the Meat Life: July 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

the Meat Life: College Football Preview --- Part One

Who to Watch For

It’s that time of the year again folks! College football is almost here and I am excited. This will be the third year I’ll be doing a preview before the season begins. Each year it’s been bigger and bigger. For those of you reading my preview for the first time, be aware I AM NOT an expert. I’m just a very enthusiast fan how likes to keep up with football.

This preview will consist of three parts. This first part we’ll take a look at who to watch for…meaning who you need to keep up with. Some of the players I’ll profile on here will be on Heisman watch. Others will just be players who are fun to watch.

Here are ten players who are ready to dominate. It’s not quite the time to start handing them post-season awards since there is a lot of football left to be played, but they will definitely be in the hunt for them. Eyes will already be on defending Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram, the junior running back from Alabama, so I did not include him on this list. The link on their name are the stat lines from last year (if applicable) courtesy of cfbstats.com. In no particular order:

LaMichael James, RB, Sophomore, Oregon

With QB Jeremiah Masoli kicked off the team, it may mean more carries. And that’s saying something in an already run-heavy spread option offensive scheme that saw James gain 1546 years rushing his freshman year.

Dion Lewis, RB, Sophomore, Pittsburgh

Probably the best rusher in the country (outgained Heisman Ingram by about 140 yards last season), Coach Dave Wannstedt will rely heavily on Lewis as they break in a new QB. Dynamic runner with a great combination of speed and power, Lewis will be a treat to watch.

Ryan Broyles, WR, Junior, Oklahoma

The most consistent performer on an under-performing offense last year, Broyles will continue to lead this receiving corp. Shifty and deadly fast, Broyles is also an accomplished kick-returner. Even with defenses keyed on him last year and missing the better part of three games, Broyles still managed 15 TD grabs.

Jared Crick, DT, Junior, Nebraska

The post-Suh era begins for this defense, as Suh’s right hand man takes the reigns as the anchor of this Bo Pelini defense. Look for Crick to disrupt the interior line of opponents, although now he will have to do it fighting more double-teams. Crick and Nebraska will look to leave the Big 12 on a high note.

Ryan Mallett, QB, Junior, Arkansas

Probably the best pro prospect at QB this year, Mallett is looking to build on his 3624 yard/30 TD passing from a season ago. Big arm in the Bobby Petrino offense, Mallett will also try to lead his team through the difficult SEC West that includes the defending national champion Alabama.

Rahim Moore, FS, Junior, UCLA

On a lackluster year for UCLA, Moore led his team in pass breakups (7) and led the country in interceptions (10). In the seemingly wide-open Pac 10 this year, Moore looks to do much of the same as UCLA will try to take advantage of the recent USC sanctions.

Terrelle Pryor, QB, Junior, Ohio State

There has always been hype around Pryor, and this season is no exception. Pryor will try to build off of his stellar Rose Bowl performance, but he will need to be more consistent passing (5-13 performance against Wisconsin won’t cut it).

Mark Herzlich, LB, Senior, Boston College

A great story here. Herzlich was ACC Defensive Player of the Year in 2008, then diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in May 2009. The team and fans rallied around him as he was treated and was declared cancer free by October. If fully recovered, he will be a force on defense and an inspiration to all affected by cancer around the country.

Jerrod Johnson, QB, Senior, Texas A&M

The Big 12’s best returning QB. The A&M offense was running on all cylinders last season, and there is little reason to doubt this year will be the same. Johnson (3579 yards/30 TDs in 2009) will try to lead the dark horse to win the Big 12, as many perceive this year may be their best chance in a while to overtake OU and Texas. A&M’s defense must improve for any of this hype to be fulfilled.

Jake Locker, QB, Senior, Washington

We’ll see how far Locker has come as this will be his second season under Steve Sarkisian. Sarkisian’s history at USC tutoring Carson Palmer and Mark Sanchez certainly point to good things for Locker, who was already proficient and well respected before his head coach’s arrival.

The second and third parts will come in the next couple of weeks. Part II? What to Watch For…the best matchups scheduled this year. Something to digest during the weeks your favorite team will be playing Creampuff University.

The countdown to college football will continue on!

themeatlife.blogspot.com

Friday, July 23, 2010

Hot Links

New segment!

I know I said next entry will be the Meat Life College Football Preview, so consider this kind of like a pop quiz...only less stressful. Hot Links! (Get it? Meat...Links...okay I'll stop now)

We'll start with the big dog in film right now, Inception:

-Here's a great explanation of the Five "Levels" of Inception.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS so if you haven't seen the movie yet, do NOT read these.

-The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article about the critics' reviews of the movie.

And in the world of music:

-Someone at CNN must have read the Meat Life. Haha, jk.

-Time Magazine's Newsfeed complied a list of the Top Ten Worst Summer Songs. I, a fan of countdowns, had to look at it and give my two cents. If you don't want to click on the link I'm actually going to outline it right now (I know what's the point of having an entry with links and then basically give the link away).

Here is the list in no particular order ---
Katy Perry - "California Gurls"
LFO - "Summer Girls"
Nelly - "Hot in Herre"
Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69"
Black Eyed Peas - "I Gotta Feeling"
Fergie - "London Bridge"
Vitamin C - "Graduation (Friends Forever)"
The Knack - "My Sharona"
Sheryl Crow - "All I Wanna Do"
Jeremih - "Birthday Sex"

Okay here is my analysis about this list. First, I'm not even sure if all these even came out during the summer. Second, "Summer of '69" is an awesome song. I don't care that Adams was only ten years old back in 1969, that's not the point. Third, where the hell did Vitamin C go? I guess she was a one album wonder, with that song and "Smile" being the only relevant hits of hers. Fourth, I know that LFO song's lyrics are questionable at best, but that's what I like about pop music. It doesn't have to make sense. You think any of Oasis's or Bush's song lyrics made any sense? Damn, I just compared LFO to Oasis...I should really stop there. And my final point..."Birthday Sex?" Really? Is that what R&B/Pop has come to?

---Sidetrack---
Yes, I'll admit it. I like pop music. Not as much as I like songs with grinding rock guitars or rappers spitting their flows, but I like it nonetheless. It's a part of the culture we live in today whether it's crap or not. Crap being borrow or unoriginal...but how many original ideas are there REALLY in music? Some of it is crap, but some of that crap I like to sing along to. There is nothing more fun (or funny depending on how you look at it) than rolling down I-44 jamming out to Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance." Anyway...
---End of Sidetrack---

Sports!

-Here is the unedited version of the Nebraska Football video telling fans to "Wear Red, Be Loud, Beat Texas." That "Beat Texas" tag was later removed. As a Sooner fan I say, too bad. I would have kept it there.

-Speaking of Nebraska, here's the awesome new Dick's Sporting Goods commercial featuring none other than Ndamukong Suh.

-And touching on what I wrote about a couple weeks ago, apparently the ESPN Ombudsman thinks his network was over the line with "The Decision" broadcast.

-And look who the richest athletes are.

And finally, tech stuff:

-I guess Steve Jobs is giving iPhone 4 users free cases (for a limited time). Should I get my wife one for our anniversary then?

-If Jobs wasn't fed up already, I wonder how he felt when a Microsoft exec called iPhone 4 "Apple's Vista."

-Happy 500 (million users) Facebook! I remember in the fall of 2005 when a girl in one of my classes asked me "hey, can you join this thing and be my friend on it?" Coming fresh off of the Friendster craze, I was reluctant to join one of these new-fangled social networks. But I thought, hey it's college. So I responded "sure, what's it called?" "thefacebook.com. It's going to be cool." Little did I know in less than five years it would be the most visited site in the world.

-Oh, and for you 80s kids, check this one out.

Aight folks, see you next entry!

themeatlife.blogspot.com

Monday, July 19, 2010

Meat at the Movies: Inception Review

Summer movies. Back in the day, I used to be at the theaters every weekend for opening night. Harkin Cinemas in Bricktown used to be my second summer home. These days I catch about two or three films at the actual theater, while catching up with some of the others later. This year so far I have seen Toy Story 3 and Inception. I’ll probably post my review for Toy Story 3 in a couple weeks. Today I’ll cover Inception. And don’t worry, this is a SPOILER FREE ZONE.

Two years after the successful The Dark Knight Batman sequel is released, director Christopher Nolan follows up with the highly anticipated Inception. Fans of Nolan outside of the rebooted Batman series will recognize the skill and style of Nolan, with mind-bender and discussion-inducing films like Memento and The Prestige. And for those who enjoyed those flix, Inception is in that sort of vein as well.

Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, the leader of a team of “extractors,” thieves-for-hire who steal ideas from people’s minds when they are in a dream-state. Cobb and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) get hired by an energy corporate head named Saito (Ken Watanabe). This time instead of taking an idea, Saito wants Cobb to plant an idea into a competitor’s head, a process called inception (thus the name of the movie, haha). The energy competitor, Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy) will get taken on a wild ride of deception while Cobb and his team try to plant the idea of splitting up Fischer’s father’s company.

But before Cobb can get started on Fischer, he recruits his team to construct and deploy this dream world. He brings along Eames (Tom Hardy), a long-time “counterfitter” with the ability to appear as someone else in these dream constructs. Yusuf (Dileep Rao), an underground chemist, is taken in order to put Fischer in a prolonged sleep-state. The final recruit, Ariadne (Ellen Page) is drafted to be the “architect,” someone who can create whole levels of the dream environment. Some of the construct is developed as a labyrinth for people who populate the dream world, or “projections,” who end up in some cases as protectors of the subject’s self-conscious. Cobb has problems dealing with a projection of his own while the team is inside Fischer’s subconscious, his dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).

Still keeping up? It seems a bit complicated, and reading all of that beforehand can be a little intimidating.

But while this runs smarter than your average summer blockbuster, I found Inception pretty easy to follow with the way Nolan spends his time explaining the background and then executing the story. The best part of the movie is the layers of the dream worlds they operate in. At one point some characters are in a fourth level of the dreamscape (don’t worry, not a spoiler…and if you want to know what I meant by fourth level, I mean a dream in a dream in a dream inside another dream…and yes it is crazy, in a good way). The special effects are typical Nolan, fantastic enough to keep you engaged, but realistic enough for you to believe plausible. CG background fit in seamlessly with the live-action. The action was actually a plus, although nothing really groundbreaking there. But then again the action was never really meant to be. And while you may read from some critics that it lacks emotion, I found enough in the story that made me feel attached at least to Cobb and Fischer’s characters (I say that and I'm not even a real big fan of DiCaprio's "auto-pilot" acting style).

I have to say that Inception is my favorite movie of the year so far. I will say this, it is definitely not your typical popcorn summer movie. Think of The Matrix meets Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Yeah, don’t expect to go to the theater and turn off your mind. This film is probably not for everyone. Like many Nolan films, this requires multiple viewings. I remember watching The Prestige for the first time and loving it, but appreciating it more on the second and third times I viewed it to catch the subtle things throughout the film. I’ve only seen this movie once, but I imagine it’ll be much the same. And who knows, after another view or two we’ll see if I’ll have to change my rating. I will definitely own the BluRay when this one comes out. If you are interested, see this in the theater.

the Meat Life rating: 8.5/10

In August, I’ll have the Meat Life Summer Movies Review, looking back at flix like Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, the big hits, the disappointments, and everything in between.

Next entry I will have to focus my attention to college football. Yes, my friends, it’s the third annual Meat Life College Football Preview!

themeatlife.blogspot.com

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Where Did The Record Album Go?

Remember the first CD you ever bought was? I’m not talking about the first CD you had as a hand-me-down or you received as a gift. I’m talking about you saved your allowance up and bought it yourself. Don’t laugh, but for me it was Hootie & the Blowfish’s second album “Fairweather Johnson.” It was released in 1996 and I used birthday money to buy it and play it on a boom box stereo I got as a birthday gift. It sold only three million copies and was sworn off as a commercial failure (Hootie’s debut album to date has sold 19 million).

Fast forward to 2010, fourteen years later and artists would kill to see three million albums, hell, they would give their right kidney for one million. The best-selling album last year was Taylor Swift’s “Fearless,” selling a little more than 3.2 million copies for the year, about the same amount as Hootie’s “Fairweather” ended up selling to date. The industry has changed so dramatically that in the last fourteen years that in 2009 there were only 12 albums that sold over a million copies. In 1996, the best-selling album was Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill.” It sold 16 million copies by itself, outselling the top seven albums on the Billboard Year End list for 2009.

So what happened?

Well, a few things. The first is the most obvious and the most debated: file sharing. In 1999, Napster burst onto the scene and changed the music industry forever. It was the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing program making it easy for people to look up and download songs in mp3 format. Although Napster was forced to shut down in July 2001, the file sharing continued with other programs and means. The music industry reacted to Napster and other file sharing culprits in witch-hunt fashion, taking on not only companies and organizations that create and proliferate file sharing programs but individuals as well. Remember the RIAA trying to charge a 12 year old kid with piracy? It was some story like that, I forget the details and I don’t know what to put into Google to look that up.

Basically people got a taste of free music that didn’t take any work. Kind of like taping a song off of the radio, only having access to the artist’s whole CD library and every band they have ever toured with and will tour with while doing so. And once someone gets all that music free, it’s hard to stop wanting more free music.

Then the iPod/iTunes came along. Since the mp3 became the music file standard, it needed a player to replace a Walkman tape player or a portable CD player. Both debuting in 2001, over the course of the first half of the decade, the iPod took over. And iTunes did solve the problem of how to make money off of the mp3, but the mp3 world made it easier for the consumer to pick and choose songs they liked. They were no longer forced to buy a complete album when they just wanted the single. With the ease of use and the popularization of the iPod and iTunes, it became the biggest music distributor in the country. Apple passed WalMart for that title in April 2008 and has never looked back since.

So we covered file sharing and the freedom of the mp3. Another reason for the sales decline despite the success of iTunes has been the choices consumers have now to gather their musical content. Satellite radio, internet/streaming audio, and video sites like YouTube have given all of us a way to access music. No longer do people wait till it comes out on commercial radio or the video is played on MTV before they know what is out. And since at least two out of three of those are usually free, someone will be able to listen quickly and decide if it is a song they like and want to own. In the case of streaming audio, sites like Pandora let you pick what style you want to listen to based on an artist name or song title. Their formula will churn out like-sounding songs. There are others like Yahoo! Music or Slacker Radio categorize everything by genre and you can listen from there. And best of all, you can enjoy your favorite songs and artists without paying (unless you go with a premium version of those services or if you listen to subscription based Sirius/XM Radio).

And then the final and maybe most telling situation would be that music just isn’t what it used to be. I was at Adrian’s house for a cook out for my brother and some of us were playing Guitar Hero World Tour. I was singing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” when Joey Betts made a great point. He said that fifteen years from now, kids won’t have songs like this from this time period to play on a game. He used this example “yeah, a got that Eminem track! Yeah! Let’s play that!” Although I do like Eminem, he does have a point. There is not a real universally loved rock song to play along to from this era. Or maybe that isn’t the best example.

The point is that music isn’t something one goes on a tear buying anymore, especially albums. Artists put out albums more or less to just push something to support a couple of singles. Some artists like T-Pain have now vowed to stop releasing whole albums, and with good reason. I mean unless you are an artist like Jay-Z/Kanye West/Eminem/Lil Wayne/Drake/Beyonce/Taylor Swift/… you aren’t going to push a million copies of your record no matter how much promotion or public appearances you make.

So if you are a record exec or an industry insider, what do you do at this point? Where do you go from here? The industry was obviously really late on reacting to the file sharing trend and waited until Apple popularized the iPod in order to get any stake in it. One thing they have to do to get any semblance of the industry they had at the peak of the compact disc of the mid-1990s is really capitalize on the different times of formats and forums people get their music from now. But now the real questions they have to ask: is it too late to save the album? The music industry?

-----July theMeatLife Download: Neon Trees - "Animal"-----

the Meat Life

Friday, July 9, 2010

LeBron's "Decision," Did ESPN Get It Right?

Okay, so now the LeBron James sweepstakes is finally over. James will join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in South Beach to try to become the new Celtics and bring another championship to Miami. Many will ask a lot of other questions like: How will the players actually play together? Who will take the last second shot to win the game? How will the Heat build around the New Big Three with limited cap space? But the questions that I want to ask is, did ESPN do it right?

The Worldwide Leader in Sports held an hour-long special called “The Decision” for James to announce his big move. According to the SI article by Richard Deitsch, LeBron’s marketing folks approached ESPN holding such an event, picked the advertisers, and made the event’s ad revenue go to Boys and Girls Club of America. Sounds like a novel proposition, to basically have a reality show set up to pay a charity. But Deitsch brings up a good point in the article, does ESPN lose journalistic integrity in this type of forum?

I watched “The Decision” to see for myself, but not live because I had to work. So I fired up the DVR when I got home. I would have to say that the coverage felt more like the pre-game and post-game coverage than a league-bending event. Since Stephen A. Smith “broke” the news earlier in the week and ESPN’s own Chris Broussard later confirmed reports that James was headed to Miami earlier in the day, the drama really was taken away from the event. I’m not sure what LeBron’s people were looking for when they pitched this, as I was kind of bored by the end of the “event.” Seeing a Cleveland fan’s burning LeBron jersey was funny to see though (not funny for the fan, but the fact that James caused people to burn his stuff).

The coverage itself though, seemed fair. An average ESPN non-sporting event coverage. It was like watching NBA Fastbreak, only it was all LeBron. Jim Gray’s initial interview was what I expected and I like Mike Wilbon’s follow-up with LeBron after the announcement. But did it really need to be an hour-long special? The announcement itself and the interviews were probably enough to fill a 30-minute program (the “pre-game” part of the show with Stuart Scott tossing conversation around with Wilbon and Jon Berry was about 28 minutes with commercials).

So as far as ESPN is concerned, “The Decision” didn’t hurt them. The journalism, although not in a conventional setting, was the usual ESPN fare – a decent mix of fact and interviewing and then follow-up opinion from their analysts. I didn't feel that ESPN compromised itself by having the event brokered by James's people.

“The Decision” does hurt James. His ego seems to have outgrown Cleveland and demanded the attention of not only ESPN but also America’s basketball-viewing public. And although this is a unique situation that no other superstar athlete has gone through before, I don’t think you would see a Magic Johnson or a Michael Jordan having his marketing people contact ESPN to put together an hour special for something that’s not related to playing an actual game or getting inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Maybe I’m old school, but I would have preferred just an update on Sportscenter. Or maybe in this new communication age, he could have done what Kevin Durant did earlier this week and just post about it on his brand-new Twitter account. Of course I say this but I helped feed that ego of LeBron's by DVR-ing the program.

In any event, good luck to James and the New Big Three in Miami. Though you lost a city that loved you so, you just gained a lot more Heat fans around the country.

the Meat Life

Saturday, July 3, 2010

the Meat Life: a Re-introduction

Let’s start again. I’m Chris and this is a little blog known as the Meat Life. I’m a 27 year old married man living outside of Oklahoma City with my wife and two kids. Before this part of my life, the Meat Life probably would have consisted of going to class and some pretty sick house parties. Now I’ve settled down quite a bit. the Meat Life now consists of going to work and chilling out with the family. But between those days and now, I’ve always liked three things: electronics, entertainment, and sports. And that’s basically what this blog is all about.

--Sidetrack--
For those of you who are wondering, why the Meat Life? Well, growing up as a little kid, I always longed for a nickname. For years I tried to make things stick (CJ, DJ…don’t ask me why on that one, C-Money, the list goes on). It wasn’t until I played inline hockey in high school that a name that someone else gave me came along and stuck. Meat. I guess Mitra was too long for someone to yell from the bench, and someone yelled Meat. That name did stay dormant for a bit after I stopped playing organized hockey. Then when I joined a fraternity in college the name reemerged and stuck for good.
–Back on main-track--

Before I was on a couple of other blogging sites. Open Diary from 2000-2002 in pretty much the infancy of the blog craze. I forget what my tag was, but since it was my senior year of high school and the freshman year of college it probably wasn’t all that important. Then from the latter half of 2002 on thru 2006 I was HopelessHero on Xanga. That pretty much cronicled the college life that I previously had. Pics of parties, logging for votes on whether or not to keep my goatie, stuff like that. With that blog I did dive a little bit into the things I liked. To countdown my 21^st birthday, I went basically made 21 countdowns over my favorite things. Songs of the 90s. Best albums since I’ve been alive. Best movies of the 90s. Best trilogies/movie series. Greatest sports moments. Basically a precursor to what I want to do with this blog.

After having my first child, the HopelessHero tag didn’t really fit me anymore. Talking a couple of years later with my brother, Mike, he suggested I should start blogging again. This time around I wanted to make it more focused. Less on my day-to-day life and more on the stuff I was interested in. Thus started the Meat Life.

So for 2008 and much of 2009, that’s what I did. There was no real structure (look back at the previous entries, I averaged about an entry per month if that). I just wrote whatever. Then in September last year until now, I took a hiatus. My second child was born! A couple months ago I thought of going back to blogging again. This time a more structured attack.

Here is the plan as it were: three entries a month. One for each category – entertainment (and by entertainment I mean music, movies, and TV), electronics (TVs, cell phones, games, computers, that sort of thing), and sports (favorite moments, impact on the larger society, all opinions). That’s the goal, anyway (I do have a family to feed, haha!). Since this entry is more of a prologue than anything, I won’t count this one as one of those entries per month. In the future I’ll try to have a guest writer for a second opinion. Writing stuff like this has been sort of a thing of mine for quite some time (you guys from the old school, remember “CT 40?”) so it’s only right that I get this going again.

Before I let you go on this Independence Day Weekend, I’ll leave you with a link. A couple weeks ago there was a glorious moment. In spite of all the turmoil going on around the country with the BP environmental fiasco, the economy, wars overseas, and the country divided politically, American sports fans were united by one single moment of euphoria. And although they got eliminated a few days later, it still remains as arguable the best sports moment so far this year.
Landon Donovan Goal

Have a great Independence Day! USA!

See you guys online!