Update and Random Thoughts

First the random thoughts:

If anyone ever wondered if Olympic track could be exciting, check out this video from the 1972 Olympics. The American Dave Wottle, the skinny kid wearing a cap in lane 3, was a big underdog and the East German favorite hadn't lost a race in 4 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45k&feature=related
Take a look if you please, it still stuns me every time I watch it. And as someone who has seen Olympic track live, it's not bad, but they still haven't figured out how to make it a great spectator sport (every single seat is going to have a terrible view for at least some events).

Boston sports fans are pretty glum after consecutive game 7 losses by the B's and C's, and the Red Sox really aren't playing too well. You gotta be proud of the Celtics for even going 7 games with the rag tag group they had guarding Dwight Howard, who really doesn't have the finishing skills to abuse less talented defenders, and picks up bad fouls. Maybe he can step it up against the Cavs, but I doubt it; Cleveland could finish them quick. I was wondering though, how much impact the Olympics will have on the legacy of this season. Writers have talked about it, how all these great American players were living together and they realized, wow, Kobe really does work hard. Lebron, Carmelo and Dwight saw Kobe getting to the gym hours before they did and not only pushed themselves to win the gold, but pushed themselves after the Olympics ended. Its no coincidence that those 4 guys are each the undisputed leaders of the teams left in the postseason. If only Tayshaun Prince had followed their lead.

I'm not sure this merits a spoiler alert, because who cares about the plots in summer movies, but I had to pick apart two of the flicks I've seen. Wolverine was exactly what I expected it to be - great action, cool new mutant powers, and just a horrendous gap-filled storyline. I guess the most glaring is the fact that Sabertooth, who plays a huge role in this movie, does actually appear in X-Men 1 & 2 but with a different actor! (A Canadian pro wrestler actually) In those movies, he's nothing more than a henchman, I can't remember if he even had lines, and sorry if I'm spoiling anything, but the revelation in Wolverine that he and Wolverine are half-brothers is clearly yet unconceived. Then there's Star Trek, which Eva, my family friend, loved. The movie is really geared towards her audience, the former Trekkies, now in their mid 30s or 40s, which is rather unusual for a summer blockbuster. My biggest complaint with the movie is that this Romulan starship attacks Vulcan and Earth, home planets of two powerful races. They have this drill that is beaming a large hole through their service. The drill can be destroyed, easily in fact because Kirk destroys it with freaking handheld phasers. Yet, when it sets on Earth, in the vicinity of San Francisco, not one shot gets fired at it. Really, I hope that in 150 years, Earth is better defended than that. It would have been passable if the starship was seen destroying even a few defenses, but no. Oh and also, if you can create a blackhole intended to absorb novas, (novae?) do you really need to place it in the center of the planet to destroy it? And if some random unkempt stranger with a crazy Scottish accent beamed himself onto my ship without warning, I wouldn't immediately promote him to Chief Engineer. But that said, Star Trek was very cool, especially if all the characters and technology struck you with nostalgia.

Ok so I've been keeping busy in this week and a half of summer. I somehow got myself into helping this guy Jonah Keri write a book on the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. He's pretty well known in the sports industry, so even though I'm doing this for free and whatnot its pretty cool that I'm working for him. So I'm transcribing interviews for him which takes forever but occupies me pretty well.

Then I somehow got this gig with HSBC in New York this summer, which I'm pretty excited about. HSBC stands for Hong Kong Shanghai Bank of China originally, but it's actually now a UK bank and not really any more prevalent in China than in anywhere else. It's actually the largest bank in the world now. So that starts June 1, I'll move in the weekend before, and who knows, living in New York might give me something to blog about.