Greg Halman, 1987-2011

I recently joined Twitter for some stupid reason and thus far have been kind of excited/pleased by the speed and volume of information I can get from my feed, especially on sports and movie news. I may have to reform my opinion on the whole thing because the news I got so quickly while eating some breakfast at 7 AM kinda ruined my day.

Mariners outfielder Greg Halman, one of the few Dutch-born players in MLB, was stabbed to death. He was 24 years old. This news comes just over year after losing Dave Niehaus. The hits just keep on coming.

Halman was one of those Mariners players who had spent most of their time with the organization in the minor league system and one that Mariners nerd fans like myself wanted to be promoted to the big leagues whenever someone on the M's roster was failing and needed to be benched/replaced. He had potential to hit for power if given the chance to adjust to MLB pitching. He was a quality outfielder capable of making tough catches. He got his debut in late 2010 when rosters expanded, but he got a good chunk of playing time in 2011 before getting sent back down to Tacoma. He hit his first major league home run at Safeco with his Dad in the stands. It doesn't get much better than that for a lot of players. That's a moment you can hang your hat on.

Sad. Senseless. Tragic. As small as his contributions were to the team in the whole scheme of things, I appreciated them and for whatever reason, I really liked him as a player. He was intriguing and unique. A black European guy, covered in tattoos, rockin' a chinstrap beard, playing baseball for the Seattle Mariners. From a purely spectator viewpoint, he was fun to watch.

And per usual, Jeff Sullivan at Lookout Landing put it better than I can.

A year ago, Dave Niehaus died. A former coworker and fellow baseball fan texted me the news. Denial. Turned the radio on. The news was true, heart attack. Outpourings of grief. Disbelief. I didn't really know what to do with myself as the news slowly sunk in. I drove down to Safeco Field to pay respects, maybe find some fellow fans as lost as I was. When I arrived, there were more reporters there than fans. After standing awkwardly for a few minutes in front of the home plate entrance where the makeshift memorial was taking shape, I left feeling unsettled.

I still feel unsettled.

RIP Dave.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) dir Edgar Wright

Well, RIP October 2011. We hardly knew ye. November Coming Fire now. I turn 28 next week. That's fucked up. Get off my lawn, you little shits. Here's one last review I wrote the other day:

Wacky Brits and their backwards date formats!

 This flick is a delightful blast of comedy/horror/drama. I figured I'd throw up another softball to help the lady get down with the horror films. Fun fact: the first time we tried to watch it shorty after we started dating, she only made it about 15 minutes into it! She's come so far! I'm so proud!

Now, I've seen this flick many, many times, but it had been a couple years. It's remarkable how the trio of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost hit the ground running so hard with their first proper feature (which is more or less a continuation of the tone from their hilarious TV show Spaced, but within the context of a zombie disaster) and they haven't stopped running since. Just nothing but quality from this crew of Brits.

Anyways, one thing I love about Shaun Of The Dead is amidst all the humor and zombie carnage are a handful of emotional moments that hit unbelievably hard. They're so pitch-perfect that they just kind of blindside you and put a lump in your throat. I have no idea how they were able to pull this off....maybe it's just because I identify so easily with Pegg and Frost's characters. But, it's remarkable that they were able to switch from being funny to "Oh shit, my step-dad is dying right in front of me and he's trying to tell me he's sorry that he wasn't nicer to me when I was younger and that he loves me." That's some heavy shit, man. And Pegg plays these scenes with zero irony and just pure heart. These sorts of scenes don't usally work so well in horror comedies, but helps make Shaun Of The Dead a true one of a kind flick and one that I think will hold up very well in the decades to come.