Rubes

Basically, you could just substitute "Star Wars" for "the Matrix" in your statements and it would apply perfectly. The problem with the SW prequels, as I see it, is precisely what you say: they would have been great if they could have tied a better story to the incredible effects. The story in the prequels was so convoluted and incoherent it had no flow and made little sense, and on top of that the dialogue is so bush-league it's embarrassing. Contrast the prequels to the original SW movie -- in the prequels, there are no characters that draw our attention and emotion. Who are we supposed to care about? The guy who we already know is going to become a ruthless villain, acted by a horrible actor with the worst lines of dialogue quite possibly ever written or delivered? The young Obi Wan, who runs around doing...something vaguely political and confusing, while spewing grade school dialogue? The "queen"? Really? Everyone else is just a cardboard cutout. The problem with both of these series is that the writers and directors tried to do far too much with the sequels, to the point where it just seems like (1) they're trying to cram far too much material into the allotted space, and (2) they're trying way too hard to come up with creative, complex explanations for all of the cool things in the original films that made them so fascinating. The great things about both The Matrix and SW:IV are: (1) they tell simple, classic stories in the context of cool sci-fi settings, and (2) they focus on a small number of clearly defined characters. Neither the Matrix sequels nor the SW prequels followed this formula -- they both evolved from simple to complex, and from few interesting characters to large numbers of characters that I couldn't give a crap about. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with complexity in movies or stories, of course. If you're going to do it, though, it has to be done carefully and gracefully. Both the Matrix sequels and SW prequels come across as anything but. I'm not sure any actor could overcome the horrid dialogue in those movies, but good points. I mean, I consider Samuel Jackson and Ewan MacGregor to be pretty solid actors, and even they are forgettable in these roles.

Thanks so much, this was gold.

EJ should be making mistakes now. This is how he will learn. Should we expect that he already knows everything?

I thought for a second this was going to be a thread about the next most awesome player name coming out in the 2014 draft.

Mike or Astro could put up a bag of words and it would still be more awesome than anything else written about it.

I don't think I had quite as deep an interpretation of this as you. Basically, the transcripted conversation went like this: I don't know where the next life "prediction" comes in, but I see this really as simple as the issue with the Latin quotation. Like Morpheus says later in the film, "She told you exactly what you needed to hear, that's all. Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize, just as I did, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." Just as The Oracle knew that "no one can tell you you're in love," she knew that no one could just tell Neo he's the One and he'd suddenly realize his potential. He had to walk the path, and make himself believe it through doing it. In my mind at least, it's a nice, straightforward theme that makes sense. I'm sure there are some religious/Jesus themes involved here as well, but I just can't get into all of the other crazy, convoluted deeper stuff that goes into multiple lives and stuff. Besides, the dialogue in 2 and 3 stunk too much for me to get past that.

I can't tell if you think that's unfair to the Matrix trilogy or the Star Wars movies.

Jeez, guys, lighten up. I was just making the point that a ton of fans go to the Jets training camp. I actually misread the original post and didn't get that he was referring specifically to people from Syracuse.

They did have 6,000 fans at that practice, compared with 1,500 at SJF yesterday...

I guess we'll find out for sure in 7 days...

The guy has some talent, but this sounds more like a temporary replacement for Caussin. Marrone is probably doing the guy a favor by getting him some camp exposure, and maybe some team will put him on their practice squad. Sounds like the Bills are already set at TE, probably with Chandler, Smith, and Gragg.

Damn, I was wondering what took you so long. So when is someone going to start labeling him as "injury prone"?

Best of luck with that, NG. I can't imagine what you're going through.

This is good news.

11-3

Actually, based on his size, I'd say he's more like Jabari Greer 0.5.

Good thing Graham, Harrington, and Maiorana didn't take jobs in a place like NYC if they get so defensive and irritated by the public that easily.

Sounds like the coach trying to motivate those two more than anything else.

Awesome stuff, thanks again Astro. But nothing about EJ? Chandler had a scheduled day off today. I'm more concerned about Elliott...sounds like he was having a great camp to this point. (But not that concerned.)

...which still would have been followed up with subsequent questions.

Like K-9 said, it really wasn't a big deal. The problem is what happened afterward. I respect JW for taking the high road in the aftermath, but the blogs, tweets, and articles that followed from guys like Graham, Harrington, and Maiorana was unfortunately not very flattering to them.

Fantastic writeup. Thanks!!

I find it interesting that the whole reason for this story is that Marrone became irritated and defensive, and now we're seeing the local media getting irritated and defensive from the backlash.

Horrible drafting, particularly in the first round, surely didn't help.

WR. I've heard him mentioned a few times, saw a couple pics of him making catches. Seems to be solid, but not spectacular. I'm getting really excited about this WR corps. If TJ is really improving like we're hearing, and Woods is a stud like people say, we're looking good with some keys guys backing them up.