Soccer - The Silly Game

And here we ago again.  It's been four years since I even thought a thing about soccer but the World Cup comes along and I foolishly give it another shot.  And based on ratings, apparently others did too.  Of course, they may have for the same reason as me.  The NBA Finals had just ended, football (real football) is a couple of months off, baseball is early in a long season and nothing else was on except a weekly NASCAR race.  If ESPN hadn't canceled the Great Outdoor Games, I would be watching that because yes, I do find dogs jumping in lakes and lumberjack sports more entertaining than soccer.  I'll wait to for a random Major League Soccer game to pull in good ratings before I'm impressed.  There is an old saying that soccer is the future of sports in the USA and always will be.  Oh but I do like how the Latin America female fans (especially Brazil) act like clothing at the game is optional.  I would say it must be a Catholic thing but my fiancée might get pissed.  She's probably pissed at the previous sentence.

Well, every other time I try to watch soccer, I end up not caring about it because it's low scoring, ties end with penalty kicks in the "knockout round", it's low scoring, there is too much flopping, it's low scoring and the calls are incomprehensibly inconsistent.  So what happens in the knockout round?  Out of sixteen teams, only like three managed to score two goals in regulation.  None scored three.  Three games were 0-0 at the end of regulation.  Oh, and two games went through regulation and the extra 30 minutes (plus stoppage time) and were still tied.  So we go to penalty kicks.  So what does the commentator say when a goalie actually blocks a shot?  "He guessed right."  WTF?????????  A game is decided because the goalie flipped a coin?  And they were proclaiming the Brazilian goalie the hero for stopping three shots.  He guesses right on one.  Another was kicked right at him.  The last hit the goalpost.  I'm really friggin' impressed.  And the only reason Brazil made it to penalty kicks is Chile had an own goal.  Which was credited to the closest Brazilian player who of course celebrates like he just cured cancer and solved world hunger.

Then Mexico lost because a player from the Netherlandsdid a ridiculous dive and was awarded a free kick near the end of the game giving them the victory.  But Mexico shouldn't complain too much.  They got away with two fouls on the same guy on the same play in the box (I think it's called the box).  And since I watched only the US games, the Mexico game (so I could laugh at my warehouse staff when they lost) and bits and pieces of the other games, no telling how many flops, fake injuries, bad calls and whiny players I missed. 

Seriously, this is the beautiful game?  We’ll ignore the sad reality that fixing games is so common place that you have to sign a contract with a country’ssoccer federation to do it.  But on the field, someone intentionally bit someone else in the middle of a game.  And flopping is so bad that the guy who did the biting pretended to be hurt.  Flopping and diving are way too generous a term for what these guys are doing.  Flopping is exaggerating contact to draw a foul like you see in the NBA.  Soccer players take it to a whole new level.  They get touched and act like they were shot by a sniper.  But they'd be stupid not to do it.  They get away with it.  And it's not like the NBA where suckering the ref may get you a couple of free throws.  These penalties have huge consequences.  The Netherlands got a win out of it.  When teams are struggling to score two goals in a game, a free kick is huge.  And some stupid rule says if you get a free kick, the person fouled doesn't have to take it.  The team kicking gets to pick their best person.  That's insane.  I'm sure Dwight Howard would love for James Harden to take his free throws for him. But it's even bigger than that.  These guys are begging for yellow (or even red) cards.  One red card or two yellow and the guy isn't just tossed.  His team is playing a man down the rest of the way. I'm sure Peyton Manning wouldn't have even more success if he was facing a defense of 10 men.

All these stupid soccer rules come together to make me not like the sport.  I want to see points scored.  World Cup means few goals.  Because their rules suck.  The red card/double yellow card is a joke.  I've said it before and I'll sayit again.  It's utterly retarded to have a team play a man down over penalties.  Especially when yellow/red cards get awarded (is that really the correct term) in such a haphazard way.  I saw a slide tackle that was all ball, no contact with the player.  The commentator said "I could understand if they called a yellow card there."  I can't.  It's stupid.   The guy who bit someone didn't even get called for a penalty. The dutch player got absolutely mugged in one half with no call and then he (actually his teammate who is a better kicker) gets a free kick for nothing in the second.  But what does playing a man down really do?  It means the team down doesn't do shit, and the team ahead doesn't really do shit either.  The team down is just protecting themselves.  The team at full strength knows they have the whole rest of the game with a man advantage.  Why?  Because you lose a man, you've lost him for the entire game.  Change the rule.  Make it like hockey where you're a man down for a period of time and then you get back to full strength.  Some of the most exciting hockey is during power plays as a team with a man advantage takes advantage of it.  In soccer, .........why work at it?  You've got the rest of the game to try, and it’s really hard for the other team to score against you. There was one team down a man in a tie game at the end of regulation.  Everyone in the studio during the break said they should spend the 30 minute overtime just trying to keep the other team from scoring and get to penalty kicks.  Yeah, that's competition.

But another stupid rule is the three substitution rule.  You can substitute three times total.  That means making a change for strategy reasons, injury reasons or because two teammates are fighting.  Which means if you have used your substitutes and another player breaks his leg, you’re at a man disadvantage unless you can convince the injured player to tape it and just lay out on the field.  So a coach is probably going to err on the side of caution and not substitute unless a player is dead.  The other problem is what it does to the players who have to go the whole way.  For one, I think a lot of players play half heartedly for long stretches during the game because they know they’re going to be out there a long time (but they have no idea how long).   Save your strength for later.  I’ve been told for years that they are in great shape and run all the time.  They may be in great shape, but I have never seen a soccer game where they are “running all the time”.  They’ll jog after the ball.  Kick the ball back and forth for awhile while the other team stands around.   Lay on the ground begging for a call. 

I think this is part of why players exaggerate their injuries to the point they’re laying on the ground for 2-3 minutes pretending to be at death’s door.  It’s a de facto rest break complete with water bottles.  And everyone is in on the scam.  The medical staff isn’t dashing onto the field to check them out unless there is blood.  They kind of saunter out there.  In fact, the most hustle I saw coming from the medics was on the sideline when a non-player broke his ankle celebrating a goal.  What’s real cool is that FIFA is criticized for letting a guy completely knocked out continue playing, but a toe gets stubbed and they’re bringing a stretcher (contrast with American football where any leg injury short of a compound fracture and the player limps off with the help of a couple of trainers).  Then the guy with the stubbed toe runs back onto the field straight from his stretcher.

 So how do you make soccer better?  More scoring would help.  But barring that, more attempts at scoring.  Hockey (closest sport to soccer) isn't much higher scoring, but a big difference is how many shots they get.  Tim Howard was record setting with 16 saves in his last game.  With two scores and 30 minutes extra, that is 18 shots on goal in 120 minutes of play.  NHL goalies average up to 30 saves a game.  Meaning they average fighting off much more attempts than soccer's highest in about half the time.  I think soccer should take some ideas from hockey and other sports.  Hit floppers with hefty fines like the NBA does.  But more importantly, substitute more like hockey.  Not exactly like hockey where they sub a lot and the ice is not so large and I can never tell where the puck is.  Look at the upside.  Coaches wouldn't be afraid of using up their substitutes so they could make strategic changes based on match-ups.  They would be more willing to take out a player who was dinged up or not playing well or on the take.  Wouldn't players be more apt to go full speed while they're on the field knowing they don't have to fake injuries or lollygag to get a rest break on the field?  Full speed should mean more attempts to score.  Besides, what is the downside?  Soccer groupies can't brag (lie) about how their players run the whole game?  If I was interested in watching endurance challenges, I'd watch a triathlon. 

Shows I Should Like More Than I Do

This isn't a list of shows I don't like.  That could fill an encyclopedia.  These are shows that based on certain criteria, I really should like them more than I do.  Some I like and still watch.  Some I really like and won't miss.  Others I should like but just stopped watching because I had problems with them.  And it's not shows that ran too long (The Mentalist should have stopped after killing Red John) or ones I would never like (2 Broke Girls because I prefer my comedies to be funny).  It's shows that had something going for them, but I just think I could like them more if they fixed their problems. 

Many have characters that I just can't get beyond.  I liked CSI early on.  But I really can't stand that gapped tooth wench.  It just wasn't worth putting up with her to watch that show.  So I stopped. 

Blacklist is a new show.  It has a lot of potential.  Mainly James Spader.  Actually, it's all James Spader.  Granted, the fake husband killing people did give it an uptick, but when Spader is not on the screen, the show typically drags.  Is that really what you want to base your show on?

How I Met Your Mother.  Based on early views, I should like this show.  It had some funny moments (like the Fiero episode).  Some good characters.  But.............the focal point is that Ted guy.  He was a douchebag.  Why would I care how a douchebag finds his wife? 

Dads.  So much to like about this show.  Low brow humor.  A guy from Animal House.  Martin Mull.  Seth Green doing Seth Green stuff.  Mexican ethnic humor.  A hot Thai actress wearing a schoolgirl outfit in an early episode.  But on the other hand.........who am I kidding?  I love this show.  I'm bummed out that it won't see a second season.

NCIS.  I like police procedurals.  I like Mark Harmon.  I just could not get into this show.  Every time I tried, the sheer implausibility of it just wrecked my brain.  And I expect some implausible stuff.  I'll accept superscientists doing police lab analysis and finishing DNA tests in about an hour.  But trying to convince me that a Mossad agent wants to quit that and join NCIS is stretching it a bit.  By bit, I mean to Jupiter and back.  Then, in another episode, Harmon's boat gets found with two bodies full of bullet holes.  Guess who they think is the best person to lead the investigation.  The boat owner himself.  But don't worry.  No one really thinks Harmon is responsible.  They think his long time friend and mentor is involved.  Have they ever heard of conflict of interest?  But the all time brain bleeding moment was this clip.  You have someone hacking into a computer.  And two people are typing on the same keyboard as if they could stop it with each using half a keyboard.  Do they have any clue how computers work?

 

Agents Of Shield.  I'm not a comic book nerd, but I do like them.  So I had hopes.  This one is actually getting better as the season goes on.  But when it takes adding Bill Paxton as a major character to your show, it could be problem no matter how much I liked him as Chet in Weird Science.   There were just character problems early on.  I liked three of the main characters - Coulson, Ward, May (another Asian actress in skin tight outfits).  But those Harry Potter science twins were mind numbingly boring.  The computer hacker just didn't fit.  Even worse, the battle hardened Shield agents who have seen plenty of death and destruction suddenly became little babies at the thought that their little hacker (who was a short timer on the team and never an agent) might die. 

 Sons of Anarchy.  Great show when it came out.  Not sure it has held up recently.  Began to feel like I was watching it out of habit.  There are certain things I can accept in a show like this.  It's really not plausible that a pretty boy biker metrosexual like Jax would become President of an outlaw biker gang (see any documentary about outlaw biker gangs and you'll see ugly is often a prerequisite for leadership), but chicks like him so making him the main character brings in that demo.   One problem with the show now is killing off Clay who I found the most interesting person on the show.  The show was at its best when there was an interplay between Jax's family dynamics, internal issues with the club and problems with outside forces.  Unless someone thinks Juice can provide the internal conflict that Clay did (and that person would be wrong), killing him off is a huge loss. 

The other problem is how the morality (or lack of) of the characters just changes.  Evil Clay practically became a doting grandfather in seasons 2 and 3.  Jax ends season 3 with a rededication to the outlaw MC life, but by the start of season 4, he's back to whining about getting out of the life.  Then a bunch started becoming pacifists.  Piney wants to "change" but the showrunners seem to think everyone will forget that Piney set up his old Army buddy's militia group to be blown up and then was then the big pusher to do a murder for hire to help out the Irish.  Opie blows up the militia but can't shoot one person for the dirty leprechaun bastards.  So Bobby (End The Cycle of Violence) takes care of that.  Now, shooting a complete stranger for money doesn't make you a bad person.  Well, maybe it does.  Then Chibs and Tig turned on Clay and are big supporters of Jax (who was of course willing to set up Tig to be killed.  Thanks Jax).  Now Tig only turned on Clay because Clay fooled him into thinking a gang member shot him instead of Opie and Tig runs over the gang banger's girlfriend and kills her which devastates Tig.  Or would seem to if it wasn't for the fact that Tig (and Chibs) went to murder a teenage girl who could be a witness against Bobby for his murder for hire.  Does this all make sense now?  No, because it seems like the writers just make crap up as they go along.  Hell, maybe it is better that Juice is becoming a sociopath so there is at least one halfway interesting character.  If the series ends with a bloodbath and everyone dead, maybe I'll think it's okay.

But the one that flummoxes me the most is The Walking Dead.  Really good show.  Can't argue with that.  I watch it every week and also watch The Talking Dead on after it.  But it's just got some stuff that bugs me.  It's rather amusing to see recaps of episodes talk of how shocking and brutal it can be.  Because if you've ever read the graphic novels that the show is based on, the show is about as brutal and shocking as a Disney musical compared to the books.  And some of the episodes tend to be boring.  But things that really bug me about the show are either situation related or character related (although there isn't a lot else besides situations or characters).  Some things happen that make no sense.  I'm not talking about the dead coming back.  I can suspend reality for that (but I can't suspend reality enough to think the actors playing Rick and Maggie have southern accents).  I'm talking about things like the bus fleeing the prison and then apparently just stopping in the middle of the road with everyone now a zombie.  How did that happen?  Did they die of carbon monoxide poisoning?  Even if one person turned and started biting, wouldn't at least one person have opened a door to flee?  Then you have Michonne walking around with two walkers on ropes because that somehow masks her presence.  She's still a few feet away from them.  Why would that be any different than just walking with a pack of them?  Is it magic rope?  Didn't they make it clear early that walkers smell non-walkers?  Speaking of which, why are they so often surprised by walkers?  Can't they smell those rotting bags of flesh?  I'm not talking about in a city setting where at this point, the whole place must smell like death and you fart to clear the air.  But in open fields or houses, they act surprised to stumble across one.  The moment you walk into a house, one whiff should tell you if a dead person is in there.  Personal body odor should not mask the smell of a dead body.  I'm not saying that just because of my personal bathing habits along with a crawlspace full of dead hookers.  I don't have a crawlspace.   

The show has some great characters.  It also has some really annoying ones.  One nice thing about the show is while it follows the graphic novels to an extent, it has time to flesh out the stories a lot more, extend plotlines, takes new detours and it mixes up how the characters act and what they do.  And adds characters like Daryl.  That way, you don't really know for sure exactly what is going to happen or when.  Shane lasted much longer on the show than the book while some like Dale got bumped off much earlier on the show.   One downside is when it doesn't quite mesh.  In the book, I can see why they followed Rick as he made the hard decisions, but in the show, not so much.  He was made leader the moment he showed up but didn't really do all that much to earn it.  In fact, in the book, a lot of the hard decisions he made were things Shane did on the show.  Rick did lose his shit in the book too, but he was never so wishy-washy like he gets at times in the show.  But making the characters so different at times has some downsides if you've read the books because you might like a character from the book and hate them in the show.  Lori was about the only one who was pretty much the same in both.  Annoying.  But fortunately they killed her off rather early.  Andrea and Dale were fine in the book but irritating on the show which means I was happy they got killed off.  But so did Shane who I actually found a lot more interesting than most of the others on TV and was glad he stuck around.  Which gives me hope that they might kill off Glenn or Maggie (or preferably both) early.  Those two are the most selfish bastards I've ever seen.  After the prison escape, they act recklessly to try to meet up again.  Which would be fine if they were on their own, but they seem to think it's perfectly alright to involve others in their mission of love or glorified booty call.  But the others aren't even against them meeting up.  They just want to be cautious about it.  Normal rest breaks, sleep in a safe spot, don't go through tunnels full of walkers.  But Maggie and Glenn are determined to risk their lives (and everyone else's) to meet a day or two earlier.  Which leads to Glenn leaving Abraham, Eugene and Rosita (damn, she's hot) to drag some guilt ridden moron woman into a zombie riddled train tunnel while following Maggie's trail because he can't wait a little longer to detour over the mountain.  If you're that hard up, just spank it.  The worst part?  Abraham and company find a min-van, get ahead of them, find Maggie and end up having to save Glenn and stupid girl from the other side of the tunnel.  Meaning Glenn nearly got two people killed, let his group waste ammo saving his stupid ass and actually wasted time in finding Maggie because he's an ignorant bastard. 

And that is what annoys me most about this show.  They are so stupid so often.  Off the top of my head, let me think of all the stupidity.

1. Protect your camp from zombies that feel no pain with cans on string noisemakers and tents?  Can't see anything going wrong there.  I guess parking your cars in a circle and sleeping inside it would be too much work.  Then you get to a farm that has had some walkers come around (and you know they can form packs), I guess trying to reinforce some kind of fence line was just too hard in the hard Georgia sun.  Hell, I would have dug a trench or moat around the house.

2.  Did anyone think to get a dog?  Yes, it would eat some of your food, but dogs have a good sense of smell (which see above about how lacking it is in the humans).  They are more alert.  They would warn you long before the zombies get into your camp. 

3. Maybe if your secret sex hideaway is a local pharmacy in town with the doors broken open, the smart thing to do would be check for zombies every time you go in.  Since they obviously can't smell them.

4.  Andrea pulls a nice trick by taking a long range shot at a walker.  Which turned out to be Daryl.  It's a double stupid because Daryl was surrounded by other members of the group going out to check it out meaning if she missed, she might have hit one of her buddies. 

5.  Shane and Rick go to drop off a prisoner well away from the farm and take the time to round up some supplies including filling a few gas cans from a gas truck.  Think about that for a minute.  They had a gas truck.  Needed gas.  Filled a few gas cans from it.  Why not take the whole truck?  Afraid it might look like a walker and Andrea shoot it?

6.  Lori spent every episode being pretty much useless in every situation not involving washing clothes.  So, obviously even though Rick and Glenn have gone to get Hershel at a bar, it was sheer genius for Lori to go out alone after all three.

7.  So you finally get a safe situation inside a prison.  You've got multiple fences and concrete walls and guard towers to protect you from zombies outside.  Yet, even though you know that anyone who dies turns into one, you don't have a night watch inside in case someone, you know, dies of natural causes?  Yes, waiting until someone dies of the flu and eats half your group is obviously the way to go.

8.  Even Daryl (the supposed smart one) opens the door to yell at a dog letting in a pack of walkers.  Meaning that he was in a house without any walkers, but couldn't smell a whole pack of dead bodies on the front porch.  AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

Then there is the king of stupid.  Dale.  I actually feel sorry for Dale because his character isn't irritating in the books (and he gets laid there).  He's a bit of a crank, but in the TV show, he's...... a nag.  They act like he's a moral conscience of the show, but he's not.  He's just an annoyance.  And dumb.  To begin with, what's his fetish for his RV that breaks down constantly?  I understand the advantage of an RV, but this one doesn't seem to lock and keeps blowing a radiator hose.  Here's a thought.  When Glenn goes to town, ask him to run by the dealership and steal a new RV.  Hell, take six and park in a rectangle to make a fort.    Then Dale begins to worry about Shane who is kind of a crazy would be rapist so that isn't really a dumb response.  But he takes their load of guns to go hide them in a swamp so that Shane can't access them (ignoring the fact that Shane has a sidearm which is all he'd need to kill Rick).  A brilliant idea because items of made of wood and metal do so well in swamp storage.  And you know who else can't use the guns?  The rest of the group if an emergency happens.  And if Dale gets killed (which thankfully happened), no one else would have known where they were.  Guns are kind of important in the zombie apocalypse.  But before he could do much else stupid, Dale gets killed.  Actually, the way he died showed how stupid he was.  They know walkers can get on the farm (they pulled one out of a well).  Yet, he decides to walk across a field in the dark by himself.  Right by a walker.  Who he couldn't smell.  Or shoot apparently.

Back (again) - Thoughts on some movies from the past

I always like my blog if for no other reason than I could point to it when one of my mindless predictions come true.  And it's unlikely anyone will point out when I'm way off base.  But I fell off updating it.  Not sure why.  I'll blame Ancel for monopolizing my free time.  Or it might have been booze.  But something happened that made me want to write on it again.  I was watching Commando and became confused about something that was happening in it.  Which led to questions in other movies popping into my mind.  Which I need an answer for.

Now, Commando is one of the all time great (cheesy) action flicks, but something just wasn't right.  Sure, I can believe Arnold survived jumping into a three foot deep swamp from the wheel of an airplane taking off, making it through several explosion and car wrecks without a scratch and then killing off a private army by himself.  I can even believe Nick Tortelli as the ruthless dictator.  And Rae Dawn Chong in a skimpy stewardess outfit is believable anywhere as long as you can ignore the fact her father is Tommy Chong.  What I don't understand is why Arnold's former friend/nemesis Bennett (so evil he only had one name) spends the entire movie wearing a chain mail shirt (that wouldn't stop a thrown pipe).  Was he expecting a sword fight?

Then there was the movie The Warriors.  I'm not questioning whether or not the Warriors could have kicked ass.  Cochise could kick anyone's ass and James Remar (Ajax) would still frighten me today.  But I frighten easily.  No, my question is specifically, where were the other Warriors?  I understand that only nine gang members were to go to the big gang conference, but when the Warriors were on the run back to Coney Island, didn't anyone bring a quarter (probably still a dime in 1979) to call for some backup?  It's not likely a gang of only nine members would have been big enough to be invited to a gang convention.  The wuss gang, the Orphans, had 30 and they weren't even considered for an invitation.  The Warriors couldn't even get any help for the beach showdown after they got back to Coney Island.  And they think they're the best?

I think this question was asked in MAD magazine's parody of Top Gun, but they didn't go far enough.  I don't mean how Tom Cruise got into the Navy before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".  After graduation, why did the Navy ship the Top Gun grads off to the aircraft carrier for the emergency military situation?  The carrier would have probably had a full complement of fighter pilots , and if not, there were more veteran graduates of the school which had been open since the Vietnam War.  Sending Iceman would have been plausible.  He was the top grad and available (and I loved him in Top Secret), but who in their right mind would have sent a potential burnout like Maverick into a war zone when he hadn't even completed a training mission since Goose's death?

Demolition Man is my favorite movie with both Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock.  Would have been better if she had gotten naked.  Worse if he had.  But they left me with a question that was never answered.  In the future, Stallone's character was confused because they replaced toilet paper with a three shell system.  How do you wipe your rear with seashells?  And why three?  And what kind of sick bastard came up with this idea?  Also, only Sandra Bullock seemed to know what toilet paper was.  Why didn't anyone else?  This wasn't Buck Rogers in suspended animation for 500 years.  Stallone was only frozen for 36 years, so maybe the under 30 crowd was post-toilet paper, but there were plenty of cops over 36.  Actually, there was a cop there that he had actually served with.  Did he just forget how they cleaned up after dropping a load in their younger days?

On the Original Latin Kings of Comedy, how did Paul Rodriguez get to be the final act?  Sure, George Lopez was the only other comedian on the show that I knew, but they all have to be funnier than Rodriguez who has somehow made a career in comedy without actually being funny.

American Beauty won an Oscar for Best Picture.  My only question is:  why?  Actually, my other question is why did I watch that crap?

Little Miss Sunshine didn't win an Oscar, but was nominated.  Not sure why.  Half the gags were ripped off from National Lampoon's Vacation (such as traveling with dead relatives).  But my question is how the parents managed to not be arrested for child endangerment?   Why did no one have a problem with the fact that they were putting their young daughter in the care of her heroin using grandfather with a porn fetish?  Who just so happened to teach her how to do a Madonna strip tease for her pageant talent portion?

In Debbie Does Dallas, Debbie is trying to raise money for a trip to Dallas to try out for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.  So, why did she already own a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader outfit?  I'm basing this on the IMDB entry and box cover only.

The Karate Kid.  By that, I mean the real one with Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi from Happy Days.  Not the Will Smith's kids vanity project which is completely misnamed since he was learning kung fu, not karate.  Which tells me Will Smith is racist for assuming people won't know there are different Asian styles of martial arts.  But I digress.  The Karate Kid (real one) is like Commando in that I'm accepting of the completely implausible.  I'm not sure Ralph Macchio could beat Elizabeth Shue in a fight, let alone Billy Zabka.  No, what gets me is that the Cobra Kai dojo is supposed to be some kind of Nazi indoctrinated karate school.  So, why is one of the lesser Cobra Kai members played by Larry B. Scott (about 1 minute in) who was also Lamar, the............ javelin throwing black guy from Revenge of the Nerds?

 

 

Of course, then there the question of why Johnny got a horrified look on his face when Creese told him to sweep the leg.  Are we forgetting that earlier in the movie, Johnny ran Daniel-san off a cliff on his bike and was going to kick a barely conscious boy in the head?  Suddenly, Johnny is worried about hurting his knee? 

In A Fistful of Dollars, why did the Baxters run out the front door where all the gunmen were?  Was there no backdoor?  Which is not a question asked in Debbie Does Dallas.

In Pretty Woman, I can look beyond the basic plot point.  It’s a fantasy of every little girl to be a prostitute who meets a rich man while hooking.  And it's the fantasy of every whoremonger to rent a session with a hooker who looks like Julia Roberts.  I would have been happy with her buddy played by Laura San Giacomo because I liked her in Quigley Down Under.  However, my problem here is strictly economics.  Richard Gere asks Julia Roberts how much a whole night with her will cost.  She says he can't afford it.  Really?  She charges $300 for a night.  I realize her normal crackhead clientele can't afford that, but in spite of her being a street walking whore, Roberts’ character is portrayed as smart in this movie.  She got a ride to the hotel in a Lotus.  She’s in the penthouse suite with him.  Does she really think he can’t afford 300 bucks?  His socks probably cost more than $300.  

Then there is Back To The Future.  Which has two major questions that I'm sure many people who have watched it may have already noticed the problems.  Remember when Marty remembers that he's in a time machine and can get back early to save Doc Brown?  Except he goes back 5 minutes before and is still too late?  Hey, dummy.  You remembered you had a time machine.  Did it ever occur to you to go back an hour earlier and slash the Libyan's tires?  Oh, and then explain to me why George McFly didn't seem all that bothered by the fact that his third child looked exactly like the dude that his wife went to the Fish Under The Sea Dance (we won't discuss where you come up with such a ridiculous name as that for a high school dance) with.