Review: Hot Fuzz

It's easy to describe Hot Fuzz as Shaun of the Dead meets any of the Lethal Weapon movies, and if you need to come up with a one-line summary that everyone will get then that's a pretty good one.

If Hot Fuzz is anything meets anything, it's the tv series Keen Eddie as re-imagined by Mel Brooks for the BBC, if Mel Brooks still made good parodies and if the producers could talk Jasper Fforde into punching up the script.

I enjoyed Hot Fuzz, of course: I'm a big fan of everything mentioned above. Yes, it dragged in the middle, but most two-hour movies do. The rest of it was plain ol' fun.

Would it have been better with zombies? Of course: Everything's better with zombies. But Hot Fuzz makes up for the lack of zombies by featuring XTC's "Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)" over a set of pub scenes near the beginning. This makes it very likely that the number of people who've heard the song over the past couple of months is substantially larger than the number of peopole who heard it in its prior twenty-odd years of existence.

And that, my friends, is the state of the art.

A Note To Recruiters, Re: Los Angeles Geography

Look, I appreciate your coming across my resume and taking the time to Google me. (It's kind of a creepy notion, but if I saw my improbable resume, I'd probably want to investigate, too. It's all true, though, even the bits at the end.) If you have an employment opportunity for me, I'd certainly like to hear about it.

Just one thing: Please don't tell me that the opportunity is "right near [me]" unless the opportunity in question is in the 310 area code.

The only general exception to the 310 rule is the 323 -- and even then, I hope you're pitching me a phenomenal gig with flexible hours.

I'm not being a wimp or a snob here. I don't mind driving, and I have nothing against the rest of the Los Angeles area. I'm just saying, if you're trying to send me more than a few miles from my home address, I don't care how close the office looks on a map. I've been driving in this town for a long time. I know the traffic patterns. If I have to spend an hour in my car, the job is not "right near [me]," and I'd rather you mention the location at the top of the pitch.

To summarize: 310 = good. 323 = iffy. Anywhere else = ask about telecommuting policy.

Thank you for your interest. No, really. Mean it. Just trying to save us both a lot of phone minutes.

Review: Grindhouse

(zombies + best prosthetic leg ever) x (cars + wanton destruction + ass-kicking women) x (better previews than the 20 minutes' worth of real previews before the actual movie + classic coming attractions/feature presentation animation sequences) = what's not to love?

Idle Baseball Season Predictions

A few predictions, to be taken for whatever they're worth:

• With conventional wisdom having the Dodgers set to make it well into the playoffs, they will be out of the race by July. I base this on the fact that every year they're predicted to be out of the race by July, they win their division.
  
  
• With conventional wisdom having the Tigers set to take the AL Central, and possibly the Series, they collapse under the weight of their own expectations. I base this on the fact that the universe threatens to collapse in upon itself if the Tigers win it all.
  
  
• The Giants will disintegrate as the Barry Gulf opens and widens. "I remember when I was the cool new kid in town," Bonds will sniff, as the young folks all congregate to Zito, who throws in a free guitar lick with every yoga session.
  
  "Dude," one of the bench coaches will point out, "you haven't been the cool new kid in town since Pittsburgh. You've been here forever, and If you were cool, you wouldn't be demanding so much money that the team can't afford to keep a good hitter in the lineup behind you so that you don't get intentionally walked 120 times a season. And you'd be talking about the whole BALCO thing. And you'd actually look happy to be playing in your 40s...."
  
  Bonds looks around. "Someone say something?"
  
  Bonds, by the way, will break Hank Aaron's home run record in late July, and no one will care.
  
  
• Barry Zito and returned Diamondback Randy Johnson duke it out for the Cy Young award, but it ultimately goes to a nonroster invitee from the NL Central. Zito shrugs, picks up his guitar and heads home for the off-season. Randy Johnson gets stuck in a door.
  
  
• Disaster strikes the Texas Rangers halfway through the season, as all of Scott Boras' clients realize what they've done and how long they've committed to do it for. By the All-Star break, the only new acquisition not on the DL is Eric Gagne, and that's only because he came off the DL a mere week before. He will pitch in a total of 10 games before he wrenches his back when he picks up a resin bag.
  
  
• Yankee Stadium collapses in May. Chase Field (or the BOB, or whatever they're calling the Diamondbacks' park this season) melts in August.
  
  
• In September, Corey Hart of the Milwaukee Brewers hears one too many "I wear my sunglasses at night" jokes and demolishes a Ray-Ban outlet.
  
  
• The Red Sox and the Yankees engage in a one-game division playoff that lasts until November.