be overkill to the degree that it would be a let down?

I ask that every time I see that Man vs Food show come on...sure enough, most of the time the guy gets it done.

Okay, compare Darth Maul to Boba Fett. Can you seriously say that Boba Fett had a better fleshed out "why" and "how" motivations in the original films? This guy is one of the most popular characters ever, yet he did basically nothing. I think what has happened for a lot of people is that they're realizing that Star Wars really IS for kids. I've noticed FAR less objection to the prequels from those who are younger and weren't around when the originals were in the theaters. Those of us who grew up with Star Wars saw the films when we were still young, far less cynical, and far more willing to allow ourselves to get transported into another world for the sake of entertainment. George Lucas was focused far more on creating a new lesion of Star Wars fans - i.e. kids who saw it for the first time at the theater - than he was appeasing his long time fans who were hooked from their own childhood. I truly believe that's where a lot of the backlash comes from...and I can understand the resentment to a degree, but I think Lucas did get around to giving us original fans what we've been waiting for when he made Sith...we got our Darth Vader origin story. Segue this to Rubes comments...we already basically KNEW the story, so for that reason alone we're not going to have the same degree of discovery that we would have with a fresh story. We already knew it was a Vader origin story to begin with, and probably many of us had an idea of how it should go in our minds already. At least the Prequels didn't break their own rules...there were inconsistencies, of course, but the example I always beat to death in the matrix sequels is Neo developing abilities OUTSIDE the matrix, namely, psychokinesis and "force-like" abilities. That was the final straw for me, and it COMPLETELY took me out of the game. Definitely agree about how The Matrix and SW IV succeeded by telling "simple, classic stories in a cool sci-fi setting". That's a brilliant formula, IMO...and it certainly worked in both instances. EDIT: One more quick point that I thought of...I often hear people saying how there was no Han Solo/Harrison Ford level of awesomeness in the prequels. Keep in mind, we're talking about one of the most charismatic actors, not only of his generation, but ever. It's really not fair to use that as a point of contention when discussing the prequels, cause there just aren't lots of Harrison Fords walking around on the streets that we can just go sign up for the film. The guy is iconic, and he's played iconic characters his entire life. He's in very, very rare company.

Totally disagree. The level of focus in camp is dictated by the coaching staff and the environment. Camps today are different than what they were back twenty years ago, and if Hard Knocks were around during the early 90s Cowboys teams, you wouldn't see guys farting around during drills. Mark Stepnoski is a family friend and I remember very well hearing stories about what camp was like with Coach Helmet. I'm not talking about downtime...I'm talking about when they're engaged in the drills and the meat of practice.

I don't know how any fan of Star Wars could NOT geek out when General Grievous whipped out his extra arms and started going apeshiit with the quadsabres...that was intense as hell! To me, the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films completely took away from a brilliant original. The Star Wars prequels were sloppy in doing so, but they found a way to still add to the legacy of the franchise. They didn't advance it nearly as far as we had hoped, but it certainly didn't detract from it, IMO. To me, Phantom Menace was sort of like Jedi. If you take out all the Ewok crap in Jedi, you have some incredibly intense sequences, particularly when Luke is refusing to fight Vader at the end. In TPM, if you take out JarJar and a few other pieces of crap, you can salvage some pretty cool stuff there, as well. Darth Maul is probably my favorite character from the entire prequel trilogy. If the Matrix sequels would have tied a better story to the incredible effects, it would have been completely badass. I don't think there's any possible way they could have bettered the first film, but they could have found other ways to advance the franchise, IMO. And let me be clear, the only reason why I have as much hatred for the Matrix sequels as I do is because of how much I LOVED the original. If I had been lukewarm to the frist one, I wouldn't be this passionate in my hatred. It's just that the disappointment is so severe that I can't help but hate the latter efforts - particularly Revolutions.

I'm not really referring to intensity, though...I'm talking about focus. There was a scene where they were discussing the superhero thing while they were doing the rope ladder. Camp Rex two years ago is sort of what I'm talking about, though. The Jets ended up underachieving that season. I dunno...I don't really give a crap either way, it just seems that the superhero talk and the butt smooching by the coaches should take place off the field...not during the sessions. Hell, even back in HS, if we were farting around even a little during practice we'd get our asses chewed. actually that one WR who ended up being held out after he attempted a diving catch...that's the sort of attitude I would expect. He was pissed that he was being held out cause the guy wanted to work on his craft. I could be completely wrong, but I would expect the majority of our team - especially our younger guys - to have a similar attitude. And if I had some jackass who walked around antagonizing people and arguing with coaches, he'd be gone. Maybe that's why Harrison wears tiger stripes now instead of the yellow and black.

I"m watching this show - which I look forward to doing every year - and the thought that's going through my mind is, "if this were my team, I'd be embarrassed." I know they're trying to make an entertaining program, but you have guys farting around talking about which superhero power they'd want to have, Marvin Lewis blowing all sorts of sunshine up various players butts, and James Harrison making everything about James Harrison, all while they should be focusing on their damn work. How long are these sessions? Two? Maybe three hours tops? Somehow I doubt that Marrone and Pettine allow our players to be this unfocused...I could be completely wrong, but this team isn't exactly striking me as a team focused on winning a Super Bowl. I think part of this impression comes from watching a pretty fair bit of the NFL Network coverage of training camps around the league...I just don't see this sort of nonsense going on in other camps - not even Camp Rex. Is it just me?

I think people forget that Sith was actually met with very positive critical reception...it has an 80 on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an extremely strong score.

Definitely...I'll never put the prequels on par with the originals, but to me they were far better than the Matrix sequels....I'm certainly biased as an lifelong Star Wars fan, but I'm also on record many times saying that I consider the Matrix damn near perfect sci-fi and it's one of my all-time favorite films. And yeah, I'll never forget my brother's reaction when I screened Sith for him. He and I saw Phantom Menace like five times together in the theater...but then after Clones he signed off on the prequels and wasn't going to see Sith. I had set up my first projector home theater and was trying to entice him to stop over to see the 133" screen by watching Sith. He reluctantly agreed, and as soon as it was over the first thing he said was, "there's no way Lucas did this by himself...he had Spielberg or someone helping out with this one." He ended up liking the film quite a bit. When I saw it, it was the day it came out during a matinee showing. I went to the IMAX alone since I couldn't find anyone to go that afternoon, so I got to see it on a massive screen with a bunch of fellow SW nerds (probably more than half the audience was people sitting alone lol). I loved pretty much everything about it...particularly Anakin's turn and the Immolation scene. Intense as hell!