MXC

MXC (Most eXtreme elimination Challenge) is the best show that almost nobody knows about. I mentioned this show in my last post when I talked about The Office. I said how The Office had become my favorite show, but this is for only one reason- I never see MXC anymore. I used to watch it all the time, it was on when I came home from school, and it was on later at night. They used to have MXC marathons on the weekends and I would watch that show for hours. But now, it’s almost never on. So I did some searching, and I found it on Spike TV at 1 or 2 in the morning on Friday or Saturday. It always changes between those days, so I just have to guess when it will be on. It sucks.

MXC was my favorite show because I never stopped laughing. I would laugh at the opening commentaries, at Guy LeDouche, and at Captain Tenneal. I would laugh at the stupid games, at the names of the people, and at what the people said before they went to play. But most of all, I would laugh at the un-athletic, and un-coordinated Japanese people basically hurting themselves on a game show. They jump and run and fall into “today’s mystery septic sludge” and in doing so, they would make me laugh even harder.

For those of you who have not seen the show, you are missing out. It is witty and off-the-wall. Its humor is not only in the stupid people, but it’s in the dialogue of the commentators as well. The show is a real Japanese game show, which a couple of guys re-dubbed into English. They talk over what is really being said, and say completely random, completely sarcastic, and completely side-splitting comments.

They games are my favorite part. They are pointless and always very difficult, even for athletic people. They require skill that most people do not have. It is these people, who wipe out, that are the substance of the show. When they don’t succeed, they get eliminated. At the end of the show, there is a Most Painful Elimination segment, where the people who wiped out the worst are featured.

All I can say is that if you have not seen this show, you don’t know what you are missing yet. You need to stay up late one night and watch it, if anything, just to say you have seen it. But I promise you, it’s definitely worth it.

The Office

I know that this blog is supposed to be about movies, but I would like to talk about a TV show. This has become my favorite show on television, passing even the best episodes of MXC. It is witting, thought provoking, and extremely awkward. The show I am talking about is called The Office.

Before I begin, I need to say that The Office was originally a show on the BBC, created by Ricky Gervais. I have not seen the “original,” but I have heard that it is better than the American version. I always say that I highly doubt this because The Office is the best show ever and nothing could be better, but I guess I should keep an open mind, I think Ricky Gervais is hilarious.

The Office stars Steve Carrel as Michael Scott- the manager of the Scranton branch of a small paper company, Dunder Mifflin. I do not know how he does it, but he is just an awkward person. He has a tendency to get into situations where he has no clue what to say next. This just makes the viewer uncomfortable. It is hard to watch an episode of The Office without cringing at the tension created by Michael Scott.

There other characters of The Office, but I only know by their names on the show. So here is a brief background of the characters and history of the show. Jim and Pam have had an ongoing and rocky office relationship. Pam got engaged (not to Jim) but eventually broke the engagement (because of Jim). Dwight is a suck up to Michael, and was having an affair with the office “stuck up” lady, Angela. Angela gets engaged to Andy, who has an anger management problem, but Angela continues to have the affair with Dwight. Phyllis is the large woman who gets made fun of a lot, Kevin is the large man who acts naturally as a mentally challenged person would, Meredith is the redhead alcoholic, and Creed is the creepy old guy. Oscar is a gay Mexican, Toby has a secret crush on Pam, Stanley is the “leave-me-alone” guy who does crosswords, and Kelly has a very oddly shaped relationship with Ryan the temp who becomes a corporate giant only to fall because of a corruption and a drug problem.

That was a brief description of each of the main characters. It may not seem like much of a concept, but to understand them, you actually have to watch the show. If you watch more than one episode, you will come to learn that they are all very well developed and very likeable to the viewer. The Office grows on you, and you will find yourself saying, “when is the next Office on?” When you watch The Office, you feel like you are part of an office. A very dysfunctional, uncomfortable office to say the least.

Football in January

These past weekends have been very busy for me. They have been full of basketball and homework. There is no time for a good movie, and that makes me mad. I have not had the chance to sit down and watch a movie since the beginning of the year, and I won’t get a chance to until February. This is because Friday and Saturday games every weekend leave little time for anything else. So I’m not going to write about basketball or school. I’ve had enough of those for now. I’m going to write about football.

Football is one of those sports that I get tired of watching after a while. It is exciting and fast paced, and can be very fun to watch if you are rooting for one team. But if you don’t care who wins the game, it can get down right boring. In recent years I have been intrigued by the playoffs because I like the Indianapolis Colts. They have gone far enough for me to watch football into late January, but not this year. This year they lost early, and my favorite team, Da Bears, didn’t even make it. So I was thinking that I would disregard football, and not even watch the Super Bowl, until the new season starts. I found that this was hard to do. I found myself sneaking away from what I was doing on Sunday afternoons to watch football. I would sneak away and watch two teams, the Baltimore Ravens and the Arizona Cardinals.

I watched the Ravens because I like Joe Flacco and I like the way they play defense. I know that sounds clichéd, but it’s true. I would rather watch a team make great plays defensively then watch a team make great plays offensively. It’s more exciting to see Ed Reed get an interception than see Hines Ward make a catch. But as they say, all good things must come to an end (I can’t believe I’m using this many clichés). I watched Joe Flacco’s inexperience catch up to him, and I saw the Ravens lose.

The Arizona Cardinals are still in it. They could possible win the Super Bowl. Amazingly enough, Kurt Warner is still playing. A hometown hero, it’s possible that he just lead a “hall of fame drive” to score the winning touchdown over the Eagles. That drive could have put a defining stamp on his jumbled career. He is a great quarterback, and he is leading a team the “Believes.” Its fun to watch the Cardinals play and I might actually watch the Super Bowl this year, because I now have a team to root for.

The Inauguration

Back to Obama, particularly his inauguration. I did not get to see very much of this (damn school!), but I have some thought on what little I did see.

First of all I have to say that Barack is one cool guy. When the chief justice screws up the oath and you don’t let it affect you, especially in front of that many people, you have some nerves of steal. I admire that greatly.

Second, what was with the weekly TV test? After the first sentence of Obama’s speech the screen all of a sudden goes black. Wow, great, our president just got assassinated, was my reaction. But eventually it kicked back in and we got to see the speech. But couldn’t the TV stations have some foresight and delay this test for an hour? Was it really worth interrupting one of the most historic events in our nations history to do some unworthy weekly test? I doubt it.

Lastly I want to talk about the pray that was given by Rev. Dr. Rick Warren before Obama was sworn in. This was the one thing that I had a problem with. When everybody was seated on the platform and Dr. Warren came up and started talking about God and African Americans and other things, I was thrown off. I know that religion plays a big role in these sorts of things, but I feel this was wrong. A small, simple prayer lasting no more than 30 seconds would have been fine, but this 5-minute rant was over-the-top. I don’t agree with all of the things he said, and I do not feel he should have had that kind of time to say all that. I thought this was supposed to be an inauguration, not a prayer service. Church and state should be kept separate, this kind of thing should not happen. It seemed obnoxious and un-American in the sense that it felt like he was telling us what to believe. This prayer put a damper on the morning festivities for me. I was not pleased.

Obama

Obama! Obama! Obama!

Obama is president. It finally happened. Finally! GWB is out of office and will only haunt us from our dreams. Obama is president. I just like saying those words. They have a nice ring to them. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Obama is president. This is a major step forward in our history. Obama becoming president is great and all, but I still have fear. I fear that there is so much hype, and the expectations are so high, that it will almost be impossible for Him to reach what people are hoping for. I fear that if He doesn’t reach these expectations, people will get angry and impatient. I fear people will mistakenly regret voting Him into office. But I also have faith. I have faith that whatever He does; the country will be better off for it. I have faith in Him. I also have faith in this country. My faith lays in this country’s free nature and acceptance. I have faith that if He falls short and doesn’t reach the expectations, the country will still embrace the good he brought. The good not only during his time in office, but in his time getting to office, uniting this often divided country.

Obama is president. So let us forget the horrors of the past 8 years. It will be extremely difficult, but I believe. I believe it is possible to move forward in trying times, move forward with a strong, calm leader out in front. I believe in my leaders ability, I believe in His words. He is going to be like a new father, showing a baby nation how to stand on its own. So believe with me, and help us start the climb back to the top. 

Snow (or wind or cold) Days

I do not like snow days. Usually students are all excited to get a whole day off of school to do nothing. But after the first snow day, not me. I say after the first snow day because one snow day I can deal with. I can’t deny that I do like to sleep in, not do anything until basketball practice, then not do anything after basketball. It’s just like a Sunday. But once the snow days start pilling up, I don’t like them anymore.

First of all, I don’t like the weather. Recently, we have been getting out of school because of the cold and wind. I always say, the snow I can deal with, but the cold always gets me. If it’s just a foot of snow to get us out of school, I’m fine with that. But when it drops to negative 23 with a wind chill of negative 50 degrees, I just don’t like it. That kind of cold makes everything cold. It makes your house drafty, it makes walking the dog unreasonable, and it makes your car too frozen to start.

The second reason why I don’t like snow (or wind or cold) days is because it screws up teacher’s plans for school. I know that this may sound odd coming from a student, but I really don’t like when teachers have to adjust their class plans. They always say that the make-up days are added at the end of the 3^rd term, which does us no good in the 2^nd term. This means that if we have multiple snow (or wind or cold) days, the homework load in the weeks after gets very large. Since teachers don’t have the time to cover things in class, they give it to the students to cover on their own.

And the third reason for which I loath multiple snow (or wind or cold) days, is because I would prefer not to finish school in July. As of right now, with only three snow (or wind or cold) days, we are already going into the second week of June. This is wrong, but it will only get worse with the more snow (or wind or cold) days that get added to this year. I would rather do my work now, and deal with the weather, than have to do my work in June when I actually enjoy the weather.

The Bowl Season

I have not posted on my blog in a while. As in, this is my first post of the year. This is because I took a break from all school work. Over Christmas break I did absolutely no homework. I’m not saying that I did absolutely nothing; I just didn’t do any school work. I was busy every day with basketball practices and scrimmages, and a full schedule of naps.

So now to what I’m to write about. I haven’t really thought much about it, but the first thing that comes to mind is football. Specifically, the bowl games. This is the silliest thing that I know of. The bowl system could be one of the most over rated and over talked about things in all of sports. Anytime during the Christmas break when I actually had my eyes open to watch TV, all that was on was bowl game analysis and predictions. The bowl games weren’t actually on; they were just talking about them. They are so hyped up that they actually are a let down when it comes to the game itself. In part because people are expecting so much from the games, and because the players have so much practice time, it’s hard for them to get back into the game mode.

This brings up the question of why the games are held at the end of December and into January, when the regular season ends at the beginning of December. Once again, the only halfway logical explanation in money. More time to advertise, so more people know about it, so apparently, more people watch. Money is the only reason that bowl games still exist. Money is the only reason the BCS standings still exist. Money is the only reason an undefeated team in a “lesser” conference doesn’t get to play for the national championship.

In my opinion, the BCS system should be thrown out and never thought of again. It is to make money, not to see who the best team in is. The only way to find out who the best team is, is to have a playoff. Every other NCAA sport and division has one. Basketball, baseball, even division II football has a playoff. So why not division I (I’m sorry FBS)? Money. The easiest and most successful way to determine who the best is, never takes place in DI because the people who run the show are too greedy and always want more money.