LA Lakers: Observations & Predictions

- The Lakers seem like they’re a team that needs a moment where they all are going to have to play scrubs on Venice beach and have an 80’s bonding montage some time during the mid season just to give themselves confidence.

- This is the first time in the history of life that fans know more than the coaches. We all see the inevitable fall of Mike Brown’s questionable offense. He’s somehow made one of the greatest point guards of all time a non-factor.

- This year could be a year that blows up the franchise. Mike Brown will kill Dwight Howard’s thoughts of signing an extension, which will result in him leaving. Brown will get fired. Nash will retire early.

- The Lakers are going to have a players only meeting after their Venice beach fun and say, “fuck it, lets do what we want.”

- Princeton offense is gone.

- Derrick Fisher signs with the Lakers. Where is D. Fish?

- Lakers somehow make it to the NBA finals.

Food Coma and Observations

“Look Again” hmmm not too sure if I’m crazy about the Sundance slogan – more on that later.

Full discretion: I’m sitting in my hotel in a partial food coma watching “The Label Maker” episode of Seinfeld… it’s so great.

The short time at the Sundance Film Festival has been good so far. From what I understand this weekend is when people start filing in for parties and screenings then it starts to slow down as the week progresses. The things I’ve seen – Lots and lots of transports from different places (obviously) it’s actually like Los Angeles just picked up and relocated to Park City.

Anyway, here are a few early on observations of Sundance:

Getting back to the 2012 slogan: “Look Again” – Seriously, I don’t get it. I sort of do but I just don’t like it. I Googled to find out what the hell it means - I got nothing.

It’s a bit more spread out than I realized. In my head I had this vision that everything was very close but that’s not necessarily the case. However you can take a shuttle and it gets you where you need to be pretty quickly.

I want to go skiing while I’m here but there is almost no snow.

There are a lot of people who work on films: This is obvious but it’s just a reminder. There are tons of people walking around with passes and it’s just a constant reminder of how big things are, especially the industry.

Slamdance is great. Yes, Slamdance. If you’re unaware there is another pretty great festival going on right now called Slamdance and its dead smack in the middle of Sundance. Apparently 4 guys whose films were rejected from Sundance in 1995 started it and it’s been thriving. They have great films, and one would argue they’re as good as Sundance films. A couple of the filmmakers that have been discovered via Slamdance: Chris Nolan (Dark Knight), Marc Foster (Monsters Ball) and films that have premiered at Slamdance: Paranormal Activity and King of Kong (To name a few).

Slamdance is basically part of Sundance now, whether they like it or not. But I think Sundance likes it.

I need to rest. Today was just an intro to the cold world. Tomorrow is going to be movies all day long. This might sound a bit nuts but the main movie I want to see here is called “The First Time” by John Kasdan (In the Land Of Women with Adam Brody). Why is this nuts? Well, it’s a Romantic Comedy, and truth be told I love the romantic comedy, also I read the script and it was great.

I love this episode of Seinfeld.

The Final season of Entourage.

I’ve been trying to remember the last time a show was about a main character but it’s not actually about the main character, it’s actually about it’s supporting cast. I was really digging deep for this one and I didn’t come up with much, actually I didn’t come up with anything… Muppet Babies? Wasn’t that show about “Nanny” or was it? I don’t’ really remember, I just remember her striped socks. I’m sure a show will come to me at 3am when I’m not thinking about it, but that’s exactly what Entourage is, and to it’s credit it is called Entourage.

This weekend marks the beginning of the end to Vinny Chase and his best friends. As I’m sure everyone knows the show is loosely based off of Mark Wahlberg (First time ever I didn’t initially call him Marky Mark) and his best friends accompanying him in LA. Along with his best friends he has his fictitious super agent Ari Gold based off non-fictitious super agent Ari Emmanuel.

I set my DVR to record the final season and I wasn’t too sure why, I don’t even know how much I care about the show, 80 percent of me tells me I’ve been invested for 7 previous seasons and it’s too late to stop now. There are only 8 episodes in the entire 8th season and I think I owe it to myself and see how this thing plays out. But seriously, why do I care about this show? Let’s be honest here for a second, the show isn’t all that good anymore, right? So I’m going to take a moment and flush out everything I remember of Entourage.

Warning: This timeline may be wrong. A lot of things may be wrong actually but it’s how I retained Entourage over these years:

I remember the show opening at Fred Segal’s on Melrose located in Hollywood. When I was watching all I thought was “Holy Shit, I literally live 8 seconds from Segal’s, I could see it at my house off of Kilkea. And when I say my house I mean I was living with my Aunt and her husband for a short amount of time. Lets dive into this a little further and open up the guts of Entourage –

I was living in Hollywood (check) and when you live in Hollywood you’re here for the entertainment industry (check) and when you’re in the entertainment industry you’re probably struggling at some point (check) and all you dream about is making something of yourself so you can call your friends and brag… I mean enjoy it together (check) and BOOM this is why we all love Entourage. This is a no brainer; they’re living the dream.

Success, friends, women, freedom, movies, and playing in the sexiest and most unknown universe in the world – Hollywood. This is what the first season was to me and it’s what the first season was to a lot of people, the appeal. Not to mention this show was filled with very specific supporting characters that were more memorable than the lead.

But I’m still hung up on this appeal thing because it’s very important. Aside from just knowing that this season was cool can anyone really remember what the first season was about? No, okay that’s fine because most can’t remember most first seasons. Moving on… what was any of this show about? Specifics I remember:

Vince (The Star) Bangs girls and eventually gets a drug problem.

E (Vince’s best friend) becomes his manager.

Drama (Vince’s brother) is in and out of acting and is also the funniest character on the show.

Turtle (Vince’s other best friend) drives Vince everywhere and eventually tries to do his own thing. The he starts dating Jamie Lynn Sigler (somehow).

Ari (Vince’s agent) gets a funny gay assistant, but consistently yells at people.

Wow. Not much. But that’s okay, because although Entourage seems as though its character driven, it’s not, it’s appeal driven. The appeal and small set pieces of these characters just being cool and getting a lot of attention is what makes Entourage. The show opens the door to the people living outside of Hollywood and exposes what it’s like to be here, and it flaunts Hollywood to the people living here… It’s the perfect equation.

I think this show always knew that and somewhat walked the fine line of character development and environment development, even though they kind of go hand in hand. The show is like a burst of energy with down time of character, and when we see that burst of energy it’s so cool, it’s almost unattainable.

So, as we get ready to watch the final 8 episodes and see how Vince and the crew get him out of his coke addiction all I can hope is that he really gets out of it and starts being awesome again. I think it’s too late to try and define this show as anything other than a fun show that exposes what we don’t have but what we all really want.

To the credit of everyone on this show they were killing it for a little while, the story lines have kept me for a solid 8 seasons (even though I can’t recall most) and the guest characters they’ve accumulated may be the best in TV history. It’s just that I don’t have much attachment to any of these guys… Maybe Johnny Drama just a little bit.

I guess as I think about it I do have some slight attachment to Vinny Chase and his crew, probably because everything they’ve had is so appealing to me.