Avocado: The Essential Fatty Asset

Avocado, get in my bowl.

---
Laurie is a regular contributor to Fistful of Words. You can view more of her artwork at Itchin' to Dance or her thoughts on creativity at Flight of the Tumblebee. You can follow Laurie on Twitter @LASkeleton.

50/50 Review: Being Normal While Having Cancer

by T.S. Oldman

As the old saying goes, if you didn't laugh you might cry. Jonathan Levine's 50/50 isn't so much about laughing in the face of cancer as it is about finding humor and a sense of normalcy while dealing with the disease. There is nothing particularly deep about 50/50. In fact, you could call it light. Not because the characters don't take cancer seriously but because we know what the characters will do once we meet them. There's no lasting dramatic tension other than the main character surviving or dying. But that's not a bad thing. Levine's film and Will Reiser's script focus more on tone and honesty.

The film follows Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a twenty seven year old whose life seems normal. Although he may be uptight because he likes cleaning and nervously chews his nails, Adam has an artist girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), a job at Seattle Public Radio, and a best friend (Kyle) who endlessly taunts him about his lack of a sex life.

Adam's lack of sex gets thrown into perspective, when he receives news that he has cancer from a doctor so callous and unfeeling that you'd like to punch him. But Adam does not punch the doctor from empathy hell. In fact, Adam appears to be more emotionally stable than everyone else in his circle of friends and loved ones that he tells about his cancer. Adam offers his girlfriend (who only recently made the relationship leap of getting a drawer in his house) a chance to walk away. Kyle (Seth Rogen) almost throws up at the news and Adam's mother (Anjelica Huston) is so distraught that she threatens to move in and immediately begin taking care of son.

All A Twitter

Tweets from the past!

By David Hammock

Twitter has become the go-to medium for the rich and famous to communicate with the masses. As much as I like hearing about Kim Kardashian's day, it's too bad Twitter wasn't invented earlier so we could follow some interesting historical figures instead of vapid celebrities. Here's a look at what could have been:


HonestAbe Abraham Lincoln
@slaves, good news... ur free! #13thAmendment
149 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


MLKdoesthabodygood  Martin Luther King Jr
crazy dream last nite. daughter wuz playin wit a white girl. hopefully a sign of things 2 come cuz i really wanna try that 'whites only' twitter
48 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


FiReSiDeCHATTA  Franklin Delano Roosevelt
New Deal... on Groupon!
65 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


Theres_No_I_in_Rome Mark Antony
@Friends @Romans @Countrymen... R.I.P. Julius Caesar
2050 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


ReforMartin  Martin Luther
I've got 95 Theses but a b*#$% ain't one! JK... but srsly check 'em out http://t.co/NuxqZVQ
594 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


theRealHelenKeller  Helen Keller 
rioasndaiog asdojfsj asdogj 2390jsalgj q09wejpasdjfgj aspoegjiapsdjg pasjdgpj!
47 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply


PatsFan1776  Nathan Hale
I regret that I have but 140 characters to type for my country
235 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply

IronHorse4  Lou Gehrig
Feel like the LUCKIEST man on the face of the earth!! U know, except for all the healthy ppl...
72 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply

TheRaven  The Raven   by Edgar_Allen_Poe
"Nevermore."
166 years ago Favorite Retweet Reply

David Hammock is a regular contributor to Fistful of Words. Check out his own site The Kids are Aight or follow him on Twitter @david_hammock

Fantasy Football: The Power of the League

My Fantasy Logo... Ostentatious, No?

By Thomas Hokum

Some people fantasize about being wealthy or being married to a model. Some people fantasize about sports cars or going on killing sprees at the DMV. Others still seem to fantasize about BSD’s. Mine are different. I fantasize about stealing Tim Hightower in the Eighth. I fantasize about Drew Brees going off for 400 yards and three touchdowns. I fantasize about standing atop a stool in a crowded bar and loudly proclaiming that my friend’s team is that feces which emanates from large, smelly dogs. I fantasize about Giselle Bundchen and Brooklyn Decker feeding me grapes while telling me that 5’8” is totally above-average height… hey, I’m only human.

That’s right baby football is back! With it comes the Fantasy craze that has swept the nation in recent years. Your own Thomas Hokum has been at the forefront of this growing craze for the last four years, and this year I threaten to submerge myself so deep into two new leagues, I will undoubtedly reduce my mental functions to opening cans of soup and hitting my car door with a stick to get it to open.

For the uninitiated, it is easy to miss why anyone would be interested in Fantasy Football at all. It has no controllers like a video game, and for all intensive purposes, the controls it does have strongly resemble an Excel spreadsheet. It calls into question fan loyalties by giving us players on opposing teams and often you will find yourself rooting for a running back or wide receivers on a team you hate. It requires constant attention to injury news, starter updates, and defensive matchups.

It’s also one of the greatest things ever.

Moneyball: Changing Baseball and Sports Movies

Brad Pitt Shines in Bennett Miller's Moneyball opening September 23
Image via http://moneyball-movie.com/

by T.S. Oldman

No matter the innovations, change will always be hard.

Just this week, Facebook updated it's features to look more like Twitter and Google+. My own newsfeed was awash with complaints, laments, and, in some cases, outright anger from my contemporaries. The posts read like the 2011 version of "I remember walking to school barefoot in the snow. Uphill. Both ways."

Even generation Y isn't so keen on change.

Moneyball, directed by Bennett Miller (Capote), is a film about change in what sportswriters have long termed our nation's pastime: baseball. Of the four major professional sports in America, baseball is the one most rooted in its past. Just as this movie is about change in baseball, Aaron Sorkin's (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillain's (Schindler's List) script turns the term sports film on it's head.

Although Miller splices real footage of the 2002 Oakland A's masterfully into the film to provide a feel for a few of the games that are featured and uses sports talks radio to convey the pressure and adulation from fans (a method used to perfection in Peter Berg's television version of Friday Night Lights), this is not a traditional sports movie. Instead of rousing pre-game speeches, we see film room study and discussions about the importance seeing a lot of pitches and getting on base through walks. Taking four pitches to walk to first doesn't exactly lend itself to the typical sports moment of swelling music culminating in a single win, but it does lead to more runs and more wins over the course of a season, in real life and in Miller's movie. There is an important home run to win a game, but it happens during the regular season.

Click through to read the rest of my review.

Fortified with Vitamin D and Arrogance

 

"The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you."

- James A. Michener 

Just like milk, Mr. Michener.  Just like milk.

---

Laurie is a regular contributor to Fistful of Words. You can view more of her artwork at Itchin' to Dance or her thoughts on creativity at Flight of the Tumblebee. You can follow Laurie on Twitter @LASkeleton.

Songwriting with U2 and Bono: Fun With Potato Famine

What type of songs would Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr
have written if they had lived during the Irish Potato Famine?
Image by Zachary Gillman via Wikimedia Commons

by David Hammock

I saw a special on the History Channel about the Irish Potato Famine where the narrator asked the viewer to imagine what it would have been like to live during that trying time. It's long been my policy to do exactly what the good people on television tell me to do, so I imagined what life might be like during the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s. Turns out, it wasn't so bad. This is due in most part to me imagining myself in the United States and not Ireland, as the narrator did not specify location. Sure there were no iPhones or internet, but there was plenty to eat and no Justin Bieber ... a pleasant era indeed.

But what of my Irish brethren across the Atlantic? What was it like? What if someone I knew was Irish and lived during the Potato Famine? Then it hit me. I do know someone Irish. The band U2. OMG, what if U2 had lived in Ireland during the potato famine?! Why it could have changed the very course of rock and roll!

Songwriters tend to write about what's going on around them. Dylan wrote about counterculture, Lennon wrote about social activism, Ke$ha writes about glitter... it would make sense that if U2 were around back then that they would have written about the Potato Famine. With hunger as the driving force behind their music, the starving artists would have probably released some slightly different singles. Here's a quick look at what might have been:

Invasion of the Pod People: A Newcomer’s View on University of Alabama Fashion

Nike shorts: the staple of UA fashion.
Image from http://bit.ly/n8hy7W

by Elaine Dunaway

If you ever find yourself walking around the campus of the University of Alabama and feel like you’ve entered into some bizarre alternate sci-fi universe, I certainly wouldn’t blame you. Why is this, you might ask? It could be because practically every single undergraduate girl wears the exact same outfit day-in, day-out: Nike Tempo running shorts, an oversized T-shirt, and either Chacos or sneakers. Hoards of girls emerge from their sorority houses and dorms looking so amazingly indistinguishable that I literally cannot tell one from another. True story: I can now consistently recognize two people on campus (two that I’ve never met or had a class with) solely due to their atypical decision to wear alternate clothes (for one a dress, for another, jeans and button-down v-neck sweaters).

Oddly, this reliance on sporting gear disappears pretty much only on game day. Yesterday, for example, I took a stroll down Paul Bear Bryant Drive and University Boulevard and was amazed to see that pretty much every college-aged girl was wearing a dress and cowboy boots. (Granted, their decision to all wear the same general thing once more rendered them incapable of being told apart; however, at least these outfits took a little effort.) Is it just me, or does this seem completely backwards?

Today's 1000



Despite the advertised ease of Green Giant's single serving products and despite the fact that, due to portion sizes, it's always easier to cook for several people than for one, there is something horribly depressing about staring at this cover and realizing that you will be eating by yourself for dinner.

Quick Takes on Point Break, Lil Wayne and the Republicans, and College Hyundais

TS checks the news and asks who will
 get to say "I am an FBI agent!!"
Image by Caroline Bonarde Ucci
via WikiMedia Commons

By TS Oldman

Three news stories this week that caught my eye and made me want to ask: Who are you kidding?

1. Point Break and Remake Outrage: Late Monday, it was announced that the surfer/FBI flick (a genre woefully unexplored) Point Break was being remade.The announcement was met with expected sarcasm, derision, and the regular slew of comments noting that Hollywood's tapped out of ideas. For those of you following along at home, note that Hollywood already has plans to remake Dirty Dancing and Total Recall;  a new Footloose is definitely happening; and the third installment of Sam Raimi's Spiderman series was so bad that no one is complaining about relaunching a franchise where the first thirty minutes of the new Spiderman looks exactly like the first thirty minutes of the last Spiderman.

Fans of the original movies or people sarcastically deriding Hollywood unoriginality let me let you in on a secret: You're not the target audience here. These remakes, and relaunches are made for people who will unironically enjoy the new version of the dancing warehouse scene in the new Footloose or the sure-to-be-included gun-firing, foot-chase scene in the new Point Break. These are people who would never ask how in an America that has a number of dancing competition reality shows and three successful Step Up films, a plot line about outlawing dancing is still plausible.

Hollywood recycles stories and characters because the large majority of audiences doesn't like to be challenged. It's the reason the alphabet soup of cop and lawyer procedurals on television get massive audiences (CSI, NCIS, SVU). These shows are enjoyed by people who like non-challenging, well produced television or are too young to process that The Wire, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad are culturally important. To some degree, any outrage over remaking films that are enjoyable but not classic/important sounds like cultural conservatives being outraged over Howard Stern or South Park. You're not the target audience. Quit complaining or don't watch. Either way, Hollywood will soldier on with movies like it's Red Dawn remake without you. Wolverines!

2. Lil Wayne, the Republicans, and Us: This morning Vibe Magazine released a bit of an interview with Weezy in which he said the following:

“You learn from what the right-wing is doing and you take something from it. I feel like as a people the most that we can do is better ourselves and learn. Then look at yourself and ask ‘Am I the person they’re talking about or am I not?’ You have to make the most of who you are because the Republicans are never going to like us.” (Vibe Magazine)

Nothing that inflammatory or surprising. @LilTunechi is as entitlted to his opinion as anyone. I never have a problem with celebrities talking politics (it's people listening to them that's bothersome). But what's interesting here is that Lil' Wayne uses the word "us." Is Wayne politely hearkening back to Kanye West's George Bush/Katrina gaffe and referring to black people? Is he talking about ex-cons? Is he talking about tattooed rappers? While it's much more likely Republicans actually like Wayne because of his tax bracket, I'll guess that Wayne was referring to black Americans or minorities in general. And frankly, that's fascinating. Weezy is using 'us' like sports talk radio callers use the 'royal we' to lump themselves in with the actual team. Never mind that Lil' Wayne is about three albums past being able to identify with anyone other than rich entertainers, it's funny to hear him use pronouns so inclusively, even if his statement is vague and almost levelheaded.

3. Hyundai Inks Deal with IMG to Sponsor College Sports: According to Bloomberg News, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and 11 other college football powerhouses will have Hyundai as their official car this year. The company plans to add nine more schools next year. The deal will net a total of $50 million over the two year contract. Considering all the debate about amateurism and paying players, this deal feels a lot like watching CEOs of investment firms taking high dollar bonuses even after the federal government bailout. As a business, college football is doing well. As a sport, it's becoming more and more ludicrous that some portion of the numerous revenue streams aren't in some way distributed amongst players. Colleges will continue to cash in while the media wrings it's hands, and fans simply watch and cheer, oblivious.

Hollywood Remakes and Mashups: And the Winner is... Everyone

Since Hollywood is all remakes and sequels these days, David Hammock is pitching
his ideas for box office gold. Image via DaBler via WikiMedia Commons

By David Hammock

Everybody likes movies, but not everybody likes the same kind of movie. Some folks enjoy critically acclaimed films while others prefer special effects driven flicks. Sadly, it seems like Hollywood rarely puts out a movie that satisfies both crowds. That's why I am selflessly working to petition Hollywood for the following remakes and mash-ups that will help bring the two crowds together.

No Country For X-Men

-Professor X comes to grips with his mortality, grows his hair out into a historically bad 'do, and travels the countryside in his wheelchair as a handi-capable hitman who kills anyone in his path with his mind... or that crazy bolt pistol thing.

Harry Potter and the Hurt Locker

-Forget Dumbledore's Army, Harry... you're needed in the United States army. Just don't try to use Expelliarmus to disarm the bomb.

The Lion King's Speech
-It's the c-c-c-c-circle of l-l-l-l-life.

The Fast and Furious Case of Benjamin Button
-Benjamin Button lives his life a quarter-mile at a time... in reverse! His car can only be driven backward, but life must be lived forward.

Click through to see more mashups and remakes that Hollywood needs to greenlight.

Summer Television Breakdown

HBO's True Blood with stars Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin is just one of
the shows Hokum runs down in his summer televevision recap.
Image by Bladerunner0427 via WikiMedia Commons.

By Thomas Hokum

The weather is cooling, football has returned, and the kiddies are scurrying back to their teacher’s dirty looks, which can only mean that summer is coming to an end. It’s been a crazy summer filled with natural disasters and, besides that, boredom. I personally have had a summer of maturation. I got glasses, shaved my head, and became an uncle! Now that I’m firmly entrenched in the witness protection program’s identity displacement regime, I figured I’d pick up this whole blogging thing again. To kick it off, I thought I’d give a rundown of some of the shows that have nursed my summer boredom. There might be some minor spoilers if you’ve never watched the show, but otherwise I’m going to try to only mention overarching plot themes and general quality/acting/production.

WNBA Jam

by David Hammock

What's the least popular sport in the entire world?

Is it field hockey? Is it jai-alai? Is it non-alcoholic beer pong?

No. It's women's basketball.

And why is this? Is it because women can't dunk? Is it because they can't shoot real jump shots? Is it because sometimes when you're watching Sportscenter to see if the Hawks won, it pops up on the screen that Atlanta won and and you get all excited because you thought it was the Atlanta Hawks, but it was really the Atlanta Dream... and then you get mad because the Dream is just a really stupid name for a team... and really most of the WNBA teams have stupid names. The Liberty, the Shock, the Sky, the Sun... is pluralization un-ladylike?

No. None of those reasons.

The reason the WNBA is so unpopular is because they don't have their own video game. So, being the equal rights opportunist that I am, I decided to design the game myself. Here's what the controller layout looks like

I tried to make it as realistic as possible. I think this could be a big hit. I mean, if all twelve WNBA fans bought a copy, I'd have enough money to buy court-side seats to a real basketball game.

This is David Hammock's first post for Fistful of Words. He will continue to be a regular contributor. Check out his own site The Kids Are Aight. You can also follow him on Twitter @david_hammock

Fistful of Words: A Year Later

by TS Oldman

When we started Fistful of Words a little over a year ago, I promised several things to all four of you that read our first post.

I promised that our site would have informed opinions about a wide range of topics. In an online world where small startups typically gain an audience by focusing a specific subject, FoW has remained open to almost any topic that would fit under the large umbrella of pop culture. Sometimes that has led to wonderful pieces about shotguns and vampires, while other times it’s led to a place where the outrage over TSA body scanners was viewed through Taylor Swift lyrics. From lessons on "How to Ask for Sex" to an expletive filled tirade on the importance of the Oxford comma, we’ve certainly been eclectic.

I promised that our pieces would vary in type. Since we aren’t experts in any one field and we didn’t begin with any special connections within a given medium (publishing, film, technology, music), we have offered commentaries, pictures, illustrations, reviews, rants, overdone (but still fun) lists, and some interviews. From guest contributors in the fashion illustration world to interviews with upstart bands, we’ve more than checked the “various types of pieces box.”

I also promised that we would do our best to not fall into the 95% of online writing/blogging sites that are launched and then disappear quickly. Although we have dwindled to four writers, we are still here and barring any serious run ins with earthquakes, tropical storms, or tornadoes (which is becoming increasingly difficult these days) we plan on still being here for a while.  

As we embark on another calendar year of FoW existence, I have no new promises other than the original ones I made last August 30^th. We will continue to be eclectic. Should our writers stumble upon a shared competency within a given subject or decide the world needs another hyper specific fan site, I will be surprised at the prospect of rebranding FoW as something other than a pop culture catch-all of essays, interviews, commentary, and reviews.

We will continue to post weekly. Our writers, including myself, only began publishing weekly in mid 2011. While that schedule (and the heat) ground us down over these past few summer weeks, we will be back on our normal schedule as we head into the fall and football season. Also, over the coming weeks we will be debuting several new regular contributors to our site. We look forward to adding their unique brand of sarcasm, design, illustration and intentional humor to our weekly lineup.

And lastly, we will continue to cultivate informed opinions and create entertaining and discussion worthy posts.

Thanks to all four of you (Hi Mom!) for sticking with us and, as always, happy reading.

The Vampire Diaries: Better on film than in print

Nina Dobrev plays Elena Gilbert on The Vampire Diaries.
Image from http://bit.ly/nApZyc

by Elaine Dunaway

There is a constant in my life that I thought would never change: if a book is made into a movie or television series, the best I can possibly hope for is that the movie/series is equally as good as the book. Never in my life would I have thought it possible for screenwriters to exponentially improve the written source material – it’s just not something that happens. Recently, though, my worldview was blown wide open through the reading/watching of The Vampire Diaries.

As a book series, the main characters are two-dimensional, flat characters void of anything particularly worth reading. Elena Gilbert is a bitchy mean-girl high school queen bee; Stefan Salvatore is the ever-good vampire fighting his nature without ever straying from the path of good; for the first five books, Damon Salvatore is completely evil and lacking in humanity. The satellite characters fare even worse: Caroline Forbes is so vindictive and concerned with being popular that she becomes inhabited by demons just to take Elena’s place as the most popular girl in Fell’s Church, Virginia; Bonnie Bennett is a vapid airhead; Tyler Lockwood is a lecherous, black-hearted boy who eagerly seeks transformation into a werewolf so that he can wreak havoc on the entire town.