Christmas Recap - Part 1

Christmas has come and gone and here's how things went down in our neighborhood.

In my last post I detailed the Friday the 17th where Gwen and I went out and gorged ourselves on delicious beast flesh. The following night was our annual "Holiday Party" with our local group of San Diego friends. But as the term 'Holiday Party' is so generic, and at the risk of being labeled un-PC jerks, we went ahead and claimed our party as our own, naming it what we really felt:

The Mon Mothma Kwanzaa Blowout Celebration 2010.

"Many Bothans died to bring you the best damn holiday party of 2010!"

Many Bothans died to bring us that party - hell we killed a few just naming the event come to think of it. In fact turns out whole multitudes of Bothans were slaughtered again and again in the planning, execution, and clean-up phases. So high was the body count that eventually even that joke was killed. Barely. But it was worth it, to get together with friends and celebrate our deeply rooted African heritage.

The party was as usual a blast. Gwen and I hosted for the first time seeing as how Eryn and Trisha conveniently skipped town permanently to London to avoid hosting. There was no trash-talking Crossbows and Catapults sessions, as in years past, but there was the annual Secret Santa gift exchange complete with international web-cam Skype sessions straight to London. Iwan turned out to be my Secret Santa, and he got me the Predator "Ultimate Hunter" Blu Ray DVD with the didn't-really-need-to-be-said caveat that "When something comes in an "Ultimate Hunter" edition, I buy it for my friends because that's my policy" - a proper sentiment by all accounts. I also got a "Big Cheese Pizza" T-shirt deservedly making fun of my pescatarian ways, and a Best Buy gift certificate which I intend to use to purchase something to help me waste more time, because I need that.

The majority of the party was a delightful affair characterized by delicious, if too much, food, good conversation and warm company. It was, as it is every year, a marvelous time. By the time most decent people left it was down to Iwan, Little Buhr, and myself, and the real drinking began. We ended up playing the Wii until all hours of the night after doing shots for Gwen's official birthday which arrived at midnight. We played Super Mario Bros. Wii on the cooperative setting, though the the term 'cooperative' was misleading as we were quick to flagellate one another when someone screwed up. At some point a "shots for failure" policy was initiated, which eventually took its toll on all of us.

The night ended when we decided to switch up games and play some NBA Jam, only I couldn't quite exchange the discs because it was frankly too hard at that point in my alcohol consumption and fatigue cycle and I preferred to simply pass out with the process half-way finished. I collapsed onto the rug with the NBA Jam disc still in my hand as if I had been shot by a sniper while trying to make the switch. Iwan likewise clocked out on the couch, and Justin, left awake and staring at the lifeless bodies of his two friends, quickly followed suit. It was perhaps 4 am.

I woke up at maybe 6 am with a face full of carpet and hauled myself upstairs to bed. When I awoke again at 7:45 am, freaking out because it was my morning to walk the dog, I was still fairly intoxicated. I ran downstairs but Gwen was already up and out with the dog - she had, bless her, sensed my imminent uselessness that morning. I trudged back upstairs and went back to bed.

The next time I awoke it was 11 o'clock and all I could think was, "Oh God, I'm missing football - I'm missing Giants vs. Eagles!". I ran downstairs, slightly less drunk but infinitely more hungover and assumed the position in front of multiple TVs.

The Giants were up 24-3 or something, late second quarter. Hey, this wasn't going to be half-bad. Nice work boys, let's wrap up the NFC East! Well, it didn't turn out like that, and over the next few hours the second half evolved into one of the three worst losses I have ever experienced with my G-Men (thank God we had the 2000 Super Bowl as a buffer), as Michael Vick "activated" like a Tecmo Bowl player and went ape all over the field, amassing 21 points in 6 minutes or something ridiculous. Neither the dog (on principle), my dad (Tom Coughlin is expressly forbidden from ever entering our house) or I were happy with the result.

By the time DeSean Fuckface Jackson returned that dreaded punt for the final touchdown, my hangover had reached its apex and as he crested the goal line, skirting near it but not crossing it, and as he pumped his fist in celebration, each pump hit me like a hammer to the temple and a dagger to the heart.

Desean Jackson - Talented Receiver, Full-Fledged Asshole

The Eagles won, and the rest is history. The next few days, despite being in the middle of what is classically known as "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year", I was in a funk. As bad as my gameday hangover was during the game, it actually protected me in some bizarro fashion by limiting my ability to process what I had seen. The next few days things got worse. I couldn't believe the collapse - it literally depressed me - and I had to tune out all football.

My normal routine of NFL blogs, websites, and podcasts was shunned and I just sort of went through the week in a fog wishing that the football season would just be over. But alas, it wasn't, and frankly the Giants weren't yet done sucking.

The week dragged, but I slowly climbed out of it, and then Christmas arrived.


Continued in Part 2 Coming Soon!

Giants Win! And who let that Predalien out?

What a weekend.

Most importantly, thanks to my Giants, America will not have to endure "America's Team" (puh-lease that stupid-ass moniker) any more in the post season. This is awesome. Could anything have been worse than a Patriots/Cowboys Super Bowl? I say no.

I stayed up until 2 am local time watching the game - celebrating alone in Man Room with my fists raised and a grin from ear to ear as the final interception sealed the deal. This was the final pose after four long quarters of fretting and worrying, alternatively being pumped and then pissed, the type of behavior which is quite characteristic of watching one's team in a big game against a monster rival, ups and downs alternating frequently.

Even if we (note: this is the point where I begin to use the collective "we" when speaking about the G-men) get waxed in Green Bay in a week (against the mighty Pack and their leader Indiana Favre, which America must be collectively rooting for something wicked right now), we can still hold our heads high knowing that we knocked the stupid Cowboys off their stupid one seed perch in the divisional round. (Interesting fact: A number one seed had never lost in the divisional round in the current playoff format until just yesterday! Ah, let that besmirch the Cowboys organization forever! Let the Dallas infighting begin! I love it. I just love it. I'm one step away from rolling on the ground and giggling like a lunatic right now.)

In watching the game, I realized a few things about Dallas. I don't like Tony Romo. He's not a bad player, or even a bad guy, don't get me wrong - he just bothers me. He is the new Donovan McNabb in that he can seemingly escape any amount of pressure, dart to some open space and then wing a strike down the field; this was McNabb's specialty just a few years back before his rash of injuries and now Romo's taken that mantle from him. I hate watching that against my boys. Hate it. The big difference here is that I might like McNabb if he were on another team, but Romo? It's like watching Kirk Cameron or Corey Haim (or some other pre-teen "hunk" straight out of Tiger Beat magazine) hop right off the page and then toy with your defense. I don't like his beady little eyes, his goofy belongs-on-MTV smile, his celebrity dating, the whole package. I know he's just a fun-loving guy at heart, but he bothers me, especially when galloping around our pass rush. There, I said it. I'm glad we rattled him good in the second half of that game to the point where he turned into a screaming ninny, yelling at the refs, his receivers, his linemen, and everybody else. He looked like Ryan Seacrest threatening not to go on camera because some intern didn't bring him his favorite donut. I loved it.

I also had a long debate with myself during this game over which fans I hate worse - Dallas fans or Philly fans. And I have decided on Dallas fans (at least until we play a big game at Philly again). I have no love of Philly fans as everyone knows (there are grudging exceptions - G Mount) and as the scar on the back of my head from a peanut M&M can attest to, but you have to at least give them some mild credit when it comes to comparing them to Cowboy fans. Yeah, the Eagles fans are a bunch of surly jerks who love their team, hate yours, pick fights and step over their own mothers to boo children, but at least they don't have that special "Texas" bullshit attitude that Cowboy fans bring. They don't carry around that same kind of cocky sneer or that puffed-chest, two-hands-on-belt-buckle attitude which they feel gives them the authority to name themselves "America's Team" or say stupid crap like "How 'bout them Cowboys" with an accent that can only correctly be described as 'inbred'. Yes, for now, Cowboy fans take the cake. They truly suck.

I just thought I'd share all that. Switching gears, I was relatively pleased with Eli's performance, or in this case non-performance (just don't screw up), and though I haven't checked officially with my dad, it's quite possible that after these past few weeks of decent play Eli might even be allowed into the Stup home one night if he were found cold and starving at the doorstep, a statement that most certainly wouldn't have been true around the stretch that ended with the Buffalo game. I'm also finding myself falling for our defensive coordinator. He's making ridiculous in-game adjustments and he's doing it with a smoke and mirrors secondary. We just shut down Romo, Witten, and T.O. for a full half without either one of our starting cornerbacks. He might just be my new hero.


In other news, I watched ALL the football games this past weekend, even the Jags versus Pats game which required me to stay up until 5 am to finish. I still hate the Patriots, and will now join forces with my San Diego boys to wish the Chargers a stunning victory next Sunday. Could we possibly dream of a Giants/Chargers Super Bowl? I know it's quite unlikely (and could possibly even destroy some of my strongest friendships should the Chargers win such a hypothetical), but one can dare to dream. Either way, I'm a Bolts fan big-time this week. And if the Giants lose to the Pack and the Pats prevail? Well then I'd morph into the biggest Pack fan there is. That's all there is to it.

I knew this would be a good weekend because it started off with a bang. The kind of "bang" only four simple words can bring: Aliens versus Predator: Requiem. Oh, there was a requiem all right.

After being a fan of the good-bad-ness of the first Aliens vs. Predator movie*, where you had middle-linebacker esque Predators doing WWF moves on Aliens ( what's not to love?), I decided there was no way I could miss the sequel on the big screen. Going to this movie was like paying respects to my former 14-year old self.

(*This coming on the heels of my being a huge fan of most all of the Predator and Aliens movies; actually here is my informal rank order of these movies from best to worst in case you were wondering - and don't say you weren't: Aliens (best overall film), Predator (pure testosterone but well done, barely edged about by the more complete Aliens in my book), Alien (A little slow, but dark and classic), Alien 4 (the first 75% was actually quite good, the ending awful), Predator 2 (Movie tagline "He's in town with a few days to kill" Nuff said. On the down side, still not sure how an overweight, out of shape, over the hill Danny Glover can go toe to toe with a predator in hand to hand combat when Arnold in his prime got his ass absolutely kicked), and lastly, Alien 3 (forget this one happened)

So I convinced a grudging Gwendolyn and even more grudging Pete to come watch with me. The result: Popcorn bliss.

Don't get me wrong this is a bad movie - but I like to think its more good-bad than bad-bad.

First off, it's better than the first movie (that one teeters far closer to bad-bad than good-bad, despite the WWF moves), and both are highly "MST-able" and don't think for a minute we weren't making cracks the entire time. Walking in, I was excited by the potential for a high body count. Anyone who's seen the preview (you have to watch this thing - it's ridiculous) knew there would be blood.

The body count of humans alone who die on screen (not counting any implied deaths, of which there are far more) is a healthy-if-not-spectacular 25 - I know because we counted. Plus there are more Alien schoolings than one can shake a stick at.

The plot is totally irrelevant, but here it is. Things actually start right after the end of the first movie. A dead predator is brought on board their ship as they leave Earth. As the predator pilots tend to other things, an Alien embryo pops out of his dead stomach. Only this is no ordinary Alien - this is a "Predalien", an unholy hybrid and sure to be a dynamic ass-kicker.

Somehow this Predalien (Love that term by the way. Pete argued that we should call it a "Pralien", but I couldn't disagree more strongly) grows up fast and then starts taking out Predators on the ship. All the ruckus from the fighting (these are Predators, dammit, they fight back) causes the ship to crash to back to Earth in a small Colorado town. Also aboard the ship are several face suckers kept in stasis in jars. These break and those things get out all over the woods in seconds. A human hunter and his son stumble onto the ship and they're toast in minutes, each getting a face full of face-sucker. The Predalien, of course, survives the crash and he gets out and starts looking for some shit to mess up.

Meanwhile, back on Predator world, a lone predator somehow is able to watch a video feed from the battle helmet of another Predator who died on the ship. He sees this Predalien in the clip and decides he needs to investigate. Our question at this point wass, what, no Predator CNN? You'd think a ship full of Predators which crashes on another planet has all kinds of sensors and alerts back on the home world and video and news of this would be just plastered all over Predator CNN, with mug shots of individual deceased predators on screen with their birth years and such, but no. Apparently it's no big deal. Instead this ONE Predator decides to take his ship to Earth and find out what is going on.

What ensues over the next 20 minutes is some hilarious parody of CSI - Predatory style. The lone Predator lands on earth, finds the now empty ship, and begins doing all this technical assessment. He also destroys evidence everywhere he goes. He uses special lenses in his wide array of visual fields to track the slime left by face huggers as they crawled out of the ship, and uses special Predator chemicals to destroy bodies, metal, and anything else. The whole thing had a comical CSI effect - I half expected him to don a white lab coat and break out a magnifying glass at one point and start doing ballistic checks. Just get to the killing already. What's funny in the end is that for all the Predator's special visions capable of magnifying and analyzing the slightest hint of chemical residue, and also the fact that he's oh, I dunno, a master PREDATOR, he seems to have trouble with simple peripheral vision and hearing, never noticing Aliens slithering around him until they're right on top of him. (At which point he schools them, repeatedly.)

Needless to say, as he tracks the Predalien (his ultimate prize) and destroys evidence of people with holes in their stomachs along the way, he occasionally stumbles in to some hapless human (they're always toast) or a normal Alien or two (likewise schooled). The Predalien acts like the queen Alien in this movie, commanding and controlling the rapidly breeding (and ridiculously fast growing) Alien legions, which run around the town and cause all hell to break loose.

The human characters aren't worth much and kudos to the filmmaker for minimizing any attempt at back story because people coming to watch this movie simply don't care, and I was no exception. There is the new Ripley-type (a female Marine just back from deployment), and the new Arnold-type (not really) is an ex-con with street smarts. There are other humans running about, most of which get schooled in a ridiculous manner (yes!), but they are completely unimportant.

The Predalien is a mixed bag for me. It's big, it still moves fast, it really looks like a combo, and it hisses a lot. I prefer the CSI Predator fighting regular Aliens more, though. Not sure why, but I don't need the gimmick. Just give me an old fashioned Predator going middle-linebacker hit on an old fashioned Alien and I'm happy. On the upside, you do get to see the entire array of Predator weaponry, from the usual shoulder cannon and blades to laser whips (booya!), thrown blades, and even a laser-net which kicks some ass.

A big downside to this film, however, is that it is too dark. Gwen and I were complaining about how dark it was, and how it was hard to see when the fights started (in close quarters, at night) early on. This only got worse because at one point the Predator fires lasers at the Predalien in the town's Power Station and takes the whole thing out, the result being a total blackout. Sigh.

I won't give away the film's ending, but I will say the government callously bombs the whole town for containment purposes as about three humans escape in a helicopter. Oops, I guess I just did give it away. The final duel between the CSI Predator and the Predalien is not bad, looking often like a Nike Football Commercial, and right before the aformentioned bomb drops, and everything in the town (including the Predator and the Predalien) are obliterated, you see the Predator rip out the mini-mouth of the Predalien and stab it with it's tri-spike in the face just as the Predalien lances the Predator with its tail - the ultimate stand-off resulting in death for both. Prior to this fight, the CSI Predator makes like the original and strips off his weapons and armor, choosing to go hand to hand with a worthy foe. For the Predalien's pre-fight routine, well he merely hisses some more.

There are more than a few homages to the original movies (the prefight routine of the CSI Predator being just one), but my favorite was one of the main characters screaming "Get to the chopper!" at the end. Unfortunately his voice was generic and not Arnoldian as we have come to know and love. Still, it was a nice touch.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for a good-bad movie, you could do a lot worse than Alien versus Predator: Requiem.


So anyway, that (in addition to playing some TF2 with the boys online - always a blast) was my weekend. Aliens, Predators, and the Giants ("we") winning a huge game. Even going back to work today wasn't too bad. After all, my office is two doors down from a Cowboys fan...