It is with great pleasure that I announce our NJ Rockstars 3.5 team is heading over to Arizona to compete in the National Tennis Championships!
Long post to follow.
HR
As I write these lines watching the trophy ceremony of Spain as World Champion following their 1-0 complete shut-off of Argentina in the World Cup finals, I have to say I feel somewhat proud my prediction entry was not too far off from the tournament’s outcome.
Below I will share my thoughts on the teams and how they performed compared to my predictions.
- The champion Spain: while I thought that both France or Argentina were capable of cracking through Spain’s defense, I must say it took me by surprise and I was very impressed of how disciplined and structured was their defense, and how formidable was the execution of their plan to asphyxiate their opponents.
- The hosts: Mexico went down fighting. The US got humbled by Belgium. Canada did what they could.
- England and Brazil: did as expected. They really need to go back to basics to recover their former glory. Add Germany to this trend.
- Cinderella: I definitely did not expect Cape Verde to embody this role. For sure they were the well-deserved highlight of the tournament.
- France and Argentina: it is obviously disappointing they did not win.
Special thanks to both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Thanks for all the years of entertainment and high-quality level.
What to expect in 2030? A European country winning the tournament.
HR
On the day before beginning my senior year of high-school, I called my parents to a family meeting (my parents are divorced, so I actually had to call my dad and ask him to come over my mom’s). The reason for this unusual request was because I had something important to tell them.
Up until then I had been a straight-A student since the first day I set foot on a school. I was not a particularly hard-working student. Without meaning to sound cocky or anything, from a very young age I knew I could get good grades by being efficient. Don’t get me wrong: I did the work when it was needed and would always deliver nothing but the best. It is just that I always felt that I could rely on my intellectual horsepower, rather than spending endless hours and sleepless nights relentlessly studying countless books.
Up until I used to lie to my parents. I would tell them I would go to someone’s house to study, when in reality I would be doing something else. That is how I was able to develop my social skills, sports ventures and other hobbies. Since at the end of each term my scorecard was full of As, my parents had this perception that I was this highly dedicated to his books kid, whose disciplined efforts were shown at the end of every school year.
That night I told my parents my plan for high-school senior year: “Forget about seeing a single A on my scorecard. It will be all Ds. This year I will do the bare minimum to pass.” To their obvious bewildered look, I followed with: “This year I am taking a well-deserved break.” They gave me a long lecture in a failed attempt to talk me out of my decision, but my choice had been made long before that, and my resolve was absolute. Up until then I used to go out and party. Now I would be deeply committed to partying and nothing more.
There is another element that factored into my decision. For my reader who have not met me, I went to high-school in Venezuela. Over there, the system to get into college is different from the US. You can learn more about it on Chapter two of my book, but the short version is that in Venezuela, senior year high-school has no effect in your college applications. More importantly, due to an overwhelming lack of supply and high demand, good schools have incredibly selective acceptance requirements, which include high GPAs from all your high-school years, plus passing an extremely difficult admissions tests. Since I already had the GPA, my plan was to ace the admissions exam of the most prestigious school in the country. Therefore, my only effort of doing any studying at all during my senior year of high-school, would be dedicated to achieving that goal.
Because of this fact that senior year high-school grades are meaningless in Venezuela and most students would somewhat be aligned with my personal vision, the education system came up with an idea to try to make the school year interesting for seniors. All the interesting topics that we had not learned to that point, would be part of the senior year syllabus: all the great books we had not read, the fun math we had not learned, the cool laboratory experiments we never did, would be featured during our senior year. As you can imagine, due to the constant streaming of daily partying, I missed all of that.
That is how I never got to read most literature classics you were supposed to go through in high-school: Tale of two cities, The divine comedy, War and peace, and… The Iliad and The Odyssey. Slowly but steadily, I have been catching up with them one at a time, and with the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie, the time has come to get my hands on this Greek classic. Once I finish it, I will share my thoughts with you.
HR
Happy birthday America! 250 years!
HR
Today being Paul McCartney’s birthday, I feel it is more than fitting to pay tribute to a band that while they have a very strong case to be labeled as the most underrated group of all time, they are undoubtedly the most tragic story in the history of music: Badfinger. Whether you may have heard of them or not, it is very likely that their music have influenced you, even if you haven’t been aware of their existence.
The roots of the band can be traced back to their formation in 1961, originated by lead guitarist and vocalist Pete Ham, bassist Ron Griffiths, rhythm guitarist David Jenkins, and drummer Roy Anderson. As it is usual with most British bands, they played many low profile gigs throughout the UK while going through many changes in their line up, until they consolidated themselves with Ham, drummer Mike Gibbons, and guitarist Tom Evans. After trying many different names, they settled on “The Iveys”.
They were discovered in 1968 by Mal Evans and Pete Asher -two gentlemen who had very close connections with some other British band you may have heard of, called “The Beatles”. Mal was primary assistant / right hand of The Beatles. You can see him on many of their videos and movies, including in Let it be and the more recent extended version of it -Peter Jackson’s Get Back. Asher was one of Apple Records’ managers. Impressed by their performance, songs and musical talent, Mal collected a series of tapes and demos, and played them to John, Paul, George and Ringo, who agreed to sign them to their label.
If you are familiar with The Beatles’ history, you will know that Apple was not the cleanest, most ethical or most efficient company, and also probably the main reason why they broke up -and not Yoko Ono. Pretty much every manager milked the Beatles’ success as best as they could, and Badfinger being indirectly linked to them, fell victim to this as well. Many of their singles were poorly marketed by both their manager Bill Collins, and the infamous Allen Klein. Still, oblivious to what was happening behind the scenes, Paul was kind enough to write a single for the The Iveys: “Come and get it” (hence, why I posted this on his birthday).
Convinced that “Come and get it” would be their breakthrough hit and first of many successes, the band decided to come up with a catchier name. Almost at the same time, Griffiths had became estranged from the other three members due to personal reasons, and was eventually replaced by guitarist Joey Molland, which resulted in Tom Evans switching to bass. This is how Badfinger was born.
As expected, “Come and get it” became a huge success and as leading single, catapulted its album “Magic Christian Music“, bringing Badfinger the hard earned fame they had been working for. This success paved the way for the sessions that would turn into Badfinger’s best album, No Dice. This time, the band’s album was marketed by the single written by the band, the highly successful song “No matter what”, composed by Ham.
No Dice also contained a song that back then, was not released as a single, did not receive much attention by both the band or anyone involved with the production of the album, and pretty much went under everyone’s radar… except some guy called Harry Nilsson. You might have heard of him. Nilsson became famous for his cover of “Everybody’s talkin’“, which became the signature song of the 1969 commercially successful and critically acclaimed film, Midway cowboy – a movie I highly recommend watching.
Back to Badfinger’s No Dice, after the album’s release in 1970, Nilsson heard the record without knowing who authored the songs, and similarly to what had happened with the Apple managers and all four Beatles, he was amazed by the songs he heard, going as far as believing that he was listening to either an unreleased album or a series of unpublished and unreleased songs by The Beatles.
After confirming that this was authentic material by a new band, he reached out to Badfinger and decided to cover that one song from their album that was written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans, who did not think much of it, therefore did not been release it as a single, did not receive much attention by anyone, and pretty much went under everyone’s radar.
Nilsson turned Without you into what is broadly considered the first power ballad.
then twenty years later, Mariah Carey used it to give us a demonstration of her raw powerful vocal range.
Back to 1970, sadly for Badfinger, this is where the sad part of their story begins.
Their band newfound success attracted a lot of corrupt people, apart from the already shady Apple Records staff. One man in particular Stan Polley has been consistently named as responsible for signing a serious of dubious deals and questionable contracts, that allowed him to earn most of the profits from the band’s sales, while basically paying them almost minimum wage.
With dissolution of The Beatles taking place at the same time while Badfinger was in the process of reaching out their commercial and critical zenith, unfortunately they also got caught in the bureaucratic contractual unfulfillments and financial burdens encountered by Apple and Allen Klein. Polley took advantage of this mess to have even more control over the band’s affairs, who at the same time continued to release more hits in their next album Straight up released in 1971, including the successful singles Day after day, and Baby blue.
After two years of commercially successful touring, three more albums followed, all released in less than twelve months between 1973 and 1974, mostly due to commercial pressures and contractual obligations forced by Polley. The reception of all three albums was mixed, which generated frictions and tensions within the band, whose members after being incredibly successful for over five years, were on the verge of bankruptcy due to barely getting any income for all their hard work, not even the royalties from their hidden gem, “Without you.”
By 1975, Pete Ham had become hopelessly depressed, having no money in the bank, being in debt for thousands of pounds, and with his girlfriend expecting their child. He unsuccessfully tried to pursue legal actions into Polley’s shady deals, but ultimately was not able to recover or receive any money back from him. On April 24, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage. Badfinger was no more.
The following years went by with the remaining members attempting to recover their hard end money through various legal actions against Polley and all the other related companies that had signed deals with them. On November 18, 1983, still being unable to recover their income, Tom Evans and Joey Molland had a heated argument about the ongoing action regarding the royalties of Without you. After partying ways, Evans committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage. Gibbins died in 2005 and Molland passed away last year.
So this is why today, being Paul McCartney’s birthday, I decided to honor and pay tribute to a band that he was also instrumental in their success, even though only a few people know of their existence.
HR
Following my very elaborate series of comparing soccer / football vs. football, it is time for the corresponding predictor for the upcoming world cup.
With the now unstoppable globalization of the sport, the 2026 edition of the FIFA world cup features an all-time high first occasion of 48 countries, playing across 16 cities spread out also in a first time of three hosting nations: Canada, Mexico and the United States. Given the unusual amount of competing nations, at this point the tournament is more about which countries did not make, rather than the ones that qualified. Teams such as Curacao, Cape Verde, New Zealand, Uzbekistan, and Haiti, who -no offense to then- under more normal circumstances would not have qualified, will now be competing against the “elite” nations of the world.
You can refer to my soccer vs. football series, to understand my reasoning behind quoting “elite”, but the short story is that if there is anything all soccer fans agree on is that the quality of the game has decreased substantially over the last ten years, which is this entry should be relatively brief in terms of predicting who might win. So let’s get on to it right away:
Most likely to be eliminated early on:
- Given their relatively low population, low exposure to high-level competition, lack of resources, and other variables, I find it very hard to see any of the five countries I listed above going beyond the group stage. Surprises are always common occurrences in World Cups, and due to the rough conditions and somewhat forgiving accommodations (IE: hydration break), who knows if any of them could be able to pull an upset.
Host nations:
- Canada, Mexico and the US will somehow make it to the knockout stage. Despite my stars and stripes having my full support, I do believe that unless some incredibly unexpected series of planet alignments occurs and the gods of soccer descend on their squads -perhaps aided by definition of a round of 16 match in penalty rounds-, none of the host teams will reach the quarterfinals.
England and Brazil:
- For the reasons I already mentioned in my soccer vs. football series, I feel confident in ruling out the two former traditionally favorites. England might be able to make it further than Brazil -who might not reach the quarterfinals, and actually might be lucky enough to make it through the group stage. But there is no way that in my life time, the Sun will rise in a world where Harry Kane won a World cup. PS.: Neymar should be starting to handover retirement party invitation cards. PS #2: Add Portugal to this list, and Cristiano Ronaldo to the retirement party hosts.
Cinderella:
- With such a large pool, it is hard to say which underdog team will be the star of the tournament. All CONMEBOL teams are relatively strong, so it would not be fair to call them underdogs, while at the same time foreseeing that at least one of them could make it to the quarters and perhaps semifinals. African teams are always the tournament revelation, so I am going to put it out there, that one of them will generate a huge fuzz, one way or another. Morocco took this role in the last world cup, so even though they could have another great performance, I still feel there is another hidden surprise somewhere coming from Africa.
Deep run:
- Not including the favorites -which will follow below- there are two teams I could see going deep into the final stages, while soundly and convincingly defeating their rivals: Belgium and Norway. Both have potential to reach the semifinals, probably even knocking out Brazil and England in their way.
Favorites that could, but ultimately will not win:
- Germany lost their way after their 2014 victory. Their squad is fresh, but they nowadays play something different.
Finally, let’s talk about the favorites:
- France: really solid team with no visible weaknesses.
- Argentina: they have the best player in the world, albeit past his prime but still capable of being the protagonist. More importantly, they know how to play with Messi and since this is his last World Cup, they are going to play their best for him.
- Spain: an annoyingly defensive team that is filled of young talents, who while not able to display the most visually appealing game, are capable of asphyxiating their opponents to death. I can see them making it to the semis, or somehow meeting against either France or Argentina in an earlier round of the knockout stage, but both the French and the defending champions will ultimately prevail due to their superior offensive.
The verdict: ultimately, I feel it will come down to a repeat of the 2022 final and in this thrilling rematch. By this time, having been the best player in the tournament -along with Mbappe-, Messi will simply be out of gas, underperform in the final, and France will get their revenge, beating Argentina 3-0.
HR
Major spoilers on this entry.
Do not continue if you have not seen Dexter Season Seven and wish to watch it without spoilers.
——————— — ————————
Season Seven stars horribly, poorly, stupidly. I am sorry, but I can’t hold it back. It makes Dexter himself a joke and it turns Debra into a mindless character. She also drags along LaGuerta with her.
What should be an immediate realization from Debra that Dexter is the Bay Harbor Butcher -or whatever you want to call him-, or at the very least to be able to corner him into a confession, turns out to her needing to trash his apartment to find the actual evidence. Luckily, as episodes go by the whole season starts to pick up and redeems itself, until it screws up once again by making the same mistake it did on Season One.
The introduction of both Isaak and Hannah elevate the series, by bringing characters who are relatively smart, competent in their actions and formidable foes to our main protagonist. Like I said, the series repeats the error of killing a great character -Isaak- who could have remained in the background of series as a looming shadow and a silent threat.
The cat and mouse game Dexter plays with both antagonists plays out relatively well and holds the suspense for much of the season. However, the fact that a smart and experienced character such as LaGuerta fails to take the appropriate action to take Dexter down, having collected all the proof of him being who he is, is perplexing to me. Of course I understand that Dexter is the protagonist and that the series has to continue regardless of what happens, but did the writers really need to make the secondary characters so unbelievably incompetent and dumb, so that he can live on?
The Season Finale is a complete disaster. In fact, the series should have ended right there, with Dexter being captured as LaGuerta oversaw both him and Debra being arrested with her final breath.
Sadly, there was a contractual obligation for Season Eight: the worst by far.
HR
If I ever start a YouTube channel, the Tron franchise will probably be either my first or second video.
Tron -the 1982, and the franchise as a whole- has fascinated me for years. It is probably one of the few entertainment products that somehow keeps following an incredibly odd recurring pattern:
- It gets released in an attempt to introduce wide audiences to a niche market.
- It fails miserably.
- It only ends up capturing the interest of people who actually understand it.
- After 10-15 years go by, and they redefine its audience.
Rinse and repeat.
The first film came out in 1982 to mixed reviews and a box-office disappointing results. Very few people liked it and even less understood it. I find it surprising that well-known present day reviewers, people with tremendous experience in the film industry, fail to grasp what Tron is about, even with all the available resources we have in 2026. This is because Tron is a smart movie, made for smart people: computer nerds from that time. Tron is the movie The Matrix wishes to be. The question then is, why did a movie that failed so badly, was able to get a $150 million reboot in 2010? The answer: because of the light-cycle scene. Everyone loves the light-cycle scene. In fact, it is the only thing people think about when discussing Tron. This is how it became a cult film -a term that is loosely used nowadays, however, if there is one film that truly earns it, it is Tron.
So Tron: Legacy came out in 2010, to worse reviews than the original, and somewhat of a breakeven box-office performance -which is hugely disappointing considering the amount of publicity the movie had to try to establish a Star wars-like franchise. Because Legacy’s plot had a direct connection with the 1982 film, audiences were puzzled on what to get out of the movie. But also, since an attempt was made to try to make the story easier to understand for a more mainstream audience, it ended up being neither niche nor wide. If there is one word that can easily summarize Tron, that word is “confusing”. The question then is, why did a movie that failed so badly, was able to get a $200 million reboot in 2025? The answer: because of the light-cycle scene and Daft Punk’s soundtrack. Everyone loves the light-cycle scene and Daft Punk’s soundtrack. In fact, it is the only thing people think about when discussing Tron: Legacy.
A third oddity within the franchise, Tron: Ares came out a few months ago, produced by and starring Jared Leto, who recently has become somewhat of an oddity himself. I have no idea what it is about, but I am completely sure that if there is someone out there who fully understands Tron and is able to figure out a way to make it work to a point where the original 1982 film can be redeemed, that person is not Jared Leto.
HR
Believe it or not, over the last few weeks I have gained a newfound momentum to work on the English version of my book. My editor and I so far have been able to finish one third of the content, which after the considerable pause I put on it, feels pretty satisfying.
In revisiting some of the chapters, I realized that parts of the original release needed a bit of improvement, which means that at the same time I am also working on the second edition of the already released Spanish version. This is relatively good news for future readers, as I am aiming to make the reading as smooth as possible, considering the challenges of dealing with such an elaborate topic.
Considering that I can only dedicate part of my weekends -the only free time I currently have- to this endeavor, I believe it is unlikely that the English version will be published this year. My commitment to the people who are anxious and excited to get my book is still there, so rest assured that my goal is still to make my work available to you as soon as I humanly can.
HR
In another rehash of the past, there is an upcoming He-Man movie -named “Masters of the universe” coming out.
Back when I was a kid, I was never really into He-Man. It was pretty big back then, but I honestly was never into most of those Saturday morning cartoons / weekly afternoon Channel 47 mass produced cartoons that were basically 30-minute commercials to sell action figure toys. I did not dislike He-Man or any similar cartoons, I would watch them every now and then as a distraction, but I never became a fan. For some odd reason, my parents bought me a slew of their toys, which I eventually sold shortly thereafter.
Anyway, it seems that the angle of the movie is somewhere between being comedic, adventurous, and cartoonish, which is quite interesting for an audience that I wonder is around the age of 40 who were contemporary at the time the show was airing back in the 80s. The only way for this movie to succeed is that is follows the framework established by other self-aware / meta movies, such as The Matrix Resurrections and Naked Gun (2025), with the former achieving mixed results given the serious tone of the film, and the latter unexpectedly succeeding against all odds, in its own particular way.
My initial response when finding out of this release was a profound sense of puzzling surprise. Some cartoons stand the test of time, such as the Looney Toons and Tom and Jerry. To me it was very clear back then that cartoons such as He-Man, Silver Hawks, and especially G.I. Joe, would not. Therefore, to see a He-Man movie being released in 2026 is a truly unexpected announcement. Surprisingly, the cast features an interesting selection of high profile actors, such as Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, James Purefoy, Morena Baccarin, Kristen Wiig, and Jared Leto as Skeletor -which I am not sure if it is a good sign since Jared Leto has been recently associated himself with movies that either end up flopping, or with bad reviews, or both. Now that I write about him, I am starting to think Jared Leto deserves his own entry. To think about it, Alison Brie kind of does too. What a quite interesting profile of an actress that is able to deliver a very specific type of lines of dialogue (refer to Annie Edison in “Community“).
Hopefully the movie does not take itself too seriously and we can get a fun flick to laugh off as a Friday night movie in the comfort of your bed. Even if it does not succeed financially, if Jeff Bezos was a huge fan of the series, he can definitely finance twenty sequels!
HR