In political news…

You little jabronis...

I thought both the State of the Union and the Republican response were very well done.  It turns out Obama does have a fastball, and will be interesting to see if he starts using it.  I was hoping he’d break out the Sam Jackson “get these motherloving tea partiers off my motherloving White House lawn!” (link nsfw)  Alas, he kept it civil-ish. But he did lay the smack down a bit, with postpartisan postracial postmodernism at the beginning and end. It was like a turkey sausage sammich – hot in the middle with plain white bread on either side.  Speaking of, during the speech, I almost forgot I was white. Isn’t that right, Chris Matthews? People afterward made a big deal about Harry Reid yawning and Alito mouthing off (literally) but there were two Republicans using their blackberries – there was a camera that kept panning overhead from the back, and the blue screens in their laps were unmistakable. Maybe they were tweeting “zomg i cant believe how orange Boehner is!!!1111″. John Boehner really is incredibly orange – it looks like he follows the same “GTL” system as The Situation and Paulie D. Bro, lay off the tanning bed, bro.

There he is! And by "he", I mean a CNN camera!

For the Republican response, Bob McDonnell actually did a good job of being “firm but fair” in his response, although the fawning statehouse audience was a bit disrespectful – they tried (and succeeded) to make it look like a mini State of the Union.  If it was pure showmanship, it went a little far, but if it intended to be a “Federalist/Anti-Federalist 2K”, I’m ok with it.  I’m not sure any modern politician could be that subliminally clever – showing the limits of the federal government by having the speech at the state capital. Someone should have asked him what he thought about Federalist Paper #10, which is the only one I remotely remember from college.  But his speech itself was very good – he pointed out areas of difference and also areas of common ground.  McDonnell’s going to be a political rock star, as long as he doesn’t start trying to marry off his sons to Scott Brown’s daughters. Political hotness will ensue, although TMZ would have a field day. If Jenna Bush sticking out her tongue was a big deal, these kids are going to make moveon.org’s collective heads explode. Literally. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing – as Jon Stewart quipped, moveon has the distinct ability to disgust even people who agree with them.

I'm too sexy for a razor...

In other news, Persian Ron Jeremy (Khalid Sheikh Muhammad) might or might not be tried less than a mile from the twin towers. It took months for NYC to realize that they were going to have to build a mobile fortress around him to keep him from getting lynched wild west style, and that this was going to be very expensive. I don’t really have a point, I just wanted to call him Persian Ron Jeremy.

I motion to raise the roof!

Lastly, I was at an event recently where Sheila Jackson Lee crashed, even though she was invited and said she wasn’t coming. This was fantastic – she crashed an event that she was actually invited to. Of course she grabbed the mic from the presenter and started rambling like Kanye and Taylor Swift. This isn’t the first ninja move SJL has made – there are several other times when she or her aids have showed up invited-but-didn’t-rsvp to events and demanded to interrupt the proceedings to do her own thing. Goldfish also was at a Rita relief center where people were giving foodstuffs and water to victims as they drove through in cars. SJL showed up, grabbed a bottle of water, pretended to give it to someone in a car, and then when the photographer said “we got the shot”, she actually gave the bottle back to the volunteer instead of completing the handoff to the Rita victim. Then she rolled out of the center with her Entourage. Sheila Jackson Lee, you are the worst person ever. Hallelujah, holla back.

Slimmah Down Nah!

This isn’t a New Years Resolution thing. Not that I’m too good for that – I organized a Biggest Loser four years ago with a bunch of dudes and money was involved.  I stuffed my face right before the first weigh-in as an attempt to gain an advantage since we were doing “pre-post total weight loss”. Everyone got bored with it by Feb and went back to hanging out at bars. In any case, the motive this year is more…pure, I guess.

Let’s do a 1 sentence recap of Josh’s perceived body image first. I was chubby as a pre-teen, skinny as a teen, chubby my senior year of high school (thanks, CiCi Pizza!), skinny through college, almost fat in grad school (thanks, World of Warcraft!), and have been somewhere in between until Ava was born, at which point I kept gaining sympathy weight. So while I have an esoteric desire to fit in most of my pants, it isn’t that compelling when compared to a Pizza Hut Pizzone. Num num…

Then a buddy called and asked me to join his basketball league and I realized that would be a perfect distraction goal – I’m 197 as I type and can’t keep up with skinny fast guys on the court anymore. The league starts in about 6 weeks, which is perfect. So there are two ways to go with this. One is to eat right and exercise and achieve a good, sustainable loss (maybe down to 188?).

The other is to go nuts with too much exercise, too few calories, and several crazy diet products and see what happens (180? death? loss of hearing?).  Which sounds like a better blog topic? Darn right. If it works, great. If not, I’ll probably have some great stories about how I was so hungry I almost ate the dog with BW3s wing sauce. Plus I can review a few of the better known diet products. Just to make it more entertaining (or less, either way, really), I’m going to keep a running diary for the next six weeks. Please keep reading or Fat Josh will eat you.  Skinny Josh never would…

Modern Warfare 2: A Very Late Random Goldfish Review

Most media reviews happen upon release of said media – movies, books, TV shows, video games.  They represent an elitist and snobby perspective on the subject – someone who is paid to critically review the intellectual property, drawing on vast expertise.  The critic also has to finish the product and write the review and get on to the next product asap to make his/her bosses happy.  So not only are professional reviews overcritical from a layperson’s perspective, they are based on a method of consumption that most common folks don’t use.

For example, when I play a video game that is 15 hours long, it takes me around a month.  A video game reviewer will finish the game in a day or two. This makes the experience fundamentally different – repetitious components of the game for the reviewer will serve only as an annoyance, whereas for me repetition serves as a guidepost and helpful reminder of where we left off (see Creed, Assassin’s).  A book may take me several weeks to read, whereas a NY Times reviewer may finish it in one sitting.  Furthermore, I haven’t read every book in the genre, so a book’s similarity to another title doesn’t upset the balance of the universe like it does for a NY Times book reviewer. Nerds.

Anyway, that is the premise for reviews at Josh Being Josh. Real people reviewing things. Maybe several months after things come out. And that’s more authentic and more Random, if not Very Late. Some reviews will be done with my bff Goldfish, ergo the Random Goldfish Reviews. If you aren’t bored out of your mind by now, here is the first one.

Modern Warfare 2: A Very Late Random Goldfish Review

My platinum plaques and status is whack if I’m not the baddest… Eminem, Till I Collapse

Truer words. The song (top 5  of the decade) is perfect for the launch trailer for Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the true Halo Killer. Lots of games aspired to kill Mr. Halo, but none of them lived up to their self-billing. Then Infinity Ward took their Call of Duty split franchise (it’s complicated) from World War 2 to a modern-day setting. Mr. Halo became Mr. #2, and we all know who # 2 works for. Modern Warfare has been #1 for a while now, and the sequel might well be the most anticipated video game of all time.

But Modern Warfare 2‘s platinum plaques and status is whack if it isn’t the baddest. Does the game live up to the unprecedented hype? Keep reading “below the fold”. Pretty Please.