The Billiken's Bluff

Approach every frame, every street like a game of photohunt. Searching the angles,



mining for inconsistencies,



looking for outliers



seeking competitve advantages



and comparing the breasts when applicable.

There are a lot of movies I've liked, but few that I can watch more than once. They are...

Bottle Rocket
Waking Life
Royal Tenebaums
White Men Can't Jump
Goodwill Hunting
Office Space

And some other good movies...

Nashville
Swingers
Forrest Gump
Shawshank Redemption
The Usual Suspects
King of New York
Fallen
Hoop Dreams
25th Hour
Goodfellas
Proof
I Heart Hucakbees
Goodfellas
Basketball Diaries
Garden State
Batman Begins
Munich
Out of Sight
The Life Aquatic
Pulp Fiction
Godfather
Menace to Society
Rainman
City of God
Juice
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Fight Club
Matrix I
Donnie Darko
Gladiator
Mystic River
Boogie Nights
The Big Lebowski
The Devil's Advocate
Do the Right Thing

I try to pay the Knicks no mind. I try to look away, but like a car crash I can't help but rubberneck.



I loved them in the early and mid 90s, but they have been impossible to watch post- NBA Finals run in 1999. Their transactions keep getting more ludicrous and are impossible to ignore in their gratuitousness. Penny Hardaway, Jamaal Crawford, Malik Rose, Eddie Curry, Jalen Rose, and now possibly Steve Francis.

They are so far in the hole.



Salary-cap speaking, talent-wise, and chemistry-wise.



Funny How??



Isiah is like a degenerate gambler who is trying to bet his way out of some significant financial entanglements.





Last week Bill Simmons wrote (facetiously):

A well-placed source tells me that Isiah Thomas is prepared to trade Channing Frye and Penny Hardaway to Denver for Kenyon Martin and Earl Watson, but only if Martin agrees to an MRI on his surgically repaired knee. If Martin's knee is in good shape, the Knicks are calling off the deal. If the knee is in rough shape, the deal is on. If the knee is in such terrible shape that the doctor says something like, "Wow, there's a good chance K-Mart might walk with a limp for the rest of his life," the Knicks will throw in an unconditional No. 1 in 2009 as well as Nate Robinson and $3 million dollars. So stay tuned.

AND

Just like Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis seems like one of those guys who changes teams, gets his act together for a few months and eventually wears out his welcome. So what would happen if the Knicks and Magic traded Marbury for Francis ... and then, three months later, they swapped them again? And this just kept happening every three months? In other words, you would be getting only the "getting his act together" part of the Marbury/Francis package without dealing with the "wearing out his welcome" side effects. I really think this could work.

Well Isiah, who hates Simmons, and threatened to F him up if they ever crossed paths on the street, must have been reading this column. Isiah decided to do Simmons scenario one better and rather than swap talented, perennial-losers, it looks like he has decided to accumulate every last one of them.

The trade is still pending a physical examination of exactly how many neck tattoos Stevie Franchise has.

WTF Billy Zane, Gary Busey?

Every once in a while the 15 year old video store clerk nerd in me resurfaces and I find myself in class reading movie trivia on imdb.com.
Today in class I took a look a list they have of the highest rated movies of all time as compiled from the ratings of site visitors from around the world. Considering what such a list might reveal a great deal about the human race, I found it pretty interesting (but not surprising).

Anyway, self-absorbed guy that I am, I says to myself - I says - I wonder what such a list might look like if it was just ME voting. Faced with the option of either taking notes on car crash lawsuits or proceeding in such a nerdy endeavor, I played God in my own little imdb world, pulling a John Cusack from High Fidelity and whipping up a list - of NDot's top 50 movies of all time! (The Got himself has been working on the same list to be posted tomorrow.)

I'm probably not very original. The list represents NDot personal favorite movies rather than what I consider to be the best films made. (I had to leave of some , like Apocalypse Now, that I both love and thought were among the greatest).

So its heavily tilted towards comedy and gangster films, and probably those that most dudes of my demogaphic could get down with, with a few randoms. Some of them are pretty new, so its hard to tell if they would have the staying power of some of the more "classic" titles on the list. To this day my closest friends and I will carry on meaningful conversations consisting entirely of quotes from the top 20.

If you dont strongly like most of the movies on this list, you and I probably wouldn't get along. Respect it, bitches.

THE TOP 20 (in rough order):

1. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Scent of a Woman
4. Goodfellas
5. Braveheart
6. L.A. Confidential
7. The Godfather (I and II)
8. The Big Lebowski
9. Billy Madison
10. Casino
11. Office Space
12. Made
13. Boyz ‘N the Hood
14. Boogie Nights
15. The Apartment
16. Pulp Fiction
17. Stand by Me
18. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
19. Good Will Hunting
20. Waking Life

THE RUNNERS UP (in no real order):

21. Swingers
22. Clerks
23. Fargo
24. Rain Man
25. Full Metal Jacket
26. Old School
27. Annie Hall
28. The Usual Suspects
29. Election
30. The Silence of the Lambs
31. The Exorcist
32. Dazed and Confused
33. Heat
34. Seven
35. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
36. Fight Club
37. Donnie Brasco
38. Gladiator
39. Casablanca
40. Sideways
41. Miller’s Crossing
42. Life of Brian
43. The Shining
44. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
45. Catch Me if You Can
46. Forrest Gump
47. The Royal Tennenbaums
48. Schindler’s List
49. Meet the Parents
50. Mystic River

to anyone who commutes regularly to and from Manhattan...

But 4 out of every 5 people on the PATH train to Hoboken last Friday night were either:

listening to their ipod





emailing on their Blackberry





or reading James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.



This wasn't the case when I got on the F Train in Jamiaca, Queens.





I think I might have been the only person in the subway car listening to an ipod (I left my blackberry at home, and finished A Million Little Pieces in November 2004) at 179th and Hillside. There were however some discmen, NY Posts, and Bibles.

By Union Tpke/Kew Gardens I saw a few ipods and some Dan Brown novels.



By Lexington and 63rd the full array of ipod could be seen (nano, video, white, black).



By 47-50 Rockefeller I had spotted not only the Blackberries, but the blue version and the slimmer Nokia version as well.





Between 42nd and 34th, as if all at once, a million little glossy teal-blue paperbacks started popping up.







Driving to work in Long Island every day has dulled my senses.

Broadway Joe has never been a stranger to the haute couture.





On Sunday Namath, MVP of Super Bowl III, sauntered down the catwalk sporting a blazer emblazoned



with the J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS!!! insignia.



The image calls to mind some seedy character wearing an overcoat, flashing a group of high school girls on the subway platform.