Chris Armstrong

@SahilBloom East of Eden!!!

2026 side quest: Go back and read all the classic books I probably ignored or sparknoted in school. Not trying to be “impressive” or “sound smart” just want to read all the classics. Just finished The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men. What should I have on my list?

@darrenrovell @MartySmithESPN Go drink your NA beer, nerd

@MartySmithESPN Not in the top 5,000 beers in the world.

Best beer in the world. Sipping it here, completely removed from the outside world and all its noise, life's stresses on pause, devoid of distraction, watching artists paint magic on the world's greatest canvas... it tastes like April at Amen Corner.

Karaban reaching a Final Four in his final year is why I will always love sports. Alex is UConn and couldn’t be prouder of him or this team. It’s not dominant. It’s not pretty. But they believe in each other and just win.

Basketball Capital of the World….Storrs Connecticut. 🐺💙🏀

One of the most unbelievable moments you will EVER see. 😱 #MarchMadness

Holy. Moly. The UConn Huskies are going to the Final Four after the Bringer of Rain hit a shot that will live on forever.

What a note from Jared.

You're watching a $248 million film and not a single green or blue screen was used. The alien is a handmade puppet. The cockpit physically rotates to simulate gravity. I looked at the production tech behind this 95% score, and the engineering is wild. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, directing their first live-action movie in 12 years, built the entire Hail Mary spacecraft as a real set at Shepperton Studios in England. Not a miniature. Not a digital model. A full-size ship interior you can walk through. Production designer Charlie Wood studied the International Space Station, Russia's Mir station, and the Boeing 747 cockpit to get the look right. He deliberately made the panels mismatched, because real spacecraft are assembled from parts made by different companies. Nothing matches perfectly. That's what makes it feel real. The cockpit is only about 8 feet wide. It sits on a mechanical platform that can tilt, spin, and shake, so when the ship changes direction or enters different gravity conditions, the whole set moves. Chairs end up on walls. Ladders flip direction. Gosling was suspended inside a spinning ring so he could float and move through the ship for real, reacting to actual hardware around him. No guessing where a wall might be added later. Then there's Rocky. He's the alien co-lead, and he's not CGI. Neal Scanlan, the creature designer who built the Porgs for Star Wars, spent a full year on this character. Over 300 designs before they landed on the final look. Rocky is a thin, hollow shell, 3D-printed from a digital sculpture, then hand-painted in see-through layers so light passes through him like skin. His arms pop off and swap out depending on the scene: one set has a closed fist for walking, another has tiny motorized fingers strong enough to pick up objects. Five puppeteers (nicknamed the "Rockyteers") operated him in every scene. James Ortiz, an award-winning puppet designer from New York theater, voiced Rocky and controlled him on set. When Scanlan met him, he told Ortiz, "You're Frank Oz, and I'm making Yoda for you." Every reaction Gosling gives to the alien is to something physically in front of him. Greig Fraser, who won the Oscar for shooting Dune, filmed the space scenes in the larger IMAX format (that taller image you see in IMAX theaters) and the Earth flashbacks in regular widescreen. Then the team did something unusual: they took the digital footage and printed it onto real film strips, twice, using two different types of film stock. Then they scanned those strips back into digital. It sounds redundant, but it adds a texture and warmth that you can only get from physical film. Fraser used the same technique on Dune and The Batman. Drew Goddard spent six years writing this screenplay. His last adaptation of Andy Weir's novel, The Martian, earned him an Oscar nomination. He described the challenge this way: a screenplay gets about 5% of a novel's word count. The lead is alone for most of the runtime. When he finally gets a co-star, that co-star doesn't speak English, communicates through sounds closer to whale song, and has no face. Goddard called it a screenwriter's nightmare, then said that difficulty was the whole point. He and the directors fought studio pushback to keep Weir's original ending intact. 95% from 212 critics. 98% from over 2,500 audience ratings. And the lead isn't a superhero, a cop, or a soldier. He's just an ordinary middle school science teacher.

It had to be this way. St. John's. Connecticut. Hurley. Pitino. Round III. For the Big East throne. A parting shot from MSG:

15 years ago today, we got Cardiac Kemba This courtside angle is incredible

15 years ago today, Kemba Walker hits one of the greatest buzzer beaters in March Madness history, sparking a run to a National Championship. Legend. #UConn x.com/ThrowbackHoops…

@SharpFootball Child lol. Dude is a champion

so tired of this child

U C O N N UCONN! UCONN! UCONN!

I know it’s cliche to complain about the dunk contest, & to say the old NBA is better. I know it’s absurd to criticize these dunks that are mostly still objectively very athletic. But idc. The dunk contest used to be a SPECTACLE, and this year was the *actual* worst one ever

“I’m probably the last person they shoulda gave the mic to” Ernest Jones is letting it fly at the Seahawks parade

@Ramsey13Chase @Underdog Haha last two years my bad

@stretcha11 @Underdog 28-6 last years? Who is they?

Vikings fans driving home from their Super Bowl watch party remembering their team stuck with NINE over Sam Darnold

@Ramsey13Chase @Underdog They don’t ask how, they ask how many. 28-6 last years and zero turnovers in a SB run.

@Underdog 19-38 200 yds. That’s an all time horrible SB.

2024 NCAA champion Stephon Castle?

Braylon Mullins is a top 10 pick in my book.