I went to university for film. I had a lot of classes in four years where I literally showed up, watched a movie for 1.5-2 hours, and then left. Prior to university, I had NEVER fallen asleep during a movie, EVER. But it’s amazing how an 8AM lecture on the history of Vaudeville films will put you to sleep faster than Joe Biden at a climate summit.

Why are 8AM lectures even a thing?

In my film program I barely made any friends because they were all Tarantino kids - all they ever talked about was how good Quentin Tarantino’s movies were. I just couldn’t stand how artsy fartsy they got about movies. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a good movie but I’m not about to put on a black fedora and a striped shirt and snap my figures in applause to Pulp Fiction.

That all said, whenever Martin Scorsese releases a film, I immediately perk up. Now, I haven’t seen every single thing Scorsese has ever released (I told you I wasn’t like the Tarantino kids) but I can easily say he is my favourite writer and director. I suppose this paragraph is one big contradiction…moving on!

Scorsese’s latest project, Killers of the Flower Moon, is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this year. It features the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro so you know it’s going to be good. But it also has an apparent run time of almost FOUR HOURS. The Irishman was a good film, I really enjoyed it but I wouldn’t have been mad if the film was split up into two parts.

I remember watching The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in the theatre and sitting there for three hours wanting more. But imagine going to the 10:40PM showtime and coming out of the movie at 3 in the morning. It’s Martin Scorsese so maybe he makes you forget it’s been four hours since you went to the bathroom?

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

🎦 W for the Mushroom Kingdom

🏀 Playing for the playoffs

🍸️ Agave on the rise worldwide

A video game movie…that was actually good

The beauty of having kids is you get to do a lot of things that you’d otherwise love to do as an adult but would feel a bit weird doing if you weren’t with kids, like watching the new Mario Bros movie. If I didn’t have kids I probably would’ve decided to wait until it came out on streaming, end up forgetting that I could stream it, and then never actually stream it. Yet here I am still watching Love is Blind season 4…

The Super Mario Bros Movie was really good. Don’t pay attention to the stupid critics who gave it poor reviews. The film was fun, stayed true to the franchise, had a lot of old school Mario references, and frankly gave fans of the video game a story and experience they would expect.

This was by far the best video game film ever made, which ended up reminding me of all the other video game films I’ve ever watched

Did you ever watch the original live action Mario Bros movie??? Everyone went into the theatre expecting to watch something that resembled the game and came out wondering, WTF was that? Also, why did Yoshi look like a raptor from Jurassic Park?

In 1995, as a kid I ran around saying “Your soul is mine!” after watching Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat was as controversial as they came for a game in the 90’s. As a film, it was nooooot bad.

My list is very extensive as I’m a sucker for things that are familiar enough to watch but end up turning out so bad. I don’t really want to talk about Silent Hill but as a game: so much fun. As a film, TRASH. Let’s talk about Street Fighter instead and how Jean Claude Van Damme played all American Col. Guile while not even trying to hide his French accent all movie long. SONIC BUST.

The NBA’s pre-playoff playoffs

Years ago I called my telco and asked them to give me a TV plan with just TSN. When I realized it wasn’t possible, I decided I wasn’t going to legally have access to a sports channel anymore. This also meant I wasn’t going to watch as much sports as I used to so I decided to only focus on basketball.

The NBA has got to be the world’s most innovative professional sports league. At the very least it’s up there with those Russians who fight in phone booths and World Chase Tag. In 2021 the league introduced a new playoff format where the 7th and 8th place teams in each conference would have to play in a mini tournament alongside the 9th and 10th place teams to see who would actually make it into the playoffs as the official 7th and 8th seeds.

This format has worked well for the Western conference since the West has historically been a very strong conference over the past 20 years - basically since Michael Jordan retired. In the East you usually know who’s going to the finals by the All-Star break so this is more so to give teams like the Raptors another chance to choke and lose to Demar DeRozan’s screaming daughter.

This all said, the play-in tournament is an interesting format since it allows for the close competition at the bottom of the conference to heat up creating an exciting end to the season every year. For instance you get to see teams like the Raptors who were on the bubble all season, go on to end their season by squandering a 19 point lead and missing 18 free throws. I’m very bitter. The NBA is innovative. The end.

Tequila & Battle Shots

I was in Cuba one year at a resort where I met a Brazilian millionaire who made his money selling mattresses. We hung out during the day but he could never join us to drink at night because he had a wife and kids to tend to. One night we saw him running to the bar all excited because he “escaped”. Immediately he asked the bartender for an unopened bottle of tequila and some shot glasses. However the bartender, lost in translation, gave him champagne flutes instead. And that’s the night I did my very first (and last) champagne flute shot of tequila.

Tequila is on the rise, like the sun (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?). Everyone and their dog has a tequila brand now. Name a random celebrity and I bet you they own or have a stake in a tequila brand - Brian Cranston, yup. Guy Fieri, yup. Lenny Kravitz, yup. Mark Wahlberg, yup. The list goes on and on. It’s no wonder Tequila has become the fastest growing spirit in the world.

It has also become the dreaded spirit in my house when my wife and I play battle shots. If you’ve played Battleship before, sub out the mini plastic ships for shot glasses of various liquors and you’ve got yourself a very dangerous basement game.

Casamigos has become my go to tequila over the past year. Frankly speaking, I’ve yet to have a tequila that I’ve loved. But when I need to make a margarita or peer pressure my guests into having a shot, Casamigos has been the elegant choice to do so.

I’m not a tequila sommelier but if you’re looking for a good tequila all I know is I have this disgusting bottle of Hornitos in my basement that I will never touch again, don’t buy Hornitos 😆