A bit about TV...

If you like to watch TV and you don't watch Boston Legal, you should. It appears most people call it a "drama", but it's funnier on the whole than any sitcom out there, and more interesting too. Plus, it's got the Shat. You can't go wrong with Shatner. Especially if he's in full self deprecation mode. (For further evidence of this beyond what's available on ABC every Tuesday, rent "Free Enterprise", which may be difficult to find, but has perhaps the best movie reference to Logan's Run)

I'm Denny Crane, dammit, and when Denny Crane talks, EF Hutton listens!

A few minor thoughts on the last weekend...

First off, Texas sucks. That game really exposed to the world how weak they are. Or at least that's what they'd be saying about Texas if Texas were ND. Instead, it's Texas had a courageous comeback against an upset-minded Texas Tech team. Because of their courageous comeback, they get moved up in the standings (well, their courageous comeback and USC finally actually choking one away to a crappy team instead of almost choking one away to a crappy team as they have been doing the last month or so.) And ND is the perpetually overrated media darling. Of course, noone's going to listen to me when I say this, but I have a theory:

ND is always overranked. Until the season starts. At which point, when they lose the first one, because there's a mindset of "ND is always overrated"(which is something that the same half the AP voters putting ND in the top five were writing as they were casting their ballot with ND written in at #1...), ND then gets dropped about 4-5 spots below where we would otherwise be. ND lost to Michigan, and after close wins against MSU and UCLA dropped in the minds of the voters. I note that at no point in either of those games was it a full three TD lead (and in the case of UCLA, never was ND down by as much as a TD, and I'd take even odds at worst in a UCLA-T.T. game).

Ah, hell... now I'm pissed at myself. I hate people who bitch and whine about getting screwed by the polls. But I've already started, so I may as well finish:

Goddamit, these poll voter asswipes are fucking us over.

A caption contest...

I started this over at ND Nation, and gave those folks their shot at it, but this is a photo that needs a good caption... I don't know why.

Troy Hurtubise is my hero...

If you've never seen it, you need to rent the documentary "Project Grizzly". This is a movie that follows around a guy for several months whilst he completes construction of and tests his 6th attempt at a bear-proof suit. There are a few scenes of pure physical comedy genius as the guy (Troy Hurtubise, if you forgot to read the subject line) brings out some archive footage tests of prior models. But far better than that are his monologue scenes, especially towards the end. Without the delivery, or the setup, it doesn't sound that great, but when a man talks about threatening a grizzly bear that "as sure as god made little green apples, I'm going to take both of these (bowie knives), and shove them right up your ass, and that's a fact"... that's not something you soon forget. So, my advice to you, again, is to rent "Project Grizzly". If you're a little off kilter, or at least find amusement in other people who are, you'll love it.

Well, my bowling league started last Friday...

the genius of this particular league is, we bowl during happy hour. 2 buck 24 oz. drafts, and I get out of work 2 hours early to get them. And, I apparently have turned into a halfway decent bowler over the last three years or so, upping my average from ~135 to somewhere a little over 180 (as of the end of last year).

As for football, ND won, so I am happy, and I would bitch about the polls like all the other ND folk are likely to do, but I don't really give a shit about that. If we wanted to be higher, we should've beaten Michigan. Instead, we got our asses handed to us. That said, what I don't see so far in the reports of the game is this: Credit to Quinn for a pump fake that froze the defense and allowed Samardzija to break free for the easy reception, after which he only had one tackle to break on the way to the game winning TD. I have the game Tivoed, and watched that play about 15 times, and it's a thing of beauty to watch him set up about 3 UCLA defenders who had Shark bracketed, freeze the lot of them, and then roll out of the pocket and make the sure pass into a ton of space.

And then there's the Tigers- World Freakin Series! Woo-HOO! (ok, so they're only 1-1 in the WFS at the moment, but that just means they have to win 3 of 5. They can do that.) But Todd Fucking Jones (I'm pretty sure that's his legal name) is a damn heart attack. Why is it that this guy can't come out of the bullpen with a three run lead, get three quick outs, and go home? No, you've gotta come out, get 2 outs, put the winning run on base, then get that third out. Fucker. Maybe next year, Zumaya can be the closer. I have no doubt he can blow 12 pitches past 3 guys and get out of the ninth without a baserunner.

My Psychotic Boss, Part 2

Pretend for a moment that my psychotic boss's name is Smith.

Heard today at the office... "You know, I think I'm going to start hunting the Smiths. Not a one of them is anything other than a waste of human life".

So Miami had a brawl last weekend

The beauty of it is, they apparently had a group of several hundred utes (several hundred what, Mr. Gambini?)... youths there as part of a program/event entitled "join the team, not a gang".

What on earth posessed anyone to bring a group of kids to MIAMI, of all places, under that guise? Maybe for the "don't just join a gang, join a gang that plays football" event, but that doesn't have the proper cheesy PSA sound.

More than one way to skin a cat...

Why can't men and women come to the same conclusion through the same means?

Why are the polls taken on Sunday?

Especially the coaches' poll. It's freakin ridiculous. Your typical coach wakes up Saturday, spends the morning preparing for his game, the afternoon at his game (if he's a halfway decent coach, he pays attention to his own game to the point of obliviousness to all others), 2 hours after the game in press conferences/team/coaches meetings, and if it's an away game, the rest of the night traveling home. For home games, they probably spend the rest of the night looking at the film of the game again.

And... they have to vote the top 25 teams early enough that the results are released by noon the next day. So, essentially, we have a group of people determining the rankings who are completely clueless to 117 of 119 teams they're supposed to know about until they wake up Sunday morning, which is going to be perhaps as much as 5(probably 2-3 for PAC-10 coaches) hours before the ballot is due. Five hours in which they're probably still spending most of the time looking over bits and pieces of their own games and those of their next week's opponent. So how are these people supposed to make an informed decision? Apparently, they're not, which is why you have things like Georgia Tech ranked ahead of Virginia Tech the day after GT stomped VT, and then the following week through the magic of the bye week (and someone actually informing the voters by that time of the result of the game) GT passing them.

This particular issue is easy to fix- release the polls (especially the coaches' poll, the AP guys are supposed to pay attention to a lot of games for their Sunday morning columns anyway) on Tuesday. That way, you can at least rest assured that all the voters will have had a chance to settle themselves for a little while and, perhaps, even had the time to check a newspaper for some box scores on which to base their votes. Of course, this does nothing to alleviate the conflict of interest inherent in the coaches' poll, namely, these guys all work for institutions that stand to benefit financially if their peers/conference members get the good bowls, and thus they have an incentive to vote those teams higher. But that's an argument for another day.

Thoughts on yesterday's football

Well, now that I've had time to eliminate the remaining alcohol from last night's drinking, it's time to gather a review:

1. ND fans, or at least the subset thereof over at ND Nation are a strange bunch. Last week, ND trounced Purdue pretty good, holding a 3 TD lead most of the time after the mid-2nd quarter. This led to people screaming for defensive coordinator Rick Minter's head(granted, there were almost 500 yards for Purdue, but the game was over well before halftime). After yesterday's Stanford game, there was all sorts of handwringing about how we were going to get screwed in the polls because we "only" won by 21. Never mind that Stanford never threatened to score other than that first quarter field goal and the TD they got by suckering in Ndukwe with a sucker play.
   
2. Sadly, we seem to be succeptible to sucker plays, as that was pretty much the same thing that happened early agaisnt Michigan State- everyone chased after the ball after a handoff, forgetting that he was still allowed to throw.
   
3. The John L. Smith death march is going to come to an ugly end. I'm thinking this could be a potentially winless Big Ten season for the Spartans. Mr. Smith, from now on, I suggest you concentrate on next week's opponent, and not some perceived slight from a week and a half ago, hell, you were still talking about ND at your post-Illinois press conference.
   
4. Michigan looks pretty good.
5. Go Tiggers!(ok, so that's baseball, but hey, the Yankees are out, so all is well in the world)
6. UGa- you stink.
7. Auburn- You too. Mr. Tuberville, shut the hell up about these playoffs, because you wouldn't make it into a playoff most years anyway, so you're not getting screwed. Also, it might help if once in a while, you played an actual team that isn't in your conference.
8. I said it several weeks back, and I'll say it again: I don't think anyone's particularly good this year. The Big Ten(sic) is awful outside UM/tOSU, so those two should run the table. Outside of that, I see no real contenders to finish undefeated in the BCS (I figure Rutgers, WVU, and Loiusville will go 1-1 against each other, and Florida will choke one away to someone. USC doesn't look like they have the stuff to win out). So there's going to be about 12 1-loss teams and the winner of UM-tOSU, and a whole lot of whining about getting screwed come the end of the season. This is going to be a fun two months.
9. As a final note on ND, someone noted that 19 freshmen made the field against Stanford. That seems like a lot. Maybe it's because we have no sophomores or juniors on the team, and Weis figures he has to get these guys some time now, because next year, they're going to be on the field all game, every game, all year(high school seniors, take notice- this means there's a lot of space for you to work your way in early). At least most of these guys look pretty good.
10. I'm normally not one to take potshots at Ty, as now that he's at UW, he's not our problem anymore. But yesterday was the first time this season his incompetence really showed through. When the referees spend 20, 30 seconds getting ready to spot the ball, your play should be in, the players lined up, and the QB under center before the whistle is blown, and the ball should be snapped at the whistle. I've seen it done a hundred times. Yet your team let the final seconds tick off without so much as even an ugly clusterfuck of a miscommunicated playcall, and the game ends with your team standing around doing nothing, while having possession of the ball and down less than a TD. Good going.
    

My psychotic boss, part 1

I expect this to be a running series, but there's something really wrong with my boss. The guy is angry. I mean, really angry. All the time. And I'm not talking about your typical boss who gets pissed when you're five minutes late, or the micromanager who gets in the way. I'm talking about a guy who, when the phone rings, has a tendency to give a nice little "god-DAMMIT!" that the entire office can hear. For some reason, he has this irrational hatred of the telephone, and has threatened on numerous occasions to desecrate the grave of Alexander Graham Bell. (yes, I'm serious). But, for today's lesson, I present the following evidence of why my boss is a total psycho:

"You know that combination iPod/cellphone? I want to get one of the ads for those things, and paste it to the wall and use it for target practice. 500 points to shoot the iPod, 1000 if you can shoot the buds out of the girl's ears without killing her."

Yep... taking target practice at cellphone users in the ads. That's real healthy. At least today he was talking about doing this to a piece of paper. at least, I think he was. Better than some other days...