Bill's Baloney

NFL Picks, Week 2

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:43:00 +0000

Off to a decent start with an opening week of 11-5.

Houston @ Tennessee
New Orleans @ Philadelphia
Arizona @ Jacksonville
Oakland @ Kansas City
Cincinnatti @ Green Bay
Minnesota @ Detroit
St. Louis @ Washington
New England @ New York Jets
Carolina @ Atlanta
Tampa Bay @ Buffalo
Seattle @ San Francisco
Baltimore @ San Diego
Pittsburgh @ Chicago
Cleveland @ Denver
New York Giants @ Dallas
Indianapolis @ Miami

I made most of these picks on Thursday, and looking at them after a couple days time, I think I might have overreacted to a team's Week 1 performance. I mean, really, it's just 1/16th of their schedule. Week 2 is the toughest week on bettors and bookies. You get some artificial lines from bookies, but most of the difficulty lies on the general public who let their eyes trick their minds.

Paging Dr. Funke, Paging Dr. Funke...

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:01:00 +0000

Football is back, homos. Strap on your purses and let's get it on. I've already posted my lineup for one of my teams, Nice Tits!, so here's my Swingin' Dude Club league, now in it's 2nd year.

QB Drew Brees
WR Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, TJ Houshmandzadeh, Anthony Gonzalez (flex)
RB Fred Jackson, Felix Jones
TE Jeremy Shockey
K Josh Brown
DEF San Diego
IDPs: James Laurinaitis, Yeremiah Bell, Justin Tuck

Reminder about scoring. Passing QB is 6 points. A completion is half a point for your QB. A reception is a point. Most of the other scoring is pretty standard.

I'm favored, for what it's worth, 156.6 - 149.62.

NFL Picks

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:08:00 +0000

The home inspection got bumped to today, so I've got the last real hurdle between me and my new home and the return of the NFL on the same day. Hopefully my head won't explode. I've been up and down the last few years with my picks. Let's see how this year goes. My pick in bold.

Tennessee @ Pittsburgh
Miami @ Atlanta
Kansas City @ Baltimore
Philly @ Carolina
Denver @ Cincy
Minnesota @ Cleveland
New York Jets @ Houston
Jacksonville @ Indianapolis
Detroit @ New Orleans
Dallas @ Tampa Bay
San Fran @ Arizona
Washington @ New York Giants
St. Louis @ Seattle
Chicago @ Green Bay
Buffalo @ New England
San Diego @ Oakland

It's Almost Go Time

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Thursday can't come soon enough for me. Bring on football season, bring on my home inspection on Friday, bring on the cold front that's supposed to roll through St. Louis. My team Nice Tits! in the Neverland Child Care league will roll with the following lineup:

QB Matt Schaub
WR Calvin Johnson, Marques Colston, Eddie Royal
RB Steven Jackson, Kevin Smith
TE Zach Miller
K Josh Brown
DEF/ST New York Jets

My bench will consist of receivers Kevin Walter and Donald Driver and running backs LenDale White, Donald Brown, LeSean McCoy and Fred Jackson.

My opponent has the Tom Brady-Randy Moss duo, along with Ochocinco and Bernard Berrian, Michael Turner and Ronnie Brown and his Tight End is tied to my QB, the Texans Owen Daniels. I'm a projected loser, by a score of 87-99.

The Swingin' Dude Club: Year 2

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:14:00 +0000

My Team:
Dr. Funke 1. (4) Drew Brees 2. (21) Calvin Johnson 3. (28) Anquan Boldin 4. (45) T.J. Houshmandzadeh 5. (52) Anthony Gonzalez 6. (69) Felix Jones 7. (76) Knowshon Moreno 8. (93) Fred Jackson 9. (100) LeSean McCoy 10. (117) San Diego 11. (124) Jeremy Shockey 12. (141) John Carlson 13. (148) James Davis 14. (165) James Laurinaitis 15. (172) Laurent Robinson 16. (189) Justin Tuck 17. (196) Yeremiah Bell 18. (213) Josh Brown

My Buddy "James" team:
Frank The Tank 1. (5) Maurice Jones-Drew 2. (20) Reggie Wayne 3. (29) Peyton Manning 4. (44) Wes Welker 5. (53) Jason Witten 6. (68) DeSean Jackson 7. (77) Matt Schaub 8. (92) Jerricho Cotchery 9. (101) Donald Brown 10. (116) New England 11. (125) Ahmad Bradshaw 12. (140) Earl Bennett 13. (149) D.J. Williams 14. (164) Barrett Ruud 15. (173) Chaz Schilens 16. (188) Trent Cole 17. (197) Jermaine Phillips 18. (212) John Carney

My Buddy Pat's team:
Flickin' the Bean 1. (9) Brian Westbrook 2. (16) Chris Johnson 3. (33) Pierre Thomas 4. (40) Brandon Marshall 5. (57) Antonio Bryant 6. (64) Hines Ward 7. (81) Carson Palmer 8. (88) Kellen Winslow 9. (105) Tennessee 10. (112) Kris Brown 11. (129) Will Blackmon 12. (136) Danieal Manning 13. (153) Kelly Gregg 14. (160) Willis McGahee 15. (177) Domenik Hixon 16. (184) Chester Taylor 17. (201) Joe Flacco 18. (208) Vernon Davis

My Buddy Matt's team:
Elephantitis 1. (1) Adrian Peterson 2. (24) Greg Olsen 3. (25) Jay Cutler 4. (48) Baltimore 5. (49) Vincent Jackson 6. (72) Devin Hester 7. (73) Jonathan Stewart 8. (96) Torry Holt 9. (97) Laveranues Coles 10. (120) Ryan Longwell 11. (121) Justin Miller 12. (144) Mike Vrabel 13. (145) Dwan Edwards 14. (168) Heath Miller 15. (169) Michael Crabtree 16. (192) Ricky Williams 17. (193) Michael Jenkins 18. (216) Carolina

$8000 Obama Dollars!

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:25:00 +0000

So I'm pretty close to getting my first home. 1700 square feet in my hometown. It'll put me back within bike riding distance of work. The lady and I love the quiet neighborhood and the walking potential. I dig the bike riding potential of the area.

They were asking $119,900, I managed to get them down to $117,900. I signed a bunch of the mortgage paperwork Thursday and so the only thing standing between us and this house is a full home inspection, pest/insect inspection, appraisal (it has to appraise at least to the value we're paying), and final underwriting review of the mortgage stuff.

Hopefully we can be in by the end of the month. First week of October at the latest. It used to have an attached one car garage that they turned into livable area (and it now has two front doors). It's a second family room right now, I think it would make a nice study or den (the fireplace is in there), but we'll see what we end up doing with it. It's got a big kitchen and dining room area. Three bedrooms. One bath. We're already looking at ways to put another half bath in. Between dad's mechanical competence and Kathy's dad (he's been a pipefitter for about 35 years) they were walking around it talking about how easy it would be to do this or that.

The bedrooms have these big, all-wood full wall closets that I really like. It looks a little different, but I think it will maximize the closet storage and accessibility. There's a concrete pad in front of what used to be the old garage. On the other edge of the property is a gravel driveway that goes around back to a detached garage. It's a little bigger than a one car, I'd call it 1.5 car. It looks like they dismantled part of an old pole barn and built this thing. It's really tall, taller than a regular garage, so it seems like there's a bit more storage out there. Next to that are two small metal sheds. Kind of like the 10'x12' variety, although I don't know if they're exactly that size.

The back yard has a couple of really mature evergreen trees. I'm not crazy about them, but they are pretty good sized and there's a big open spot so playing frisbee or catch or washers or bags or whatever wouldn't be a problem. We're talking about maybe getting an in-ground pool eventually. And a trampoline. Me and the the kid all love the trampolinin'.

It's a really deep lot so there's plenty of backyard. It's completely fenced in the back too which is what we'd prefer with the kid and the cat. The roof looks in great shape although we don't know it's age just yet. The air conditioner looks a tad on the older side, but the house was still being kept cool. It's on a crawl, so there's no basement issues to worry about.

It has about 270 square feet of pavers just out back and part of the patio is covered. We can't wait to get a fire pit and drink coffee out there in the crisp autumn evenings around the crackling of a fire. There's a sliding glass door that leads into the house from there.

Between Kathy, the realtor, and I making two passes through it, and both sets of our parents looking it over once, none of us found anything really wrong with it. Just some things we'd like to change to our tastes. The only thing that won't pass the Madison County inspection is that it needs the ground fault interruptors on the outlets, but that's pretty minor. As long as there's no mold in the crawl or up in the attic it should be good to go. It just went through a sale three years ago and there wasn't a problem them. One of the owners showed up while we were looking at it and said the crawlspace is really deep and really immaculate.

So if everything goes according to plan, I'll be liveblogging NFL games on Sunday mornings in front of our big screen in a new home by week 4 of the NFL season.

It's Dickheads Like This....

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Pardon the title of this post, but it’s dickhead like the guy I’m about to mention that make me not want to play free leagues. I wrote this big review of my first fantasy draft of the year several days back. The draft went well enough I thought. I had since dropped Earnest Graham for Fred Jackson. Jackson’s the undisputed #1 guy in Buffalo for the first 3 games while Marshawn Lynch is suspended. Based on their play last year, Jackson has a robust chance of being the starter even once Lynch returns. But I digress.

The league was real close to your standard scoring format. 4 points for a passing touchdown, 6 for receiving or rushing TDs. This is the principle upon which we drafted. Because of this format, quarterbacks are pretty equal with running backs and receivers. So I wait until the 5th round to go for a quarterback, taking Matt Schaub. Schaub’s a guy with top-tier potential, who will at least produce 2nd tier production (if healthy), but is still coming with a third tier price tag. But in this format, he’ll be a solid starter each week.

So three days after the draft, what happens? The commissioner decides to make the following changes:

Pass TD points changed from ‘4’ to ‘6’
Trade Review changed from ‘League Votes’ to ‘Commissioner’
Divisions changed from ‘No’ to ‘Yes, (2 divisions)’
Fractional points changed from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’
Playoff Seeding Options changed from ‘none’ to ‘Division winners awarded
top playoff seeds’

Well, isn’t that cute? I can’t tell if he’s a numbskull who did it on a whim because he likes to see big numbers in the weekly scores or if he thinks it will benefit him more than an opponent, and he’s fishing for an edge. Given the particular changes, I think he’s looking for a leg up.

So we are induced to join the league based on one format. We do our homework, set our draftboards and go through a live draft that lasts about 2 hours and 10 minutes all under one scoring premise. And days later, this dope decides to change everything. He doesn’t see why – IT RENDERS EVERYTHING A PERSON HAS DONE UP UNTIL THAT POINT MOOT.

So the TD scoring changes favor teams that went for an elite QB early. It makes the top-tier guys more valuable. He’s taking back the power of veto from the league and placing it all in his hands. If he wants to make a shady deal, no one else can do anything about it other than gripe. If he wants to prevent a rival from fairly and legitimately adding a piece, he can singlehandedly veto it.

By splitting the 10 teams into 2 divisions he could be trying to guarantee himself a pass into the playoffs. Obviously, there’s a lot of football (real and fake) to be played between now and January. But looking at the teams on paper, the division I got stuck in has 3 very strong looking teams, one darkhorse contenter, and one team that looks ho-hum. His division has two decent looking teams and three average ones.

The fractional points thing is kind of a coin flip. It’s more a matter of preference. Maybe he’s been a tough luck loser a time or two before. I know I have. But that’s the deal. You can win by a hair or lose by a hair. If my team gets two more yards than yours and wins by .01 points, I’ll take it. It might suck for you, but hey, I did out gain you. One one-hundreth of a point is one one-hundreth of a point. Throwing out any fractions and rounding everything off is like having a big penis contest and then saying you’re only going to measure in inches – no fourths, eights, tenths, sixteenths or thirty-seconds. So what’s the point? This is a game, there’s supposed to be a winner and a loser, even if you have to measure down to the hundreth of a point and count every yard, you do it because you’re trying to find a winner.

Imagine the league championship week has two teams tie with matching scores of 100-100. Team A actually had 100.92 points if you were to count fractional points, and Team B scored 100.04. Who should win? The tie-breaker would go back to overall record. So what if Team A was 10-2 in the regular season and Team B was 11-1. Team B is your league champion. Sound fair?

Didn’t think so.

So I posted a public message to this doofus outlining some of my points, mostly about the draft being moot now, how the scoring change would’ve affected my draft strategy, and how I would’ve signed up for a league with these scoring rules if I had wanted a league with these scoring rules. I said he should change them back, or, at the very least put it to a league vote. If only one or two other people had a problem with it, then hey, majority rules. I’d post my exact message, but dickweed went and deleted all the public posts.

Here’s what he sent me back. I have it because he also emailed it to me.

Jesus Big guy,
I was unaware there were people that were so tempermental
about their FREE fantasy league. I repeat FREE!!!!! I would of thought
someone who joins a public league with the user name "Nice Tits" would put about
as much thought into the scoring as you did choosing that name. In
response to your idea of letting the league vote, well.... that would be an
option, but I'm pretty sure only 5% of the league showed up on draft night. Why
you ask? Cause they could give a shit. Half of them probably don't even remember
signing up.

So sit back, sharpen your knife so you can take more self portraits and
don't worrie about my scoring system.

Commish-

Some very articulate arguments in there, huh?

IT’S FREE! Why are you complaining? Did I say FREE!! Yeah, well, the donut shop down the street gives out free coffee if you buy enough donuts, but if that coffee is laced with arsenic, I’m not going to want it whether it’s free or you pay me to take a cup. No thanks.

I love his third point, which he put the most effort into. I like it when people make up stats to back up their point of view. Uhhhh, yeah, I’d change it but no one else cares, so, tough titty, kitty. Ok. Alright.

It took me awhile to figure out what he meant by the last line but it’s a reference to my avatar I use as my icon. It’s a headshot of GOB Bluth holding a knife in his mouth while doing a magic trick from the show Arrested Development.

My response went something like this:

It’s not about whether I pay for the league or not, it’s about the time
people have invested in it.

Don’t make assumptions about how seriously I take the league just by my
team name. If you judge a book by it’s cover you’ll look like a
stooge.

5% of the 10 managers would be half of one person. I obviously
care, so there’s 10% and you care enough to change the scoring, so we’re up to
20%. While we’re making blind halfass guesses, I sat through the entire
draft for over two hours and almost no one ran out of time and had to auto
pick. It might have happened a couple of times, but not with any sort of
regularity. So at least 9 of the 10 managers were here for the draft that
they don’t remember signing up for and even guy #10 was here for most of the
draft. Pretty miraculous everyone of these rubes managed to find their way
to the draft when they don’t remember signing up.

I’d quote it verbatim, but about an hour after my response, numbnuts logged in and deleted all messages posted up until that point. Guess someone doesn’t like public dissent. It lends creedence to my thought that he’s trying to manipulate the rest of the league in his favor.

Anyways, I tried reporting him to Yahoo! Under their sportsmanship and fair play policy. I doubt they do anything. The policy is mostly intended for owners who conspire against another owner, any sort of league collusion to gang up one one or two teams, etc… I’m trying to make the case that he started the league under false pretenses all along, and that these changes are efforts to circumvent normal competition in order to give him an unfair advantage. Like I said, I don’t think it will fly. He hasn’t done anything too shady yet. He hasn’t vetoed a trade, made a ridiculous one for himself, frozen anyone’s roster out of spite, and the scoring changes still present a level playing field for everyone at this point. It just would’ve modified my draft strategy. Others probably would have as well. I’m just upset that I was misled. Duped. Bait and switched. And I’ve had my time wasted.

If only Yahoo had an Asshole Commissioner Policy I could file my complaint under...

Neverland Child Care Draft Results

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:50:00 +0000

Pretty standard scoring league: 25 yds per point, passing TDs 4 points, INTs are -1, rushing & receiving are 1 point for every 10 yards, 6 points for a TD, fumbles are a -2 deduction. Bench formations are QB, WR, WR, WR, RB, RB, TE, K, DEF/ST, and 6 bench spots.

1(10) - Steven Jackson, RB, St. Louis Rams
Not going to lie, I really wanted S-Jax to slide to me. I was really hoping we had that one idiot who takes a QB in the first round and sure enough, someone took Drew Brees at #2 overall.

I'm less concerned about the injury history than others. He's the undisputed top back on his roster. They revamped the O-line. The team has a new toughness under Steve Spagnuolo. They have a run-first philosophy now and a West Coast offensive playbook that will be heavy on runs to Jackson and generous on throws to him as well. Think of Brian Westbrook the last 3 years, how Philly's entire offense ran through him. That's what Pat Schumer wants to do with Jackson. And they have a real fullback for the first time since Jackson's dominant season a couple of years ago. Despite missing four games last year and constantly being behind and having to throw Jackson still ran for 1042 yards, caught 379 yards in passes and scored 8 total TDs.

2(11) - Calvin Johnson, WR, Detroit Lions
How Johnson managed 1331 yards receiving and 12 touchdowns on an 0-16 team that didn't have a quarterback, didn't have a running back for most of the year and didn't have much in the way of other weapons to take the heat off him is remarkable. He's as talented as anyone in the league and his floor this year seems to be a repeat of last year. How high does the ceiling go? I don't know. No one does. I made him the second receiver off the board.

3(30) - Kevin Smith, RB, Detroit Lions
I'm a little alarmed that two of my first three picks came from the lowly Lions, but Smith doesn't face a ton of competition and unlike most of the rookie RBs last year actually got better as the season went on. He's right smack-dab in that second tier of running backs and between the 11th and 29th picks 7 other backs went. It was draft two receivers with my picks at the turn or split them up. I wanted a split and Smith was the best left on the board. I considered there to be a fairly depreciable drop off right after him. Ryan Grant was still around, but that was about it. Despite not starting out of the gate, he managed 976 yards on the ground and 286 through the air with 8 scores.

4(31) - Marques Colston, WR, New Orleans Saints
Had to get another wideout here and it was a toss up between Colston and Marshall. Terrell Owens was around, but I have no confidence in him or his QB, Trent Edwards. Marshall is the better natural talent, but he's had injuries (more so than Colston) and comes with all kinds of baggage. Colston has been good to me in the past and I'm looking forward to him being fully healthy again this year. He got hurt fairly early in the 1st game last year and missed the next 6 games as well. So his 760 yards and 5 scores really only came in about 9 games. If healthy, he's a good bet for 1200 yards and double-digit scores.

5(50) - Matt Schaub, QB, Houston Texans
I might have pulled the trigger a tad too soon on Schaub. But I really wanted him. After my last pick, Romo, Warner, Rivers, Rodgers and McNabb all went off the board. Schaub might not be in the same tier, but he's the last one I'd really consider close for this upcoming season. He missed five and a half games last year, but still threw for over 3000 yards and 15 TDs. His 276 average per game and 92.7 QB rating are very nice, but the injury history is a tad worrisome. If he stays healthy, Houston has a dynamite offense.

6(51) - Eddie Royal, WR, Denver Broncos
With 3 wide receiver spots and no flex position, it puts a tad more importance on getting wideouts before running backs. The Broncos may be a mess, but Royal will still be productive. I fully expect them to be trailing every game and having to have Kyle Orton (gulp!) throw way more than Mr. Neckbeard ever should be asked to. As long as Brandon Marshall is healthy and not suspended across from him, Royal should be plenty good. He's solid downfield, he's solid in the short and intermediate game and he's got speed and moves to make any ordinary play extraordinary.

7(70) - Kevin Walter, WR, Houston Texans
At this point I'm looking for depth, and it's down to wide receivers or running backs. I think there's some tremendous value in later rounds with some young backs, and I've already espoused the importance I place on receiver depth. So Walter was the pick. He's nothing flashy, just a monster target on the outside with good hands and steady, if unspectacular production. Andre Johnson takes all the attention among receivers, making Walter a difficult matchup. Last year he posted 900 yards and 8 scores.

8(71) - LenDale White, RB, Tennessee Titans
Alright, tubby. I need running back depth and despite your years of trying to down your NFL career Teneessee has stood by you and given you chances. And like hamburgers, you ate them right up. Last year's total of 15 TDs seems unlikely, but not impossible, although now that he's reported leaner than he's been since high school, White might get a few more carriers outside of the red zone. And hotshot youngster Chris Johnson isn't exactly the most unbreakable running back.

9(90) - Donald Driver, WR, Green Bay Packers
This is one of those picks that isn't sexy and you don't feel good making it, but Driver is still a good player who will give you steady production. Green Bay still figures to throw quite a bit, so there's no threat of a regime or system change affecting things. The weather up in Green Bay becomes worrisome come November, but Driver has battled through it before. Last year's 1012 yards and 5 scores were his 6th year of at least 1000 yards and 5 scores. He won't get back to his 2004-06 averages, but this is still a quality performer.

10(91) - Zach Miller, TE, Oakland Raiders
I'd been looking at the tight end pool for a couple of rounds. There was a big group of guys I saw as bargains because of their average draft position and still developing ceilings. This group includes Greg Olsen (although the price tag isn't too cheap now that Cutler is in town), Dustin Keller, John Carlson, Miller, hell, I'm still willing to give Vernon Davis one more season (his coordinator is the guy who helped mold Tony Gonzalez's career). I even think a guy like Randy McMichael of the Rams can be a 700 yard, 6-8 score guy. But Miller is locked onto by Raiders "QB" JaMarcus Russell as much as any other tight end in the league. Even if they don't get to the red zone much, and there's not a ton of big plays, Miller's 14 targets a game mean he's going to get the ball plenty and it's going to add up.

11(110) - Donald Brown, RB, Indianapolis Colts
I wanted to go back to the running back pool again and was looking at the plethora of seeminghly high-upside guys sitting there. I've been burned by Joseph Addai a couple times over the last couple years, so I'm as willing as anyone to believe that Brown's share of the timeshare Indy is cooking up can be as high as 40% initially. I'm also one of those that thinks that by mid-November, Brown is the clear #1 in Indy's backfield. He's smart, he's looked good in pre-season so far, and he's said to have solid hands, so I see Indy using him quite a bit this year even prior to the inevitable Addai breakdown. If only he had a top-end gear....

12(111) - Earnest Graham, RB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
I was considering any number of options here, but Graham jumped out at me. I'd considered a backup QB for Schaub for a few rounds (and came oh-so-close to drafting Carson Palmer with the Zach Miller pick). I had Matt Hasselbeck still sitting there. Felix Jones and Derrick Mason looked solid picks for this spot too. But I can really see Graham becoming the goalline guy for Tampa Bay. Derrick Ward has never been the #1 guy before. He ran behind a much better line the last few years in New York, and had Brandon Jacobs pounding on defenses before he came in. He's not really a burner and he's not really an inside grinder either, so I don't know what to expect of him in a starring role. But Graham has been such a team guy for the Bucs the last couple of years that they're going to find regular work for him. He's short, stout and powerful. He's proven he can get short yardage and be good around the goalline. He's not going to be a big yardage guy, but if he continues his productivity around the chalk, he'll be one heck of a deal in the 12th round.

13(130) - New York Jets Defense & Special Teams
Picking at the back of the draft, I felt I had to go for Kicker and DEF/ST one round earlier each than I normally would. Unless I wanted to pick through leftovers. Sure there were some ninny's that went for defenses and kickers way too early. Philadelphia was the first defense taken, at the end of the 6th round. New York Giants, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Tennessee went in the 8th round. Minnesota went in the 9th, Chicago in the 11th, and San Diego in the 12th. So I was looking at the Jets, New England or Dallas. I don't like Dallas' secondary and I'm not overly impressed by their special teams. New England is always good, but I don't feel like they have many guys that can take a couple turnovers back to the house. And their special teams are just alright. The Jets were the 4th best defense in this format last year and they've since added Rex Ryan and his Baltimore swagger. It helps that he brought Bart Scott and Jim Leonhardt over with him. Vernon Gholston should take a step up. They've got guys who can force turnovers and take them back for points. And what separates them from the other two is an exceptional return man in Leon Washington. Every year he seems to take two or three punts and a kickoff or two back for scores.

14(131) - Josh Brown, K, St. Louis Rams
I supposed I could have waited for whatever kicker was available with the very last pick of the draft, but since there's bonus points for longer field goals (3 points for 39 yards and less, 4 for 40-49 points, and 5 for kicks over 50 yards) there were two kickers I figure to get plenty of chances and who have been good at long kicks that I felt like I liked better than any ole' kicker. Brown gets the nod over Matt Prater because he has a longer track record and kicks half his games in a dome.

15(150) - LeSean McCoy, RB, Philadelphia Eagles
I felt ok going for a kicker one round earlier than I would because there was a lot of guys I like that couldn't all possibly go before my final pick. I liked Shonn Greene up in New York. I don't have much confidence in Thomas Jones, and I really like his bruising style. But Jones is at least healthy. There's Julius Jones, who I wasn't considering, who's at least back #1a in Seattle, and his co-back TJ Duckett, who I could see getting 8-10 TDs as a goalline specialist. There's Darren Sproles, the dynamic backup and return man for San Diego. There's Baltimore's goalline bruiser Le'Ron McClain. There's Buffalo's best back Fred Jackson (don't get me going on Marshawn Lynch) who will be their starter for at least the first 3 games. And Rashard Mendenhall. There's New England's goalline guy, Sammy Morris. There's the Giants' #2, burner Ahmad Bradshaw, who could do what Derrick Ward did so well as to get a starting gig and $17 million from Tampa Bay. There's handcuffs Jerious Norwood and Chester Taylor. And there's two guys who figure to start the season as their teams' #1's - Tim Hightower of Arizona and Correll Buckhalter of Denver. The free agent pool is fairly deep and seemingly a mile wide.

But with Brian Westbrook's littered injury history, his slow recovery from ankle surgery, Philly's offensive style of spreading the ball around to everyone with a pulse and their own admission that McCoy is someone they're getting on the field - NOW - with or without Westbrook, well that was enough for me. He's looked very good in preseason and they've rebuilt their offensive line.

Like A Kid In A Candy Store

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Got a fantasy football draft tonight. Hopefully, if the league fills in time. I've had the itch for a few weeks now and its been building and building. I've managed to suppress it thus far by telling myself that not enough roster & injury shakeouts had transpired and with the help of my lady's unrepentant hatred of fantasy sports.

But enough is enough.

Draft time is 6pm. I'm off at 2, got some errands to run, then I'll be back here at 5 to start the coffee and do a final review of my draft board. I'm thinking of video recording parts of the draft this year on my new laptop's webcam. Not sure that that's something I want living on in perpetuity on the internet, but we'll see. I videotaped most of one of my drafts last year, but never got it off the camcorder.

It's a pretty standard league, so reshuffling of my rankings should be minimal. The league name? Neverland Child Care.

Fantastic! I love the internet.

I'm With You, Fran Tarkenton

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:54:00 +0000

The Hall of Fame QB and 13 year member of the Minnesota Vikings pretty much nailed my thoughts on the latest developments in this Brett Favre Saga. Story here, video here.

Let's recap. Favre is wishy-washy on his future for a couple of off-seasons. At some point a couple years ago, after already having drafted a Backup Plan A, paid him millions and made him ride the pine for two years, the club decides they're going to use their shiny new youngster more, being that he's the future of the franchise. The Packers demand a firm answer of Favre. He's ho-hum and eventually demands his release (through his agent named "Bus"). Favre starts a string of about fifteen retirements, cries on national television a few times and shoots some Wrangler jean commercials (stay classy, Hattiesburg, MS). Favre rides back in on his decrepit old, white horse, being reinstated and forcing the Pack's hand. Somewhere in here I call him a dope. The Pack trade him off for draft picks. Favre plays the "game manager" well for about a half-season, starts bombing and the Jets miss the playoffs in spectacular fashion. Favre more or less gets his head coach Eric Mangini fired in the process, not that tubby didn't do enough on his own to merit this result.

Favre decides he's retired for good. He thinks. I like the quote from the ESPN article:

At first, Favre said he would remain retired. Then he wasn't sure. He said he
would let the Vikings know by July 30. Then he decided he'd stay retired. Then
on Tuesday, he flew to Minnesota and signed a two-year deal worth $25 million.

That's not too much like a 13 year old girl changing her mind about something every time she gets upset. So Favre gets to skip training camp, get a 25 million dollar contract, and scuttle a potential Super Bowl contender. Packer fans are outraged. I understand that reaction. But on the other hand, he just made your biggest threat to the NFC North championship way easier to beat. Do we fault Brett Favre that much, or is he really just a slow adult who thought he could still play because he can outgun the 11th grade QB of the local high-school team? I can see where a slow adult would fall into that trap....

Hey, also in from the "Stories that Won't Die Department" is Michael Vick's reinstatement and signing with the Philadelphia Eagles. This is what I wrote way back when I started this blog. It was like my fourth post.

Let's talk about the Football part of this development. I'm going to start by saying that Vick is too small in build to be a running back. I'm going to continue by saying he's too old to learn to play wideout at this point. Third, I'm going to cite his career completion percentage: 53.8. On his merits as a passer, Michael Vick has never been a good quarterback. He's subpar. He's not going to unseat Donovan McNabb. If the Eagles don't resign McNabb, they're making a mistake. Vick can't execute the West Coast Offense.

Sure, he's athletic, and he can throw deep. And the runs....wow, the runs. But he's not accurate. He's never been a leader. And if your postseason hopes hinge on a guy who can't execute the play that's called, but instead relies on being a "weapon" when plays break down, you're not going anywhere.

At best, Michael Vick may be useful upwards of 20 plays a game as a Wildcat quarterback or a receiver or back who goes in motion and works out of the slot. Even then, I don't have high expectations.

Now, on this reinstatement & signing as a matter of society - just because you serve your time for an offense you commit, doesn't mean you're entitled to full reinstatement of your privileges. Felons who serve their time still don't get to vote or own firearms. In the insurance business, if you're busted for Premium Trust Law violation, you could go to prison, pay some fines, but you don't always get your insurance license back after you've done your time. It depends on the offense. Lawyers who commit crimes and serve their time can still be disbarred. Doctors can lose their medical licenses and not get them back even after they've done their time.

Michael Vick served 18 months of a 24 month sentence and immediately finds himself reinstated. Like nothing ever happened. Sure, sure, it's conditional reinstatement. Ok. Keep telling yourself that.

Doing your time for the crime you've been committed doesn't mean things go back to the way they used to be. It just means you're free again. I don't get this lack of consistency from the Commissioner. He's been preaching about the NFL's image, insisting that playing in the league is a privilege, not a right. So why the quid pro quo? Like everything else about the NFL, it's probably all about the benjamins.

Let's address the argument comparing Vick's offense to Leonard Little. In 1998, I believe, Little was driving drunk and hit a woman named Susan Gutweiller, who was on her way to pick up her teenage son from a Rob Zombie concert. It was big news for a long time here in St. Louis. It popped back up a couple years ago when Little got another DUI. It remains a sensitive topic. Little made a terrible decision that had devastating consequences. But it wasn't premeditated and it wasn't recurring. Was his sentence too light? I would guess yes, in all probability it was. Michael Vick personally beat dogs, he personally drowned dogs. Time and time again. He set out to do this and he carried it through. This was no accident. This was no recurring accident. It was what Michael Vick intended to do. Mission accomplished, big guy. And then he went to sleep for the night and would do it again another day. So beyond the fact that these two NFL players both were involved in heinous acts, I don't see the similarities in the two.

What was with CBS sending James Brown to do the interview with Vick for 60 minutes? Brown is a football broadcaster. Sure he's well respected and all, but he's not know for any hard-hitting or in-depth interviews. Why not send Mike Wallace? Or Steve Croft or Bob Simon? Send a real journalist, someone who's sat eye-to-eye with people before and asked really probing questions to get to the root of a story? Why send the jolly football guy who laughs and horses around every Sunday with the former jocks? I don't get this. Of course, it's because CBS has a multi-billion dollar contract with the NFL, but do they think no one's going to see through this? Why didn't we send our troops to Iraq armed with plastic spoons instead of M-16s? That's about how equipped I think James Brown is to handle the first sit-down Michael Vick has. Most of American wants to see how sincere this guy is. Most people can probably forgive him if he comes off as genuine and full of sorrow and remorse. But we'll never know, because CBS put a big fat softball up on a tee for Michael Vick. And despite it, I haven't met many people who had their minds changed by the interview. So it was all worthless fluff.

Rams @ Jets: 2nd Half

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Got interrupted when the lady and the kid came out to visit. I ran around with the kid and the dog and we had ice cream outside. So I missed a few parts of the game. Some of the observations:

Keith Null wasn't asked to do much throwing, but he did slip in a TD pass to the rookie WR Walker out of Vanderbilt. It was kind of a dangerous pass, but it worked. I like Null - he's big, wide-shouldered, and doesn't look as skittish as Bulger.
I continue to be underwhelmed by Brock Berlin, but he was 6 of 8 before leaving with a shoulder injury.
Samkon Gado looked good with his few carries and he ripped off a seventy something yard TD. He finished with a line of 6 carries for over 90 yards.
The rookie RB out of Texas, Ogbayanna or something like that, looks pretty stout and has a nice burst. I'd like to see more of him. He was buried on the depth chart at Texas and was primarily used as a 3rd down back because of his speed and good hands.
Jason Smith looked pretty solid. Luckily, he wasn't going up against a top-notch pass rusher, like he does in practice with Leonard Little.
Chris Long is a solid, but unspectacular player. Other pundits have noted this about him. It seems unlikely he'll ever be a monster defensive end, but will be more like a Grant Wistrom - hard-nosed, high motor, max-effort, team-first, high character guy.
None of the wide receivers really stood out. Robinson had the big catch, but we'll need a little something out of the rest of the crew. Brooks Foster, Keenan Burton, Derek Stanley, Sean Walker....feel free to step up anytime.
Actually, Walker's TD was a pretty nice catch. He had to make an adjustment to the ball while it was in the air and he had a defender right in his face. I guess it's a start.
Rams won 23-20. In pre-season, it's said that you look at the score while the first teamers are in there and you watch individuals when the 2nd & 3rd stringers are in. The Rams first team looked alright, and, as noted, plenty of individuals had solid games.

Rams @ Jets: 2nd Quarter

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Dustin Keller runs a 3-yard hitch, is uncovered, makes the catch and turns it into about a 10 yard gainer.
Bradley Fletcher breaks up Sanchez's perfect game with a pass defense.
Dustin Keller gets open, breaks a tackle and has about a 15 yard gain down to the Rams 3.
Thomas Jones stuffed on the run on 1st down. Jones runs again, leaps over the pile, narrowly breaks the plane of the goalline, and has the ball knocked out. Todd Johnson recovers and runs it out but the refs are already signaling touchdown. Spagnuolo is going to challenge, and will likely lose.
Rams start from their own 26, and Bulger puts one up. Despite defensive pass interference, Laurent Robinson hauls it in, get a few more after the grab and it's a 50 yard gain. Robinson was a 3rd round pick a couple years back by the Falcons, he's got size (6'2") and now he's free from the depth chart trappings of Atlanta. Word is he's looked good in camp. He looked good there.
Randy McMichael hauls in a six or 7 yard catch.
On a short Darby run, Richie Incognito is up to his usual antics; he blew his man five yards off the line of scrimmage and gave him a shot after the whistle.
Bulger sacked in deep on 3rd and 3 or 4. Rams settle for another Josh Brown field goal.
Jets pick up a 1st down on their possession, but the Rams eventually force a punt.
Derek Stanley tries his best to foul up the punt return, manages not to fumble, but ends up losing about nine yards. Spagnuolo looks ready to spaz out.
Notable Rams entering the game: backup QB Kyle Boller and RT Jason Smith, the 2nd overall pick this year.
First play is an Anonio Pittman run behind the mauler Smith.
Kyle Boller, out all last year with a bum shoulder, completes his first pass to Tim Carter, out all last year with bum employment.
Rams slowly moving the ball down the field, Boller picks up a 4th and 1 on the QB keeper.
Rams attempting another field goal after a 12 play, 64 yard drive lasting about 4 minutes.

Rams @ Jets: 1st Quarter

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:06:00 +0000

Jets win the coin-toss and get the ball first.
First play from scrimmage, a one-yard gain.
3rd down and Leonard Little blows around the edge, sacking Kellen Clemens and forcing a fumble. James Hall recovers. Rams ball deep in Jets territory.
They proceed to lose three yards on the next 3 plays, and Josh Brown nails a forty-something yard field goal.
The Jets move down the field pretty easily and settle for a field goal after working deep into the Rams territory. Backup DT Gibson could have blown the drive up, but whiffed on what would have been a 7 or 8 yard sack.
Rams look to start putting together a strong drive. The o-line is knocking people off the ball. S-Jax with a nice run, a nice little dump pass to TE Randy McMichael, a decent run from Kenneth Darby. And then Bulger gets blown up by Calvin Pace while holding the ball too long. 3rd and 18.
After the punt into the endzone, the Jets start out at their own 20. Check that, a penalty pushes them back to the 7 yard line. Mark Sanchez, the 5th overall pick, enters and throws a 48 yard pass to Jerrico Cotchery. Justin King burned on the coverage.

IT'S FOOTBALL SEASON!

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Long time, no typey-typey.

I don't know how to describe this time of year. Summer is about to kick the bucket, which I love because the days of 100 degree heat go bye-bye. The kids riding their bikes in the street and teenagers driving around blasting their stereos are about to go back to school. Baseball just now starts to become interesting on a day-to-day basis. Blues open training camp in about 28 days. The new season of House is about to come out on DVD. Full-blown coffee season is around the corner. And the pre-season football is here at last. The Rams kick off against the J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets here any minute. Now it'd be nice if Channel 2 had their audio working.

I'm at the folks' house, housesitting, with the dog and the cats. I've left the woman and child at home for the evening to get my focus on the game.

This year is doubly exciting. Not only is football here again, but the Rams have done something sensible and overhauled the organization from top to bottom. I'm excited on a number of fronts. I like the Rams draft, particularly 1-3, with a nasty offensive tackle (Jason Smith), a real 'mike', James Laurenitis, and a big corner in Bradley Fletcher. I think Steve Spagnuolo was the best coaching candidate available in the offseason. I like how they moved Will Witherspoon back to his best position, weakside linebacker. I like the free-agent signing of Jason Brown a big, young, nasty center.

I like it, I like it, I like it.

Game's almost on and pizza is almost done. More as it develops.

Hockey Season Heating Up

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:18:00 +0000

Been getting back into hockey more and more, post-lockout. I've started playing once a week again, for the first time in a couple years. The first week went surprisingly well, physically. This week....well, I felt like someone who hadn't played in two years or so. It doesn't help that I'm playing against kids from the local high school team. These kids are in great shape, for starters, they're young. They've never put on the "Freshmen Fifty" or taken it off or put a good portion of it back on. Secondly, they just finished their season up. So they've been practicing and playing several times a week for about six months now.

Conditioning aside, the speed is the most noticeable difference since I was a senior ten years ago. Back then, the game was more physical. The rink here was brand new and most of the guys playing in the league were fairly new to ice hockey. Sure, there are other local rinks, but it hadn't caught on as widespread yet. Each team had a handful of guys who had been playing for years, and it showed. The rest of us were lesser skilled but more physical. Nowadays, the rink has been here for years, these kids grew up playing hockey. The overall skill level is much higher across the board. And the conditioning of skating regularly throughout the year shows.

It's also fantasy hockey playoff season. This was the first year I played fantasy hockey. It was a small league, and not all that competitive, but even factoring that in, I think my performance was impressive. It helped having the #1 overall pick and nabbing Alexander Ovechkin.

There's the standings (click to enlarge pics). I ran away with things, clinching my playoff spot about four or five weeks ago. And I was pretty consistent, losing only twice in 23 weeks of matchups. Here's the weekly splits:

My first-round bye ends tomorrow and my march to a little gold trophy resumes.

Organized Religion is Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:07:00 +0000

I was driving from the girlfriend's house out to my folks this morning and drove by the church we used to go to. The parking lot was full, parked four rows deep in spots. Cars in the front were facing out. Cars in the back were backed in, facing out. Parking around the side of the church was full, parking around the school was full too. The majority of the vehicles parked there were backed into their spaces. Facing out. If going to church is so fun, how come everyone seems to park as if they can't wait to get out when it's over?

When I go to a Cardinals or a Blues game, I pull in front first. I can't wait to get there. I don't care about after the game, it doesn't concern me. I'll sit in traffic for twenty minutes, backing out, waiting for police to manually direct traffic. But these church goers, who love their weekly praise offerings, their mouths say one thing about loving church and throwing away an hour or two of their weekends, but the body language of their vehicles tells a different story. Seems like they don't want to spend any more time at church than absolutely necessary.

The Camels Are Unhappy

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Like Eminem...

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:38:00 +0000

I too, am back from exile. Only I'm not going to rap about rubbers and beer and......hmmm. Ok, scratch that. I'm definitely not going to wrap about fromunda cheese. Everything else could be in play.

I took the advice everyone who's ever made fun of anyone with a blog and went out and got myself a girlfriend. So I've been a little too preoccupied with "other things" to worry about blogging about nonsense on here.

Fantasy Baseball
It's that time of year. Hope springs eternal for 30 major league baseball clubs. And fantasy dorks eagerly line up to wait for services to open this year's installment of the fantasy game. I've got two teams already. Posts regarding draft results may or may not follow. I normally play upwards of 4 or 5 teams, so if you've got a league you want me to kick your ass in, send me an invite.

St. Louis Rams
Gotta love the new regime. Their new GM, Billy Delvaney is an old-school football person, not a lawyer masquerading as a football man, and he's off to an impressive start. First, he landed my favorite choice as coach, Steve Spagnuolo, then they cleaned house - cut were Corey Chavous, Drew Bennett, and Trent Green, and 11 free agents look like they're going to be allowed to walk. There's more people on the chopping block too. In the first day of free agency, the Rams snared the best lineman available this year, Ravens center/guard Jason Brown. He's still a young free agent (25 years old) and he's just what the doctor ordered for our offensive line.

At 6'3" and about 320 pounds, Brown fills a longtime position of need, center, while just now entering his prime. He's big enough to move a massive nose tackle in a 3-4 defense out of the way and he has the nasty disposition to abuse the tackles in a 4-3 defense mercilessly.

I could go on and on, by my point is this. This was a great signing by the Rams, and the new regime is saying and doing all the right things. The only downside is that the old regime should have locked up emerging young cornerback Ron Bartell last year. Instead, they let him have a career year, one where was the best corner in the NFC West, and now, at 26 years old, in his prime, he walks out the door (not yet, but soon) with a crazy deal we can't match.

The Postal Service
I find it perplexing and amusing that UPS uses a song in their commercials ("Such Great Heights") from a band called The Postal Service. I know it's just a band, and there's no competition between USP and the band The Postal Service, but c'mon, it's one of those "life is too funny" ironies.

Anyways, I had my iTunes on Party Shuffle and it dialed up an old favorite, The Postal Service's song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight." I always loved this song. I'm not a big fan of much electronic music, but this was a solid little album they put out, 2003's Give Up.

I remember discovering this song. I bought two pairs of shorts at American Eagle and I got a sampler cd with my purchase. This song was one of the seven or eight tunes on the disc. Every time I see that weird mulleted spokesman in the UPS commercials I think of The Postal Service and this album.

The Departed
I watched this yesterday and damn, is it one of Scorcese's best. Perhaps the best. My god, it's just phenomenal. I would babble on and on here, but I'll spare you any more praise. I had forgotten that a version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" was in the movie. I went and looked it up, it's a 1990 live version Roger Waters did with The Band and Van Morrison. Another phenomenal element in a much larger phenomenal masterpiece.

Weather
Alright, enough already. I'm sick of this shit. I can deal with the piercing cold when it's cold all the time. But the roller coaster we've had the last two weeks is silly. Sixty degrees one day, and two days later its fallen to the twenties. The yo-yoing of the mercury is the hardest part. That kind of adjusting just fucks with your body.

Other Musical Notes:

I always liked Catherine Wheel. Rob Dickinson has a unique enough voice that I'm surprised he's not a little more famous in rock music. He is the nephew of well-known Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson. Catherine Wheel had a cup of coffee here in the States in the early '90's. There was this song, "Black Metallic," from their 1992 album Ferment. And there was "Waydown" and "Judy Staring At The Sun" from their 1995 album Happy Days.

Every few months I get this incredible itch to hear "Black Metallic". I finally bought it the other day, and while purchasing the song, I noticed that there's an acoustic version done by Rob alone. Apparently Catherine Wheel broke up in the late '90's and Rob Dickinson is doing a solo thing now, mostly acoustic stuff. He throws in his old Catherine Wheel hits I guess. I'm surprised this song translated to acoustic so well. The original version is a seven minute spacy, reverb drenched electric guitar piece. The acoustic version has been trimmed to just over five and it plays well on acoustic. The album is called Fresh Wine for the Horses.

Minor announcement: I'm done buying music through iTunes. I'm using Amazon's mp3 store. I hate the DRM rights on iTunes stuff. If I want to back it up so I can play a song I've paid good dough for, I have to burn it to a disc and rip the disc back into my library, thus removing the digital rights management from the file. This "unlocked" file can then be played on any media player on any machine. Amazon's music downloads have none of this and I haven't noticed much in the way of a difference regarding the selection available at the store.

Thoughts on Things

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:41:00 +0000

Haven't been banging away on here much lately. Been tired, been busy, been doing more posting on my Twitter account, http://twitter.com/billv9, where I can post short blurbs rather than ramble on. And on. And on.

I like Twitter better. It's more like reading headlines at The Onion. The headlines are the funniest part. The stories are good, but a quick, brief, totally ridiculous line or two at the beginning totally make The Onion go. That's what I like about Twitter. That, and the phony Michael Bay posting over there.

Fantasy Football
Tobias Is Queen Mary lost the championship game, so my four teams this year produced two first place finishes, a second place and a third place. That, my friends, is one successful season of fake football.

New Bed
I just finished putting it all together and tonight will be my first night in new Queen-sized comfort.

54 Year Olds
I know one! Tomorrow is the old man's b-day. Him and Howard Stern. Dad's alright, but I'd rather be the son of Howard Stern I think.

St. Louis Rams Head Coach Search
Jim Haslett is a finalist. Leslie Frazier, Vikings secondary coach, is a finalist. Josh McDaniels did alright. Jim Fassel was impressive, according to his agent, but what else would his agent say? Packers linebackers coach Winston Moss is an impressive man, but supposedly the Rams don't think he's ready to be a HC. Rex Ryan was getting interviewed this morning. And Steve Spagnolo (sp?) is a part of the "good-ole boy" network of new G.M. Billy Delvaney, so word is the job is his if the new Rams owners offer him a contract. Now that the Eagles K.O.'ed the G-Men, Spagnuolo (sp?) can officially be interviewed.

Here's the candidates in the order of my (mostly uninformed) preference:

Steve Spagnolo - he's in that right age where he seems ready for a HC gig. He's worked his way up quick - but not too quick - the last few years. He's hard, demanding, but has the respect of his players. Oh, and he's been pretty good with the defenses he's worked with.
Rex Ryan - I like Ryan over Spagnolo in terms of X's and O's, and he's been doing it longer, so there's a bigger body of evidence. The problem is that, I don't get the vibe that he'd be a great head coach. His guys play their butts off for him, but given his age and that classic Ryan demeanor, I get the vibe that he's one of those guys like Monte Kiffen and Jim Johnson, that are just better coordinators than head coaches.
Jim Fassel - He's got experience, he's won before and I'm confident he can manage all the coaches and personnel. But he's sort of a 'tweener - not quite a players coach, not such a hardass that guys will at least respect the hell out of him. His time with the Giants comes into question as he inherited a pretty good Parcells squad, and concluded his time there with a good John Fox defense. When Fox left, the defense went to hell and he got the boot. Sounds like an experienced Scott Linehan. No thanks.
Leslie Frazier - Supposedly, he's a fast-riser, ready for a HC gig and everyone loves him. I'm not familiar with his whole history, but I'm skeptical to heap on too much credit for his work with the Vikings defense. They basically forced other teams to be one dimensional because they had the Williams brothers forming a human wall of blubber up front. You could pass on that Vikings defense though, they were nothing too special.
Winston Moss - a no-nonsense, football lifer, hardass who's very good with linebackers. A lot of things the Rams need this man has, but if there's skepticism about his readiness to take on the big job, then there's usually fire where there's smoke. But I like his work with Barry Popinga, AJ Hawk and Nick Barnett the last few years.
Josh McDaniels - Sure he's part of the Bill Belicheck coaching tree, and, as Bryan Burwell put it, "the prized young Jedi Knight" Belicheck is currently training. And sure, he's been awfully good with X's and O's the last three years. But he's 32 and Belicheck is the unquestioned leader of the Patricheats. I'm highly skeptical of his ability to be a leader of men, many of whom would be older and more experienced than he is. I don't think a team trying to change the culture of losing is the best place for him to start.

St. Louis Blues
The Blues season is going to end one of two ways. The kids are going to burn out from the longer, tougher NHL schedule and the Blues fizzle down the stretch (and get great draft position, again), or they gradually turn the reigns completely over to the kids and they really start to "get" what it is to be star NHL players and the Blues play well enough to end the season on an upward swing, but play themselves out of the Johnathan Tavares sweepstakes.

Weather
It still sucks.

Travel
I'm normally against it. But when the weather is like this and my hot water pipes are freezing, it's time to book a flight to Scottsdale to see the brother. Thank goodness for Southwest's "Wanna Get Away" rates to keep from breaking a brotha's budget.

Gas Prices
I let the Red Dragon get pretty low the other day, and I went to fill up and was pissed that two days earlier gas was $1.39, but now it was $1.61. As I'm pumping 36 gallons into The Dragon, I realized I should shut the hell up, because a fill-up now is like $45, tops, when just a few months ago it was over $100.

Artie Lange's "Rehab"
It's the best joke I've heard in some time. For starters, it's not rehab, it's a health spa. His stay went from 21 days planned, to 17, to 12 actual days. And after seven days he decided the bed was hard and water pressure wasn't up to snuff, so he drove over an hour down the coast to Miami to stay in a hotel and eat at Nobu and, alledgedly, party on a boat.

So while everyone else was back at work this past Monday, Artie was, for all intents and purposes, just still on vacation for an extra two days.

The Italian Job
I watched the Mark Wahlberg/Edward Norton/Charlize Theron remake yesterday. Pretty solid flick, in many ways your typical heist movie with some neat chases, shiny material possessions and a hearty dose of double-crossing and tech gizmos. Let's say 7.0 out of 10.

Last of the Champions

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:30:00 +0000

My one last fantasy football team is playing today, for the championship. I don't know why I picked a league that plays meaningful games on week 17. Anywhoosies, I'm 2-for-2 in championships so far, so what's one more?

I'm rolling out the following lineup:
QB - Tyler Thigpen
WR - Larry Fitzgerald, Eddie Royal, Antonio Bryant, Mark Bradley
RB - Derrick Ward, Fred Jackson, Cedric Taylor
TE - John Carlson
K - Joe Nedney
DEF - Green Bay
IDPs - Justin Tuck, LaMarr Woodley, Brandon Merriweather

Projected outcome is me losing, 247 - 207.

In non-related news, America has the worst commercial makers ever. Case in point: This commercial is not from America. I don't know what it's for or what language it's in. But damned if I don't want to jump out of a plane with topless women right now.

Toppless Ski Diving Adv - video powered by Metacafe

I Think I'm Growing a Beard

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Today would be like, day six, or something. I could just be really lazy over the long weekend and this could be gone by tomorrow, but I think I'm going to keep it going through next week and another four day weekend and reassess my beard development a week from now.

My hope is that this will somehow get me closer to Debbie Dunning and/or Pamela Anderson.

CCC: Like Lemmings Over a Cliff

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:49:00 +0000

People are lemmings. They're idiots. This is proven countless times everyday. I'd list examples, but I don't have all day. People are generally so bored and lazy these days that just about anything passes as entertainment. No one wants to think for themselves, they want to be told what's cool, what's trendy, what's funny; no one wants to risk the embarrassment of forming an opinion of their own. I don't know why, I just know what is. Fear of being embarrassed? Because it requires thought and they might have to defend their points?

Whatever. I keep coming back to my thesis: people are idiot lemmings. Tell them a cool, expensive new movie is coming out, and that it's supposed to be good, and within a week of it's release, suddenly it's the greatest. Thing. Ever. This is because people are afraid to think for themselves. So they buy the hype, they drink in the buzz and they go along for the ride.

So this is all leading me into a rather lengthy review (about 3300 words) of The Dark Knight, the Batman sequel that came out a few months ago and was immediately declared, even before it's release, the greatest film of the last __(insert # of years here)__. People immediately started fan clubs and movements for a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger. There was a massive groundswell of rabid, unquestioning support.

If you want to spare yourself a lot of reading, just read this paragraph of my review. Don't get me wrong. I love Batman. I my opinion, it's the greatest superhero/comic book franchise ever. I like Christian Bale. The man is the most dedicated, crafty actor of his generation. I know this is a comic book movie and there's going to be unrealistic occurrences in the film. But tell me something is the Greatest Movie Ever, and I'm going to start looking for flaws. Because you've just raised my expectations. All in all, The Dark Knight is an outstanding movie. But it's no instant classic. It's a glorified summer blockbuster. Everyone in it gives very good performances, but again, nothing award-worthy here. Everyone should just calm down and take a deep breath.

Now, on with the full review.

The Dark Knight

I rewatched Batman Begins four days ago in anticipation of getting The Dark Knight for x-mas. Reason one was to make sure I was familiar with the story in the last one. Reason two was to be for comparison purposes. Here are some observations and thoughts I had watching this.

Gotham City
Was it just me or was it made to look dingy and dark in Batman Begins, because it was so overrun with corruption? The lighting was often pale and the streets had that creepy glow and feel, with steam coming out of sewer vents. But now it’s glossy and the exterior shots look clean and shiny. I know Gotham is on the way to being cleaned up, but it’s not there yet. Why the makeover for the city?

Wayne Tower
Is it just me or does this look nothing like the tower in Batman Begins? The building wasn’t destroyed in that film was it? Not that I recall. And if it was damaged to the point they’d have to rebuild it, how could they rebuild a massive downtown high-rise quicker than they could rebuild Wayne Mansion?

Opening Scene
We jump right into a push in on a large shiny building, where a masked clown shoots a window out. It’s apparent we’re already up to our neck in some kind of shenanigans, but there’s no setup, no back story. They drop it in as part of the dialogue between characters, but it seems forced and rushed. This strikes me as an odd opening, but it becomes apparent as the film runs on for over 2:20 that this was probably done this way due to time constrains.

Joker Standing On The Street
A better setup would’ve been to see him walking around on the street, getting to the corner where he’s picked up. When he takes his mask off at the bank he’s got his makeup on, but he didn’t have time to put it on in between. So he had to stand on the street corner in his makeup. Wouldn’t this strike people as odd? The Joker is already making a name for himself, so surely someone would’ve recognized him.

The Joker is noted as an anarchist, not one for having a big plan. But the characters in the opening bank robbery scene seem to all have had a sit down, separately, where they went over the robbery plan in some detail with, presumably, Joker.

Sound Mixing
The background music is way too loud. I also think it’s featured too prominently throughout most of the movie. I know they went to great lengths to create this anxious, tense music and they want to set a tone, an ambient vibe for when the Joker is about to do something or is on camera, but this is silly. It’s all music, no substance.

Fake News
Too much of the plot is advanced through the news reports. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a commentary on modern media or what, but I hate watching people watching TV. There’s nothing that feels like more of a waste of time. Once or twice in a film, ok. I can see how that could be a necessary plot device a couple of times. But there’s like seven cuts to “GCN” – Gotham City News.

The Tumbler/Batmobile
How come no one ever shoots it in the tires? The first scene, which seems pretty unnecessary, just inserted for some quick action, the tumbler crashes into a parking garage and “poses” for a second while gunmen open fire on it. Lots of bullets seem to ricochet off the frame, but not one shot seems to catch it in the tires. With run-flat technology being what it is and the heavy duty construction of the tires, it could probably withstand some shots. But considering how much it jumps around, cuts and the general pounding the Tumbler takes, any weakness in the tires could become a big problem, real quick.

Bat Gadgets
Hope they don’t start relying on new bat gadgets in the story too much in future films. If I wanted to see that I’d watch any James Bond film. Batman uses his wealth to have these gadgets. He needs them; he’s just a regular guy. But his gadgets should be a means to help him defeat his opponents, not the reason he’s able to defeat his opponents. The reason Batman triumphs is because he’s a bright, determined man. But just a man. The reliance on too many trick weapons makes him just a masked 007 clone.

Defying the Immutable Laws of Physics
My biggest annoyance in any film, the sheer ignorance of what would really happen in a situation instead of what would make the best looking grandstand in a film. In his first appearance, where the criminals are trying to drive Batman out, Batman jumps down several floors of a parking garage onto the roof of a van which is being driven by Scarecrow trying to escape. The roof collapses and it’s not shown, but I’m sure he’s probably pinned, but why does the van immediately stop? Scarecrow’s foot was just on the gas. If someone lands on his head, he’s probably going to slam on the accelerator, not the brake.

And no, a 200+ pound man landing on the roof of a van isn’t enough to stop it dead in its tracks.

Substitute Batcave
I understand that Wayne Mansion is being rebuilt, hence no batcave. The underground bunker substitute seems ridiculously spacious. What happened to Batman keeping a low profile?

New Rachel Dawes
I couldn’t be happier that there’s no more Katie Holmes-Cruise. Maggie Gyllenhal is an alright substitute at first glance.

Harvey Dent/Two-Face
I didn’t realize his character was featured so prominently. I thought that this was a Joker vs. Batman movie. The involvement of a third major character means further watering down/complication of the storyline. I’m sure it also explains the extended running time.

Buying a plane for Cash & Flying it Over Hong Kong
C’mon. Maybe no one who’s seen the movie has ever flown privately, but the one thing I learned while in pilot school is that the FAA is even more uptight than the IRS, if that’s possible. Fart the wrong way and they investigate you. And since there are a lot fewer airplanes than cars flying around, it’s a lot easier job than you’d imagine. An unregistered plane doesn’t get off the ground and fly anywhere near civilization without being shot down. The type of plane that Wayne buys can’t make a flight across the Pacific due to fuel capacity. And it’s definitely not flying over a foreign country, particularly one as developed as Hong Kong without registering a flight plan or being shot down.

Joker Infiltrates Mob Hideout
You mean no one checked to see if he’s dead?

Batman Hand-to-Hand Combat
His moves seem choreographed. Overly choreographed, because of course they’re choreographed. He’ll strike one guy, then pauses momentarily, waiting for the next attacker to hit his mark. It seems like they’re fighting almost in slow-motion. He’s telegraphing his moves. Why people fight him the way they do is silly. The clumsy awkward swings these thugs take at Batman is just stupid. No one fights like this. A guy tries to hit Batman high, in the head. Batman deflects his punch away, and then cocks back to throw a right haymaker. The guy who threw the punch just stands there waiting to be hit. No attempt to recoil, no attempt to block or defend himself. And how come every time Batman punches someone does it sound like a small bomb has been detonated. These sound nothing like punches landing on human skin.

Escaping Hong Kong
The explosion can be seen blowing fire and shrapnel twenty feet out the window. Yet shots from inside the building show not a whiff of smoke or a sliver of glass flying near Batman and Lao. The explosive were on the outside of the window. They would’ve broken the windows by detonating them inward, not outward.

Batman Rescues Rachel
How come every time Batman jumps off a building and lands on a car he’s never hurt? He landed on the van at the beginning and was fine. He saves Rachel, seems to fall about 15 stories, can’t deploy his wings to break the fall and lands on his side on top of a taxi. He’s a little out of breath but fine. The suit can stop a knife, ok. But a 200+ pound man falling fifteen stories onto a car….there’s no amount of padding for that. And furthermore, why is there always a car right where he’s falling? He never hits the sidewalk? Not once?

Transferring Dent to County Jail
So much wrong with this scene. The Tumbler taking the garbage truck low….nice try. But the garbage truck wins in terms of mass. The Tumbler wins in terms of leverage. And their velocity is about the same, so this collision should’ve been a push. But no, the Tumbler gets under the truck, and somehow has the velocity to drive it backwards into a pillar.

The bat bike is ridiculous on a number of fronts. We know they built a real prototype which is drivable. But the way it maneuvers and handles at the rate of speed it’s driven at is just asinine for people to believe. Even worse, the two gimmicky looking moments when its front wheel spins sideways for the sharp corner and the bit where it drives up a wall and rotates the body in mid air.

And don’t get me started on the way the fifth wheel tractor trailer goes end over end. That hitch would never hold through the flip. It would come apart and the truck would land in a crumpled, but crooked heap, not just flip over onto its roof.

Joker In Jail
Why does Gordon uncuff him? So Batman feels a little less bad about beating around a handcuffed criminal? After all that, why does the guard have to stand in the room? Nothing good can come of it. Joker can only kill him or get hold of him and use him as a hostage. And being that he’s mentally unhinged and uncuffed, doesn’t that seem entirely plausible?

Dent is coughing and spitting that fuel everywhere, including the side of his face that doesn’t get torched. So why doesn’t that side burn?

And when Joker makes his phone call and the bomb goes off in jail. How come the force from the blast knocks everyone down and incapacitates them, except for Joker?

I love Alfred’s little tale about a bandit in a forest somewhere. Robbing and killing for sport, for the thrill, for no other reason but to fuck with people. And like a terrorist there is no negotiating, no trading, and no talking to them. So to catch him, they just burned the whole forest down. It’s an apt little metaphor for the dark places inside himself Batman must tap into to catch Joker.

Batman’s X-Ray Vision
It’s supposed to be sonar, I know, generated by cell phones. But the building is largely empty, so there’s no cell phones on most of the levels to tap into, if that’s even possible. Furthermore, sonar doesn’t work like x-rays, seeing through walls, through steel girders and thick concrete walls to other floors and other rooms. Sonar works by sending out wavelengths which then bounce off of things. Judging by how long it takes to “ping” something and how many “pings” you get in response you can tell how close an object is and, roughly, how big it is. It won’t paint you cute little digital reproduction of how many people are in a room on a different floor, or how the furniture is arranged in your neighbor’s apartment.

I could do without a lot of the ferry footage. All the petty hand-wringing over detonating the other boat to save themselves can be safely assumed. It’s the end result that counts, not how they get there. And given the time the film runs, a lot of it would’ve been easy cuts for me.

Two-Face’s Last Stand
Batman survives another four or five story fall, this time onto bare dirt, with nothing to break his momentum other than his legs. He gets up, talks to Commissioner Gordon and runs off into the night. I know this is a comic book action movie and you have to suspend disbelief somewhat, but if falling five stories onto your ass won’t hurt Batman, what possibly will?

Questioning Reality
The logistics of much of this doesn’t make sense often times. There’s the whole gravity thing which I’ve covered. There are mechanical and technological issues, which I’ve tried to touch on. And then there are the technical and spatial issues, mostly with all the explosions going on. Joker jokes about how cheap gunpowder and gas is, and he’s seen sliding down a mountain of cash, so resources aren’t a problem. But moving all those explosives around and rigging them on the timers is a delicate and time consuming process. Not just any former convict escaped from a mental ward can do it. But within seemingly just a span of days and sometimes hours, the buildings Dent and Dawes are contained in, Gotham General, and two ferries are rigged with thousands of cubic pounds of explosives? More thought goes into rigging the annual 4th of July fireworks shows on the riverfront here in St. Louis than this mass carnage. And no one in Gotham General noticed all the explosives set to implode the building?

Joker: Nicholson vs. Ledger
Physically, Ledger is a better Joker. Nicholson was just too short. He looked like a circus clown in the pancake makeup perfectly done and the high-waisted pants on a little man.

They’re both psychotics, but Nicholson seems dimwitted in comparison. Nicholson seemed gleeful that he was now a big-time member of Gotham’s crime element. The way he danced through the restaurant to meet with Kim Basinger is a good example of this. Ledger is darker more into fucking with people than just stirring shit up. Nicholson gassed a major parade. Deranged, ok. Ledger’s Batman keeps giving people choices, forcing them to confront their dark side, to embrace it and use it in order to survive. He breaks the pool cue in two and forces the three gangsters to fight to the death. The prize for the winner is a spot in his organization. He sends detonators to both ferries with the choice: I’ll blow you all up in one hour unless you turn on the other ship and one of you blows the other up first. Then they just have to live with the guilt, knowing they’re one step closer to embracing his mayhem. Ledger’s Joker was a darker, more mentally-ill psychotic.

Now, much of that was the writing. And a whole bunch more of it's effectiveness is good makeup. What is to Ledger’s credit is his basketcase speech pattern, the way he draw out his words. His constant lip-licking. His alternating soft-spokenness and growling. His twitchy, shifty-eyed musings. Nicholson seemed docile and medicated. Like not even he could understand what he was doing because he was doped to the gills. But Ledger’s incarnation is an off-his-meds-and-out-of-his-mind type scary. You never know if he’s going to laugh in your face or stab you in the neck.

But not even Ledger’s Joker is that scary. I wasn't up all night because I was so disturbed by it (example: I was having trouble sleeping after seeing Zodiac. That was scary). We never actually see him kill anyone. He puts a knife to people. He fires a gun at people. The implication is that he kills. But we never see it in any gory details. And by insulating the audience from that, we never get maximum terror from the madman Joker. We never see his post-murder glory, which is half the sickening nature of Joker, his total disregard for human life. The film’s makers did this to still get the PG-13 rating, so they could cash in not just with the adults, but the teenagers out with friends and dates, and even the 5th-8th grade crowd tagging along with parents. If they wanted a truly menacing character, they should’ve showed him do the full deed a time or two instead of cutting it short.

I don’t get how Joker is supposed to be this simple, lunatic anarchist, who doesn’t have an agenda, doesn’t have a plan. He’s just a madman on the loose. He tries to pass himself off as that, and so do other characters. Like a rebel without a cause. But he seems very planned out during the bank robbery, the attempted assassination on the mayor (kidnapping fifteen cops and posing as them, with the timer on the window shade), his escape from jail and setting Batman up to decide between Rachel and Dent, and his whole plot to knock Harvey Dent off his shiny, dignified pedestal by slowly turning him into a murderous lunatic of his own. Seems pretty cunning to me.

As far as this talk of an Oscar goes, I think that’s the real lunacy. A memorable, good character Ledger was, but this isn’t the type of role that wins those awards. This is a glorified action movie. There’s too many characters working their own story lines to allow for any real development of any one character here, and all of Joker’s screen time is spent on his anarchy and destruction. Joker is passed off the most easily of anyone. He’s a simple nutjob who loves killing, and explosions and fire and living without any rules. There’s not supposed to be any reason he ticks. He has no relationships with anyone to explore, therefore there’s no depth to be mined from the character. There’s a reason all those artsy character-driven movies seem to win all the awards. Because the actors who play those characters have to carry much smaller casts, for much longer periods of screen time. They have to explore their characters more deeply and in more situations than Ledger does as the Joker.

DVD Packaging
I think this is a hearty sham job Warner Brothers is putting on people. Good film, worth buying, yes. The jewel case and slip cover is alright. But $24.96 worth? I think not. The second feature disc is mighty bare. There’s a making of feature and a making of the music feature. These are both very interesting and fairly long. The making of feature has the interview audio so low and the musical score so loud though that unless you’re sitting two feet from your TV, you have trouble hearing the soft spoken (or poorly recorded) Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, among other cast & crew. But the rest of the second disc is your basic boring slideshows, cast & crew credits. Sure there are the full-screen versions of the seven or so GCN “News Reports”. Wake me up when that shit ends. There are also the eight or so scenes that were shot in IMAX, split out from the movie. I don’t know why we need second copies of these? Can’t we just rewatch the movie? How is this necessary?

My biggest pet peeve is that there are no commentary tracks. I like hearing what a director was thinking during a scene, what technical hurdles and tricks the crew faced with a particular location or stunt, or what actors found amusing or interesting during the making of the film. I want to get some information about what it was like to be there making the film. But there’s no such insight.

The biggest reason for the inflated price tag seems to be that if you insert the DVD into your computer, you have a code so you can make a digital copy on your computer. This is what consumers have long been clamoring for. Most of us don’t want to flood the streets with bootleg copies. But we want to be able to make copies of something we legally paid for and acquired in case we lose or damage our original copy. If your product is so good that we take it to a friend’s house to watch, or that it’s so good someone would want to steal it, then we want a little insurance like that. But we don’t want to pay $8-$10 extra bucks for it.

This is a case of one step forward and one step back in terms of bonus features.

FINAL ANALYSIS:
Harvey Dent was supposed to be Gotham’s white knight, an incorruptible, happy face of all that is right to rally behind. But when you bill something or someone as a knight in shining armor or the greatest film (of the year, of all comic movies, ever, etc….) well, it opens up everything for scrutiny. And beauty often seduces us on the road to truth. There’s a wonderful parallel between Harvey Dent and The Dark Knight as a film. Harvey Dent did a lot of things right, and that was good for the city. But when he became the golden boy, the chosen one, he was put under a bigger microscope and the imperfections began to show.

Tell me The Dark Knight is a great, great film. One you’ll rewatch many times over and be entertained, and I’m right there with you. Tell me it’s the film of the years and Heath Ledger should be airmailed an Oscar, and I’ll start looking for reasons to tell you why not. And that’s how I feel after months upon months of hype and now finally seeing the picture. Very good, yes. Great? No, not quite.

For starters, the star here is Christian Bale, the hero is Batman. But with the juicy plot lines of Joker, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and even Commissioner Gordon, Wayne/Batman is marginalized. He’s pushed to the fringe of the spotlight with a watered down part. Bale’s Batman is still the best ever. And now Ledger’s Joker is the finest incarnation of that character as well. But the sum of the parts here doesn’t equal the greater whole. The development of a young Bruce Wayne, from childhood to finding his way as Batman in Batman Begins still triumphs this picture. At the end of Batman Begins I got chills. I felt something that can’t be put into words. We see the full idea of Batman come to fruition. Bruce Wayne goes from troubled, angry youth adrift in this world to full-fledged hero. Here, we learn little more about Batman. It’s a new villain or two, new challenges, and Batman going through the motion to keep Gotham safe. The action is still great, but the story that action gift wraps isn’t quite as good; it doesn’t tug at you the same way, therefore, it’s not as good.

Report Card
Christian Bale/Batman/Bruce Wayne............A-
Heath Ledger/Joker.........................................A
Aaron Eckhardt/Harvey Dent/Two-Face.....B
Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon............B+
Maggie Gyllenhall/Rachel Dawes....................B
Michael Caine/Alfred........................................A
Morgan Freeman/Lucious Fox.......................B
Rest of Cast........................................................B-
Writing................................................................C+

Overall: 8.0/10

I see that about 400,000 voters at IMDB have given this an average of 9.0 and that it's ranked the #4 film of all-time on their site. Seems a little knee-jerk to me. Look, it's good. But it's not great. Check back with me in 10 years and we'll see if it's aged as well as the other great films throughout history. On another note, I'm becoming concerned with Christian Bale. He seems to have stopped taking interesting characters in challenging roles in smaller films for big production, glitzy features. He was locked into this one, I know. But his next film out of the shoot is going to be the new Terminator movie. I don't know how he's going to shine in the role of John Connor. It's been done before, and the focus of the Terminator movies is always the machines and elaborate fight scenes. Seems like a waste of his acting talents to continue taking these roles.

Finding That Christmas Spirit

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:32:00 +0000

I've spent the last couple of days battling the elements and my own annual holiday reluctance. For starters, it's been about 4 degrees the last two days. Sure, the high made it all the way up to 12, but with wind and the desolate chill of the night dropping further in the other direction, I'd peg the mean temp at about four degrees for the last 48 hours. This year, only my hot water froze. Last year it was all of it. So I spent the weekend shower-free. More fun.

I moved the space heater into the bathroom and cranked it up to max, closed the door and hoped for a quick thaw. It was quite the contradiction. I'd walk into the bathroom and it would be 90 degrees. So hot and stuffy it was hard to breath. Then I'd walk out, close the door behind me and the rest of the apartment has to be in the high forties. It took time, and the piercing heat of a 14 degree high today, but we did it. I came home to hot water in the shower.

I've also spent most of the last couple of days sipping ginger ale, monitoring my fantasy football championships, and watching some festive holiday movies. I have two first place finishes and a third so far, and my one other team earned a trip to the finals next week. So that's been good.

On the Christmas front, it's another ambivalent year. I didn't get smashed at the office x-mas party again, I did worse. I got just buzzed enough to sing karaoke for about two hours. You should've seen me knock Tears for Fears out of the park. I also filmed most of it. Why? Who knows? But it was disgustingly awful. Although I did get to covertly film a couple of nice sets of cleavage. I had a co-worker make out with me after a Christmas party for one of our brokers two weeks ago. So maybe I had the camera out in case she wanted to get even more randy.

If it's going to be this cold, it should just snow already. Because then at least I could go outside and play with the pup. But when it's this cold, there's no playing. So instead I can sit around and re-rank the greatest Christmas movies of all time. When I last left off, this is where we stood. Here's what I'm thinking right now:

Rank. Film (Year Released) Last ranking...peak position

10. The Santa Clause (1994)...9...4
I still like Tim Allen in this role, but it looks weaker compared to the classics. And the kid is still annoying as all get out.

9. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)...10...9
I still haven't gotten the chance to rewatch this in the last couple of years, but every time I see the cover of the Jim Carrey remake it makes me miss the original just a little more.

8. A Christmas Carol (1986)...8...8
I wish they'd run this on tv. I can't find it anywhere on the Internet illegally, and I don't really want to pay solid money for it. I can wait you out, WB11.

7. Elf (2003)...6...6
Will Ferrell. James Caan. Artie Lange? Why not.

6. Scrooged (1989)...5...5
Just rewatched this Monday night. Still solid, but anything here between 6-9 can be flip-flopped in any order.

5. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)...7...5
Watching this now. I jumped this over Scrooged because Chevy Chase is a smidge better in his starring role than Bill Murray.

4. Frosty The Snowman (1969)...4...4
Watching this next. I'm partial to the classics.

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)...3...3
Holding steady. Just rewatched this prior to Lampoon.

2. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)...2...2
Hoping I can catch this on tv here in the next couple of days. I love the '60's Fu Manchu that Burl Ives' snowman character had. How'd they know it would be so popular?

1. Bad Santa (2003)...1...1
Also rewatched this last night. It's the post-modern masterpiece of new Christmas movies. An instant-classic.

Auditing My Self-Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:18:00 +0000

So about a year ago, I set these goals for 2008. You know me, I'm more analytical than Freud. So let's go through these and see what kind of success I had for meeting my goals and, uh, I dunno, experiencing a personal growth or some hippie sounding bullshit.

Eat less. Result: Push. Hard to track this. I had ups and downs.
Become a minimum of 18.79% more environmentally friendly. Result: Success. Hard to quantify the exact percentage here, but I didn't wash my truck as much, so I wasted less water and flushed less soap and chemicals into my folks' yard. Also, on the subject of water conservation, I almost always peed in my shower if I only had to pee rather than the toilet and flushing. I also kept to recycling all year long and I think I even farted less, so +1 to you, Mr. Ozone. Also, I donated money to the Save the Tasmanian Devil cause.
Open a predatory bird sanctuary..... Result: Undisclosed. In the interests of national security, I have no comment on this. And don't read too much into all the bird droppings always on my truck.
Fix broken taillight on truck. Result: Success. Barely. I broke it in mid-December 2007, and I ordered the new part in early November 2008.
Finally get around to my Manifesto. Result: Failure. I could grasp at straws here, but while I came up with a few things and jotted them down, there is no actual Manifesto to speak of.
Start own religion. Result: Incomplete. Hard to start a relgion based on a Manifesto when you don't do the Manifesto.
Pay MORE in taxes for political leverage. Result: Yup.
Launch joint partnership into Jack In The Box tacos. Result: Failure
Stop shoplifting paperclips, start shoplifting more useful items. Result: Success. I haven't had to actually shoplift anything useful because I really loaded up on some sweet gel ink pens at the PIIAI convention this year.
Petition the FDA about Girl Scout Cookies. Result: Failure. I wasn't as motivated to do this as I didn't get hit up to buy any cookies.
Bank error in my favor. Result: Success. This might be a technicality, but about four years ago I bought a bunch of diet pills from Trim Spa. What shows up in my mail this year sometime in August, even after I've moved since? A check for something like $12 or $16 for a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against the drug's makers. I'm claiming it.
Breed master race of intellgent dogs. Result: Failure. I can't take full credit here. While I did get a puppy, Sadie, and while she is extremely good at understanding a wide variety of commands and hand signals at about 8 months old, she does not satisfy the entire portion of this goal that was a run-on sentence about the Homeland Security Dept using them to protect landmarks.
Stop being irritating prick at the office. Result: Success. I'd say I've come a long way in office relations in the last year. Next year's goal will be to come a long way in sexual office relations.
Urinate in public more to cut down on use of water. Result: Another big check in the "HELL YES" column. I think I've blogged about several urinating in public incidents this year.
Buy cooler shoes. Result: Success. I'm on fire. I got this one done very early in the year. I'd say my $80 Asics running shoes qualify as cool, and getting them for $24 on clearance counts.
Get a haircut. Result: Success. Luckily the goal wasn't get a better haircut, because I'm not sure I would've passed that one.
Get American Idol taken off the air or marginalized... Result: I'm claiming success via a very distant, couple time removed connection. The show has been marginalized a bit. It's not the juggernaut it once was. There are a lot of factors contributing here. But one certainly is that Howard Stern's massive audience jumped on board with a website (votefortheworst.com?) and their idea to vote for the worst possible candidate to go as far in the show as possible. And Sanjaya made it as far as what, #8? He made it so far they had to put him on the Idol Tour. And it drove the regular fans nuts, the people who should be locked up or castrated for being kooks. I subscribe to Howard Stern, so in some way, I'm connected to this occurrence.
If elected Dictator for Life, free Paxil for everyone. Result: Push. I wasn't elected President/Dictator for Life, so this one is null and void.
Stop putting Canadien money in Salvation Army buckets during the holidays. Result: Success. I didn't put any money in their buckets. I prefer to save Tasmanian Devils.
Stop snickering when people say "penal code." Result: Push. I don't recall anyone using the term in my presence this year.
Pull my weight in the whole "world peace" movement. Result: Success. I'm all for getting the hell out of Iraq. And I think gays should be allowed to marry and make themselves miserable just like most hetero couples. I think those count.
Bump heat up to 58 during winter months. Result: Incomplete. Winter isn't over. I've touched 58 degrees a couple of times, but this goal implied I kept it steady at 58. That hasn't happened yet.
Work on juggling skills. Result: Success. I tried, but little progress was made.
Stop making stupid bullet-point lists. Result: Not even close, mark it zero, Dude.

Final Tallies
Sucess: 13/24
Failures: 5/24
Push: 3/24
Incomplete: 2/24
????: 1/24

That was actually a pretty successful year for me, personally. Way to go self!

Inside the Glory

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Many a fantasy championship roster probably prominently feature a couple of participants in tonight's Indianapolis @ Jacksonville game. Let's survey the (potential) damage:

Melvin Eats Blubber
I eeked into the playoffs (but earned that spot, nonetheless) then soundly dispatched of the #1 seed, a 10-4 team, by 18+ points. I might've been a little lucky in that his squad really seemed to peak about three weeks ago. This week it's the title bout and I'm up against the #2 seed, a team named FreightTrain, who concluded the regular season with a 9-5 record and knocked me off twice in the regular season. Now the tables have turned, as I'm a 39-point heavy favorite. One of my QBs is Peyton Manning, who I will be doing a raindance for to rain TDs upon the Jaguars secondary.

Tobias Is Queen Mary
I wrapped the regular season at 9-5, then drew the same opponent in the first round. His team has fallen apart, so it was another easy first round victory. This week I've got the #7 seed, some dude named Fighting Irish who finished the regular season at 6-8. How you're allowed to make the playoffs with a record like that is beyond me. I'm a 37 point favorite. That's not a giant margin in this format, but it's substantial.

Triple Midgetation
I bullied my way through the regular season and I'm doing the same in the playoffs. Two weeks ago I bounced the #8 seed, The Bomb Squad, by 70 points (an unbelievably huge margin in this league's format), I followed that up last week by sending the #5 seed, Up North Colts Fan, home with a 32 point spanking, and in the bottom half of the bracket, I got some favors. The one or two other teams I was impressed by got knocked out by the #6 seed, someone calling himself Aesir, who was 6-7 in the regular season and is now smack talking himself up as "this year's Cinderella." I quickly reminded him that at the end of Cinderella, she turns back into a dirty broad riding in a pumpkin. He hasn't responded. I'm a 19.5 point favorite this week, which is still a pretty sound asswhupin'.

Dr. Funke & Frank the Tank
I lump these two together because they both crashed and burned. Dr. Funke wasn't such a surprise. As the #3 seed, I slipped by the #6 seed, a 6-6 squad by 22 points two weeks ago. Ok, that was nice. But last week, I ran into the #2 seed, a 10-2 squad that's about as much of a buzzsaw as Frank the Tank (11-1*) was. I got trounced by 26 points. Meanwhile, captain buzzsaw, got a kick in the seat by the #5 seed, the retardedly named ??????????, who was a paltry 6-6 during the regular part of the slate. Almost to a man, Frank's roster tanked their performances. Despite that, I was still in the hunt up through Monday night. But Brian Westbrook, chief punk scapegoat on this team, managed only 9 of his projected 29 points. So I lost and now I have to play with myself. Wait. Now I have to play myself. That other part comes later.