Now it’s down to maybe two or three. Once friends of mine with free admission via WGA membership or the like start making the rounds during awards season, I’ll go a little more, but it takes a lot for me to spend $11 and up on something I could easily enjoy on the big ol’ flat screen in the comfort of my own home. No idiots on cellphones, no trailers for such absolute utter SHIT that I feel like I’m taking body blows every time another one comes up…. no people. I think that’s the key.

But with some bucks left on a gift card, I went to Moneyball the other night, figuring I love baseball enough to enjoy it, and I turned out to be right.

While it takes a lot of liberties with the actual story of Billy Beane’s sabermetric approach to saving payroll with the Oakland A’s of 2002 (and beyond), the story is solid and you’re rooting for the mavericks (personified by Brad Pitt as Beane ans Jonah Hill as a fictional numbers wonk based on Paul DePodesta) against the old ‘n’ stodgy (personified by aging scouts and a rather overweight Philip Seymour Hoffman as Oakland field manager Art Howe).

Beane & DePodesta applied the numbers & stat crunching theories of Bill James to putting parts of their roster together and their mixed success with it led a lot of other teams to try the same methods, especially richer teams like the Red Sox (who hired Bill James) and the Yankees. What the movie implies is that all of the A’s successes in ’02 came from such moves, when in reality a lot of the better players on that team, like their pitching rotation of Hudson-Mulder-Zito, as well as hitters Miguel Tejada & Eric Chavez, had been there the year before any of the new number theory was attempted. Most of the sabermetrics were applied to drafting players out of college, which over the years has had mixed results (one notable success being Nick Swisher, currently with my Yankees, currently sitting home watching other teams continue on in the post-season. Sigh.)

Whatever. Instead of inside-baseball nitpicking, the film is well made, remarkably undramatic yet interesting, and altogether entertaining. I think what I liked best was how it avoids the usual baseball movie clichés. The usual stock characters, the two dimensional characterization of idiot sportswriters, the drama of a particular big game… all of it doesn’t figure into the final mix. A lot of what the movie focuses on instead is how Beane works to trust his instincts despite a lot of disappointments in his life, and how that leads to a mixed result for his own personal goals. The A’s still haven’t won a World Series since 1989.

Another thing I liked was that I didn’t notice the Aaron Sorkin signature on the dialogue, although a little speech for Boston Red Sox owner John Henry comes real close. I guess if he & Brad Pitt were walking down a hallway talking fast at each other, that would have tipped it off a lot more. Or perhaps if they were both caught sneaking mushrooms through airport security.

But I digress.

I’d recommend this one to all baseball fans, and even beyond that to people who might enjoy a movie about a guy who learns to deal with & overcome his actual and his potential for disappointment. Adult themes in a film are kind of refreshing these days.

I’ll try to post regular commentary on the usual assortment whenever the cat lets me. I also need to continue developing the outline for the Wagstaff novel sequel. And Santa Anita opens in another week. And now it’s time to pet the cat again. There’s so much to do…

So here’s hoping. Perhaps Plan B should be to pull a Charlie Sheen & get lots of media attention, and even if I don’t, well, I’ll certainly be having a good time, right?

One of my brothers is a big fan of Two & A Half Men, while I’m more partial to The Big Bang Theory – I was looking forward to producer Chuck Lorre’s vanity cards after the Sheen kerfuffle, but alas… I think he’s suspended writing them, probably at the behest of CBS’ Lawyerarmy™

Maybe Sheen’s gaggle of porno girls could write them. That could be entertaining.

Is “gaggle” the proper term? Should it be a herd, or a colony, a clowder? Maybe a flock, although I think if I opened my front door to them, I’d prefer a swarm. It’s been pretty cold lately. Then again, a rookery sounds a lot sexier.

Anyway, let’s get to predictions involving even MORE annoying celebrity egos and look at this year’s Oscars:

I’ve seen very little this year, but I always make my predictions based on other principles of handicapping. Starting with the acting categories, I think Christian Bale will win Supporting Actor, edging out Geoffrey Rush. I think they want to give “The Fighter” some awards in a year where I think “The King’s Speech” will grab a lot of major categories. But despite the conventional wisdom that points to Melissa Leo winning Best Supporting Actress for “The Fighter,” I think Halee Steinfeld will win for “True Grit.” The quirky picks always come in the supporting categories, and I have a gut feeling about this one.

Picking Best Actor is easy – Colin Firth for “The King’s Speech.” He played someone overcoming a disability and they always go for that. Actress is a close call – while Natalie Portman seems to be the favorite, I’m thinking the voters will go with the “she’ll be back someday” theory with Portman, perhaps with “No Strings Attached” in their minds the way “Norbert” scuttled Eddie Murphy a few years back, and instead give the award to Annette Bening for “The Kids Are All Right.” This might also provide the only political grandstanding of the evening (always a great part of Oscar entertainment) if she gives a speech about gay marriage.

Come to think of it, the only woman who could ever nail Warren Beatty down to a lasting marriage ought to have very interesting things to say on the subject.

I think “Inception” will win Cinematography and the Sound Editing awards, “Toy Story 3″ will win Best Animated Feature, and “Inside Job” will take Best Documentary, despite all the hype Banksy has been getting. Want another random prediction of one of the minor awards? “Killing In The Name” will win Best Documentary Short since it’s by far the most hand-wringingly PC.

Back to bigger awards: since screenplay, director & film are always overlapping in various ways, I’ll call original screenplay, director & film all going to “The King’s Speech,” while adapted screenplay goes to “The Social Network,” because they’ll want to give it something.

Rounding out some random predictions on the telecast: I’m thinking Tony Curtis gets pole position on the memorial reel (which I hope they actually televise this year instead of showing us the screen it’s being projected on WHERE WE CAN’T READ ANYTHING), I’m guessing cohosts Franco and Hathaway are likeable but overly scripted, nearlky everyone presenting will be announced as the star of their upcoming film to plug, the production numbers will be tedious (there’s a tough prediction to make, eh?), and the entire long march of a slog of a chore of a onerous debacle will clock in at 3 hours and 47 minutes, with an over/under of 5 minutes.

I’ll be missing my usual bowling night to watch this thing. Every year I wonder why I bother, and the next year, I’m back again for more….

…. just like Charlie Sheen, I guess.

Maybe he’ll host next year, along with Alex Jones and a rhumba (that’s a group of rattlesnakes. Cool, huh?) of porn girls. Somewhere, Bob Hope would be smiling.

Walking away.

No more picks. No bowl picks. Nothing.

Even a virtual gambler knows when to quit.

Besides, my original point in this exercise was to see how I’d actually do betting these games on any given Vegas weekend. Lately, I’ve been “betting” larger and larger amounts simply to try to improve the pathetic season stats I’ve been compiling this season. Regardless of what method I use to pick games this year, nothing seems to consistently work. I may as well be flipping a coin, and there’s no way I’d ever be betting hundreds of dollars for real on that.

And so, I’m discontinuing this little feature of the blog before I embarrass myself further. I’ve cleaned the blog archives of previous picks/results posts, leaving a far leaner & easier blog to scroll for movies, tv, sports and all the other stuff here.

This past week, another 2-5 performance & losing a ton of virtual money. Enough already.

I was hoping the oddsmakers would peg the Rams as underdogs against the Chiefs, but I guess Matt Cassel’s appendectomy stitches are the big question mark for that one. The Rams are actually favored in that game by a point and a half… and as much as I think they’ll probably win that game outright, I’m only gonna bet $10 on it for this little exercise. Sam Bradford looks like a solid NFL quarterback so far, and the Rams have a shot at the playoffs in the (Cut to Comic Book Guy) worst NFL division ever.

My only favorite to go for this week are the Raiders by 7 over the Broncos. The Raiders are, surprisingly, in the hunt for a playoff spot and will be playing accordingly tough. The Broncos are in disarray – when the only interest people have in your team is whether or not they will start Tim Tebow, it doesn’t say much for the rest of the organization.

Somehow, the Browns get a point against the Bengals. Another rookie quarterback who is looking decent – Colt McCoy – gets the start from now on according to Cleveland, and the Bengals just flat out suck. Take the Browns.

I like the Bills plus 5 1/2 against the Dolphins – Miami has been playing well, although they got lucky by getting to play a reeling Jets team last week, and the Bills have been the hard-luck losers all year with an axe to grind… I think they’ll keep this one close if not win it outright.

In another battle-of-suck, the Cardinals get 3 points against the Panthers. Since I’m not sure why anyone would get points against the Panthers, I’m taking the Cardinals.

My two favorite picks of the week: first, the Texans get a point and a half against the Titans, another team in free-fall. The Texans pulled a great comeback last week against a much better opponent and then lost a heartbreaker. I think they’ll bounce back this week against a much weaker team. And speaking of that opponent, the Ravens are one and a half point favorites over the Saints. The Saints are a much better team than the Ravens, they’re playing better now than they have all season, and I think they’ll view this game as a dress rehearsal for the playoffs much more than Baltimore and win the game outright. Take the Saints plus the points.

The Bets:

$200 on Texans & Saints. $100 on Cardinals, Browns & Bills. $50 on the Raiders and $10 on the Rams. Also, all 20 3-team combos from every one of those except the Rams game at $10 a pop. Total money out as I swing for the fences again = $960

I may as well be generous… it’s Christmastime, after all…

Coming up in the next few days… Bowl picks!

I’ve been exploring it for a while this evening, and it’s loaded with stuff on silent film, sports, advertising… all sorts of cool stuff, well researched, documented & presented. Big thumbs up!

I first thought that scoopable wheat litter was a good replacement for the clumping clay I’d started her off with, as per what I’d been told by her rescue organization as to what she preferred. Clumping clay produces a lot of dust, and since the cat began her time in Chez Wagstaff with some breathing problems, I assumed the litter dust was making them worse. So, I switched her to wheat, which was less dusty, smelled better, and was certainly better for you environmental types since it’s renewable and not mined.

But then the cat developed an allergy to it, something my vet warned me to look out for. After a few weeks of the stuff, it began to make her eyes water like crazy – like little faucets. She’d tear up after grooming her face or after using the box – so a quick experiment of waving a cup of the stuff fresh from the bag under her nose once she’d dried out proved the allergy when she had an immediate reaction.

Bah! I ran out that night to get more clumping clay & changed her entire box after vacuuming the hell out of the bathroom & surrounding area.

I knew she’d still use the box with the clay – Job 1 was keeping her using the box – but I didn’t want to let her breathe that clay dust too long.

So, as per the suggestion from the manager at a local pet supply store, I decided to try to switch her to Green Tea cat litter, a Japanese product made from recycled wood, mixed with green tea leaves to naturally kill bacteria & fight odor. Since the stuff is pellet form and not sandy, I slowly mixed it in with the clay as I scooped clay out, over a week or so.

And it worked! The cat got used to digging around in it, and then I replaced the entire box with Green Tea litter only. The stuff clumps well, smells much better, and produces far less dust. When she tracks a little around the house, the pellets are easy to spot & pick up. And perhaps best of all, the stuff weighs about 1/3 as much as clay, so changing the entire box will no longer be a weightlifting exercise.

I can’t recommend this stuff highly enough if you’ve got a cat! I figured I’d post this review since I was going nuts trying to find the best match for my cat’s health, and it seemed to happen almost by accident. If you landed here on an internet search & this helps you out, great! But I’ll warn ya – it’s a little pricey… even if it lasts longer, it still works out to a higher cost than the clay (though about the same as the wheat, I think). Amazon sells the stuff, but I’ve found it at a few different pet supply stores and managed to find a 10 liter bag (about 6 pounds, basically enough to fill an extra large litter box) for about $11.

But my kitty is worth it! Look how adorable she is, napping on my blankie! Awwww!

Yes, cats reduce me to brain-scrambled moron in nothing flat. It must be that parasite in my brain.

Now all I need is a product that translates from English to Cat and back again. That way, I can explain the concept of “4AM is NOT playtime” much more easily.

Well, not all the ones I watched were great, but there weren’t any true clunkers in the bunch. Probably the weakest was The Secret Fury, where Ryan marries Claudette Colbert and has to save her from a conspiracy setting her up for murder. Despite a half-decent twist at the end and a wacky jazz soundtrack, the plot is a pretty big pill to swallow with some lame red herrings. However, since Ryan naturally had a lanky-menacing quality to his physical presence, watching him play a good guy is always interesting, since there’s always the threat of danger lurking beneath the surface of those cold stares of his. In Berlin Express, Ryan has to save Merle Oberon from some Nazi insurgents trying to retake Germany – a decent thriller set against the fascinating location shoot of post-war Germany at the birth of the Cold War. Just seeing the cities makes for a great documentary of sorts, and the plot is decent, if not The Third Man.

Probably the best of the Ryan-as-good-guy movies I saw was Robert Wise’s The Set-Up, where Ryan plays an aging boxer who refuses to throw a fight for the mobsters betting on his opponent. The movie is shot in real time, and the portrait it paints of the blood-lust among various boxing fans, thereby creating the entire cold hearted universe Ryan’s character is condemned to live in, makes for a great, must-see film.

Ryan as villain? Always a good time! His breakout role as the violent bigot in Crossfire remains a great performance in a terrific and daring for its time movie. Granted, the novel deals with the murder of a homosexual and the movie switched that to Jew, which I guess was controversial enough in the same year that gave us Gentlemen’s Agreement. He plays a subtler version of the menacing redneck in Bad Day At Black Rock, a movie I liked but did not love – some wonderful motifs of isolation throughout, some rather odd martial arts from Spencer Tracy versus Ernest Borgnine, but somehow it never all came together for me.

Ryan’s portrayal of a gangster in The Racket mirrors Robert Mitchum’s cop character trying to take him down – both of them have to deal with corruption and incompetence within their own ranks, and Ryan comes across as sympathetic, even in Mitchum’s eyes. Sort of like Ryan’s character in The Wild Bunch, we see a criminal who has a fairly strict honor code for himself.

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed Act Of Violence, where Ryan returns from World War 2 to stalk fellow Stalag inmate Van Heflin all over 1948 downtown Los Angeles (some great location shooting here for me to think about how the city has changed). Betrayal, lies and a secret past… all with Ryan very well cast since he can be naturally scary and then, turning on a dime, reveal an inner honor. Ignore the lame ending and savor the rest.

I want to use a coupon good for $3 off larger bags of a specific dry cat food. The kind I want is on sale in a 5 lb. 14 oz bag.

The clerk says: “You can’t use this coupon, it’s for 40-47 ounce sizes only.”

I say “Well, this bag is twice that size and it’s the same brand, is that okay?”

The clerk looks at the bag and says: “No, it says it’s only 14 ounces.”

I say “No, 5 pounds and 14 ounces. That makes it more than 47 ounces.”

The clerk says “The coupon is only for the bigger bags.”

I say “Five pounds 14 ounces makes 94 ounces, it’s twice the size of the bags in the coupon.”

And then the math skills of this f-ing douchetard became all the more clear. The clerk says “No, this says 40-47 ounces. That means it’s for those really big 30 pound bags.”

30 pounds = 40 -47 ounces! It’s the NEW MATH! Hey, hear that, Rosie O’Donnell and Ron Jeremy? Hire this kid as your nutritionist & go ahead and eat five more pizzas.

I realize what I’m dealing with, and try to explain “There are 16 ounces in a pound, so 5 pounds means 5 times 16 or 80 ounces, plus the 14.” He looks at me blankly so I repeat “There are 16 ounces in a pound.”

And the clerk says “Well, that’s what you say.”

Yeah, it’s what I say. I invented all systems of weights & measures.

So, instead of doing the right thing for the future of humankind and TWISTING HIS STUPID GOD DAMN EMPTY HEAD OFF, I ask for the manager, who accepts the coupon and gives me my precious $3 off.

The dogs in the store smelling each other’s nutsacks have IQ points on this kid.

Now I’m thinking I should’ve told him there are 4 nickels to a dollar to get an even bigger discount next time. Christ.

The poor thing was found under a house with a litter of kittens. The rescue organization kept her until the kittens were weaned & then adopted them all out. So, momma cat won the feline lottery by landing THIS patsy to become her human slave.

She doesn’t bother my allergies…. well, not TOO much anyway. Between the 24 hour Claratin & the Bioallers Pet Allergy pills, they’ve been pretty much under control, and now that kitty’s initial shyness keeps fading, she has the run of the place.

I also bought myself the greatest vacuum in the world. And don’t you worry looking at that price tag… I found a refurbished one for half that. Yay!

She’s finally learned that waking me up at 5am does NOT mean I’ll get up and play. She’s also learned that waking me up between 7-8am means she WILL be fed. And at long last, I found a type of scratching post/pad that she prefers to my couch, my bed, my carpeting and possibly my face while I sleep.

She will watch baseball on TV with me, and thankfully has not tried to attack the screen. The shoelace I tied to a plastic stick, however, must DIE.

She’s good at napping while I finish a presentable draft of the Wagstaff novel. She got off to a rough start, with a respiratory infection combined with what I figured out must have been an allergic reaction to silica dust from her cat litter. But now she’s a California kitty getting all-natural wheat litter now, man! Totally stoked! Seriously.. I can’t recommend this stuff highly enough, considering that it’s stopped her from snoring as loud as my brother did when I was a kid and keeping me up at night. Get it even if you don’t have a cat & crap in it yourself.

Anyway, that’s why I’ve been sparse in my posts lately…. been on novel writing & kitty daddy duty. And it’s all been worth it.