Hillary on O’Reilly: An uneventful game of softball.

Well, sure enough…Bill O’Reilly is ready to out-and-out brawl with Geraldo Rivera, but he’s respectful as can be to Senator Clinton. All of that blustering in his book about calling her out on her scandals, about having a knockdown drag-out fight with her that belonged on pay-per-view…and while he challenged her a bit of the time, he went a lot easier on her than he goes on almost any guest that he largely disagrees with.

Don’t get me wrong, this woman is a United States Senator and there’s some outside chance she could be our next President, so I don’t really advocate being blatantly disrespectful to her on national television…but, of course, I don’t like O’Reilly’s insistence on being so ill-mannered toward many of his guests. He should ask the tough questions, though, and I really don’t like that he would go easier on her than he does on most. When she’s not right in front of him, he barks up a storm about her; when she is right in front of him, it turned to a whimper. How can anyone respect this two-faced “man”?

From time to time, in a 162 game season…

…you get your butts kicked. No deep analysis needed for game two between the Mariners and Indians.

Quite happy to see Wladimir Balentein and Jeff Clement called up though (and hitting a combined 3-for-5, with a 3-run HR from Balentein). The M’s will certainly be a better team for it going forward.

Here’s hoping for an appearance from good Miguel Batista tomorrow night, and a series win in the rubber game.

Movie Review: Harvey (1950)

If you’ve seen my Top 50 movies blog, you may know that Harvey is in it…so my stance on this movie is obviously overwhelmingly positive. I had placed it near the end of my list after just recently viewing it for the first time; I knew I had just witnessed another Jimmy Stewart classic, but it’s difficult to rank a movie after only one viewing of it (especially if that one time is still so fresh in your mind). I decided to write this review because, upon not being able to get this highly enjoyable movie out of my head, I already went back for a second viewing…and, if anything, I may have underrated it the first time around, and I wanted to be sure to highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.

This movie tells the story of Elwood P. Dowd (played masterfully by Stewart) and his best friend Harvey, a rabbit six inches taller than him. Harvey is invisible to everyone but Elwood, which of course makes everyone think that Elwood is off his rocker. His sister Veta (played in an Oscar-winning turn by Josephine Hull) tries to get him committed, but not all goes according to plan.

Hillary Clinton on “The Factor” tonight; Bill O’Reilly’s bluff will be called.

In his book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America, Bill O’Reilly asserts that Hillary Clinton is the one person that he expects would never go on his show, which he always affectionately refers to as “The No Spin Zone.” Honestly, I figured he was right about that much, but we were both wrong. Hillary will be on for a two-part interview, tonight and tomorrow.

He proceeds though, in his book, to write the following excerpt:

Rejected, I have to take consolation in my fantasies. Each night while lying in bed I visualize the interview. At last we are together in the Zone. Her pantsuit is peach, her hair perfect, and she’s backed by five Secret Service guys with weapons at the ready.

He then asks question after question of Mrs. Clinton, then adding a blank response after her name for each one. Some samples…

Very kind of the Mariner offense to make a cameo.

This Mariner offense could be pretty good if we could just skip lineup spots five through eight. It was looking like another night where the M’s were going to have to try to scrape out a third or fourth run in the futile hope that it would be enough to win…and suddenly, the floodgates opened in the 9th inning. Finally, a game where I can say that the M’s were resurgent in the face of adversity…and we largely have Adrian Beltre to thank for it.

Movie Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is ranked as the #33 movie of all time, according to the American Film Institute. It staggeringly ranks #7 all time on the IMDb top 250. It swept the Oscars in 1976. It is renowned as a classic in every sense.

Sorry, I just don’t get it. I love Jack Nicholson, and he is great as always in this one, but it probably wouldn’t crack my top 5 for Nicholson movies alone. By no means is it a bad movie, but I would call it “pretty good” and nothing more.

Movie Review: We Are Marshall (2006)

You would think that I would love football movies, as much of a junkie as I am for the sport itself. Honestly…you might be a bit surprised at how little I like them. Sports movies, in general, are so formulaic most of the time (build odds against an underdog, then watch them succeed)…and if they don’t find a new angle or an interesting character to develop, I’m likely to think of it as generic. It was a good formula to begin with, it’s just been overdone and I can’t get emotionally attached most of the time anymore. My friend Alex, upon reading my top 50, expressed his shock that I only had two sports movies in it; I responded that if I filled out a top 75 or top 100, I still might not find more than one or two more.

I hated Any Given Sunday. I couldn’t wait for it to end. Friday Night Lights was okay at best…mostly I thought it was pretty pointless (the TV show, however, is really good). Rudy and Remember the Titans were both enjoyable, I did like those, although neither would at all threaten for a spot in my top 50, probably not even in a hypothetical top 100. So, even though I’m not trying to be a tough critic of the sub-genre, I’m pretty hard to please if sports are the backdrop.

We Are Marshall is good…not amazing, but good, and certainly not generic. It tells the true story of the tragic plane crash that killed the Marshall University football team…its coach, most of its players, and many of its key boosters. The tragedy is portrayed at the beginning, though. This movie is about the rebuilding of a program, nearly from scratch, after the tragedy.

Congratulations to Husky killer Alex Brink.

One name I was not expecting to see drafted yesterday was longtime WSU Cougar starting quarterback Alex Brink…but at pick #223, midway through the final round of the draft, the Houston Texans made him their final draft choice.

Brink celebrating the winning touchdown pass in the 2007 Apple Cup

Seahawks close out draft with unexciting but solid picks.

Pick #163: Owen Schmitt, FB, West Virginia

I actually really like this pick. The Seahawks weren’t able to grab a tailback early on, but a good blocking fullback could go a long way in helping our running game along. As one of the few remaining teams in the NFL who continue to utilize the pure fullback position, and Schmitt blowing people up in front of Steve Slaton for WVU in recent seasons, this could be a match made in heaven. I’m hopeful that Schmitt will get immediate playing time.

Okay, I’ve decided, I hate the lineup more than the bullpen.

Sunday afternoon. Mariners build an early 2-0 lead. Felix Hernandez on the mound, masterful as always, cruising right along. As the innings go on, things feel well within control, but the offense has failed to build upon the two run lead. Heard this one before?

I’m not going to put the majority of this on Felix’s 8th inning meltdown.

Seahawks Pick #121: DT Red Bryant, Texas A&M

It looks like we got a heck of a value out of Red Bryant in the 4th round, rated by some as potentially the best pure run stuffing DT in this year’s draft. This is a big boy (6′5″, 322 lbs.) who seems like he might have the potential to immediately impact our run defense in a positive way.

Movie Review: Léon (1994)

Léon came and went with little fanfare in 1994, garnering no American film awards (or even nominations). I’m not sure if that’s a function of being a French film from a direction/production standpoint; the film is set in New York, and has an American style, but is technically a foreign film (it was released in the U.S. as The Professional). Whatever the case, this was well-deserving of lots of accolades that it didn’t get…it’s a great, great movie.

Léon is the story of a professional hitman of the same name as the movie title (played by Jean Reno), and the young girl Mathilda (Natalie Portman) who changed his life.

Our starting rotation is a rock.

There have been valid complaints about the Mariners’ lineup and bullpen so far this year…but aside from Miguel Batista, who has mostly been terrible, the starting pitching has been really good, and that’s mostly without the #1 starter that we sold the farm to get. Thankfully, that very Erik Bedard was back tonight, and didn’t look like a pitcher still being saddled by any kind of injuries. It was thrilling to see; since he was put on the DL, I feared the worst, that we had received damaged goods…but the way he dominated tonight, it seems as though John McLaren’s proclamation, that the team was just playing it safe early in the season, may indeed have been sincere.

6.2 shutout innings of work. Fantastic.

…and with the 38th pick, the Seattle Seahawks select TE John Carlson, Notre Dame

Well, they paid a big price to move up, they will no longer be picking in the 3rd round…but the Seahawks addressed the most glaring gap in our starting lineup, on either side of the ball, picking up John Carlson from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

John Carlson makes a catch in a rare Irish win last year.

I don’t know a ton about Carlson, Notre Dame was utterly unwatchable last year so I just didn’t tune into most of their games. I’m ecstatic about Tim Ruskell addressing the position, though, and hopefully we’re finally looking at the big target that Matt Hasselbeck has long needed in the West Coast Offense.

With the price Ruskell paid to get Carlson, I’m pretty sure we’ll be entering camp with the assumption that the starting tight end job is his to lose. That ends today’s picks for the Seahawks, we have a fourth, a fifth, a sixth and two seventh rounders to look forward to tomorrow. I really hope that three or four of those picks are on the offensive side of the ball.

…and with the 28th pick, the Seattle Seahawks select DE Lawrence Jackson, USC

First, I thought trading down was the right move. I was hoping on Rashard Mendenhall, RB out of Illinois, but once the Steelers took him at #23 I didn’t see an obvious pick to make. Without a pressing need to address, or an obvious value to snatch up, acquiring another couple of picks was a good thing. Now, I fully expect to see the ‘Hawks address the kicker position late in the draft (an idea I didn’t like as much when we only had 6 picks.

As far as the pick goes…I’ll be honest, defensive end is not one of the positions I was expecting the Seahawks to address particularly early on. We have an incumbent pro bowler on one side in Patrick Kerney, and a pretty capable starter on the other side in Darryl Tapp. With that said, Kerney is due to get old pretty soon and Tapp can be improved upon, so I’m okay with the pick…I just thought there was a greater need at other positions that they would look at.

Welcome to Seattle, Mr. Jackson.

The bullpen came back, the offense took a rest. This is getting tiresome.

Miguel Batista couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn last night. He wasn’t just having a few control problems; he looked perfectly capable of aiming for the catcher and decapitating a fan in the front row. After watching him flail wildly and get away with somehow only giving up three runs, Cha Seung Baek came in and pitched amazingly, at one point retiring 15 straight Oakland batters. He wound up giving up one hit that came around to score, but in a tight spot like that, going six innings and giving up just the one run is excellent.

Hats off to Baek, for giving us a really great opportunity to win the game after a bleak start.

The offense showed back up. It didn’t matter.

Seven games against the Orioles. Six losses. Entirely stupid.

The Mariner offense jumped all over Baltimore starter Adam Loewen, spotting the pitching staff a 5-0 lead. Jarrod Washburn did an okay #4 starter job, laboring through only five innings but holding the Orioles to two runs. From there, though, the bullpen looked awful. Again. Even after botching the lead entirely, and digging us into a 7-5 hole, Ichiro hit a two-run homer to tie the game back up, and Shawn Green promptly gave another home run up to give Baltimore a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Of course they wouldn’t relinquish it…they now have former Mariner and apparent new Mariner killer George Sherrill to shut things down for the night.

I mean, seriously…how, in 12 losses, have we managed to have FIVE of them get closed out by any single pitcher from some other division, let alone one who was pitching for us 24 regular season games ago? That is truly painful.

Sorry Ichiro. Seven runs at home still isn’t enough to beat the mediocre Orioles.

The Office: “Night Out”

I wasn’t loving this episode tonight…but then Toby made an awkward joke, copped a feel on Pam, and proceeded to scale a tall fence with the ease and grace of Spiderman to escape the situation. I haven’t laughed that hard at a moment of The Office in as long as I can remember.

Toby took his creepy crush to the next level. Fantastic.

There were other funny moments in the “stuck at the office” storyline as well…

Spare me your righteous indignation, Senator McCain.

If you don’t like the sight of blood, don’t go into politics. A United States Senator of more than 25 years should’ve been apprised of that by now. Apparently, though, John McCain still can’t tell the difference between “negative” and “dirty.”

Link

Inez, KY — In what is becoming almost weekly protocol, Sen. McCain condemned officials his own party for going over the line in attacking Barack Obama.

This time the North Carolina Republican party has launched a new TV spot tying local Democrats who support Obama to incendiary remarks made by the Democrat’s longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

“I think sometimes we neglect a fundamental reason why we have political parties–that is to elect our candidates to office,” McCain said aboard his bus. “What I hope is that they would listen to my views that it’s not representative of the Republican Party and what we are trying to be. We are trying to be a party that respects everyone and to show disrespect for any candidate or anyone…is certainly not the party of Abraham Lincoln.”

I would love for Senator McCain to explain what his arbitrary view of “respectful” is.

Goodness…take a few walks, M’s.

Nick Markakis loves hitting against the M’s…I’m glad that he left Oakland and went to Baltimore, so he can torture us a little less often. Our encounters with him still aren’t rare enough; he hit the eventual winning HR in the top of the 8th, a solo shot to give the Orioles a 3-2 win.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that was the real story of the game, though. The story of the game is that the Mariners again failed to draw a walk, for the fourth time in seven games, and did all of (mediocre Baltimore starter) Daniel Cabrera’s work for him. He went 8 innings strong, and did it by throwing less than 100 pitches…nobody in the Mariner lineup forced him to work. The only ones who have shown any real patience at the plate this season, to my eyes, are Jose Lopez and Jose Vidro…and even they aren’t great in this regard. In general, we have a team full of free swingers, and if they’re not making good contact, we’re not going to have a realistic shot in a lot of games.

No freaking way this guy should be that dominant against the Mariners.