"You are what you love, not what loves you."- Adaptation

• Link of the day: The Mighty MJD has a list up of all the free swag the players get at bowl games this year. Way to go, Alamo bowl
• Honestly, I think Johnny Damon's best years are behind him. Yankes will be looking for a new center fielder in the middle of the 2007 season or so.
• I'm filing a protest with the league, but for now I will do whatever it is you want, Heath, to get ahold of those tickets.
• So are people supposed to be serious with the new Facebook friend connection feature? I have the feeling it will end up being a big joke.
• Know that I'm getting paid to sit here and write in this blog.

So... I've been trying to think of some standard features that I can create that will become traditions of this blog. So far all I have is What I'm Watching, and the very occasional Overrated/Underrated. But today I bring you a brand new, semi-weekly feature. Mason's DVD Shelf. I wanted to have something kind of similar to Oprah's Book Club, you know, but I felt that no one would give a crap if i suggested a random movie every once in awhile that no one cared about. But by choosing movies from my own personal DVD collection, I hope that someone, someday will be inspired by one of these posts to borrow said movie from my room. Ask anyone who knows me, movies are my passion. Books and music and TV are oh so good, but my love will always be cinema. So I kick off the DVD Shelf with what I think is one of the most criminally underrated movies of all time. Probably in my all-time top 5 favorite movies.

Mason's DVD Shelf #1:
Adaptation (2002) Starring: Nicholas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep
Never before has a movie better tried to capture the creative process of writing better than Adaptation. But there's more to it than that. Quite simply, this may be the most creative movie of all time. I don't want to give too much away, but in order to fully appreciate this movie you need backstory.
After writing the amazing Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman was hired to adapt the book The Orchid Thief to the big screen. Written by a journalist for the New Yorker, Susan Orlean, the Orchid Thief was about her following a man in the Florida Everglades who would go to any length to get precious orchids out of the protected wildlife preserves.
The only problem was, this book was impossible to adapt. Charlie simply couldn't do it. He panicked, thinking he would never work in Hollywood again after they found out he couldn't adapt it. But the script that he eventually turned in would be a work of pure genius. The script he gave the executive was about a man named Charlie Kaufman, who was hired to adapt The Orchid Thief. Only problem is, he doesn't know how. In the script Charlie has a twin brother named Donald, also a screenwriter.
So Charlie wrote a story about Charlie trying to write a story. To give any more away would be criminal. Its a comedy, but also pretty moving. So if anyone feels the desire to watch Adaptation, just ask me. You will not be disappointed. Trust me.

"Charlie Kaufman writes the way he lives... With Great Difficulty. His Twin Brother Donald Lives the way he writes... with foolish abandon. Susan writes about life... But can't live it. John's life is a book... Waiting to be adapted. One story... Four Lives... A million ways it can end."