because 'born to run' would be too damn obvious. or, why 'bond' movies are just stupid. (or, the post that has even less rhyme and reason than usual.)

this past weekend, a bunch of us drove down to a city for which a beautiful neil young song - to which i cannot find an audio link - is eponymously-named. (to say nothing of the songs, like elton's philadelphia freedom and boyz II men's motown philly, which do not hail from that soundtrack.)

(the city also gets a lot of airplay from diane keaton's mary wilkie in manhattan; you can even hear one of those quotes.)

anyhoo, i dont know why im making such a big deal about pop culture references to this city of cheesesteaky love; we didnt see nearly enough of it for me to pontificate about its value as a metropolis. (thusly, not only was the city never the main focus of this post, but it's hardly even an auxiliary topic. [i just like linking to shite; it's half the fun of blogging. {the other half being the discount at circuit city.}])

(meanwhile, i just used double-embedded parens. aw yeah!)

i will say philly seems like a pretty city, oozing with historical-looking dons.

anyhoo deux, yeah, we went down to see and cheer bramalon in the maradon, and that is what we did:

clip courtesy of gold lion films

the badass finished in 3:41:47, which is like 8.5 minutes per mile, which is pretty effing classy.

and now, at long last, without further ado, here's the main pt of the post:

it was foolish of me to break character and get even moderately interested in seeing a bond movie. we saw 'casino royale' on sat. night, after supping at tgi friday's (home of the never-meant-to-exist deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls). god is this movie bad. it is a royale bore, is what it is. the plot centers on this huge poker game for crying out loud.

IM SO SICK OF POKER. enough with effing poker already!

fortunately, i slept through almost the whole movie. (everyone who was with me - save publicadcampaign, but including bond-obsessed gold lion - hated it too, so you cant say i cant legitimately diss it just cuz i slept through it. had i had to consciously suffer through it, i would have disliked it even more intensely.)

so i got to thinking about this whole 'bond' movie franchise. namely, i realized what an utter hoax/con job it is.

the fact is, bond movies ceased to be original or even interesting decades ago. they're basically the same movie made over and over again, with (very) slight plot and character twists. (thusly, the whole thing would be more appropriate as a law & order-type tv series.) but the powers that be that produce these films 'get away' with it, b/c they cleverly do not attach numerals - roman or otherwise - to the titles.

think about it. by the time police academy 6, or friday the thirteenth 15, or star trek whathaveyou came out, most people saw the unwieldy number attached and it crystalized this thought: hey, can 6 effing police academy movies really all be interesting? isn't it enough with this franchise?

well, imagine the bond movies were given numbers. we'd be on, like, bond 40. (btw, im not bothering to verify any of these numbers with links b/c you get my pt and i dont really care to extend the manhours i've put into this current, admittedly unweildy post.)

no doubt that anyone with half a brain, or just a modicum of integrity, would see 'james bond 40' on a marquee and realize that seeing another bond movie is just a total waste of time.

(this is not a comment on the brain-size or integrity of myself or my friends, since no number is attached to 'casino royale.')

so, next time you get a hankerin to see a bond movie, pretend its sequential number is attached, as it should be. that'll show ya.

ps - eff it, i cant resist.