And in this corner....Potato Face Vargas!

I just got done watching the Vargas/Mosley fight on HBO. This fight was not live, by the way. It happened last weekend. Boxing decided long ago, that in order to attract viewers to a largely attraction-free sport, that they should charge $50 a pop to see any fight that is even vaguely interesting. Don't get me wrong. I love boxing. I'll watch two white guys boxing on MSG in the middle of the night. But I am not going to give up gas and beer money for a week to see a fight. Not gonna happen. Here in the Buffalo area, we had Baby Joe Mesi rise up from the rank and file recently, and it looked as if he might actually get a chance to fight for the title. Until his brain started bleeding, and that just doesn't sound like a good thing. Yet, Baby Joe still wants to fight. He's willing to drag his bleeding brain into the ring and take on some guy who's only goal in life is to make Joe's brain bleed even more. He is actually taking legal action so he can have a chance to jump over the ropes so Jim Lampley can have a chance to say something like, "Oh man, Joe is taking a lot of shots out there, and his brain is losing a massive amount of blood right now." I have a number of questions about brain bleeds. First on the list would be, "Where does the blood go?" Does it pool up in your ears or shoot out your nose or something? My brother in law is a doctor, and next time I see him, I'll ask and let you know because I know this is a burning unanswered question. But anyway, back to the Vargas/Mosley thing. Fairly early in the fight, Mosley caught Vargas with a vicious right to the head and Vargas' eye starts swelling up real good. And I mean real good. So, Mosley makes it his goal in life to keep hitting his opponent in his bad eye, again and again and again, until finally Vargas' eye and half of the side of his head are swollen to roughly the size of a small pumpkin. By the 10th round, it looks like some sick bastard plastic surgeon has implanted a large baked potato just under the skin on the left side of Vargas' face. So, Mosley smacks the potato again, and the ref wisely calls the fight. And Vargas is pissed. Lampley sends the old and nearly incomprehensible Larry Merchant into the ring to interview Mr. Vargas, and Vargas can't believe the ref has called the fight so quickly. These guys are a whole different breed of human, if they are truly human at all. I don't know about you, but I have devoted my life to the pursuit of preventing my brain from bleeding and to making sure parts of my face don't make someone want to slather sour cream on them. Maybe that's just me.

Oscar says, "I detest you, idiot."

Dick Cheney should have saved his birdshot for whoever decided that the Academy Awards Show was an actual event. I know that a bajillion people watch the Oscars, but I'm not sure who they are. Actually, my sister watches them. Because she runs a pool. I bet on the Oscars, but I don't watch them. I have never seen 90% of the movies that have been nominated for Oscars in the last twenty years, and have no immediate plans of doing so. I look at the ballot, and immediately realize that the only nominated films that I have seen are nominated in categories like "Animated Feature," "Makeup," "Sound Editing," "Sound Mixing" and "Visual Effects." And what exactly is the difference between "Sound Editing" and "Sound Mixing?" There are different films nominated in these two categories so there must be a difference, but I have no idea what that might be. This year we have gay cowboys, so I'm assuming that that film will walk with a whole lotta Oscar. And good for them. Gay cowboys have been a repressed minority in this country for far too long. Rise up, gay cowboys! Claim your awards! The popular arts seem to be big on awards as if these people need reassurance that they are wanted. I feel for them in a way. I know a great plumber, a terrific carpenter and the guy who picks up my garbage is really good too, yet these people have no way of validating their existence. Poor saps. Instead of working like hell until they die in a middle class suburb with no golden hardware to place on their wood burning stoves, they should have taken up being pampered like little girls and making millions of dollars by being pretty and acting in the movies. Then they could opine about how stupid plumbers, carpenters and garbagemen are, and how their votes shouldn't count in this evil country. And, by the way, George Clooney, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Frances McDormand, and Jennifer Anniston are going to take a break from being shuffled about in limos and private jets to show up at this heinous event in green hybrid vehicles to demonstrate how you are destroying the environment with your SUV's. I'm sure their bevy of bodyguards will leave their firearms in the glove compartments as well.

Kill Hollywood. Don't watch the Oscars. Hollywood pays little attention to your interests. The top box office attractions of 2005 are "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "The Chronicles of Narnia," (which has the audacity to pander to the Christians out there) "King Kong" and "Chicken Little." The box office of these 4 film adds up to over $926 million dollars. The box office of the 5 nominated films adds up to $229 million. But Hollywood insists that they know better than you which movies are artistically relevant. You are but ignoramuses when it comes to judging the value of film. Which is fine. Even if this were true, it begs the question, "Why do we watch the Oscars?" If the awards have nothing to do with our opinion, why do we care? Ask yourself this when you are about to tune into this masturbatory exercise in vanity. And pop in an independent film that's actually entertaining. You'll feel better for it in the morning. And God knows you'll know who the winners are by the time you get to work on Monday morning.

I haven't had much time to write as of late, mainly because work has again been requiring nearly all of my precious, invaluable time. I was thinking of all the things I could have been doing with the time I have been so selflessly dedicating to the job, and quickly became depressed. Outside of the blog, I have been unable to spend time on the following: 1) Hitman 2- I've had this PS2 game for a year, but have not been able to kill anyone that mattered. I've found that when you spend eight hours or more a day in front of a computer screen tracking numbers for the man, it's important to lead a fantasy existence in which you travel the world icing baddies for the CIA. I can't even do this particularly well. 2) Booze- I've hardly had time to drink. I get home after 8 hours at the office, do 30 minutes on Satan's treadmill, get dinner ready, eat, do some family time, put Jessie to bed, and go right back to work on the laptop at the kitchen table. I checked my bottle of Jameson's and found to my chagrin that it contains nearly the same amount of life-giving elixir that it had almost a month ago. 3) Netflix- I watched "Red Eye" on Sunday and "The Short Films of David Lynch" on Monday, and wished I'd spent my time doing something more artistically stimulating like shaving the cat. 4) Sleeping- Strange how doing the same thing over and over again for 14 straight hours can stimulate you just enough so that when you go to bed your brain refuses to give up the events of the day. I haven't had a full 4 hours sleep in 2 months. Hang on, I'm grabbing a Jameson's. 5) That's better. One more and I'll sleep tonight. 6) There she is. That's smooth.

Motorhead's "Orgasmatron" is slamming away from the boombox behind me and I've got a rocks glass with a lonely ice cube floating in the golden glow of Irish whiskey with a Yuengling back, and all is right with the world. The busy season is almost over. I'm taking a long weekend for St. Patty's day, and am planning on spending it in a bar with my NCAA brackets and one yellow and one orange highlighter. God bless the USA. Screw Oscar!