I love ninjas. And I love ninja movies. Enough to make a short one of my own. Here’s my ninja movie Mt. Rushmore (aka top-4 but Bill Simmons has been a big part of my November so i thought I’d steal the term): Three Ninjas, American Ninja, Ninja Scroll, and Ninja Assassin. That’s also my list of ninja movies that I can name off the top of my head.

Really though, it’s a shame that there’s no serious ninja movie with a great story and great characters. It doesn’t seem out of the question, considering how interesting the culture is with different clans and whatnot. The action would be somewhere between the realism of the ninja invasion scene in The Last Samurai and the supernatural abilities of the ninjas in Ninja Assassin.

Anyway, I guess I should say something about Ninja Assassin since this is my review. It’s violent. (Think Alien vs. Predator 2. Oh wait nobody else watched that. Think new Rambo.). The story’s not great. The fight sequences are awesome. And you probably should’ve expected all of that coming in. More workout scenes would be welcome! They’re actually pretty cool and they could show Raizo training with more weapons. I guess I should call them adult ninja training scenes to sound less suspect.

On another note, I just went to IMDB to see how to spell “Raizo” and scrolled down to the message board posts (always a bad idea). Someone is disappointed that they took Rain (huge in Asia) and put him in a stereotypical role as a martial artist instead of a serious role. He’s not exactly gonna pass as Billy Costigan. Not to mention he wasn’t held at gunpoint and forced into months of filming. Man do I hate those message boards.

Back on track. If you liked the new Rambo and you like ninjas you’ll love Ninja Assassin. I still can’t get over the post-release commercials saying, “Some critics have called Ninjas Assassin… ‘Exciting’.” Sold.

I got a BlackBerry 9700 on Monday. Intro notes: I’m on T-Mobile and used a G1 for a year until it broke. I switched to a first generation BlackBerry Pearl for three weeks.

These are my thoughts on the 9700 written on a BlackBerry 9700. (I needed something to practice typing on the keyboard so this is what I chose.) I was gonna start this by saying that I’ve never been so excited for a phone before. But that’s just me rating more recent things higher. I was way more excited for the G1, back when it had a chance to stand toe to toe with the iPhone. (Even then, it was only a chance and not really likely. But I didn’t realize that Lloyd Christmas had a better chance with Lynn Swanson.)

The screen is fantastic. I always felt like text was always too big on the G1, even when set as small as possible. On the Bold I’ve got it set pretty small and can read it comfortably. I’m glad to be on a full keyboard again. My G1 broke. Loved that keyboard. Didn’t love sliding it out every time, but I didn’t mind as much as some people did. Switched to my brother’s old BlackBerry Pearl. I actually really like the keyboard and the SureType system. The biggest problem is that I updated the OS and the first-generation Pearl really can’t handle the newest version, so typing with any sort of speed meant a meeting with the hourglass and then probably a ruined sentence to delete. Also, the trackball couldn’t scroll left so I learned to navigate without getting to places where a left would be necessary. The trackpad is really nice. It sort of feels like having a touchscreen, which might be hard to believe without trying it. Obviously it can’t compete with the multitouch experience, but coming from the G1, I really don’t miss the touchscreen.

But I do miss the browser. The biggest flaw of the 9700 is the biggest flaw of any BlackBerry—the browser is garbage. This is well documented and RIM has a WebKit browser in the works. Yes, I tried Opera. No, I haven’t tried Bolt yet. But for now the experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I read 9700 reviews and thought. “Well, how bad could web browsing?” Bad, so bad, Jackey Vinson. Having that kind of software on flagship hardware is like having all those retro NES games on the Wii except it feels ancient instead of nostalgic.

Another thing I miss is Android’s universal menu bar. Some BlackBerry applications still allow you to see alerts at the top of the screen; some don’t. I’m writing this review in Memopad and I have no visual evidence on screen of whether or not new messages have come in. The LED could probably be set, but that only notifies me that something new came in, not what kind of new thing came in. When the G1 UI demos came out last year, I thought it was odd that they would highlight something mundane like the menu bar. Now that I don’t have it, I understand why it was so important.

The messaging experience is the system seller and it’s the reason I know I won’t have any buyer’s remorse. About a month ago a majority of my friends that I hang out with regularly started using the BlackBerry Messenger group chat feature. And within a couple of weeks it became the main form of communication between us. Texts stopped and mass MMS stopped. Some of the same friends used to frequent a forum we had in high school, and it reminds me of that in some ways. Is this going to be a dealbreaker for most people? Probably not. But for me it was. I miss having a decent browsing exerience (hopefully the WebKit browser fixes that in the future). But I would really really miss the group chat if I couldn’t have it.

Email is great. I installed the Gmail application and I’m satisfied with it. SMS messages are threaded by user now, which I’m really happy about. I hate going back to see what I said last (we stopped using ICQ for a number of reasons but that was one of the main ones) and didn’t ever fully understand how the Pearl decided to mini-thread some convos and not others.

Music and video are good from what I’ve seen so far. Video plays without a hitch as long as its not too high a resolution. Music is pretty basic but that’s all I want really. Even with my iPods I rarely used more than a couple playlists on a daily basis. And the BB Desktop Manager lets me sync with iTunes playlists. I’ll probably try leaving my Nano at home the rest of this week and see how that goes.

And I guess it’s also a phone. The calls I’ve taken have been clear consistently. Honestly I’ve never complained about call quality on any of my previous phones so take my opinion with a grain of salt (read: disregard it completely).

The 9700 hardware is great and the software is good. Browsing might be a dealbreaker but if you’ve used a BlackBerry before you know what you’re in for. And if you haven’t, do some research and make sure you know what you’re in for.

Albert forwarded me a list from CNN of interesting college entrance essay questions, because I asked if someone had ideas for something to blog about. I didn’t get too into it, but I’m just trying to get back into blogging regularly, so it’ll do. Hope it’s worth your five minutes. I linked to Albert’s above. I chose this one to write about:

4. In the year 2050, a movie is being made of your life. Please tell us the name of your movie and briefly summarize the story line. (NYU, 2009)

College admissions officers like to throw in “fun” questions like this to relieve a bit of the stress high school seniors face while applying to college. I don’t think it’s working.

Movies based on true stories are usually very loosely based on true stories. Read a Wikipedia article about pretty much any sports movie made in the last decade that was inspired by a true story. Ignorance is bliss and knowing what actually happened usually takes away from these movies. Not so great—but if you flip it around it’s awesome: mundane things that happened in my life become chill scenes: out in the first round of the regional spelling bee becomes third place in the nationals; 12th man on a PBL team becomes at least Division 1-AA; six months in San Jose as a technical writer becomes eight months in Santa Barbara as a sponsored boogie boarder. Jeremy Efron-Hudgens has a number of scenes in classrooms and at corporate desks looking clueless while Jessica Alba’s daughter gets to struggle through lines like “I have a boyfriend.” Then I get a cameo at the end like the end of Pursuit of Happyness and even I don’t show up to the premiere of this awful movie.

Hawaii was only a couple of weeks ago, but the sunny beaches seem so far gone at this point. So I think the best I can do right now is a bulleted list of thoughts from the trip. I’ll try to make it cohesive.

Thursday we flew out in the afternoon. Nothing special about that. Took a taxi with Dan, Junior, and Paul from Paul’s apartment and met up with Jon at Seatac. And the hours at the airport were typical. Security then the food court. Then getting on the plane. Jackpot.

I sat next to, from what I could gather, Mariah Carey’s biggest fan. Or one of her assistants. The first thing I noticed is that he had a picture of her at some kind of pre-show event as his iPhone background image. Not a huge deal, I’m sure plenty of people have her as a wallpaper. But then he brought out a MacBook Air. Mariah Carey as the desktop background. That makes two things that aren’t really all that odd. Then he started watching Mariah Carey music videos. Ok he’s a fan. But after the music videos, he started watching Mariah Carey acceptance speeches. Then I got a better look at his iPhone background and realized he’s in the picture with her. In the meantime, I was watching highlights of Independence Day. Can’t blame the guy, you gotta get your fix on the airplane. Oh yeah he also bought a snack pack on the flight and from what I gathered he was a vegetarian. He gave me his hard salami. Cool dude.

I underestimated the flight and had my mind prepared for a 3-hour flight instead of a nearly 6-hour flight. And I thought I slept for at least an hour when it turns out I dozed off for about fifteen minutes. It’s the third flight I’ve brought Atlas Shrugged on and at this point I don’t know if I’m ever going to finish the last two hundred pages. Me, Junior, Paul, and Jon drew comic book characters. You know what, I’m just going to skip to Hawaii.

It was hot, but it’s really the humidity that hits you when you step off the plane. But nothing’s better than stepping off a plane and seeing palm trees. I basically associate this with Hawaii and San Diego. I feel like I’m rewriting Dan’s Friday entry. It wasn’t the most eventful night. We rented the car, checked in, claimed our beds, and went to L&L and met up with RJ at The Shack for $2 beers. I also ran into a few people I graduated with in High School. I spent $2 + tip. Too full, too bloated, too tired.

I guess the only thing I can add is a thought about the room. We had three beds and having everybody in the same room probably doubles the fun of time spent in the room. If you want to gather everybody before heading out, you have a huge room. You know when people are awake in the morning and you can talk until the wee hours of the morning at night. The only negative is the single bathroom. Getting as many beds in a room as possible is highly recommended. But I guess that only really applies to groups of all guys or all girls. Couples would want to have their own room. That’s just speculation, since I’m so far away from knowing first hand. I’ll finish the other days this week hopefully. I’m gonna go slam the balcony’s sliding door on my head right now.

I’m trying to blog in WriteRoom now. I got it off the free MacHeist bundle. Go get it! (Free Twitterific stands out). In the past week I’ve tried avoiding Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader because they can take up so much time. And I’ve done a pretty good job. But that’s because we started playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare last weekend to prepare for Modern Warfare 2 this week. The last time I was this excited for a release was probably for The Half Blood Prince and Terminator: Salvation prior to that (what a letdown).

Anyway, my friends have been excited for November for a while. Last month had one of the greatest weeks ever: Jay-Z concert to start it and a trip to Hawaii to end it. Which I still need to write about, though I should’ve written about it on the airplane when the memories were still fresh. But I digress. November has been circled on the calendar basically for MW2, but then a couple of other things came up. Pun intended. Along with that DVD release (do we say “DVD/Blu-Ray release” now and eventually just “Blu-Ray release”?), there’s 2012 and then Ninja Assassin. Plus basketball is back. We get to see how all those NBA summer moves pan out and UW gets to see how good Abdul Gaddy actually is. I really liked last year’s squad. When announcers say “would you want to go to the trenches with so and so”, most of the roster fits that description. It should be good. And on the other side of things, UW will get a chance to avenge last year’s awful Apple Cup loss. And of course there’s Thanksgiving. One of the holidays that gets better as you get older. Maybe the only one, though I’m sure I’m missing something. Halloween depends on how you rank slutty costumes vs. fun-size candy. So that makes two holidays that get better as you get older.

This Thanksgiving has the added bonus of doubling as the first long weekend with MW2. It’s hard to describe how exciting this is. But since only a couple dozen people read this, half of you know exactly how exciting this is.

I almost forgot. The Blackberry 9700 comes out this month also. I loved my G1 for messaging and browsing and really loved it for Google Maps with GPS. Everything was great about it except the time that it stopped turning on. So I went to Dan’s old Blackberry Pearl. I’ve read comments that the only killer app on the Blackberry is Blackberry Messenger. And that’s become the main form of communication between a majority of my close friends so it’s definitely a major pro in deciding whether I want to get a 9700 or not. I’m pretty sure I’ll miss browsing on the G1, but I was usually just on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader so it’s probably not as huge a loss as I’m thinking. (Plus if I really want access to those, their respective Blackberry apps seem really good.) I’ll also miss having Gmail in my pocket, specifically how well it handles threaded emails. But other than that I’m looking forward to having a Blackberry that doesn’t give me the finger (read: hourglass icon) every time I want to do something other than make a call.

Amazing picture, but he ended up landing on his head with a concussion. No spinal injuries though. It was his second concussion in eight days. A guest on Dave Dameshek’s podcast, on the subject of toughness of players and fan perception, suggested we start calling concussions bruised brains.

One of my favorite trips ever. Didn’t take enough pictures. I always know I’ll regret it when I don’t take my camera around, but I do it anyway. I hate worrying about my camera when I can’t be around it (like when I’m in the water). But I really should’ve brought my point and shoot around. Next time I guess.

Fun times as usual. We’ve upgraded since last year. Bigger venue, better food, better speller. Plus we went with the fantastic idea to wear jerseys. Increases the fun sort of the way costumes do, except my costume would be a giant shirt that looks like a dress. As for my team, I didn’t have a completely boneheaded pick this year. (I ended up with Captain Jack’s bonkers ass, but it’s nowhere near a season-ruiner like picking an injured guy in the third round.)

P.S. Good job in the last picture guys, the only time we’ve looked harder is playing Where’s Waldo.

Over/under of injured NBA players I pick for my fantasy team today: 0.5 and I’d take the over.

• Chiefs +6.5 over Redskins
• Bengals -3.5 over Texans
• Browns +14 over Steelers
• Vikings -3 over Ravens
• Jaguars -9.5 over Rams
• Giants +3 over Saints
• Panthers -3 over Buccaneers
• Lions +14 over Packers
• Eagles -14 over Raiders
• Seahawks -3 over Cardinals
• Jets -9.5 over Bills
• Patriots -9 over Titans
• Bears +3.5 over Falcons
• Broncos +3.5 over Chargers

Fake bet $250 bet: Chiefs win (+230)

A guy with one giant forearm. And just one. Arm-wrestling enthusiast.

Enjoyed it. Before the movie we were convincing ourselves that it couldn’t be that scary. And it was. But not as scary as I thought The Ring was. Pretty amazing what they did with a few cameras cheap special effects. If you think you’ll enjoy it based on what you’ve heard about it, you will, because basically everything I heard about it turned out about right. Go see it if you like horror movies at all.

• Vikings -10.5 over Rams
• Chiefs +7.5 over Cowboys
• Panthers -4.5 over Redskins
• Buccaneers +15.5 over Eagles
• Giants -15.5 over Raiders
• Bengals +8.5 over Ravens
• Lions +10.5 over Steelers
• Browns +6 over Bills
• 49ers -2.5 over Falcons
• Texans +5.5 over Cardinals
• Seahawks -1.5 over Jaguars
• Broncos +3 over Patriots
• Colts -3.5 over Titans
• Jets -2 over Dolphins

Fake $250 bet: $125 on Adrian Peterson 1st half touchdown (-125) and $125 on “Steve Smith 1.0″ touchdown (+130).

Adam Richman, host of Man vs. Food, interview on ESPN. One of my heroes! Really enjoyed this one. He knows he’s got a great job and that he kind of lucked into it. He tries to stay healthy between challenges and seasons because he knows the show would be hard to watch if he became morbidly obese.

It’s important for me to stay in shape. If I start looking really, really bad, folks will start to worry, and they won’t enjoy the show. Plus, I want to have sex! So that motivates me.

(Thanks, Chris)

Late Night segment of David Letterman talking about an extortion attempt on him. Summary: someone tried to blackmail Letterman for $2 million with evidence that he’s had sex with Late Night staff members, which Letterman admits is true. Here’s a New York Daily News article with more details.

The long-time host of America’s top-rated Late Show admitted his dalliances to his studio audience last night after giving testimony to a grand jury in New York about the alleged extortion.

Letterman, 62, said he was sent a letter by a man who threatened to reveal “terrible things” about his life in a film screenplay and book he was writing, unless the star paid up.

“What was all this creepy stuff?” said Letterman, who is married with a five-year-old son. “It was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have had sex with women on my show.

“Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, especially for the women.”

It’s the most lighthearted admission of a sexual affair ever. And in hindsight, here’s the most lighthearted denial of a sexual affair ever.

Modern Family pilot. Better than Arrested Development‘s pilot, especially in the “introducing a million characters” department.

Michael Vick is not back with Nike.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Nike said it has “agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike.”

There’s an iPod touch advertisement taking over the front page of ESPN.com right now, and it’s really really cool. Apparently there was one on Wired yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to see it live. Here’s a video of it.

Michael Vick is back with Nike. Kobe just needs to get back with Nutella!

This morning I realized I’ve been using a Mac the entire year and I never took the time to learn how to open a folder in a Finder window using the keyboard (command+down). I spent a few minutes this morning browsing a table of OS X keyboard shortcuts, and the most useful one that I didn’t know, other than the ‘open folder’ one, was the shortcut to cycle through windows in the current application (command+`). P.S. That’s the tilde key, it took me a few tries with the apostrophe to realize.

Super Street Fighter IV impressions (and a new trailer) from Gamespot. I think it’d be a good idea to post more things that aren’t related to fake football and fake football gambling. Capcom confirmed Super Street Fighter IV this week, introducing three of eight new characters: T. Hawk, Dee Jay, and Juri (from what I’ve gathered, she’s some lady, but I’m guessing there’s more to it than that).

It’s a standalone title and people seem mad¬† that it isn’t just downloadable content. Capcom, I’m not mad at you. First, it’s expected, costume packs already cost $4. And those add very little to the gameplay. They’re not just letting opponents pick the same character or adding four bosses. Eight new characters is basically an additional third of the original set of characters. It’s Tiger to Leopard not Leopard to Snow Leopard. And there’s bound to be a bunch of character tweaks for balance. SSFIV won’t be sold at full price, and I’d much rather pay, say, $40 and get a new disc than $25 to basically lock the game to my console.

More importantly, that trailer… the first word that comes to mind is flaccid. It’s a continuation of the Ken and Ryu ink-blot fight. Only the closing Super Street Fighter IV logo kept me from double checking to make sure I didn’t just re-watch a video from last year.

Update: This week: 12-4, Record through 3 weeks: 30-18; Lost both fake bets: -$250, total remains at $500.

• Titans +1 over Jets
• Eagles -7.5 over Chiefs
• Ravens -13.5 over Browns
• Giants -6.5 over Buccaneers
• Jaguars +4 over Texans
• 49ers +7 over Vikings
• Falcons +4.5 over Patriots
• Lions +6.5 over Redskins
• Packers -6.5 over Rams
• Bears -2.5 over Seahawks
• Saints -6 over Bills
• Dolphins +5.5 over Chargers
• Bengals +3.5 over Steelers
• Broncos -2 over Raiders
• Colts +2.5 over Cardinals
• Panthers +8.5 over Cowboys

Fake $250 bet:¬† $125 on “Frank Gore will score a touchdown in the 1st half” at +140, and $125 on “Adrian Peterson will score a touchdown in the 1st half” at -115.

Current fake $250 bet total: $500

Anatomy of a Play: Adrian Peterson’s 64-yard touchdown run from week one. I can’t get enough of this run, and this video has some wide shots from team film.

[Update---This week: 11-5, Total record: 18-14. $250 bet won, total: $500.]

• Oakland Raiders +3 over Kansas City Chiefs
• Tennessee Titans -6.5 over Houston Texans
• New England Patriots -3.5 over New York Jets
• Cincinnati Bengals +9 over Green Bay Packers
• Minnesota Vikings -10 over Detroit Lions
• Philadelphia Eagles (even) over New Orleans Saints
• Atlanta Falcons -6 over Carolina Panthers
• Washington Redskins -9.5 over St. Louis Rams
• Arizona Cardinals +3 over Jacksonville Jaguars
• Seattle Seahawks +1.5 over San Francisco 49ers
• Buffalo Bills -5 over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• Denver Broncos -3 over Cleveland Browns
• Chicago Bears +3 over Pittsburgh Steelers
• Baltimore Ravens +3 over San Diego Chargers
• New York Giants +3 over Dallas Cowboys
• Indianapolis Colts -3 over Miami Dolphins

And Jerry gave me the idea to bet a fake $250 every week and see if I can come out on top at the end of the season. I was going to bet this fake money on NFL props but this week it’s $250 on the University of Washington Huskies at -20. Talk about under”dawgs”! (Even I cringed.)

Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye on Leno’s opening night. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my dad used to record two things religiously: Sonics games and The Tonight Show. Last year wasn’t a good year for him, so I’m glad he kind of got one of them back. I get the sense that he didn’t stick around to see this performance though.

[Update: Here are the results. Counting Thursday's game as a loss. Current record: 7-9]

• Bengals -5 over Broncos
• Vikings -4.5 over Browns
• Texans -4 over Jets
• Colts -6.5 over Jaguars
• Lions +14 over Saints
• Cowboys -5.5 over Buccaneers
• Dolphins +4 over Falcons
• Chiefs +13 over Ravens
• Eagles -2.5 over Panthers
• Giants -6.5 over Redskins
• Seahawks -7.5 over Rams
• 49ers +5.5 over Cardinals
• Packers -4 over Bears
• Patriots -11 over Bills
• Raiders +10 over Chargers

Most points on Sunday [0-1]: Colts (+600)

Some prop bets for the Seahawks/Rams game [1-3]:

• Seahawks total points OVER 24.5 (-115)
• Rams score first (+150)
• First score of the game not a touchdown (+130)
• Longest touchdown UNDER 40.5 (-115)

And since it’s the first week, here are some season prop bets!

• Michael Vick OVER 4.5 yards on first rushing attempt of the season (-115)
• Longest completion UNDER 36.5 yards in the NFL regular season (-115)
• Most regular season wins: Chargers (even) vs. Colts
• Most regular season wins: AFC East (-4.5) over NFC West
• Raiders total interceptions UNDER 17 (-115)
• Most passing touchdowns: Drew Brees (+4.5) over Tom Brady
• Most passing touchdowns: Tony Romo (+0.5) over Donovan McNabb
• Most rushing yards: Maurice Jones-Drew (-45.5) over LaDainian Tomlinson
• Most rushing touchdowns: LaDanian Tomlinson (+4.5) over Adrian Peterson
• Most receiving yards: Andre Johnson (+50.5) over Larry Fitzgerald
• Most receiving touchdowns: Terrell Owens (+3.5) over Larry Fitzgerald
• Cardinals in playoffs: NO (-130)
• Seahawks in playoffs: YES (+115)
• Adrian Peterson MVP (+700)
• NFC East NFL champs (+300)
• Eagles NFL champs (+1200)

Trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats. Sold.

Penny Arcade did a great job with their take the Disney/Marvel story. Rotten Tomatoes on the other hand, did not (the comments are entertaining though, my favorite was this: “As a website devoted to critiquing other peoples work, RT should be more careful about posting stupid * * * * like this.”).

First pick, PPR league. MJD wasn’t sexy enough for me and I need a name change since it’s irrelevant now.

ESPN Rise lifestyle editor talking about Jordans.

Jay-Z Rhapsody commercial. Just watch it! I couldn’t find a collage of all his covers with an image search, but you can see most of the covers with a quick Amazon search.(Thanks, Jeff)

NBA 2K10 Preview from ESPN Videogames.

But the change in philosophy over the ratings isn’t the only aspect 2K Sports was looking to adjust; in speaking to the game designers, they look back to “NBA 2K7″ as still being the best in franchise history. “When fans talk about ‘NBA 2K,’ they always go back to ‘2K7,’” says producer Rob Jones. “After they see what we’ve done with ‘NBA 2K10,’ they won’t need to talk about any of our older games. ‘2K10′ is going to be the game everyone talks about from now on.”

Delancey: Seattle’s Great Pizza Hope.

The much-buzzed-about restaurant became the Great Pizza Hope of Seattle long before its doors even opened. Why? Because the pair behind the operation is food-focused author and Orangette blogger Molly Wizenberg and her husband, Brandon Pettit, a composer turned chef, formerly of New York. Thanks to Wizenberg’s blog entries tracking the restaurant’s progress and Pettit’s loyal Twitter following, Seattleites have long been rooting for this little venture/experiment to succeed. Fortunately, it does.

I need to try this.

My first 3D movie! That gets it one star, because it’s a fun time. Another star for getting what I expected—a bunch of outrageous death scenes one after the other. The estimated budget for the movie is $43 million, which is more than any of the first three movies. My estimated budget for the 3D cameras is $40 million. The deaths look comical (which I guess I prefer over hyper-realistic), and there are extended shots showing the mutilated bodies and they’d fit better in Tremors. But the acting in that movie is leagues better than what you get in The Final Destination. Some people think 3D is a fad, but I enjoyed it and I liked what I saw from the 3D previews.

Disney to acquire Marvel Entertainment.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

Snow Leopard calculates disk space in base 10. One comment brings up a good point: downloaded files will appear larger on the hard drive than the size stated on a website. But hard drives have so much capacity these days that anyone downloading even, say, a 4GB file has more than enough space and won’t worry about a few hundred extra MB here and there. But they’d probably worry about 70GB missing and this means a 1TB drive will show up as 1TB instead of 930GB. It’s an end to that confusion, but I really hate that the article I linked to calls it a fix to a “disk capacity bug”.

DJ Rok One’s eulogy for DJ AM.

I have learned so much about myself and music and life in the aftermath of his success. Beyond the US Weekly shit and the Nicole Richie shit, and the TV shows and Million Dollar Deals, beyond all that shit, this one guy loved djing so fucking much that he changed the face of music forever, in the same way that Curt did in the 90s.

Speaking of Michael Jordan, ESPN is counting down his top 23 most memorable moments leading up to his hall of fame induction. I love sports clips with the original announcers (as opposed to highlight clips set to background music). Having the original information graphics makes it even better. This should be good.

TMZ: DJ AM found dead. Sad that it’s so soon after getting a second chance surviving the plane crash last year.

Kevin Wildes was on the B.S. Report today. (Clicking this link will resize your window and open up the ESPN player.) He’s an ESPN producer (currently working on SportsNation) and one of my favorite guests on Bill Simmons’s podcast. When Kevin Wildes goes on the podcast, he presents three half-baked ideas (example from the past: a bar with movable walls that makes the room bigger or smaller based on how many people are in the bar, because 30 people in a small bar is fun but if it’s a huge place it just feels empty and 120 people in a small bar is too crowded.) This one was really good.

But I decided to post it because they mention an old urban legend that Michael Jordan essentially owns the rights to all footage of himself. And Bill Simmons confirms that it’s true (as much as Bill Simmons saying it’s true counts as confirming something, but that’s good enough for me.) And I think that sort of answers the question I had during May and June: why isn’t Michael Jordan in more NBA commercials? They absolutely could have given his last shot the CGI’d empty stadium treatment.

SLAM Online’s college basketball preseason preview: Washington (#9). I’m definitely excited for Thomas & Gaddy, which has the bonus of sounding like both a law firm and a mob family.

While it would seem like a less than ideal situation to bring an All-American freshman into the backcourt to run alongside a player who dominates the basketball as much as Thomas does, Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar landed the top pass-first guard in the country in Gaddy. The Tacoma product is the complete package for a floor general, possessing great size for the position at 6-3 and a well above average basketball IQ. Gaddy has the smarts and skills to break defenders down off the dribble and create for his teammates. It’s likely that he will find himself guarding the shooting guard position when him and Thomas are on the floor, but those two will be perfect complements for each other offensively.

And here’s the rest of the list so far:

• 25. Florida State
  24. Florida
  23. Clemson
  22. Illinois
  21. Georgia Tech
  20. Siena
  19. Michigan
  18. Oklahoma
  17. Minnesota
  16. Ohio State
  15. Mississippi
  14. Duke
  13. Butler
  12. California
  11. Connecticut
  10. West Virginia

Pitch: Comedians talk about and perform a joke known as The Aristocrats.

I decided to stick The Aristocrats on the Netflix queue because of Jeffrey Ross’s appearance on Bill Simmons’s podcast. He discussed the Hugh Hefner roast and Gilbert Gottfried in particular. I was about to write a summary of what Jeffrey Ross said, but I searched real quick and found a concise description:

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried was known mostly for his ranting and squinting until September 29, 2001, when, in the wake of the WTC attacks, he mounted the dais for the Friar’s Club roast of Hugh Hefner. “I started out by saying, ‘I have to fly to L.A. tonight, but I can’t get a direct flight: They have to make a stop at the Empire State Building,’” he recalls. “Then I felt the audience jump back.” At that point, Gottfried decided to launch into a ten-minute version of the world’s dirtiest joke, known in comedy circles as the Aristocrats.

Here’s how the joke goes (taken from the Wikipedia article):

The setup: The joke always begins with a family act going in to see a talent agent.

The act: It is described in as much detail as the teller prefers.

The punchline: The shocked (or intrigued) agent asks what the act is called, and the proud answer (sometimes delivered with a flourish) is “The Aristocrats!”

Apparently comedians used to get together, taking turns telling their version while trying to outdo the previous comedian. I was hoping this documentary would include full footage of Gottfried’s telling at the Hugh Hefner roast, but only part is shown. My favorite segment was Kevin Pollak doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken telling the joke. In the end, hearing the same joke over and over is about as fun as it sounds. And listening to the deconstruction of a single joke over and over is also about as fun as it sounds. It’s sort of like magic—what’s going on behind the scenes is a lot less fun than the actual performance. As interesting as the history is, ninety minutes is just too long for any single joke.

Dave Chappelle 2007 stand-up in London. I always ask people if they’ve seen this then I tell them I’ll send them a link later and later I forget to send the link. Anyway, Neal Brennan (co-creator of Chappelle’s Show) was on Bill Simmons’s podcast and I spent a few hours watching Chappelle clips on YouTube after listening to that. And I came across this clip of him performing in London, which is one of my favorites and one of the few non-interview clips of him after leaving the show. His response to a group in the crowd yelling “I’m rich, bitch!”:

No, nope, I’m not rich anymore. I was almost rich, bitch. I shoulda took that money, now I’m in a basement in London, somewhere.

That doesn’t translate well at all to text—just watch the clip! P.S. On the podcast, Neal Brennan mentions that the next few years of his career will depend on how well The Goods does. Based on that, the next few years of his career aren’t looking too good. But he also talked about Half Baked, which was received slightly better than Simple Jack and had some critics saying that his and Chappelle’s careers were over. Basically he’s been in worse position and done OK so I think he’ll be alright.

After the letdowns of G.I. Joe, Terminator: Salvation, and Transformers 2, I’m happy to say that District 9 exceeded my expectations. And they were actually pretty high going in. Even more amazing is the budget that was less than $40 million. The Neill Blomkamp/Peter Jakson director/producer duo was working on the Halo movie before it was canceled, and I’m convinced that it would’ve been the best video game movie ever (of course, this list epitomizes “not saying much”).

But back to the movie. There’s a lot more action than I was expecting, and the action’s far, far more exciting than I was expecting. The last twenty minutes glued me the same way the bombing scene in Pearl Harbor did. The interrogation from the trailers isn’t in the movie. I’m going to call that a reverse-spoiler because I was waiting for it the entire time I was watching and I get irritated when I’m expecting a scene to happen in a movie and wondering if it’ll be next. With summer coming to a close, it’s a dead-heat between District 9 and Star Trek for my favorite movie this year. (Though it’s the second year in a row that I didn’t go with my friends to the Pixar movie then just put it off and all of a sudden it’s almost out of theaters.)

Update: When talking about my favorite movie this summer, somehow I freakin’ forgot about Harry Potter. I think it’s because I’ve been trying to force out the memory of the front row seats at the midnight showing.

Summer is coming to an end. But the break isn’t! As the month comes to a close, I’ve started to transition from feeling and saying “Oh I just graduated” to “Oh I’m unemployed.”

• I went to San Francisco a couple of weekends ago. I should’ve wrote some scattered thoughts right after the trip because now I’ve forgotten the details. So I’ll gloss over it now. Japantown is awesome and the amount of time we spent there reflects that. Most of the guys I was with lived on U.S. bases in Japan as kids (and the one who didn’t visited over summer break), so we’re pretty biased.
• Food spots we tried: Max’s Diner (not great, plus we were trying to go to a different Max’s and didn’t realize it until we were too late); some sushi place (great, fresh sushi, but we were a little sticker shocked mostly because we’ve grown used to happy hour prices); Sophie’s crepes (basically like Unicorn Crepes in Seattle, except cheaper with larger portions); some Ramen place (perfect the day after going out); House of Curry (good curry, good naan); some crepe place on Haight (just had a taste, and it was good, but I prefer the modern Asian cones over the traditional crepes); Cancun Taqueria (had the carnitas, beef tongue, and chorizo tacos and loved them all); and of course, In ‘N’ Out (it’s good, pretty much everyone agrees, I also had a brain lapse and said no to onions for my first double-double which is the same saying no if they asked if I wanted my burger to be delicious).
• Went to Club Sutra. Had fun. Two fights broke out and every kind of emergency vehicle was lined up outside at the end of the night. According to one of the doormen at our hotel, that’s the norm on Broadway.
• Taxi drivers are nuts there. Here’s part of a comment I left on Albert’s San Francisco running blog: “We had one that I’d describe as deceptively terrifying because he wasn’t on the phone, didn’t get angry, didn’t talk, and stayed calm while flooring it, tailgating, and cutting across multiple congested lanes. His ability to find openings was comparable to an elite running back’s.”
• As we walked through one of the terminals in SFO, I realized that same terminal was essentially deserted the last time I was there. I got flashbacks in SFO of the time I got stranded there. Immediately I remembered that I basically traded an afternoon boogie boarding and relaxing in Hawaii for sleeping in an airport without a shower or a change of clothes. Easily breaks into my top-5 worst nights ever.

All in all, I really like San Francisco and I wouldn’t mind visiting again in the immediate future. I could actually try Farmerbrown (it was closed when we went the first time we tried and reservations-only the second time we tried) along with everything in the No Reservations episode that we preceded by a couple days.

Michael Wilbon’s article on the Michael Vick signing. He touches on the racial implications and the relationship between Vick and McNabb. The press conference with Vick, Dungy, and Reid just ended and I think they did as good a job as they possibly could. As far as the dogs go, Vick said something along the lines of “I’ll try to help more animals than I hurt” and addressed his past excuse of dog fighting being part of the culture he was raised—he realized that excuse was something he was hiding behind. As for football, he said he’s maintained his weight in prison and he feels ready to ease his way in and contribute. He replied “You gotta crawl before you walk” when someone asked about accepting a non-starting role. As far as I’m concerned, he was sincere in all his answers, mostly because he’s never been much of an actor. Proof: Nike’s Michael Vick experience commercial, where he has a single line at the end and he butchers it.

I found out I could set the custom button on my D90 to a “hold down for RAW capture” setting. These pictures are all from RAW files. If the vignette setting could go left any further, my pictures would do a Haka because they’d be all black.