It's about time...

1992 was a really long time ago. It really was.

That was the last time the Boston Bruins were in the conference finals. I was too young to remember or care, but it's exciting now.

1972 was even longer ago. That was the last time the Black and Gold won the coveted Stanley Cup, as champions of the National Hockey League.

This is my fist post about the Bruins since the season started. I said back then that the B's had a lot to prove, that there would be high expectations, and failing to live up to those expectations could and should lead to people (coaches, general managers, captains, goaltenders, etc.) losing their jobs with the organization.

I was hesitant to post anything more during the roller coaster that is the regular season. There were times when I thought Coach Julien deserved credit for the team's stingy defense; and there were times that I thought he should have been fired for, as team president Cam Neely eloquently put "trying to win games 0-0."

The team looked impressive against teams like Chicago and Vancouver, but looked like a high school team in their two games against Detroit. They had some exciting games against Montreal and Philadelphia, which would set the stage for the early playoff rounds.

As the Bruins prepare for their first conference finals in 19 years, it is important not to be content with this level of achievement. They have a series against the Tampa Bay Lightening which they are capable of winning, and anything can happen in the Stanley Cup Finals. While we wait for Game 1 on Saturday, let's take a look at the highlights of the Bruins' season thus far.

Tim Thomas. Timmy is back. After an injury-plagued '09-'10 campaign, The former Vezina Trophy winner showed why he was once the league's best goalie. At the age of 37, he had a career year and has performed well in the playoffs so far as well. This season may not have been Tuukka time, but he will get his chance someday, too.

Marchand Emerges. Brad Marchand had a terrific rookie season. The little agitator that could never seems to give up on the puck, and is always giving it his best effort when he is on the ice. He was certainly a pleasant surprise.

Strart, Wheeler, Hunwick, and Sturm Out, Kelly, Peverley, and Kaberle In. The Bruins made some big trades this year with Chris Kelly, Rich Peverley, and Tomas Kaberle donning the Black and Gold sweaters for the first time this season. Although Kaberle has not performed the way he was expected to, Kelly and Peverley have exceeded expectations and have produced in the playoffs. It was sad to see Mark Stuart get traded to Atlanta. I liked his toughness and his work ethic, but the Bruins needed to do something to bolster their offense.

What a Difference a Year Makes. This time a year ago, the Bruins were known as the team that could not win a Game 7 on their own ice, and could not close out a series with a 3-0 lead. This season they have done both already. They Beat the Habs in a thrilling Game 7 and then swiftly swept the same Philadelphia team that rallied back from three games down last year. They have been playing with more intensity and more confidence this playoff tournament and the collapse of last season is in the rear view mirror to stay.

Whatever the rest of the playoffs bring is still to be determined, but it has been an exciting ride through two rounds. Tampa will not be an easy team to beat. They have some really talented players and, like the Bruins, a veteran netminder who has been playing out of his mind so far this postseason. After that, Detroit, Vancouver, and San Jose, the remaining teams in the Western Conference, are no easy out either. There is still a lot of hockey to be played before the Boys of Winter hang up the skates to go golfing, but it would be really exciting if Lord Stanley were to pay his first visit to Beantown since Richard Nixon was president.

Maybe Next Year, Mr. Murray

Another year of Academy Award nominations have been announced, and now it is time for another year of discussing who got snubbed. I am probably break this up into several posts so I can focus on them individual nominations as I watch more of this year's movies.

Before the Oscar nods were announced, I had read about the film Get Low starring Robert Duvall and Bill Murray. I then saw the film, and found it very enjoyable, but not the best movie I had ever seen. To my disappointment, neither Duvall nor Murray got nominated.

The premise of Get Low is that an old hermit who knows people talk about him behind his back decides to throw a funeral party for himself while he is still alive. Duvall's performance as Felix Bush, the hermit, is good but effortless. Robert Duvall is one of the most renowned actors in Hollywood and anything he does with is career now, cannot possibly live up to The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. I could easily see Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, or Gene Hackman, who are all around the same age as Duvall, playing this role and it still being a pretty good. movie.

In a different way, Bill Murray, who plays the funeral home director who happily takes the old hermits money for a live funeral party, is working in the shadow of his own success. Even though he did get an Oscar nod for Lost in Translation, no matter how many critically acclaimed serious roles he takes, he will always be remembered for Caddyshack and Ghostbusters. The Oscars have a bias against comedies, but some comedic actors have won awards. I am still hoping that someday, this comedy icon will get the recognition he deserves.

Duvall and Murray are far from the only actors or directors to get snubbed this year. More is on the way.

That's What Being a Fan is All About, Charlie Brown

As a sports fan, the playoffs mark important times of the year and each sport carries a different stigma with its finale ritual. In baseball, the World Series takes place at the end of October and the beginning of November. It symbolizes the end of the summer, and the end of all that is warm and cheerful. Basketball and hockey end in June, around the same time as final exams and graduation. The football playoffs take place around the time that winter break is wrapping up and college kids once again leave their hometowns and head back to school. Depending on the outcome, I am either pumped for a Super Bowl party in a couple weeks, or totally miserable because the Patriots are eliminated and i have to get through another tiresome semester. This season is the latter.

When the Pats lost on Sunday to their arch rival, the New York Jets, it was painful to watch, and yet I could not force myself to get out of my seat and do anything else while the game was still going on. An ugly, disaster of a game was being played, and yet I could not pull myself away from the TV.

Why do we put ourselves through such torture?

My theory is that the Red Sox and Bruins have trained Boston sports fans into coming back year after year regardless of how bleak their prospects may look. From the Impossible Dream to Carlton Fisk to Bucky Dent to Grady Little, Red Sox fans always had a strong intergenerational bond that only grew stronger with defeat. There was always a glimmer of promise in the future. Maybe Ted Williams will win us a World Series. Or maybe Yaz. Or maybe Fred Lynn. Or Jim Rice. Or Dwight Evans. Or Roger Clemens. Or Mo Vaughn. Or Nomar. Or Manny. Or Pedro...

At least the Sox pulled it off and won a couple of World Series titles before I got too old. The Bruins still have yet to win the prestigious Stanley Cup since before Watergate (or the end of the Vietnam War or the premiere of SNL. Any sort of historical bench mark to indicate that 1972 was a long time ago). I remember all the excitement over an 18 year old kid named Joe Thornton. Now we can only hope that Tyler Seguin and Tuukka Rask can become champions in Beantown.

Elimination day is a great time to reflect on your commitment to the team. In some cities, when their basketball team is eliminated, many fans leave in the third quarter, or they are too busy texting their friends or trying to spot celebrities to even care. It is hard to be a fair weather fan in a region that only gets fair weather for four months of the year. Standing behind a team when they are at their worst is the fanatical equivalent to shoveling two feet of snow off a driveway while flakes are still coming down and then spending the rest of the afternoon clearing off your backyard rink so you can have a place to celebrate when the sky clears up--it is just what true fans do.

I feel like Charles M. Schultz should have made a TV special about this topic where Charlie Brown is down in the dumps for supporting his local sports franchise when they seem like a lost cause. Looking for guidance, he first asks Lucy for psychiatric help and, after handing over a nickel, she tells him that his faith in such a terrible team is really just a coping mechanism for his own fear of failure. She suggests to him that he try to coach his own team of whatever specific sport the special is about. His ragtag team of misfits (Schroeder, Snoopy, Frieda, Pig Pen, etc.) do not respect him and do not follow the plays he tries to teach them because they think he is too much of a blockhead. Discouraged and resentful of the entire sport, Charlie Brown exasperatedly asks what the point being a sports fan is anyway. Linus quietly and eloquently explains that you need to take the good with the bad and the fans that were their when the team was lousy will feel even more rewarded when they finally turn it around and win. Upon hearing this the rest of the team gets really focused and plays really hard for their dedicated coach who is sulking by himself. The special would end with all the characters humming "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in honor of Charlie Brown.

If that TV Special ever got made, it would make more casual sports fans find the true meaning behind the games they sometimes care about.

Too Much of a Good Thing

When LeBron James decided to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh by "taking his talents to South Beach," he changed the landscape of the NBA for better or for worse. Never before had two of the top three players in the NBA chosen to collaborate as free agents. Magic Johnson had an aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy. Larry Bird had Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and Dennis Johnson. Michael Jordan had Scottie Pippin and Dennis Rodman. They never tried to join forces with each other, or Karl Malone or Charles Barkley for that matter. The times they are a-changin'.

Then came the discussion of what to call this fantasy basketball team that was holding practices in Southern Florida. Some call them the Superfriends. The heat themselves have started calling themselves The Heatles. That is pretty bold to name yourself after the most influential, most important rock group of all time. Those guys came out with platinum record after platinum record. Their rhythm guitarist once said that they were more popular than Jesus, and most of the world was okay with that. They set the bar for what popular music could be. They changed their sound several times, but always managed to pull it off to keep up with the changing times. They broke up after a prolific run and each member went on to successful solo careers, proving that they were each talented enough to do it on their own.

What have these Heat done?

Dwayne Wade led the Heat to a championship five years ago, but has not done much since. Chris Bosh should not even be considered a superstar, but merely a guy who has always put up good numbers on a bad team. LeBron James took Cleveland to the Finals a few years ago, but got swept. With a better team around him the last few years, he has failed to get out of the Eastern Conference and quit on his team and his city to play with his star powered friends in Florida.

If anything these Miami Heat will be The Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup comprised of ex-Beatle George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty. Some of the most successful artists in the history of rock collaborated for a couple of albums, but the combination of all their talents, egos, ideas, and personalities could never outshine their individual accomplishments. Too much of a good thing really can exist. Their second album, after Orbison's death, paled in comparison to the first and their ship had sailed. The Miami Heat might be able to win a championship or two, but they will never be the best team ever.

Spoiler Alert: Voldemort Cracks the Stone Table and Aslan and Dumbledore are the Same Person

I recently watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (this movie's promotional slogan should have been something like "Just when you think it's over...we'll see you this summer to take your money again.") and i was pleasantly surprised. As I have written before, I have not been the biggest fan of the Harry Potter movies when it comes to doing the books justice and including important details. In this one, a few characters that Harry should know very well since they have been important parts of previous books (Bill Weasley and Mundungus Fletcher) had to introduce themselves to Harry as if they had never met so the audience could figure it out.

One thing that really bothered me is that Harry has yet to wear his invisibility cloak in The Deathly Hallows WHEN HE IS THE MOST WANTED FUGITIVE IN THE WIZARDING WORLD. Are we supposed to think Harry Potter, The Chosen One, The Boy Who Lived, the best quiddich seeker of his generation, the kid who defeated a troll at age eleven, a basalisk at age twelve, a swarm of dementors at age thirteen, won the Tri-Wizard Tournament as the fourth seed at age fourteen, and has thwarted the most powerful dark wizard in fifty years time and time again, is stupid enough to walk through the streets of London in broad daylight when he has THE POWER OF INVISIBILITY literally in his back pocket? Please.

A few other moments of note from the movie:

When Xeno Lovegood began telling the story of the three brothers, a black feather floated around for a little bit and then landed in the water. It looks like computer generated feather technology has not progressed all that much since Forrest Gump came out in 1994.

Also during that story, Ron acts shocked and surprised when he hears the word "Twilight". Apparently Mrs. Weasley always told the story taking place at midnight and the time change caught him off guard, but it was funny that they threw in that subtle jab at their sparkling competition on the mainstream fantasy market (One of my biggest fear as a fan of the HP books is that the next generation who sees the movies but does not bother to read the books will think Twilight was better because some of the Harry Potter movies were so terrible).

DOBBY FINALLY PLAYED A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN A MOVIE!!!! I have been waiting for this for a while. They neglected to put him in The Goblet of Fire when he essentially saves Harry, Ron, and Hermione from drowning. I was afraid they had forgotten all about him, but they did let him use his free elf powers to save the day (That's another thing I realized: the death eaters get to use spells that kill and torture and manipulate people while the good guys can only stun and disarm their opponents and hope for the power of magical loopholes to save them when they are outnumbered).

The thing I thought was most interesting about the movie was the very last scene when Voldemort goes to Dumbledore's tomb to retrieve the Elder Wand. Looking at the tomb, which I only saw once before since I did not particularly like the Half-Blood Prince movie, all I could think of was the Stone Table from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I always noticed the similarities that Harry Potter has to the Lord of the Rings books and the Narnia books. I read Narnia before I even knew about Harry and now I have to read them again because it has been so long. All of a sudden the arrogance of Voldemort seems eerily similar to that of the White Witch. The same can be said for Aslan and Albus Percival Wulfrick Brian Dumbledore (but with that many names, I could spell out any character). Little does Voldemort know that his action at the Stone Table will be his undoing come July.

"Walking Dead" Lives up to Expectations

When I first saw the promotions for The Walking Dead, a drama that premiered on AMC on Halloween night about the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse in the United States, I was excited. Zombie movies are cool. They tend to have similar themes (survival, trust issues, government conspiracy) but they are always entertaining and they all bring different things to the table. I was curious to see how they would expand a story that is usually told in two hours or less into a multi-season television series. I was curious to see if main characters would be protected for the sake of continuity (will season two have a completely new cast of characters like 28 Weeks Later did?) or is nobody safe (in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a character shield cannot protect you from Roman rule). For now, I am not concerned with stuff like that. I am just enjoying the ride.

The pilot episode begins with deputy sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is shot in the line of duty and goes into a coma. When he wakes up, the state of Georgia (and presumably the rest of the country) is overrun with a virus that kills a person with a fever but causes their dead body to keep walking around and biting and infecting others. This start to the story is a lot like 28 Days Later except in that movie, Cillian Murphy's character is not a police officer trained to use firearms. Rick Grimes is later reunited with his family and a group of other survivors as they try to wait out the epidemic.

My favorite part about this show is their attention to detail. A lot of TV dramas since Lost have tried to get more of a cinematic feel while keeping the weekly cliffhanger effect that TV brings. Much like Mad Men, which airs on the same channel, The Walking Dead is very well written and the acting performances are not what you usually see on TV.

Wherever this zombie saga takes us, I cannot wait to see. It has already been picked up for a second season (consisting of thirteen episodes instead of six), and there is certain to be more twists along the way.

When Will People Learn?

I hope that someday, people figure it all out. I am not talking about the stuff about being nice to each other and accepting other people's religious beliefs and ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientation and stuff like that (not right now anyway); I am talking about the little disclaimers that get in our way on a daily basis. I realize there was once a time when not every car had a seatbelt, but in this day and age, I do not need to be told how to buckle up every time I go on an airplane. I get that companies do not want to get sued, but at this point, you have to be an idiot to be shocked that the cup of hot coffee you ordered is hot. I cannot wait for the day when Youtube and Hulu stop putting the "Press Esc to exit full screen mode" message right in the middle of the screen. Youtube videos have been a mainstay in American culture for a good five years now, and I think it is safe to say that if you can figure out how to put a video in full screen mode, you can figure out how to make it normal again. I do not want that stupid message blocking the picture I just made the to fit the full screen to see it better. I just want a world where we do not need disclaimers for things everybody knows how to do. Is that too much to ask?