The Big Update

Holy shit it's been a long time since I've been able to make a decent post about my world! I finally have my computer here and I can get back to rolling off blog updates almost every day now!

Baseball

First off, we have to begin with the biggest news of them all, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series! Even now, it is very hard for me to sink in how... well, to put it frankly, how easy it was. The toughest challenge along the way ended up being the Phillies who didn't put up much of a fight. While Roy Halladay was touted around ESPN and Fox as being this God of Pitching, the Giants easily dismantled him. Most people were shocked to see that not only was the Giants pitching staff the best starters and bullpen in the entire league, but that their hitters were damn good too. The Texas Rangers, to this date, are only known for two things: being owned by George W. Bush before he became the governor of Texas and for foolishly trading away Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees.

A bit of back-story on how/why the Rangers even contended in the playoffs. After the 2009 World Series when the Yankees defeated the Phillies, the Phillies decided to make what was heralded by ESPN as the highest profile trade in baseball since Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees. The Phillies traded away their ace pitcher, Cliff Lee, to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for their ace, Roy Halladay. Note that at this point in Lee's postseason career, he was undefeated and Halladay had never been to the playoffs. In mid-season, the Mariners did an incredibly stupid thing and traded Lee to the Texas Rangers in exchange for junk players because Lee had an expiring contract and the Mariners did not want to pursue re-signing him. With Lee as the new ace of the Rangers and some mid-season trades for power hitting, Nolan Ryan assembled the best hitting team in baseball alongside one of the top 5 starting pitchers. Once reaching the playoffs, the Rangers did the unthinkable and finally won a game in Dallas for the first time in the 50+ year old team's history. Shocking the media even more, the Rangers defeated the defending champion New York Yankees.

And then these guys came along. I guess even Japan feels Giants fever!

In Game 1, the Giants served Cliff Lee his first career postseason defeat. In Game 2, Matt Cain pitched a shutout while the Rangers bullpen collapsed after C.J. Wilson exited the game with a blister on his finger. During that Game 2, a pitcher who shall forever be known as str8edgeracer (his twitter account), pitched 11 balls in a row. Then he finally pitched a strike. Oh, but then he threw a 12th ball and walked his third man up at bat with 2 outs. The Giants absolutely obliterated the Rangers bullpen and the Rangers fans started getting worried as the World Series was headed to Dallas for the first time. In Game 3, Jonathan Sanchez couldn't quite pull it off and the Rangers won 4-2. In Game 4, Madison Bumgarner served the Rangers their 2nd shutout and became the youngest pitcher in history to pitch more than 6 scoreless innings. In the epic climax of Game 5, Tim Lincecum, reigning two-time NL Cy Young winner, tied the record for most strikeouts in a World Series clinching game at 10 strikeouts and Edgar Renteria joined some big names by delivering the series clinching RBI, the 2nd time he has done so in the World Series, joining the names of Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig.

Basketball

The Miami Heat continue to have inexplicable supporters in the sports media... or so they did until they blew a 22 point lead against the Utah Jazz and trailed the entire game against the Boston Celtics. Most people have found the very obvious flaws in the Miami Heat's "super team," most notably three of them: 1) An elite point guard like Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, or Chris Paul is capable of scoring easily on the Heat by driving to the basket. 2) They have a serious lack of length at the 4 and 5 positions coupled with Chris Bosh vastly under-performing. 3) The Heat bench cannot gel together whatsoever and in order for the Heat to get in any kind of rhythm, one of the "Big Three" must be on the court.

Paul Millsap was the kryptonite for the Heat, scoring 46 points and making 3/3 3-pointers.

The Lakers have been playing almost effortlessly in the first 9 games of the season, managing to get a record of 8-1, losing their first game against the Denver Nuggets by 6 points in a game that Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom had poor shooting nights. If they didn't declare their alliance before the season, most people are now giving the Lakers a guaranteed 4th consecutive trip to the NBA Finals.
The biggest surprise, however, has been the New Orleans Hornets beginning their season at 7-0. While there have been some rumors of a Chris Paul trade, the Hornets haven't let it stop them and they're doing all they can to start and hopefully end strong. It was quite unfortunate to see their season crumble last year with Chris Paul's injury, but I'm glad now they have returned to form and give the Lakers a good challenge in the playoffs!

Comics

The big event is finally over! Bruce Wayne is finally in the present and has once again donned the cape and cowl. In order to return to the present, Wayne had to have his memories tampered with so Darkseid's Omega Effect could not affect him to the original effect. In order for him to regain his memories... well I'll leave that detail hanging until my review of The Return of Bruce Wayne #5-6. In the world of Supergirl, she managed to defeat the threat to Bizarro World in an unexpectedly long story arc that was actually very well written and speaks to who exactly Supergirl is. Expect reviews for all these comics in the near future.

Video Games

So, the Playstation Move and Kinect are on store shelves now... Not sure what to make of that other than the Wii is still going to be the number one seller at Christmas time. I recently downloaded a bunch of sports games demos, so I guess I can give my 2 cents on those.
NBA 2K11: Like the previous NBA 2K games, 2K11 is too fucking complicated to pick up and play. While incredibly realistic, it's also impossible to enjoy unless you put in hours of practice to learn how to play.
MLB The Show 10: I downloaded this mostly to see how it plays in 3D and it's not a very good 3D effect in place. What makes things worse is that the pitching is impossible to pull off and I couldn't figure out how to swing. Allegedly, the "swing" button is either square or cross, but neither fucking worked.
MLB 2K10: After playing The Show, I had to check out and see if MLB 2K was any better. It was miles better than The Show. The pitching was a bit tricky to figure it out at first, but after walking 2 guys, it was became easy to get consistent strikes. While difficult to hit consistently, I eventually learned to not swing at everything that came my way (like in real life!) and managed to get a single! One problem I encountered was playing in the outfield could use some improvement. When the MLB 2K11 demo hits in a few months, I'll have to give it a try and see if the outfield play is improved at all.
Madden NFL 11: Madden NFL 10 didn't impress me whatsoever. After Madden 11 promised to make things quicker, simpler, and deeper, I had to be a little curious to see how they could finally make a football game easy to play without miles long pages of playbooks. Well, Madden 11 managed to do it. Playing QB is easier than it's ever been, rushing is realistic, kicking field goals and punting takes into account several factors, and playing defense is incredibly rewarding. I am extremely tempted to go out and buy this game because it's actually a very good video game, not just a good sports game.

Movies

Basically the only update here is that I saw Jackass 3D (loved it) and I bought the Back to the Future trilogy on blu-ray. Hopefully, Jackass 3D will finally kill the 3D genre forever and push movie makers to return to making movies without resorting to advertising OOH SHINY 3D LOOK!

Well, that's what things have happened in a nutshell. Updates to come in the coming days!