Wait-Which Transformer Won the Nobel Prize in Literature? Was It Optimus? It Was Optimus, Right?

I'm just kidding, folks. I know the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet nobody has ever heard of, and not a four-story alien semi-truck / robot.

Netflix CEO: "Come on, people! It's an April Fool's joke! Wait, what month is this? Fuuuuuuuck"

LOST GATOS, CA—Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called an impromptu press conference this morning to discuss Netflix's plans to spin off its DVD mailing service into a separate website, Qwikster. "I got you guys! I got you guys good! Like we'd really inconvenience people with an entirely different website and then have the balls to name it something that sounds like it was thought up by a hungover intern one hour before the press release went out! Oh, you guys! You guys! I was just having some fun with you because of all that hoopla about raising our prices earlier this year. And I love a good April Fool's joke. Just like Google does every year. Remember when they did that mail you your email one? That was good. What? What's that? The month? What about the month? Wait, is that why they call it . . . ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . you know, I never really thought about it before . . . but yeah, that makes sense . . . . I . . . oh, shit. Hey, excuse me I have to make some calls."

Netflix's stock was down ten percent today in heavy trading.

Frodo Didn't Do Shit

Okay, today we're going to discuss The Lord of the Rings. We're going to focus on the last movie since I just watched it for the first time. No, that isn't a time-stamp typo you see on this blog - it is 2011. Look, I've been busy. There was that housing market bubble, Saddam Hussein was captured, George Bush elected for a second term, John Paul II died, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Lance Armstrong won the Tour De France twice, balloon boy, Michael Jackson died, four Olympics, Mel Gibson DUI, Friends finale, Atkins, Howard Dean's scream, Nipplegate, the Xbox 360 released, Youtube launched, every Twilight book and movie, Writers Guild strike, Hurricane Katrina, Saddam Hussein executed, Facebook launched, bird flu, iPhones, iPads, Ricky Martin's gay, what else do I have to say? We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning, we didn't start the . . . sorry, got sidetracked there. What were we talking about about? Oh, yeah, right. So then Netflix finally sent me a copy of The Return of the King and I had time to sit down and watch it.

I am going to approach this through a series of questions:

What the fuck, Frodo?

Why is he the hero of this movie? What exactly did he do? He spent the entire third film either (1) getting knocked unconscious (2) getting wrapped up in spider goo (3) being an untrusting little bitch (4) having Sam throw him over his shoulder and carry him around. And the cherry on the fuck-up pie? He almost ruined everything at the end by refusing to toss the ring into the fire. Then everybody is chanting his name and bowing to him? What?

Sam did everything! Everything! And what does he get for it? He gets to bust his ass at some crappy job in Hobbitland with a wife who probably ballooned up to 300 pounds after the movie ended. And what does Frodo get? He gets to take a ship to Elf Island, where everybody lives forever and it rains gumdrops and the lakes are full of Cherry Coke. How did that conversation go down?

Sam: Mr. Frodo, you can't leave us! Where will you go?

Frodo: To Elf Island, Sam.

Sam: What?

Frodo: Elf . . .

Sam: I heard you. Don't you, like, live forever there?

Frodo: Yes, Sam, that is the idea.

Sam: Can I . . . can I come?

Frodo: No, Sam This must be my burden to bear.

Sam: Burden? 

Frodo: (gazes longingly into the distance for several minutes)

Sam: What the fuck, dude?

Frodo: (still gazing)

Sam: You didn't even do shit. And I got to stay here in Hobbitville while you're off scaring up Elf tail in Live Forever Land?

Frodo: (still gazing)

Sam: Fuck you.

What sort of wizard are you, Gandalf?

Because you're apparently not the sort of wizard that, you know, does magic or anything. Sure, you drove those dragons away once with your wand. But can you shoot some fireballs, or freeze everybody with some sort of freeze-spell, or summon lighting, or . . . you can't do any of those things? Huh. Well, I guess keep clubbing ogres with your wand then. And while we're on the subject -

What's up with the eagles?

You had eagles? Huge eagles? This whole time? Eagles that rip through dragons like they're made of paper-mache? We've been getting our asses handed to us by dragons and you never thought to unleash the eagles? Did you think somebody would throw a fit if you were like, oh, hey, just by the way, I have a grip of mega-eagles with a taste for dragon blood that aren't doing anything right now . . . any interest in deploying them against these winged lizards that are currently decimating our ranks?

So the reinforcements are a magical army of the dead?

That can cut through all the enemies? With incredible ease? At lightning speed? How . . . convenient.

Why didn't Frodo die?

Doesn't this movie scream for some sort of sacrifice? No good guys really died. Nobody important at least. This may come as a shock to you, since it did take me the better part of a decade to get around to watching The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but I always assumed that Frodo died in the end.

No! Not at all! After getting rescued from the volcano, Frodo wakes up in bed in a brightly lit room as the members of the fellowship trickle in to greet him. I assumed that at some point the camera would focus on the fellowship and then turn back to Frodo, revealing then that the fellowship was actually standing at his grave, the bedroom scene having been Frodo in the heaven Gandalf talked so much about. Not only did this not happen, the movie then went on another thirty minutes, at least fifteen minutes of which were filled with Frodo staring directly into the camera and smiling. And I think another five minutes might have been recycled footage from the ending of Star Wars. I'm not sure. I kept looking for a Wookie in the crowd. And did Aragorn start singing at the end? Did that happen? What the fuck is this? Magnolia? Does anybody remember that movie? No? Okay, moving on.

This ending pisses me off so much I demand that Peter Jackson drop everything he is doing and reshoot the ending of the movie to include my Frodo death scene idea. How can you have all those big speeches about heaven and not have anybody die? That's just poor storytelling. I'm going to start an online petition as soon as somebody shows me how to start an online petition. Is Ian McKellen still alive? It doesn't matter; we'll just CGI him in if necessary.

I Now Spend My Days Watching Reruns of Alf

Did I mention I recently got a 3D TV and cable? Well that might explain the lack of blogtastic blogs, as my life now revolves around watching approximately 7 hours a day of 3D boxing, reruns of That 70's Show, and programs about how aliens built the pyramids. God I've missed you, cable. Welcome home.

But anyway, time to get back to doing what I do best.

Blogging, I mean.

Man that's sad.

Since my last blog the US has had its credit rating downgraded from AAA to AA-plus by Standard & Poor's. I think they also took the little gold star away from our rating. Maybe a smiley face or two as well.

Standard & Poor's is a division of McGraw-Hill. Think about that for a second. The WORLD ECONOMY is currently being dragged into a financial maelstrom by A COMPANY THAT PUBLISHES TEXTBOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND AVIATION WEEK.

Yep.

So let us now turn our attention to those countries which have been deemed the best places to keep your money by a company whose major assets include television station KERO-TV, an ABC affiliate operating out of Bakersfield, California. I believe that there is an episode of Wheel of Fortune airing later tonight if you are at all interested and within 30 miles or so of Bakersfield.

Australia

A perfectly fine place to keep your money though it should be pointed out that one out of every three bank tellers in Australia is a kangaroo wearing a people mask.

Canada

Honestly, there's about a 32% chance that all this grief we're taking in the world press is going to cause us to lose our shit and take you over, Canada.

Denmark

Hamlet is from there. So they got that going for them. I honestly couldn't find it on a map.

Germany

LOL . . . no.  Just . . . no. So I guess we've all sort of decided to turn a blind eye to that whole losing two world wars thing? It's not like it happened 400 years ago or something.

Holland

Hypothetical question: If Holland detached from the Netherlands and subsequently sank, how long would it take before anybody else noticed? Two weeks? A month? Longer? I suppose at some point our college students who were heading there to smoke pot would be confused when their airplane landed in the ocean.

Norway

I like black metal. I like black metal a lot. Also, the country has recently been in the news because a mad man decided to express his hatred of Muslims by . . . killing scores of blue-eyed, blonde-haired kids. Yeah, that's . . . that's confusing.

Singapore

Wait, isn't this country mostly known for sex-change operations and caning people? Sure, give 'em your money. What the hell. Caning makes perfect sense. Wait - it isn't 1927? Oh, well then hold on for one second . . . 

Sweden

Death metal! I like me some death metal too. This country also did do a great job of hiding gold for their masters, the Nazis, so maybe it is a good place to keep your money.

Switzerland

But as much as Sweden loved that sweet, sweet Nazi gold, it can't hold a torch to the Swiss. Did you ever notice that you can rearrange the letters in "Switzerland" to spell "Nazis R We Ltd?" Yeah, think about it.

Austria

Is this still a country? Really? Are we sure? This isn't one of those things where we forgot to take it off the map after WWII, right? Actually a country? You're sure? Okay, I'll take your word for it, internets. But if I look at a globe tomorrow and see it next to the Ottoman Empire, I'll know something is up.

Finland

Whatever.

France

Okay, now you're just trying to piss me off.

England

So a small island country that is currently engulfed in riots, that has a queen despite the fact that it's not 1437, that was at risk twice in the last hundred years of becoming New Germany, is a better place to keep your money than the USA? You know what? Do whatever you want with your money. I'm going to go figure out what all this Real Housewives fuss is about. 

Study: 3D video causes eye strain, fatigue GOOD THING I DIDN'T SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON A 3D TV RECENTLY OH WAIT A SECOND I DID

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/07/25/3d.video.eye.strain.ars/index.html?

Sorry, I can't be bothered by studies of eye strain and fatigue and early-onset blindness when everything is this awesome -

Video Games Are Not Violent Enough

Apologies for the lack of blogtastic(tm) blogs, but I've been moving to a new apartment over the last few weeks. My new apartment's amenities include (1) a wall o' mirrors in the bedroom (2) a bottle opener built into the kitchen wall (3) track lighting in the kitchen and (4) a remote controlled light / fan in the living room with a mood lighting setting. Apparently I now live in the apartment of a swinger circa 1975. The shag carpeting and heart shaped tub and the bear rug that goes on top of the shag carpeting are all coming next week.

Also, this blog has nothing to do with video games. I was going to write something about the history of violence in video games (motivated by that recent Supreme Court decision), but I got a bit side tracked and then I didn't feel like thinking up a new title. So next up (maybe): Video games.

But for now, here are a few belated thoughts on Grantland.com. I'm mainly writing this because 90% of my traffic now comes from people searching for information about Grantland.com. The other 10% comes from people searching for information about Megan Fox's freak appendages and "arab toes" and "big p e n i s." Sadly I'm not making any of that up. That's what people are searching for when they end up on my site.

I had wondered about what form Grantland.com would take and what Bill Simmons' role would be. Bill's writing is featured prominently, which I expected, and he's also writing regularly again, which makes sense since he's going to be the site's biggest draw for a while. What I didn't expect was that Dave Eggers' hipster hands with their Flash Gordon secret decoder rings from a 1974 cereal box (that's the type of ring a middle aged hipster would wear, right?) would cradle the Grantland.com globe so closely to his Black Sabbath tshirt (definitely a hipster t-shirt).

Here, let's play a little game I like to call "Title of a McSweeney Article or a Grantland.com Article?" -

Regarding the Crazy Thing That Happened on Last Night's Game of Throne

Like It Or Not, You’re No Bob Costas

Bruins as Bears: The Sportstorialist on Sexual Coding and Playoff Beards

Understanding the Seattle SuperSonics by Comparing Them to Girls You May Have Dated in College

On 'Mama's Boyfriend'

Notes From the Caddieshack

The Empty, Empty Rogers Centre

The Philadelphia Flyers Have a Time Machine

Back into the Belly of The Beast

Dispatches from the NBA Entertainment League: Dispatch 1: The League and Game One: The Shame

Among the Hugs: A Visit to Wembley

Norse History for Bostonians: Lesson 9: A Short History of the Norse Invasion for Bostonians

Regulation Wormholes: The Absurdity of the NBA's Half-court Rule

In Defense of the Chimpy Corollary

On Whiskey and Grease: Pappy Van Winkle

McSweeney’s Recommends

Okay, not so much that last one, but not that easy, right? Here's how to check your answers: The first one is from Grantland and then they alternate all the way down. What can I say? I'm lazy.

Do you know what titles don't sound anything like any of those? These ones -

The Movie Star
Welcome to Draft Diary XV
Painting The NBA Trade Picture
A Black And Gold Day for Boston. Finally.
NBA Finals Game 6 Retro Diary
Dizzying Highs and Terrifying Lows
Proud to be an NHL front-runner
It's time for LeBrondown, Part II
Cashing In on the New Moneyball

Those are Bill's Grantland.com columns. As I speculated in the last blog, Bill does appear glaringly out of place among the more "literary" offerings populating Grantland.com at the moment. This isn't to take anything away from The Sports Guy. My Grantland.com routine has thus far been clicking on a non-Simmons Grantland.com column, getting bored after a few hundred words, and then switching to another tab to read Bill ramble about how 90210 characters are like Boston Red Sox players. Maybe Bill doesn't have all those big words and those complicated sentences with their dependent clauses and subordinators like his Grantland.com brethren, and, sure, Bill couldn't write his way out a wet paper bag if you armed him with a thesaurus and a condensed OED. But he's nothing if not entertaining.

Unfortunately, as of late is he's been only mildly entertaining. Though a mildly entertaining Sports Guy is better than most of what I've read / skimmed / skipped on Grantland thus far, I'm still a bit perplexed as to the drop-off in entertainment value. It's not that any of his columns for Grantland.com have been bad, but they've been rather middling. Take his recent column, The Movie Star, where he (1) apparently forgets to make up a title and (2) spends a few thousand words arguing that Ryan Reynolds isn't a huge movie star.

I guess because so many millions of people have been raving about what a huge movie star he is. Oh, wait, no, not at all. I'm pretty sure he's regarded as either Mr. Scarlett Johansson or that guy from Van Wilder or that guy who was People's Sexiest Man Alive but everyone knew that it was sort of joke because he wasn't nearly famous enough to be that and the honor was only bestowed on him because he was married to Scarlett Johansson.

Bill seems to believe that appearing as the lead in a middle-of-the-pack Summer blockbuster confers some sort of universal recognition as a Legend of the Silver Screen, Mr. Johansson having ascended in the eyes of the movie going public to a position alongside the Cary Grants and Paul Newmans and Elizabeth Taylors of the world. Ummm, dude, Tobey Fucking Maguire and whoever the hell is Harry Potter have been starring in Summer blockbusters for ages and I don't think anyone has accused either of them of threatening to procure the title of "World's Biggest Movie Star."

The Straw Man has always been one of Bill's best friend and it is not like he's ever been a master arguer. We are talking about a guy who wrote an approximately 4,000 page book with the central theme that successful sports teams are successful because they know "The Secret," a nebulous notion which basically boils down to "good team chemistry." Yep. But there seems to be more behind the lackluster columns than just unpersuasive arguments. A few ideas -

(1) Bill's rusty. Remember, his column writing has dwindled the last few years as he was preoccupied with his podcasts and writing the The Book of Basketball. Perhaps it will take time for him to work himself back into mid-season column-writing form.

(2) Bill needs an editor. I believe that he always worked with one while writing for espn.com. Is he working without one now since he's the Editor in Chief of Grantland.com? I don't know exactly how that works, but it would seem odd to have an editor to edit the Editor in Chief. Is the new found freedom too much for him?

(3) Or maybe Bill's just out of ideas, his initial turning away from column writing necessitated by a lack of anything new to say and not because he wanted to explore the wild, wacky world of Podcasts. Or, as I call them, Non-Streamed Syndicated Internet Radio Shows (NSSIRS). Trust me, I know all about a writer who's written so much that he's the shadow of the shell of the shadow (the shadow's shell's shadow, if you're keeping track at home) of his former self. Oh, boy, do I. Sigh . . . But anyway . . . wait . . . sigh . . . anyway -

Sigh.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm slowly moving my three-hundred or so myspace blogs over to a blogger site since myspace might disappear any day now. More details to come.

Gingrich's Top Aides: We Did Not Know What Year It Was Until Seven Hours Ago.

DALLAS, TX— The political world was rocked Thursday morning following announcements from several of Newt Gingrich's top aides that they were abandoning the former Speaker's presidential campaign.

Campaign manager Rob Johnson broke down in tears when reached for comment Thursdays: "I . . . I . . . What happened? Where did all the time go? Where am I? I was sitting in a meeting just a few hours ago talking about the Clinton impeachment proceedings and joking with [senior aide] Dave Carney about this funny thing on Seinfeld and then suddenly there's this Obama guy I've never heard of and everything's just so strange and weird and . . . a black man as President? That can't be right . . . and what the fuck is this thing? An iPad? I . . . I don't even know what that is . . . where's the keyboard? What sort of voodoo magic is this? Somebody hold me . . . I'm, I'm scared."

Several other aides were hospitalized as of Thursday late afternoon. A doctor at Georgetown University speaking on the condition of anonymity stated that all displayed signs of severe temporal displacement. "It's like the last twenty years never happened. We showed the group pictures of Justin Bieber and not one of them could successfully identify him. [Top aide] Scott Rials asked who that girl with the weird hair was. And they all kept wanting to listen to Pearl Jam's Ten over and over again and play with their Beanie Babies. I don't even know what a Beanie Baby is! And when we gave [press secretary] Rick Tyler a cell phone in hopes that he would contact his family, he ate it. The whole thing! He ate the whole fucking thing! And where the fuck did they get those flannel shirts from? Nobody here gave them flannel shirts! I want to know where those shirts came from!"