The Worst Thing in the World Ever (or Maybe Just Right Now)

Speaking of the movie that I would give my Razzie vote to as worst movie of the year – Twilight : What To Expect When You Are Expecting Vampire Spawn Part 1…. What an awful, awful viewing experience.  I don’t think words can express how truly bad this movie was.  And really, I won’t try.  It is pointless at this point.  One thing the internet is not short on is Twilight take downs (One thing the internet is short on – more little kids getting hit in the head with oversized balls please).  It would be like staking Edward after Buffy and Abram Lincoln were already done with him.  So, instead of piling on with yet one more overwrought dissection of this cult phenomenon’s sexism, disturbing messages to teen-age girls, or undercover Mormon evangelism, let me instead just highlight the most memorable moment for me from this most recent episode of “As the Pampered Teen-Ager Pouts”.  And can there really be any argument about this.  Clearly the best part of this movie, ney, the whole series, is when the spurned werewolf of the central love triangle falls instantly in love with the less than 1 day old vampire progeny of the story’s protagonist upon locking eyes with it (By the way, the resolution of the love triangle in Stephanie Meyer’s other book “The Host” was equally creepy and off-putting).  Then, in the translating of bad book writing by poor screenwriting into dreadful cinema, the vampire boy narrates this perverse bond of man and child wife for the benefit of the audience (It is their most sacred law).   So, you don’t misunderstand there cosmic bond.  For more Twilight bashing, enjoy the below video. 

By the way, the remake of Arthur is actually pretty good.



Solitaire Update

So much for that upward climb I was crowing about last time.  I seem to have plateaued in my rapid ascension to solitaire royalty.  Of course, their might have been another reason for my continued improvement overtime besides the one I gave the last time.  And that is my addled, aged mind and its inability to keep track of how many games I have actually played at any given time.  I give it the old college try but many times I find myself asking, was that game four or five.  To my benefit, when I do question myself, I go with the higher number.  Darn you natural aging process.

There is one other variable in the ebbs and flows of my success and failure - the device and version of solitaire I play my games on.  I tend to play my games with either the default Microsoft Solitaire on my laptop or the game that is found on my Blackberry.  Originally, I had assumed these to versions of the game both simulated the randomness of a deck of cards.  But I am not so sure anymore.  It may just be me (and I am not willing to do the game tracking to figure this one out.  At least not yet.) but it seems like the Blackberry pays out fewer winners than the laptop one.  I don't think I ever came across a gutter ball (a hand that you can't make a single card play with) on the laptop but I know I have with the Blackberry.  It seems to me that the laptop always gives you a chance to win, you just have to make all of the right moves.  But the Blackberry simulates the truth of the cold, hard world.  Or it could just be my senior brain playing tricks on me again.

Day 35 – 0 of 9

Day 36 – 3 of 18 (3.75, 48.52)

Day 37 – 3 of 9 (200.5, 3.88, 50.51)

Day 38 – 1 of 9 (202.5, 3.75, 48.58)

Day 39 – 0 of 9 (203)

Day 40 – 2 of 5 (203, 3.5)

Day 41 – 2 of 8 (200.5)

Day 42 – 4 of 10 (200.5, 4, 52.16)

Day 43 – 1 of 5 (201.5, 4, 51.54)

Day 44 – 0 of 11 (201.5, 4, 51.34)

Day 45 – 1 of 5 (200.5)

Day 46 – 0 of 6 (201, 4.01, 50.41)

Day 47 – 2 of 10 (200.5, 4, 50.11)

Total - 72 of 432 (16.7%)

 

This blog post is sponsored by Knight Industries.

My Hindsight is Impeccable

The problem with taking months off between writing blog entries, is that all those absolutely brilliant predictions you make never get recorded so that when you are inevitably proven correct there is a lack of a record to prove your brilliance.  Luckily, I included my feelings about the Green Lantern movie in my last blog posting spree well before Ryan Reynolds proved me one hundred percent right.  I was able to successfully call both the miscasting and awful look and feel of the movie from the trailer.  I particularly enjoyed the io9 review of the movie that referred to GL as the floating of head of Ryan Reynolds.  The movie looked silly and amateurish by direct-to-DVD standards and only succeeded in killing off a franchise that the studio was willing to keep alive even in the face of losing over 100 million dollars on the original.  My childhood installed in me a deep fandom for Green Lantern and G.I. Joe and I was thrilled when it was announced that both of those properties would be turned into movies.  And then Hollywood went and destroyed both of them (we won’t even get into Transformers 2 because at least the original Transformers is a pretty entertaining movie if you edit out all the parts with John Turturro and Sam Witwicky’s parents).  At least G.I. Joe is getting the Rock.  And the Rock does not disappoint.

But one prediction that I didn’t get down on silicon in time was my the strong feeling from the trailer that Cars 2 was going to be the big letdown that breaks Pixar’s streak of instant classics (Personally I consider Ratatouille to be the first blemish on their reputation but I will go with the critics here and pretend that it was a classic).  It didn’t play like a Pixar movie.  It felt like a Dreamsworks’ movie.  A shameless grab for the easy money that comes with a quicky sequel and a built-in merchandising franchise.  And the full length thing just proved all of those concerns to be on target.  The wafer thin plot and a nonsensical twist ending (it made absolutely no sense in retrospect or in immediate inspection) had the stench of Disney’s fine tradition of sequels like Aladdin: The Return of Jafar or Cinderella II - Dreams Come True.  This movie clearly existed only to get their branded toys back on the shelves and drilled into kids’ cerebrum’s.  The Toy Story sequels had made us think Pixar was different.  They weren’t wearing the Katzenberg albatross that gave us Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch as a Glitch.  But it is clear now.  The only 2 Pixar movies to get sequels to date (Monsters Inc. 2 will soon make this statement out dated) were the ones that spawned successful toy lines.  The announcement of a fourth Toy Story movie, despite the artistic crescendo of Toy Story 3 (should have won the best picture Oscar last year but an animated movie will never win) that provided one of the best trilogy conclusions ever only, only underlines, bolds, and italicizes the swallowing up of the Pixar vision by the Disney marketing monster.  Oh well, we will always have WALL-E.  

Oh and here is one more of my outdated predictions for the road.  3D movies are an overpriced fad that tries to convince people to pay premium pricing for a diminished movie going experience.  It will soon pass.  Also, we will one day fly like the birds, walk on the moon, ride around in horseless carriages, and tame the mighty power of the open flame.  Man, my ability to predict the past is amazing.

This blog poster is sponsored by the Four-Five-Six Laundry.

Big ... Meh

You would think that if a show you watched every episode of a television show over the course of five years, you might actually care.  But when it comes to "Big Love", the best I can do is a big shoulder shrug.  It was a soapy sudsy tail of family.  A psuedo-Morman, polygamous family but still if fashioned itself as a story of family.  Unfortunately, it was an extremely hatable, stunted family that was almost impossible to route for.  In fact, it was the kind of family that could only exist on television, regardless of marital status.  The middle wife of the group, Nicolette Grant, is shrewish individual that noone would stand to have as a college roommate let alone a life partner.  Yet, the horrendous, self-centered, navel-gazing characters were not the worst part of the show.  The writing was.

There so many nonsensical turns and unbelievable happenings on the show but instead of listing them all, let's just stick to escape from Mexico by dismemberment as the best of the worst.  Somehow a whole army of armed goons can't both shoot the people who just chopped up their prophet and make a phone call for an ambulance.  I guess crazy polygamous sects are multitaskers.  As bad as this was though, smaller but much more regular failures by the show runners were much more annoying.  The characters never grew during the entire five year period.  Despite everything that happened, they never changed.  Their character defects at the beginning of the show where the same at the end.  An episode would end with the wives reconciling, bonding, and vowing to be BBF's only to return to the exact same argument the very next episode.  Groundhog's day, everyday.

Well, it is over now.  Likely to quickly be forgotten and buried in the TV graveyard next to Evening Shade and Amen.  And how did it die.  Like it lived.  Illogical and irrational behavior on the part of the family members, the wives hurling insults at each other and doing things to deliberately get at each other, and a trying to hard to be shocking ending that somehow left the wives living happily ever after with no real income to speak of.   At least bug-eyes got to come back for a 5 second cameo before it ended.  And at least it wasn't the Lost finale.

This blog post is sponsored by Hendrickson's Home Plus.

Chance of Brightest Day, Most Likely Blackest Night

The trailer for the first live-action Green Lantern movie came out last weekend. Unfortunately though, when I call it live-action, I am using the term loosely. And this greatly disappoints me.

I am, of course a bit of sci-fi, comic book dork and in the realm of the superhero universe, Green Lantern was my childhood favorite. Superman was an incredibly boring and unimaginative character and Batman was just too mainstream for my taste. I wanted a B-level star to call my own and Green Lantern fit the bill (my choice of Green Lantern over Batman was for the same nonconformist reason that I chose to root for the New Orleans Saints and Houston Astros despite growing up around Pittsburgh and the greatest sport franchises of all time) . I was sold on the galactic policeman. Of course the cartoons that my fandom was built on didn't contain any of that confusing Book of Oa backstory. Just a man and his ring. But by the time I found out that Green Lantern wasn't that special in the comic book world, one of thousands that include a dog, a squirrel, and a cucumber, he had been imprinted on my amygdala. With the kind of brainwashing that only childhood cartoons can provide, I was very excited to hear that a Green Lantern movie was on the way. Of course, at this point my hopes should have been as high as a Democrat on election day but the lessons of G.I. Joe:Rise of Cobra and Transformers 2 didn't seem to fully set in.

The casting of Ryan Reynolds should have been the first warning sign. Yes, Hal Jordan is a cocky test pilot but the Green Lantern of Hal Jordan and John Stewart are definitely serious stalwart fellows. There is no such authority exuded by the Sexiest Man Alive (or Dead for that matter - I can't imagine a dead body being very sexy). He is the jokey, snarky, ironic guy. Just because Iron Man was such a hit, doesn't mean every superhero from here on out has to be Sherlock Holmes as Tony Stark. But I always like Reynolds going back to his days as a guy in a pizza place so I was willing to overlook Hal Jordan as a poorman's Stark minus the alcoholism. Then I saw the preview.....If they were going to use so much cheap CG, why not just make it an animated feature and call it a day. They couldn't even be bothered to fashion a real suit for GL out of real materials. They had to paint him up like on of the girls in the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue. It looked horrible. When the next step after the three new Star Wars movies was the Cartoon Network's Clone Wars. I made complete sense. Nothing looked real in those movies. You might as well forget the expensive actors and just make it all computerized. And that is what we have with the Green Lantern movie. A whole lot of really fake looking CG done at the discount rate compared to the cost of Star Wars. If you were going to do this, why not just make another cartoon movie. At least Green Lantern has several options for his Jar Jar.

This blog post is sponsored by Ferris Aircraft.

Even if Lebron would have stayed, Cleveland would still be the saddest place on Earth

Yes, "The Decision" has a horrible debacle of excess, ego, and ignorance. Yes, the notion that any other team was being given honest consideration as a final destination was a sham. Yes, the whole fabricated fascination with LeBron's free agency gave the false impression that the NBA was more than the a gussied up version of pro wrestling (aka the outcomes are fixed) that only matters to a dedicated niche population. But in the end, I have to say I respect the final decision that David Stern made and passed off as LeBron's. To see a free agent decision come down to something other than dollars is so rare, I think you have to take notice and give a little golf clap. To take a little less to play with friends and create a unique experiment in how to make up a professional sports team is incredibly interesting and worth watching. And the noise that was made the likes of Jordan and Magic that they would never, I mean never ever (heaven to betsy, how could you even imagine it to be so), give up being the alpha dog and seek out a situation like LeBron has with Wade in order to win a title. That is why Magic demanded to be traded away Kareem and Worthy and why Jordan pushed for Pippen to be sent packing. To prove that they could win a title on their own. Not like that quitter LeBron. Oh, wait they didn't do that did they. And Jordan's days without that strong supporting cast in Washington didn't really work out either. The rhetoric was all so disingenuous. Sure the new Miami Heat haven't set the world on fire yet but I at least am paying some attention to America's fifth most popular sport.

Of course there is the other side of the LeBron equation, Cleveland. That sad little shell of a town. Football team that can be proud that they are now good enough to lose respectfully and a baseball team that is very similar to the Indians at the being of the movie "Major League". I guess the good news is they still have their bustling tourism industry as evidenced by the below video.

This blog post is sponsored by Bromley Marks Pharmaceuticals.

Bowl Season Wrap-up - Slightly Delayed - Again

With the Big12 barely clinging two life, I thought it might be a good idea to finally finish this post that I started back in January. Two years back, I did a round up of the BCS bowl games by compiling the records of the different conferences. I repeated this little exercise with the results from the 2009-2010 bowl season but to make up for the missing year I also did a cumulative record from the past 3 years. So, is there anything here of interest? Well, the not quite departed but surely to be renamed Big 12 has enjoyed both more recent and long term success than the two conferences that stole their teams. But then again, the moves of those teams weren't driven by seeking a more winning tradition. A bigger TV paycheck was the draw. Oh yeah, and academic alliances - and if you believe that I have some picturesque Louisiana beach front property to sell you. In fact, the two teams that bolted weren't the ones really driving that success of the conference so if anything, they left for a conference that gives them a better chance at winning.

But what I think is the most striking thing about the below results and the recent realignment announcements is what is happening with the Mountain West Conference. The success of the MWC puts the Big East and ACC to shame. They should not be begging to be included in the BCS. The Big East and ACC should be begging to remain a BCS conference. And now the MWC has added Boise State, the most successful non-BCS school outside of the MWC. Yet the MWC is still a second class conference. Ahhh, yet another reason to pay very little attention to college sports. They make money like professionals. They chase money like professionals. They give lip service to the student athlete but care for their education as much semi-intelligent individuals cared for the Lost finale. And they treat the everyone like a typical Glen Beck fan by thinking we will fall for the line that they actually care about crowning the best team as champion. As I have said before, I have no problem with the old bowl system. It never gave us a definitive champion but then it never pretended to. The current system that relegates the MWC to the ghettos of college football with the likes of Northern Illinois and Toledo insults everyone's intelligence.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
MWC	5	1	-
SEC	6	4	1
Big East	4	2	1
Big Ten	4	3	1.5
Ind	1	0	1.5
Big12	4	4	2
Sun Belt	1	1	2
ACC	3	4	2.5
WAC	1	2	2.5
C-USA	2	4	3
Pac10	2	5	3.5
MAC	1	4	3.5

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2009

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	19	8	-
MWC	12	4	1.5
Big 12	13	7	2.5
Pac-10	11	7	3.5
Sun Belt	3	2	5
Ind.	2	2	5.5
Big Ten	11	12	6
C-USA	8	10	6.5
Big East	8	11	7
WAC	3	9	8.5
ACC	9	16	9
MAC	1	12	11

This blog post is sponsored by International Genetic Technologies, Incorporated.

It's Saturday Night !!!

Despite Saturday Night Live's long history of producing comedy superstars, it has an equally long history of not being funny. With each passing year, critics like to sound the bell that Saturday Night Live has lost its way. It relies to heavily on catch-phrase spewing stereotypes. Skits are based on a single joke stretched out for 5 minutes. The skits meander with no real ending. Blah. Blah. Blah. The complaints don't change. Just the date on the columns. The problem is the complaints could justifiably apply to any year of the show's existence. It has always been the way it is currently described. Our collective memory is just clouded because of the post-SNL success of the actors. Because they are funny now, they must have been hilarious on the show. And then when they cherry pick the best parts of the few good comedy bits for those retrospectives, our distorted memory is confirmed. From the Eddie Murphy era to the Will Ferrell era to the glorious current rein of the Fred Armisten era, the show was and is 95% awful on a weekly basis. The current version of the show only has two parts that work. The Weekend Update is always worthwhile although it was at its best when it paired Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Secondly, SNL does musical comedy well, particularly as part of their internet-driven Digital Shorts. Surprisingly, one of my favorite resent musical jokes came outside of this format in a normal skit. I have to say, I continue to laugh when I see. In fact it was so good that is accomplished the primary goal of all SNL shows, to advertise and sell its host and musical guest. I was so taken with the tune that I went looking for a Micheal Buble song that sported the same melody and what I found wasn't half bad.

This blog post is sponsored by MacMillian Toys.

Even Brett Favre Knows What a Putz He Is

If you are going to rot multiple professional football organizations from the inside while robbing them of millions of dollars, at least you will be given the opportunity to further pad your bank account by making light of the miserable circumstances that you created for fans and teammates with your out of control ego and fading football skills in the service of hawking flatscreens for a soon to be defunct retail outlet.

This blog post is sponsored by Yu Wan Mei.

All About Me

From the outset, I have made no bones the nature of this blog. It is intended to be nothing more than a compilation of self-indulgent navel gazing. This is likely the reason why it has taken me nearly a full calendar year to realize that other members of the genus Homo have happened across my ramblings. But now that my eyes have been opened, it is time to salute these fine upstanding citizens for taken note of the internet's highest quality detritus.

Since I began cataloging poor quality videos that amuse only me, I have received 7 comments on this corner of the internet wilderness. One was a spam comment that I deleted while 3 more are were from relatives that pitied my sad, lonely, and ignored musings and threw me a bone. But then I put up a post about the upcoming G.I. Joe movie. Surprise, surprise, I hit a sweet spot for the blogosphere. 2 of the comments are even relevant to my post. So thanks Marc and Kyle. You have proven that every now and then, the needle can be found in the haystack, even when the haystack is larger than the great state of Alaska. And specifically to Kyle, you have obviously put some thought into your comment and in the spirit and tradition of great internet debate, I respectfully deem your opinion the moronic regurgitation of an obviously mentally feeble individual in need of institutionalization. Who will feed you when you mother passes on? Actually, I see what you are getting at but I stand by my concerns over casting. My problem with Duke isn't so much about age but the blandness of the actor. And despite your contention, I still feel Cobra Commander needs the gravitas that only comes with age. But I am prepared to be and hope to be wrong.

In honor of my most popular post, I present video from Cobra Commander's ill fated run for President. I imagine his plan for a weather control device would have been as beneficial to the future of this country as the Iraq War and the latest version of a stimulus package. Oh, and the Oscars were completely unwatchable.



This blog post is sponsored by Prescott Pharmaceuticals.

And the Oscar for Pretentiousness Goes to....

Way back in the early days of the internet, I used to maintain an unvisited outpost of self-indulgence. A lot like...no...exactly like this blog (hence the reason the original site and the blog share the same name). One game I used to play purely for my own enjoyment was selection of personally sanctioned movie awards. The only qualification for consideration for my prestigious awards was that the film had to make a minimum of 100 million dollars. My motivation in doing this was that I found the Oscars to be less and less representative of reality. I also found them less and less watchable but that is another story. It seemed that as the movie industry began to loss that aura of exclusivity and superiority, the individuals responsible for the Oscars felt they needed to try harder and harder to separate themselves from the rabble. To distinguish themselves. To justify their existence. To establish that they maintain some singular skill and knowledge that the proletariat do not possess. The only way to do this of course is to summarily dismiss any movie that garners popular acclaim in favor of monotonous, ponderous, navel-gazing art house fare that rarely plays outside of L.A. multiplexes. Where once the Oscars honored true classics that are still beloved and watched today, the present day Oscars select movies that were never actually viewed by people who weren't paid to do so and are forgotten to time immortal as soon as the poorly watched telecast ends. Pollack, Atonement, Babel. These aren't good movies. Under any circumstance. They're not even watchable. And the grand tradition continues this year. Despite incredibly popular pieces of art like WALL-E and Dark Knight, we get nominations for Milk and The Reader. Sure, popularity does not equal quality - Twilight and Harry Potter any one - but if a piece of celluloid is really supposed to represent the best work from a period of 365 days, shouldn't someone actually be willing to watch it? As a final proof of how bad this year's nominees are, I give you the following video. The largest moneymaker of all the nominees isn't even original. It is a puffed up, padded, and pompous rip off of a much better movie. The Raspberry Awards have more relevance now a days than the Oscars.

On a side note, given the lobbying, pandering, and slandering that goes into a successful Oscar campaign, you almost have to wonder if this video is the product of the makers of Gran Torino or something.

This blog post is sponsored by Binford Tools.

Don't Let the Door Hit You on the.......

All I can say is it is about time. The town of Green Bay can finally celebrate their freedom from the tyranny of one Brett Favre. The man that single-handedly robbed the nation of the Superbowl matchup everyone wanted to witness has mercifully decided to hang it up. Sure, there is going to be a portion of the Cheeshead nation that will miss his errant lame duck bombs every Sunday but the Packer organization can finally have a game plan that doesn't involve the quarterback running around like a chicken with his head cut off before closing his eyes and throwing the ball up for grabs. Now, I recognize that the man was one of the best quarterbacks for a 3 to 5 year period but since then he has been little more than a juiced up Don "Magic Man" Majkowski riding on the good will of a single Super Bowl victory (same number as the immortal Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson). During that time he has built up numerous reasons to forget that period of above average-ness and come to see him as overrated and object of scorn. Here are my personal top 6 list of reasons I never want to see him mentioned as one of the game's best.

6. The last play of his career perfectly summarized his career.
5. John Madden's Man Crush
4. Making a mockery of Micheal Strahan's sack record by giving him a fake sack.
3. Addicted to drugs and an alcoholic but noone seems to care
2. His joke of a consecutive games streak record where he would sometimes play a single play and then come out (also hopped up on pain pills).
1. All-time leader in career interceptions just above luminaries like John Hadl and Vinny Testaverde

Update : The fine minds at ESPN see the truth about the overrated career of Brett Farve. At least those people at ESPN that weren't hosting a three hour retrospective/deification of the man.

The one good thing about Brett Favre...best wooden acting by an overrated Quarterback in a comedy classic. (The embedded video appears to be non-functional, so go here to view it)

An Apple a Day

If there is one company that knows how to produce a catchy advertisement, it is Apple Computers. I guess you have to be good at selling an image when your business model is predicated on convincing people to shell out hard earned for over-priced, under-powered, proprietary, closed system technology. Apple is especially good at IDing cool new musical ditties that stick in your head like a starving brain sucker (my sisters always seemed to have one of those on their heads as children). If radio stations were this good at putting enjoyable music on the air, people might still listen to them. But then again, that is the way it is with all technology advertising. Convincing people to pay way to much to buy something they can't possibly use to its full potential. I have an iPhone that can synthesize food from air, diagnose disease, and fight crime at nights as a masked vigilante but I use it mostly to call my mom. Hey, but at least the $600 price tag came with a felling of self importance and belonging. And now a few of my favorite tech commercial parodies.

Terry Tate - Office Linebacker

The hype for Super Bowl commercials has come to equal Super Bowl itself. We have been led to believe that millions of people watch the game just for the commercials but then again TV talking heads tell us a lot of things that aren't true. But it really seems that the water cooler quality of the Super Bowl commercials has really decreased over the last couple of years. Of course, I do view the commercials of Super Bowls of yesteryear through those rose colored glasses of nostalgia. In my day..... In reviewing past commercials, I saw a number of ads that I have a fondness for (Monster.com, EDS, and Budweiser) but not many greats. My favorites from this year had to be the Night at the Roxbury referencing Pepsi Max commercial (never funny as an SNL sketch but always amuses me when it is performed out of context) and the Barkley-Wade T-mobile ad. Of course nothing in this year's disappointing crop can equal the Terry Tate sales pitches introduced during the 2003 big game. Now that is quality pseudo-entertainment.

The NFL Writers Ran out of Good Ideas

The NFL season started with so much promise. Unlike so many past parity-stricken years, there appeared to be at least four truly dominant teams, one of historic proportions. We were on a path to some epic football clashes to conclude the year. But like a TV series (X-Files and hopefully not Lost) or movie (Independence Day because aliens use Macs) that develops a killer hook but does not have the intellectual wherewithal to pull off a satisfying conclusion, the NFL season died a painfully slow death of dashed hopes and squandered potential. None of the great match-ups materialized. Not one. We did not get Packers v. Cowboys, Colts v. Patriots, Cowboys or Packer v. Patriots. Just a bunch of mediocrity mindlessly meandering through the playoffs. At least the Super Bowl provided the hope that we would be able to observe history, even if it required replaying a game from just five weeks prior with a team quarterbacked by a guy that looks like the least intimidating member of a high school marching band (probably plays the French horn). Of course, to be consistent with the rest of the playoffs, the game was an underwhelming snooze-fest involving a Patriots team that came ready for a coronation ceremony instead of a football game. The whole season quickly went from historic to forgettable in the span of 5 weeks. And we won't even get into the 4th down non-holding call that allowed a vastly inferior Jacksonville team to triumph over the mighty and deserving Steelers. The only good thing that came out of this year's playoffs was this YouTube clip. It makes perfect sense to me that Hitler would both be a Cowboys fan and own a T.O. jersey.

Bowl Fever - I Think I Got Vaccinated

This year's completely uninspiring college football season came to a merciful end this past Monday when the LSU Tigers completely humiliated the overmatched Ohio State Buckeyes. The game was unwatchable by halftime which is only appropriate because most of America had forgotten that the college football season was still ongoing by the time they got around to playing the "title" game. I hate to pull an "in my day" but in my day bowl season was actually entertaining. Even though the old system wasn't perfect, on New Year's day, you were assured of seeing all of the best teams in action. But now, New Year's day is reserved for fewer games composed of the second-tier teams and fifth-tier Illinois while all the "big" games are strung out as "events" unto their own. The old system would have given us the much preferable USC vs. Ohio State. Kansas vs. Virgina Tech could be entertaining as one of many games that you flip back and forth from but it ranks as a distant second to a rerun of Ugly Betty when it is the only football on TV. No playoff system successfully crowns the "best" team so we shouldn't concern ourselves with that for college football. Instead let's go back to the time when we had a day of 9-12 bowl games and a really great day of football. One game can be a blow out because one of the many other options will surely be heading to an exciting conclusion. I used to also walk both ways uphill in the snow.

About the only moment of the College Football title game with any suspense was the naming of Pontiac Game Changing Play of the Year Presented by Toyota. In the end, they went with 15 lateral play by Trinity to win their game against Millsaps. As you will see below, it would have been more meaningful if the other team hadn't quit trying at the end. By the time Trinity makes the final run for the goal line, there are many Millsaps players just standing around watching. Apparently they realized they were playing in a game that doesn't matter and no one cares about so if those fools were so determined to win, they can have it. It wasn't worth getting winded over.



Just to finish off this rant, I am also annoyed by the the talking heads insistence that the only worthwhile football takes place in the big conferences and that of the big conferences, the Big East is the weak sister. If you look at the final standings of bowl season as an indicator of conference strength you will see the truth. Not surprisingly the SEC is indeed the class of the nation but number two is the Mountain West Conference and that conference's one loss was a close game in which they lost their starting quarterback against a major conference opponent. Sure Hawaii was destroyed but Boise State and Utah have previously shown that the small conferences belong in the big bowls. I would rather have seen a tough BYU team take on Missouri than a mediocre Arkansas. At the least, the Mountain West teams should get all the bowl games that normally go to the ACC. They were just an embarrassment this year.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	7	2	-
MWC	4	1	1
Big 12	5	3	1.5
Pac-10	4	2	1.5
Big East	3	2	2
S. Belt	1	0	2
Ind.	0	1	3
Big Ten	3	5	3.5
C-USA	2	4	3.5
WAC	1	3	3.5
MAC	0	3	4
ACC	2	6	4.5

Order of the Pheonix - A Potter that isn't Horrible

Just saw the most recent Harry Potter movie. I was surprised by the watchability of the thing. The special effects weren't distractingly awful and the movie lacked many of the gaping plot holes that the novels are well known for. The last scene did not consist of long exposition that if shared with Harry at the beginning of the movie would have prevented all of the events of the movie from happening. For a change, I didn't have the feeling that this was a children's movie written by a child. Anyway, I only mention this to give a reason for archiving these Potter-related amusements.

Brothers by Other Mothers

Militant actor George Clooney and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Separated at birth or really the same person? Ask yourself this - have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time?

A Day Late - Sunset Strip

The modern news cycle moves way to fast for me to ever keep up. So the best I can do is write my thoughts on a subject a week after the rest of the world has already posted and debated every possible opinion and position on said subject. By the time I get around to it, my words look both unoriginal and redundant. But if I let that stop me, these pages would remain blank. Not that anyone would notice if that happened. That absence of an audience does provide the benefit of not having to worry about timeliness. Since, I am the only one being entertained by this blog, I will continue in the grand tradition of kicking a dead horse and over-indulging my own egomania.

Today's thought is a week and a half old. Last Thursday was the concluding episode of the massively disappointing failed TV series Studio 60 from the Sunset Strip. As most left-leaning individuals, I loved the West Wing (At least the first 4 Aaron Sorkin years before John Wells made it soapier than General Hospital). That is why I bought into the hype surrounding Sorkin's new show, Studio 60, and was anxiously awaiting its arrival at the start of the TV season. Unfortunately, it was a complete nonstarter from the very beginning. It treated the backstage mechanizations of a TV show as if they represented life or death consequences and that opinions of pampered Hollywood types about national policy mattered to anyone. The pomposity of it all was over the top. It was as if Sorkin sought to continue the West Wing but in Hollywood. If he just would have stuck to juicy insider details about making a show and a light hearted tone, it might have worked. But no, we have supposed comedy actors more concerned about war in Iraq than making anyone laugh.

The inappropriateness of the tone certainly ruined the show but the most annoying part for me was the so-called Christian true-believer. This token representative of the faith was supposed to provide the balanced view that the West Wing was missing. But instead, this character played out as way for Sorkin to show that his beliefs were superior to anything the religious right has to say. We are told she that she is a true and faithful servant despite her residence in the Sodom and Gomorrah of Hollywood. What we are shown is a woman who constantly questions her faith while those around her steadfastly defend their own. We see a woman who is more than willing to subserviate her own religion to be with an atheist man who has no intention of doing the same for her. What a bastion of modern Christianity.

Goodbye and good riddance (Even though I watched every awful episode).