Friday the 13th XIII: Jason takes Manhattan. I recommend starting around 4:50. Or I guess 6:50 if you want to jump close to the money shot. Happy Halloween!

MTVmusic.com opened this week. It’s music videos and clips from MTV interviews and such. You could argue that this is all basically on YouTube anyway, and I don’t have much of a response, because the quality is only marginally better. Well, I guess you can fast forward to any point in the video instead of just where the original video was keyframed.

My selection for you: “Breakdown” by Mariah Carey and Bone Thugs ‘N Harmony. Basically tied with Thug Luv for the most important song of my middle school life. Except this is that weird version without the Bone verses but they’re still in the video. And since I mentioned fast-forwarding, go to 2:33 to remember what Mariah used to look like. Not that she’s an uggo now but here I’ll just post a screen cap.

The FreeDarko Book website is live. A few excerpts from the book are available on the site. About Kobe Bryant:

While it’s hard to argue with the outcomes in his life, the process behind Bryant’s perfection–the “how” of his imposing “what”–hides a humanity even more craggy and flawed than our own. He alarms us by appearing both above and beneath us, inspiring exultation and revulsion alike. And for all his brazen confidence, there’s no qeustion that the ever-isolated Kobe sustains himself through a similarly combustible dynamic.

TrueHoop previews the book. I haven’t been excited for a book release since maybe ever, now that I think about it. I usually have to set time aside to read any FreeDarko posts, because they’re basically essays, but it’s always worth it. And how can you not like a site that previews the season with blurbs about upcoming games—every. single. game.

In my dream I’m watching a movie. Not like on a screen, but sort of like how you fullscreen a YouTube video except it fills up my range of vision instead of a monitor. So it’s sort of like I’m there, but it’s definitely through a camera.

It’s about something like James Bond’s kids. Think teenagers. Actual teenagers, not 28-year-old Tom Welling as a high school Clark Kent. Brother and sister. They decide to take things in their own hands while their dad is on vacation. So they’re trying to foil the bad guy’s plans–your typical filthy rich enemy with a giant mansion. He has a butler. Don’t think too old. Not (looks, personality, he’s funny, he’s a hard-worker, my partner, ) Mr. Miyagi (!), but more like Lau Chan in Virtua Fighter 2 rather than the walking corpse version in VF5.

But the butler secretly helps the kids throughout the movie. And they manage to get to the mansion. And somehow they break the bad guy’s finger before getting captured. So he has them tied up in his den I guess. One of those large rooms with basically only a desk, statues, and other ornaments that you only see in movies. The butler is there. The kids are trying not to give away that the butler’s been helping them. Then the bad guy calls the butler over.

The audience doesn’t know if the bad guy knows that the butler’s been helping them or not. But as he walks over, you get the sense that the bad guy knows and is going to make the butler kill the kids. Then you think ahead and realize it’s a movie skewed towards young teenagers and kids, so the butler’s gonna find a way out of this predicament and get the kids out of there. And he walks up next to the bad guy, who’s sitting behind the desk. The bad guy pulls out a gun with a silencer. The camera cuts to the bad guy’s face and he starts to mouth words:

“What would you have me do?”

And he shoots the butler in the head.

Then I wake up. What the hell right?

Oakland +8, New Orleans +3, Kansas City +14, Buffalo PK, Tampa Bay +2, Philadelphia -9, New England -8.5, Carolina -5, Washington -7.5, Cleveland +7, NY Giants +3, San Francisco -5.5, Cincinnati +9, Indianapolis +4

Last week (4-10): Tennessee -8.5, Buffalo -1, Cincinnati +8, Miami -3, Dallas -8,  Minnesota +3, New Orleans +3, NY Giants -10.5, Detroit +10.5, NY Jets -3, Washington -7, Indianapolis -2.5, Tampa Bay -10.5, Denver +3

Overall (47-55)

How good is LeBron James? I meant to post this earlier, I think I found it a few weeks back when Google was celebrating their anniversary with a retro version of their search engine. This article is from 2000:

Garfinkel has even higher standards, a historical perspective. He talked about the 100-plus NBA players who have attended his Five-Star camp, names such as Grant Hill, Stephon Marbury, Rasheed Wallace, Christian Laettner, Elton Brand, Dell Curry and Bobby Hurley.

“I’ll say this,” he said. “You heard all those NBA guys I mentioned? LeBron played as well or better than any one of them when they were sophomores at my camp. It was ridiculous; he totally dominated. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Eight years later, it’s safe to say the answer is “pretty good”.

I realized that I’ve been spending way too much time on the computer.  It’s Google Reader.  The thing is that the whole idea behind using an RSS reader again was so that I’d be able to post more links.  But then I just ended up checking it all the time and not posting anything.  Sometimes I feel like I’d be more productive watching TV than reading about upcoming Korea-only cell phones and how so and so stuffed a supercomputer into a Genesis shell.  At least when I watch TV I tend to have a textbook out that I pretend to read.

I’ll set a goal so that I’m accountable.  I’ll try to post three links a day.  That seems realistic.  And I’m planning to cut my time at the computer to an hour in the morning and an hour at night.  That seems less realistic.  We’ll see how it goes.  My first step was to end the subscriptions of sites that have constant posts of things that are just interesting enough to read but mostly aren’t important at all (Gizmodo, Engadget, Kotaku, Lifehacker).  I’ll keep you updated.

Tennessee -8.5, Buffalo -1, Cincinnati +8, Miami -3, Dallas -8,  Minnesota +3, New Orleans +3, NY Giants -10.5, Detroit +10.5, NY Jets -3, Washington -7, Indianapolis -2.5, Tampa Bay -10.5, Denver +3

Last week (6-8): New Orleans -7, Indianapolis -3.5, Cincinnati +9.5, Carolina +1.5, Detroit +13, Atlanta +3, Miami +3, Washington -13.5, Denver -3.5, Philadelphia -4.5, Dallas -4.5, Seattle -1.5, New England +5, NY Giants -8

Overall (43-45)

YouTube - Adidas: The Run ft. KG, TMac, Duncan, Dwight.