10SNE1 or What's All This Racket?

I'm a sports FANATIC! I've watched whole Curling matches before - there's just about no sport I won't watch. It's how I'm wired. So, the other day I was watching a little tennis. I've played before. Once. On a date. Ruthie KILLED me.

I used to like to watch tennis back in the day when the there were a few really good players and they would beat up on each other. I saw a documentary on Chris Everett and Martina Navratilova. I remember those days with fondness - two great players trading victories.

So being a cynical old man watching a sport (any sport) my thoughts throughout the match I saw surprised me: 8% of the game is the hitting, volley, and serve portion of the tennis match. The rest of the time is spent pacing, sneering at the other player, angry at yourself (including talking, screaming and smacking), and tight-roping the back line while dribbling the ball before every serve. 1% of the time is spent arguing with officials as to whether the ball hit the line or not (John McEnroe notwithstanding).

When it is all over, both opponents meet and embrace at the net. I suppose this is a defensive move so as to avoid errant knees.

Oh, and the title of this entry is a license plate I saw once: 10 (ten) S (s) NE1 (anyone) - and the 'racket' joke just had to be done. Sometimes I'm powerless to stop the stupidity.

Moving Pictures in Motion

The other day I was looking for a good movie to watch. I'm unsure how to go about finding a good movie as I think there is a sliding scale - ranging from crappy to epic. This, however, becomes the problem. I've been subjected to several movie rating systems all of which are similar, different, confusing, unrealistic, irrelevant, and frustrating.

Movies are rated in a variety of ways. Seskel and Ebert devised a simple binary system of "thumbs up or thumbs down." This is perhaps the most solid and definitive version of ranking ever. Don't trifle with a sliding scale. This is a see it/don't see it scale. Cut and dried. Straight forward. Aweful.

Rotten Tomatoes uses two "% like" scales - one for critics and one for the community of participants. This one is good, but I find myself placing a threshold on it because it is too vast. So, a 67% liked movie is OK, but a 66%er is right out!

The most common ratings for movies is the star method. 5 stars=10 ratings. Why? Half stars. Why not just have 10 whole stars instead of having to mutilate and sever stars or worse, display stars and then a 1/2 next to it. Its biggest problem in my way of thinking is that it seems non-committal. Is it 2 stars or 3? Oh, 2 1/2 stars? Well, in that case...and I once again set a threshold. Must be more than 2.5 stars for me to enjoy it.

The problem with ANY ranking system is that there is subjectivity and temporal issues. To combat this, I think I'll have to find reviews of a dozen movies or so by a number of critics and see if I agree with them. Once I've vetted my synchro-critic then I can rely on his reviews. And reviews on recent movies should be stamped with an expiration date. Review from 1977: "The special effects in Star Wars are extraordianry." Revised 2011: "The special effects in Star Wars look like paper models were cut out of construction paper and colored with crayon."

I think Dr. Doolittle III is so bad it actually owes me a star.