Your “Is It June-uary Where You Live?” Wednesday Open Thread

NFL Nuggets:

• Pete Carroll says it’s cool that Nate Robinson wants to try out, but has a slim likelihood of making a team, let alone the Seahawks. Kind of a strange look for a guy who normally looks at all the facts before rushing to judgment.
• Still with the ‘Hawks, Michael Bennett wants a new contract, and says seeing other guys get big deals is like “seeing your favorite girlfriend get married to someone else”. Since the GM was willing to freeze out Kam Chancellor, Bennett’s not really pushing that hard.
• Profootballtalk swept up the pencil shavings of ESPN and Deadspin reports about Jameis Winston to parse out the claim by Buccaneers wide receiver Louis Murphy that criticism of Winston is race-based, and claims Johnny Manziel gets better coverage because he’s white. Aside from being wrong on its face, Jameis Winston is considered a bad person because he has done some very bad things.
• According to ESPN, “Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy has said the National Football League is involved in “every aspect” of the club’s new stadium project after holding discussions with NFL executives this week.” Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. Also, who knew “Levy” was Cockney for “Kroenke”?
• ESPN also has a story about James Harrison, and how Deebo wants to keep playing until he’s 40. Also included – he got drug tested at his mom’s house during a visit. I bet that woman has a death stare for the ages.

Remember: it’s only 53 days until the Hall of Fame Game, and 84 days until the start of the regular season.

Soon, our days will be filled with meaningful content. Soon.

A brief rant – IT FUCKING SNOWED IN VANCOUVER YESTERDAY!

Granted, it was up in the local mountains, and was gone by noon. But still – June fucking 14th; it only got up to 10 Celsius / 50 Fahrenheit. That’s goddamned bullshit! It brings to mind an old Drew Carey routine:

Which then reminds me of classic Colbert

Of course this leads, inevitably, to God-Emperor Trump

Science!

Speaking of science, I found this gif on SPLOID. It’s mesmerizing.

Tonight’s sports action: Just baseball. Orioles @ Red Sox is the national game on ESPN2 (7:00) Seriously.

At least tomorrow brings us the first round of the US Open, USA vs Ecuador in hot Copa action from the CLink, and Game 6 in Cleveland, with the following questions:

1. Will they lose at home?
2. Will the sadness be sweeter or more bitter?
3. How many balls will Draymond Green hit?

But there’s nothing of significance tonight.

So, I’m talking movies. I could’ve put this on BringBackMatt, but the main page seems right for a light content day like this.

I’ve seen, in the last month, “Captain America: Civil War”

“X-Men: Apocalypse”

And “The Nice Guys”

While none stood out, each served their purpose of being delightfully entertaining.

Captain America was what “Age of Ultron” should have been, and was in every way a superior film. It handled the role of setting up future films quite well, and didn’t make the connections seem as forced as “Ultron” did. It was actually a nice conclusion to the Cap trilogy, and on their own worthy of the three-pack purchase, if you’re into that sort of thing. And – to repeat the answer I gave in an open thread a week ago – it was far-superior to “Batman v Superman”.

I would posit, however, that “Apocalypse” was a better film than “Civil War”, mostly because it was truer to the source material. People got bent out of shape with all the death and destruction, but that’s what those X-Men comics that helped raise me were all about. I hardly expect Captain America to be a documentary, but I also don’t expect them to have the accuracy & aim of The A-Team. Seriously, in Marvel movies, only the bad guys seem to kill; good guys wound or incapacitate in order to allow a soliloquy. X-Men movies accept their “fantasy” aspect and go overboard with the destruction, because it’s not the real world. (Unless Alex Jones is actually correct.) Willfully ignoring the “think of the children” crowd made it a fun movie, in the same way that the “Independence Day” movies love destroying landmarks.

The next step up from “Apocalypse” is “Deadpool”, which was the best superhero movie of the year. There was more violence in “Apocalypse”, but less gore; I guess that was the PG-13 difference, aside from language and a couple of boobs.

Both should be seen on a big screen, if only because it’ll help with the immersion. It’ll be fine on the 48″ at home, but I like seeing that stuff large.

“The Nice Guys” was a good story that could have used about 15 minutes trimmed off of it. It wasn’t as funny as the commercials made it seem, but it had good humour and a nice pace. I found the girl a tad annoying, but mostly because she had character traits that made her both the streetwise one and the naive waif, and the switching kept her role from having the consistency to be believable. But it was worth the price of admission to see Crowe & Gosling interact with each other, and setting the movie in the 1970s gave those scenes even more kick. It’ll be a good Netflix Saturday night.

Next up for me is either “Finding Dory” or “The Secret Life of Pets” with the nieces, or ID: Resurgence” or “Ghostbusters” by myself (since those aren’t wife-accompanied-type movies). Looking at this list, I’LL REGRET SOMETHING!