Let's Talk About Rugby

Rugby might be more fun to watch than American football. I'm sorry, America. Really I am.

In the scrum of my heart, I will always hold a special place for the game who's rules I learned at my mother's knee (American football...it's a complicated story). But learning about Rugby slowly over the course of the BBC's coverage of the 6 Nations tournament this year has really opened my eyes to the awesomeness of the game.

Before BBC America's coverage this year, my only exposure to rugby was listening to my cousin back out of our WoW raids because he had to go to his roommate's rugby games. And there was the one time we stumbled on a game in progress in Stanley Park in Vancouver...but that ended... interestingly...

Anyways, BBC America did us all a favor this year and played some of the games for us Yanks. What a treat.

The captains for this year's 6 Nations Tournament

My main problem with American football has always been that the game just takes way too long. The players spend a lot of time standing around on the field, waiting for the game to start, or restart, or for a referee to explain a penalty, or for the kicker to get his stuff together, or for an injured player to get up, or for the quarterback to make up his mind.... Basically there's a lot of standing around.

This is what a football game looks like. People standing on the field.

I've always wished that football games would just play all the way through. Rugby does this. None of the 6 Nations games I watched this year went over their 80 minute running time. The players roughed around on the field for a 40 minute half, took a break, and then finished up with another 40 minute half. 80 minutes of non-stop action. Beautiful.

Even when there are injured players on the field, the game doesn't stop, they just play around them.

Rugby is essentially the brutal older brother of American Football. The brother that doesn't screw around with protective gear or elaborate rules, he just likes to pound on people and run around with a ball. The first game of rugby I watched had a guy jump in the air and put his cleats in another player's face. The cleated guy was bleeding all over the place as they walked him off the field, the game continuing behind him, and the player who did the kicking? Kept going and I'm pretty sure he scored.

Cleat. To. The. Face.

The reined in feeling of American football is a detriment to the sport. These are powerful men who should be able to bludgeon each other. The game is essentially an evolution of the gladiatorial sports where people used to kill each other in front of crowds. It's stylized war on the field. But it's a war with its teeth removed, hampered by the addition of so many rules, so many penalties, and so many pads.

So many.

Rugby is the less evolved version of this, its basic features apparent in our dearly beloved NFL, but its evolution seems to have stopped right after "killing is wrong" but before "let's put on so many pieces of plastic we no longer feel the hits."

If this seems to be a disservice to our football players, it's because it is. If our players ran at each other during a kick-off instead of away from each other, I think we'd be closer to the game's potential. But right now watching a game of professional football is just watching grown men who are being paid a lot of money run around encased in plastic. Sometimes they get to touch the ball. Most often they stand there and watch as the ball is set up for another down. And another. And another. The monotony is tiring and ultimately boring.

At least in rugby everyone jumps on the man with the ball and when the ball moves to the next guy, it starts over, a slow painful crush of men making its way down the field. But at least it's a crush of men in constant motion. And their little shorts are a lot cuter than those football cropped leggings of awful.

See? Shorts.

Not that there's nothing wrong with rugby. It's really disorienting to watch what seems to be a slapdash game when you're used to the slow march of a professional football game. The announcers, rather than explain what's going on, seem to just comment on the team's standings or on what the referee has said in the past rather than give poor, clueless me an idea as to the strategy of what's going on or even just an overview.

I learned more from the few post-show reviews tailored to us American viewers than from watching each of the games in its entirety.

Ultimately, I won't turn down watching a game of football. It's a part of my heritage and I do like that I at least know what's going on. But after the season is done, I will definitely turn over to the rugby league and watch as men pummel each other down the field.

Plus, the eye candy is so much better when they're not wearing helmets. :)

Review: The Adjustment Bureau or Is This Supposed to be Subtle?

Let me start by saying I didn’t hate The Adjustment Bureau. Really. I didn’t.

My sister, brother, and cousin, however are another story. They left the theatre disappointed and slightly annoyed. “Too preachy,” they said. “Stupid ending,” they said. And my favorite comment: “What a cop out.”

The last was said by my cousin in reference to the final scene of the movie which I’m going to SPOIL in the following paragraphs. Forewarned, forearmed, and all that jazz.

Ostensibly, The Adjustment Bureau  is the story of Matt Damon, young politician extraordinaire, and Free Will. When he botches his chances at his first Senate election, Damon disappears to that font of all knowledge, the restroom, in order to rehearse his consolation speech. There he meets the lovely Emily Blunt in a gorgeous dress and no shoes (in a public washroom!) who inspires him to cut the crap and just speak from the heart.

They share a passionate kiss (again…public washroom…it would be sexier if I weren’t thinking about all the germs crawling up between her toes…she’s a modern dancer, she needs those toes!) and he goes on to inspire his constituents and set himself up as the front runner for the next election.

Blah, blah, blah he doesn’t see her again except for an incident of random chance where some guy in a hat falls asleep and doesn’t knock over Damon’s coffee cup before 7:05 am, THE HORROR.

So he sees Emily on the bus and they chat and he gets her number and does a happy dance and he gets to work early as the hatted man runs after the bus. Fun fact, the hatted man’s name is Harry. Like this:

Anyhoo, upon arriving to work, Damon finds that everyone is frozen in place and there’s some people sticking electrodes and flashing the Men in Black forget everything sticks at his friend. It’s the Adjustment Bureau! Swankily dressed men with vests and little hats with trench coats and apparently power over the laws of nature.  They capture Damon after a scene wherein they walk through walls and the movie slowly dissolves into nonsense.

The men are Angels. Kinda. Or anyway, they do that cocky grin when asked point blank by Damon. Honestly I was mildly impressed that they got that out of the way so early in the movie. But it does begin to set up the Head-Bashingly-Un-Subtle “Ooh, it’s an Analogy!” that will pretty much eclipse the rest of the movie.

Damon’s Plan (found in these little Moleskines the Hatted Ones carry around) does not include Emily Blunt. Her Plan does not include Matt Damon. But somehow they keep feeling as if they are pulled together; their Plans must align, right?

"What is it?" "I don't know! They never explain the squiggles!"

It turns out that in earlier versions of their respective Plans, these two lovebirds were destined for each other. 

The Plan changed.

Because of the horrific head whacking, the movie makes sure you know that this is supposed to be The Big Issue. It’s going to change the way everyone thinks about God and Free Will. The revelation that these ultimate Free Will Plans being touted and protected by Angels, plans that come directly from “The Chairman” (read: God) can be changed is supposed to throw a monkey wrench in how we think about our lives.

Because the writing is so sloppy, what you actually get is the audience’s communal sigh and the wish that perhaps Damon and Emily won’t end up together, maybe then the movie will be surprising.

A movie that takes itself this seriously needs to live up to its claims, but The Adjustment Bureau doesn't. Instead the end is just a giant example of deux ex machina mixed with some hand-waving. The hats (yes, the physical, I-can-knock-it-off-your-head ones) are what allow the Hatted Ones to walk through walls. They blindly follow the will of their Chairman. Instead of feeling intrigued by this dig at the idea of Free Will, we are just tired and unhappy. Somehow the movie has managed to insult those that believe in an ultimate Plan bestowed upon us by a Creator and those who just believe in Free Will, period. 

Ultimately, The Adjustment Bureau was a fun movie that needn’t have taken itself so seriously. More Inception-esque street chases, more Hatted Ones, and more of Emily Blunt dancing and it would have been a little better.

As my sister said, “I thought it started off well and went down from there... It really wasn’t that complicated…[And] the hats were kinda dumb, too. I mean hats? You can’t think of something cooler?”

…from the mouths of Teens, I guess.

Overall: ~2.5 Giant Pacific Starfish. Good idea, poor execution, and needless complication serve to make this ultimately forgettable. And that’s my Free Will talking.

BzzAgent Review: CoverGirl Lip Perfection

I recently joined BzzAgent and got my first free sample, CoverGirl's new Lip Perfection line of lipsticks. I got two colors: Fervor and Sweetheart.

Fervor is the color I requested as it's the one closest to my own lip color. I don't often wear lipstick (gloss is more my speed... chapstick is even closer) so I was excited to try it.

Here's my sample stick. It lives in my bag with the chapstick, I like it so much.

Overall, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the quality, color-last, and even taste of this lipstick. If I apply it in the morning, the color lasts all the way through lunch and is pretty much still there even after I eat. And maybe I am new to the world of lipstick, but the fact that the lid clicks into place is awesome. Checking the price on Google, it looks like they're going for around $5 which is a steal for a lipstick that works really well.

The CoverGirl claim, that you will have more beautiful lips after 7 days, is the only thing I haven't really been able to confirm. I have been wearing the lipstick consistently, but, like all lipsticks I wear, I've found that ultimately my lips dry out and crack leading me back to my gloss as opposed to reapplying Fervor. I don't know if that's just a by-product of my stupid-dry skin or if I'm the 1 out of 10 the claim isn't true for, but this isn't enough of a  reason not to use Lip Perfection.

Overall, I give this product 4.5 out of 5 stars. The quality, color, and clicking lid more than make up for the product's shortcomings.

An Anglo-Saxon and a Prose Poem walk into a bar...

...and you end up with these.  They're on the same subject, what we in The House have been calling "The Great Prune of 2011."

Tangled with twigs, twisted trees deepen

Grasping the ground, giving for no one.

Invasives shrieking, inglorious agony

Pluck and pull them, piercing thorn strikes.

Welts well to life, workpants no comfort

Deep held dreams dragged from darkness,

Roots ranging outward, reached with violence

Cut and culled, crawling vines cast down.

War has been waged, we wonder who won.

----

We go to war with the garden while I still have my coffee mug warm and fragrant in my hand. We begin the battle armed with clippers and workpants, gloves and shoes, the rattling wheeze of a chainsaw, the dead calm of Miami February breaks.

The invasives put up a fight, a battle hard won. We are marred with scratches, cuts, bruises. Lines of red that will not go down, welts where our legs were subjected to the stranglehold of a plant I cannot identify. We pluck them screaming from the Earth, mandrake roots and deep vines. Tiny squirming insects roil from dirt that has gone too long unfurrowed.

Immigrants, we uproot them to make more room for the natives. Cut their stems, dig up their roots, our feet press against stumps as our backs press to oaks until we have the proper leverage. One last push, someone rides the stump, afternoon sunlight filtering through hair matted with the sweat of a battle too long. One last effort, a concerted try bracketed with the cadence of a sailing song and the trunkless yields, fallen. We cast them wilted and diminished in ramshackle piles, they who only wished to reach for the sun.

I jump, grasp the low-lying vines and hang, suspended between destruction and flight.