I had been anxious for a few days about the Champions League final. If I had bet, I’d have bet on Manchester United. Not only because they’re English but because I thought they were better. And even though they lost the match today, I still think they’re better than Barcelona (as a team, of course).

My opinion is that Alex Ferguson screwed up. Rooney is a striker, therefore he should play inside the area, and not through the sides as he played today. Ryan Giggs also played in the wrong position! Giggs in the middle? Come one! He’s the one who should be playing through the sides. And what’s more, he’s 35! He can’t run as he used to, so he’s better coming off the bench at 25-30 minutes of the second half. So Sir Ferguson should have started with Scholes, Berbatov or even Tevez.

Actually, Ferguson screwed up twice! He crewed up starting Giggs and then he screwed up again at half time when he didn’t understand (or refused to admit he had made a mistake) what was happening with his team and took Anderson off the game.

What does Barcelona have to do with it? Nothing! They played very well and they do deserve the victory. Congratulations!

Today I drank this:

And you know what? Despite the piss colour, it’s surprisingly good! It doesn’t have a strong taste. And to be honest with you, it doesn’t taste like anything at all.

Who was that guy on the beach? Did the bomb go off? What’s in store for season six?

Last night’s season-five finale of Lost answered many questions in typical Lost fashion–by bringing up more questions at the same time. We take a look at some of the lingering mysteries and do our best to make sense of it all.

1. Who is Jacob’s nemesis?
What a great intro to the show–two men on a beach looking at what appears to be the S.S. Black Rock coming to their island. Our attention is too concerned with the “it’s Jacob!” bombshell to realize the big mystery here: who is the other dude? All we know is he wants Jacob dead, and he can assume the identities of the dead on the island. Some theorize he’s the Smoke Monster, but I’m not so sure. I still think Smokey is a security system, as previously revealed.

Looking at Lost through Bible-colored glasses, we’re inclined to think Jacob’s nemesis is actually his brother, as dictated by the tale of Jacob, Esau, and their mother Rebekah. We’ll refer to him as “Esau” until proven wrong. Other theories on the two include a God-Satan relationship, Jesus-not-Jesus opposites, and your basic good-versus-evil dynamic. But that almost seems too simple for Lost. read more…

*Spoilers!*

I’m a bit speechless after watching the season finale of Lost last night. I just hate when the writers instead of answering some questions they simply give you more questions to be answered and let you imagining lots of things. Now we have to wait for 9 months until season 6 starts, which will be the last and hopefully all answers will be answered.

The Incident started with two men (supposedly friends) talking on the beach. One of them is Jacob (it’s nice to finally have a face for the name) and the other one is still a mystery for me. Who is he? What the hell happened to him? Why haven’t we heard of him before? Not sure if any of these questions will be answered. Anyway, in the end of this first scene we finally have a full and nice view of the statue. Yeah!

So, one more fact about Jacob: He actually met every single lostie at some time of their lives and in each situation he gave them one object: for Kate a lunchbox, for Jack a chocolate bar, for Hurley a guitar case, for Locke his own life back, for Sawyer a pen etc…

Who is FakeLoke? We all saw the real Locke dead in the box! So, who is he? I’m pretty sure he is the mystery man from the first scene. And you?

As for the last scene, I have a feeling that the flash we briefly saw, wasn’t a proper bomb explosion, but in fact it was the flash that makes them travel in time. Am I too lost here?

Oh, what about Richard Alpert? I bet he arrived on the island on that boat we saw sailing on the shore. But the question here is, what was the boat doing on the island? How did it find the island in first place? And what the hell is that language he spoke when Illana asked him what lays in the shadow of the statue? Is that Latin, Egyptian?

Do you know what I didn’t like? I really didn’t like the answer Jack gave Sawyer when asked about why he was going to detonate the bomb. Come on! I’m a romantic guy, but blow everything up because he had lost Kate? Oh, and the same goes for Juliet! I simply don’t bite it!

I saw Star Trek last night and it wasn’t good. It was ‘kin awesome!

There are plenty of references to the original series to keep the fans happy. (And I’m one of them!) I enjoyed seeing the lead actors imitate the characteristics of the original crew. The casting was great, btw. Moreover, the film has a good story line, specially the way the found to put old Spock in the plot. (Leonard Nimoy deserved it!) The film also has plenty of humour, non-stop fast action, fantastic special effects, great acting from all the main “crew”.

I have never enjoyed The New Generation and all the generations that came after it, I’ve always been a fan of the original one though. So probably that’s why I enjoyed this film much more than I expected. J. J. Abrams is Da Man!

Star Trek is definitely back! Hopefully we can expect more films to come!

Live long, and prosper.

I’ve just watched The School of Rock for the first time and I don’t know why it took me 6 years to finally watch it. It’s Probably because of Jack Black, who I don’t like that much (I think the sometimes do thins in a forced way), but I do like him in High Fidelity, though. Anyway, the film is absolutely great and I recommend it in case you haven’t watched it already. It has plenty of good music and it sends a good message at the same time. I wish I had seen the film back then, because by now I would have watched it a gazillion times. But there’s still plenty of time to do that (hopefully).

The film is about a guy (Jack Black) who still believes in the power of rock to change lives, to change the world, even - but The Man has ground his spirit down. He slowly has to accept that no, there’s nothing he can do about the fact that The Man rules the world. All he can do is build his little corner of it. And build it he does.

Here’s a quote from the film where he explain what The Man actually is:

Yeah, you can try, but in the end you’re just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don’t know the Man. He’s everywhere. In the White House… down the hall… Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he’s burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock ‘n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ’cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!

But they didn’t give up! They formed a rock band and therefore they rocked!

It was the first time I hade goose bumps in a cinema! It’s impressive how exactly the feeling is the same  we have when we see a Maiden live gig. So much energy! Much of that could be due to Kevin Shirley’s 5.1 mix, which is breathtaking. It’s a unique experience, I tell you that.

It was an absolutely unforgettable and magical experience! Funny, emotional at times and very very interesting. Its great to see such a down to earth film about a band that so many people are proud to be fans of. I can easily say: I AM PROUD OF BEING AN IRON MAIDEN FAN.

As Jeff Miers wrote to the Buffalo News: “It’s a metal equivalent of Beatlemania, the unlikely stars of the show a quintet of humble, down-to-earth family men/musicians in their 50s who still seem uncomfortable with celebrity.
Yes, it’s mostly about the music. Maiden’s epic blend of richly layered guitar harmonies, supple rhythm-section propulsion, grandiose vocals and prog-rock virtuosity remains metal’s most adventurous sound some 30 years into the band’s career.”

Well, couldn’t have written any better.

Up the irons!

Pasta is probably my favourite food along side beef. And pasta al funghi secchi is one of my favourite pasta dishes. In my 30 years of life I’ve eaten many different ways of doing the funghi secchi sauce at many different restaurants. As you may have noticed (if you follow this blog) I’m a pretty good cook and I do like to have a little adventure in the kitchen every now and then. So, yesterday I tried to imagine all the pastas I’ve had with funghi secchi before, in order to try to reproduce what I would call THE perfect pasta al funghi secchi. And well, I think I got it! It wasn’t difficult at all. Now, I’ll simply teach you how to prepare it, so you can cook it for yourself, for your guests, for the one you love, for whoever you want to.

Bear in mind that when I cook, I measure things with my own eyes (it’s a gift I was born with , sorry!). So, sorry for not giving you the exact quantity of the ingredients. They will vary according to the number of people you’re cooking for.

What you have to do is: First of all: hydrate your funghis! Then Boil the water to prepare the pasta. There’s no specific shape of pasta to use here. I’d suggest Tagliatelle or Fettucine, but whatever you choose it’s more than ok. Start cooking the pasta, look for the time of cooking in the package and cook for 1 min less (you’ll understand why later). In another pan you’ll put some extra virgin olive oil with a bit of very well chopped onion (the red onions taste better, fyi). Just fry it for 1-2 min, then add one hand of funghi secchi, fry for 1-2 min more (are you feeling the aroma? niiiice isn’t it?). Now it’s time to add half a glass of white wine and let it reduce. At this time you pasta should be ready. Dry it and immediately add it into the pan with the funghis. Mix it well, so the wine and sauce can penetrate into the pasta, keep mixing until the wine is almost reduced (see why you cooked the pasta for less minutes?). When you feel the texture of the sauce is good, remove it from the oven and add one table spoon (or so) of butter to it and mix well. Put it in you plate while it’s hot, season with black pepper and add parmesan cheese while it’s hot, so it can melt a little bit. And that’s it! Very easy, isn’t it? No big secret at all! A very tasty dish is 20 minutes or so.

It should look like this:

fettucine al funghi

Enjoy it!

I’ve always been keen on British accent, I think it’s cool and sexy at the same time. But since the day I saw Trainspotting for the first time I’ve found the Scottish accent even cooler and I’ve always wanted to speak like a Scott and sound like Ewan McGregor or Robert Carlyle. Sounds a bit crazy, I know, but so what? It’s not supposed to make any sense.

Anyway, I was browsing youtube and I found this guy called RayTheFox, who has a series containing 7 lessons on “How to learn the Scottish Accent”. The lessons are very small (less than 2 minutes), funny and worthy! You can check the first lesson here on this post. As for the other ones, you’ll be able to watch them by looking at RayTheFox’s profile on youtube.

Totally by chance I saw that a friend had posted a comment here on the blog 3 days ago. I immediately noticed that I hadn’t seen it before simply because I wasn’t notified by email. The thing is, my wordpress settings are set up in order to send notifications whenever someone post comments. So, why hadn’t I been notified? Well, probably I was. But since gmail thinks it’s smarter than us (human beings), it might have considered it to be spam. Acording to gmail I have 1896 spam messages, but every time I click on it in order to browse the spam folder I get a message saying that I don’t have any spam at all. Hmpf!