it is as the french say, that certain "i don't know what"

totally abstract and somewhat nebulous... it's impossible to imagine clutch in terms of numbers or figures... but we know it when we see it, don't we?

it was just so prevalent this past weekend, particularly sunday... the whole idea of coming up the biggest when it matters most... if you can do it, whether it's circumstantial or a habit, you'll be remembered as such... if you can't, you're a choker...

first it was the u.s. open... retief goosen, one of the five best players in the world, goes into the final round up three... he's already won the thing twice so we know he isn't easily betrayed by his nerves... plus, given the fact that the opens are played on the hardest courses, we know that no one is going to move up that much... all he has to do is shoot even par, maybe +1 and he wins again... it was a "what more do you want" type situation... a no-brainer...

so what happens? he makes nine bogeys and a double, doesn't make a single birdie and shoots 81, just good enough to finish in a tie for 11th... it was a choke of epic proportions, one of the biggest gag jobs ever in the history of championship golf by a great player (greg norman at the 1995 masters will always be no. 1 on that list)...

it was stunning, not just because of the huge numbers but also because of the type of guy goosen is... he was so good up to sunday and so good when he won the previous two times, that he was breathlessly described by writers, tv guys and ahem... me, as bloodless, without a pulse, unflappable, what have you... the guy's expression never changes no matter what... to me, going into sunday, he was the ultimate clutch player... but now what? will what happened haunt him? will he shit the bed every time he has a lead in the final round of a major for the rest of his career? and perhaps more pertinent to my point, how does what he did relate to what clutch is and what it isn't?

you could even say that tiger woods choked too... he had two huge chances to get close enough to put pressure on the eventual winner, michael campbell, that probably would have done him in... but even the greatest - tiger - blew it, missing a semi-easy putt badly on 16 then three-putting from 10 feet on 17... campbell, who dropped a couple of bombs on the back side, made every shot he needed to make, and steadily shot par with no flash at all, had never been in such a situation... does that make him more clutch than tiger? or even goosen? sunday, it did...

then there's robert horry, or big shot rob, his perfectly assigned nickname... horry had no points with one second left in the third quarter of game 5 of the nba finals... but he buried a three-pointer at that very instant, cutting the detroit lead to 1, and taking back a bit of momentum for his spurs that they'd squandered earlier in the quarter - always a bad thing, especially on the road... horry then went on to score 18 more points in the fourth quarter and in overtime, including the game-winning three with 5 seconds left... he single-handedly took the game over, drilling three's, getting putbacks on offensive rebounds, driving to the rim and playing stifling defense...

horry does this all the time - it's kind of his thing... here's a guy without a single nerve in his body, especially in the most important games and situations... he's been hitting ENORMOUS shots in the playoffs and finals for years... he has 5 rings, 2 with the rockets and 3 with the lakers and will have his first with the spurs tonight after they win game 6, entirely because of what he did on sunday... this guy is so clutch that a) his own coach said after the game that they kind of save him during the year so he'll be tip-top in the playoffs and b) various people who write and talk better than i (and make a shitload more money too) were today engaging in debates over whether he belongs in the hall of fame...

it's a good question... all he does is ensure huge wins... when he misses, it's stunning... he's the definition of clutch - coming up biggest when it matters most... a no-brainer...

his teammate, tim duncan, arguably the best player in the league and armed with two rings, scored 26 points and had 19 rebounds... he also missed something like 7 foul shots in a row in the fourth quarter and totally gagged on a wide-open putback that would have won the game in regulation... does that make him a choker? what about rasheed wallace, an important guy for detroit aho's been known to come up large in big games... he left horry open for then winning 3 in ghastly fashion... does he join goosen, tiger and duncan on the gag reel? in general, of course not... on sunday, yep...

and here's where the murkiness lies... some people like horry, michael jordan, david ortiz, tom brady, etc. just know when the stakes is high and subsequently what to do, period... some people like duncan, tiger and goosen have given clutch performances, are unquestionably great, and just could have had better days... some people like campbell may have been just good enough... the bottom line is that there's no across-the-board answer... you either have clutch or you don't... you can't teach it or measure it... it just is... lates.

hi, i'm a pet psychaitrist, i sell couch insurance and i'm test-marketing positive thinking

back to sports - seems like the right way to go... it's all because of those identity-challenged red sox... one minute, they suck, the pitching's for shit and they can't get out of their own way and the next, they're great, the pitching kicks ass and they've won four straight with another cupcake coming in for the weekend...

it's the season, folks... it doesn't matter what happens from one week or day to the next... forget world series wins, if they lose a couple in a row, they suck and the manager should be strung up above the state house and if they win a couple in a row, they're going all the way again...

it's so subjective... they lost all those games last week on the road, where they haven't been good in forever, to two teams who are legit playoff contenders... and three of the four straight wins were at home, where they're world beaters, against the reds, who have to be one of the worst professional baseball teams i've seen in a long time - we're talkin devil rays bad, ya know? suddenly, against some truly odious pitching, manny starts to hit, millar is on one of his patented streaks, edgar's doing things and even bellhorn is only striking out twice a night... look out, '27 yankees!!

anything can happen... just look at the bombers... the captain's favorite team just swept a series... they must be all fixed, right? wrong - it was against pittsburgh, who comes here this weekend... the pirates are not quite as bad as the reds, which means they suck... anything less than 2 out of 3 for the sox will be a HUGE disappointment... the yankees beating up the pirates doesn't mean they're any good, it means they played a team inferior to them in a meaningless series at home in mid-june (even though it feels like late october outside again, ya know?) the sox sweeping the pathetic reds was nice and all and it was certainly good medicine, but what does it really mean? answer: nothing...

in mid-august last year, the sox were still treading water, barely over .500 and they went on to win... things change - it's not so goddamn black and white... shit, they were only down 3-0 to the yankees in the lcs before they came back, so even in october, in the playoffs, you can't read anything for real... no one will truly be able to assess this team at least until september if not the end of the season... no matter who pitches well and who hits between now and then, we've been shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's no gauging anything until the end is near... they aren't as bad as they've looked at their lowest points and they aren't as good as they've looked the last four days... they're somewhere in the middle... and for now, in mid-june, that's ok...

couple quick notes - first, anyone who appreciates fine art needs to see this piece my dear friend the fabulous chacha did on her site for her illustration friday series... it's really beautiful... check it out...

also, legend asked me to name a couple more good bad movies in the spirit of the last post... so, off the top of my head, i came up with david lynch's "wild at heart," "the golden child" with eddie murphy, tim burton's "mars attacks" (not only made bad on purpose, i think, but one of the best of the good bads...), paul verhoeven's "showgirls' (classically good bad!), "medicine man" with sean connery and the doctor from "the sopranos," "the edge," that movie where anthony hopkins and alec baldwin fight the killer grizzly bear together and finally, in a hopkins double-dipper, "hannibal," easily one of the greatest good bads ever if for no other reason than the scene where he eats ray liotta's brain while liotta sits at the dinner table looking like he just drank a couple bottles of booker's by himself... anyone who feels like adding to the list, please feel free to do so... lates.

i have a trig midterm tomorrow and i'm being chased by guido the killer pimp

so i could discuss the suddenly resurgent sox or the more-boring-than-tom cruise-nba finals or even how the hot, sweltering weather makes me feel...

but fuck all that - i have a plan, dammit... recently, hbo has featured a movie caled "the girl next door" in heavy rotation on all its channels... well, i had remembered hearing about it when it was in theatres and being somewhat intrigued by the premise so i watched it the other night... and you know what? it sucked, and i loved it...

which brings me to my point - how does a good, bad movie happen anyway? for the most part, its just a freak occurrence since most movies are either good, bad or even worse - decent but instantly forgettable... they're rarely completely awful but still a lot of fun, ya know? and the whole thing's got me thinkin...

so this movie "the girl next door" had to have been a disaster from the minute they started shooting it... it's biggest problem is that it wants more than anything in the world to be a new "risky business" for whatever letter labeled generation we're in now... this means that everything that happens from the opening frames is completely derivative, which equates to all of the filmmakers having neither a shred of credibility or originality in their entire bodies...

there's the lead kid - the bookish, nerdy guy with the bookish nerdy friends, who's going to georgetown if he wins a scholarship (not unlike acing the princeton interview in "risky business") and has never had one iota of fun in his life until his big interview/important scholrship dinner when he runs a whorehouse/trips out on ecstacy... there's the lead girl - here a porn star instead of a hooker - who falls in love with him, gets him to loosen up, is blonde and just looks generally scorchingly hot on all occasions... there's even guido the pimp, here a porn "producer" who is very protective of lead girl...

it goes on... there are the clueless parents, the evil faculty, the money-making scheme involving the other hookers/porn stars and so forth... the score even sounds eerily like the risky score at critical moments...

yet there's no edge, no balls, and worst of all, no courage of its convictions... "risky business" examined prostitution from a detatched stance, giving us characters who were hookers and pimps, but so what? it did not even remotely judge any of its characters on the basis of what they did, it simply watched them exist... there was no moralizing or glamorization at all...

"the girl next door" sensationalizes porn and the industry but backs off when it comes to the lead girl, who just wants to be loved and is miserable and horrified by her profession... basically, it's a teen movie with an R-rating, like "she's all that" or "cruel intentions" with boobs... every other porn star, director or producer in the movie is having the time of their life, except for her... the filmmakers just don't get that you can't have it both ways... even the big sex scene at the end has been totally sanitized for the viewing pleasure of the several million 15-year-olds in iowa or missouri who snuck in... in "risky business", they do it on an L car in chicago while tangerine dream's score plays - it's a terrific, sexy scene... in "the girl next door" they do it in the back of a limo after the prom while some david gray song that i heard in a jc penney jewelry commercial a couple weeks ago plays... it bears more resemblence to something you might see in an episode of "7th heaven" than in one of the seminal movies of the 80s.

but i loved it... even though i'd seen them all before, the characters were interesting because of the way they were played... the lead kid, an actor named emile hirsch, was totally natural and funny and carried the movie... the producer was timothy olyphant, who plays the sheriff in "deadwood" and was the drug dealer in "go"... he's incredible, totally stealing every scene he's in and being hilarious then freaky/sketchy from one minute to the next...

the girl is named elisha cuthbert... i remember her from a small role in "old school" (luke wilson's one night stand) and i think she's on the tv show "24" which i've never seen... but this shit has to put her in a new dimension, not because of her acting, although she deserves credit for actually kind of seeming like a real porn star a few times, but because of her presence... elisha immediately enters the pantheon of most ridiculously, stunningly, amazingly, gorgeously hot women in the movies... shit, i might even see that horror movie she has out with paris hilton just to get another look at her... the bottom line is that now she has an honest to goodness future as mrs. jmg...

it's also funny, mostly thanks to the producer and the kid who plays the lead's porn-obsessed friend... and the soundtrack, although it features tons of songs heard before in better movies (eliot smith's "angeles" from "good will hunting," satchel's "suffering" from "beautiful girls," bowie and queen's "under pressure" from you name it and filter's "take a picture," from that hp printer commercial, etc.) is top-notch (it even makes good use of the who's "baba o'riley" and echo and the bunnymen's "the killing moon")...

man, this is long - i need an editor (i'll accept applications starting now)... i guess my point is that every time i see a movie that i know is terrible and love it anyway, i can't figure it out, so writing about this particular instance might help... it's so infrequent, i think the last time it happened was 3 years ago with "gangs of new york," a martin scorsese movie that was was one of the biggest messes i've ever seen but totally knocked me out anyway...

it's all gotta be based on our own inner, subjective viewpoint, ya know? maybe if the actors had been different or the character of the friend not so funny, i just would have seen it for all its flaws and hated it... but who knows? maybe i don't even have a point... yeah, that's probably it... you know what? forget it... if you haven't already...

but see "the girl next door," if for no other reason than for elisha... man, is she a burner... lates.

i'll have a bloody mary and a steak sandwich and a... steak sandwich

ok, it's time to get back to basics here, folks... it's a new week and my mind's a little less cluttered so without further ado, let's get right into one of my favorite things, the random thoughts note...

• strange going for the sox right now... they'd won at least two games in their last three series before hitting st. louis last night and now, after two really lousy losses, they look disinterested, lazy and just plain bad... renteria's reverted back to his pre-yankee series self too... the poor guy - every time he screws up, either at the plate or in the field, it just kills them...
• saw the new star wars and after initially loving it i indulged in much deliberation before deciding it was just ok... the writing and acting still sucks and the actual, official turning to the dark side by the kid was too quick and not very convincing... but a) it looks like "citizen kane" compared to the first two prequels and b) being able to witness the advent of darth vader actually happen lends a lot to the movie just by virtue of what it represents to the whole series of movies, old and new... by the way - best scene, bar none, is when the emporer truly becomes the emporer... that and every close-up of natalie portman...
  
• haven't done knucklehead awards in a while, but the honor for the whole damn month has to go to redskins safety sean taylor... this guy is a real treat... hey sean - go to practice, talk to your (three-time super bowl champion) coach and leave the frickin guns at home, ok?
• anyone else love what's hapenning to the yankees right now? man, do they suck... every time i think the red sox have problems, i think about the yankees and my day brightens... $205 million, man... to me, what's more interesting than whether or not they get turned around is whether or not torre or cashman get fired or quit before the end of the year...
• watched the sox episode of that "queer eye" show since forests have been felled in order for some of our local hatemongers to wax poetic on the topic in recent days... the bottom line is it was totally harmless... there were a couple laughs, mostly surrounding millar pretending to be a flaming queen, but other than that, i just didn't get what the big deal is... in fact, the most interesting thing about it for me was that the whole thing was done to raise money for a bunch of kids who lost their little league field due to hurricane charley last summer and the team was from port charlotte, which you see a fair amount of in the show... it's strange, i've never been to port charlotte but i feel as though i know it like the back of my hand...
  
• pistons or spurs? spurs or pistons? it's like they're the same team...
• if you have hbo, you should watch "entourage"... it's damn funny, it's only a half an hour long and the entire first season is on demand... if you have any affinity at all for jeremy piven, one of the funniest actors out there, that's even more reason to watch... couldn't have been more perfectly cast...
• about the title of this drivel - it's a line from "fletch" and me and the big man and grandpa were discussing the pantheon of all-time funniest movies the other night... they said for them, a movie like "fletch," though hilarious, doesn't belong quite in the same boat with "caddyshack" or "animal house" or the like... i said i thought it did because even now, having seen it 2,354 times when it's on TBS at 4:30 a.m. and watch at all, i still laugh so hard that the tears start flowin... it was also the last really good movie chevy chase ever made... man, that's kinda sad...
• doesn't it figure that the sox are going to play the cubs in wrigley field for the first time ever this weekend and nomar won't be there? good thing he's leading the NL in all-star votes after playing just 14 games... then again, i shouldn't be surprised - millar's second in the voting for AL first basemen...

hey before i go, i just want to give a shout out to everyone for their kindness last week... you all know who you are - thanks... more to come soon... lates.