Fantastic

Went over to my friend Jeremy Dawson’s apartment for the second half of the Super Bowl on Sunday. Yes, predictably, as a sucker for the dark-horse, underdog, “little guy” (loosely applied here to a major sports franchise and corporation) I was pulling for the Saints - not only was the New Orleans Team/City symbiosis just a better story than the weak “Manning is the greatest ever, right?” angle, but I feel Brees is, in a small part, still spiritually one of the San Diego Chargers, my team. He put up numbers and delivered on Sunday. New Orleans loves him. He’s got that chant. So I was glad to see him lead the Saints to take it all.

Probably my favorite thing of the night (aside from that Peyton pick by Porter) came from The Who’s halftime show: drummer Zak Starkey (Ringo Starr’s son) had the Royal Air Force roundel painted on his cymbals…

So simple, but so archetypically The Who - simultaneously proud and wary of being British. I wish they had finished their 12-minute halftime set with ‘My Generation’ or ‘I Can See For Miles’ but instead they ended with a rather redundant second verse from ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’... I blame it on the CBS/CSI-themes tie-in.

But I have digressed… Jeremy is a producer with director Wes Anderson, recently returned from a three, maybe four-year stint in London working on Fantastic Mr. Fox. As well as producing the film, he did the voice of the Badger’s bully son, and Anderson gave him the animation puppet as a gift. So dope!

Jeremy with his character from Fantastic Mr. Fox

Congratulations to him and everyone involved with the film for the Academy Award nomination in the ‘Best Animated Feature’ catagory… If you haven’t seen it, you really ought to try, it’s really great. The work behind it is so visible, so apparent, it’s inspiring and it really gives you that ‘get up and make something’ vibe really lacking from the CG blockbuster animated films of today, and if that sounds stupid, maybe this link might help bolster what I’m trying to say… Fuck a Pixar! The blu-ray is gonna be a must-cop for me.