{ Monthly Archives }
I’m happy that D.C.’s getting a baseball team. I still don’t like baseball and am unlikely to go to two games (I’ll go to one, when the new stadium opens). But it makes people really happy. DC should have it’s own baseball team. Now as long as they don’t move and get bought by some scumbag who later becomes President…
Armstead passed away on the 16th. No, I hadn’t heard of her, either. But I know her songs. I ran across a reference to one recently, which caused me to download this. Seems appropriate to allow you to do the same. I swear, you probably know this song. Get past the cheesy beginning.
[from Jeff Parker's Mystifying Oracle, he makes cool comics]
Funny thing happened to me this weekend: I read a lot of different blogs and they all have different things they focus on. One of them, Stereogum, has an interesting fascination with all of the pop divas; the Britneys and Madonnas and Xtinas etc… Stereogum always has these terrible paparazzi photos, too, that I think are pretty funny. Most of them have been Britney, recently, because she was getting married (and she has become ridiculous since getting with her new dude). I happened upon a Reuters item at Google News on Sunday morning about how Britney was telling people she was pregnant. I was sure Stereogum would be all over it, and be funny about it, too. I hopped over there and there was no mention of it, so I sent Scott, the Stereogum guy, an email to let him know. He posted the story later and gave me credit for the info linking the blog here.
So now I’m one of those guys who combs for Britney scoop. Great.
Ethan and I are back to pick some games and give a little insight into this weekend’s NFL games. Just so you know, Ethan’s comments are in yellow and mine are in white.
Just 4 games this week. We do these in between our jobs so some weeks we will pick more games than others. This will be a light football week.
COLTS over Packers – This is a pretty easy pick. The Colts might be without Edgerrin James but Dominic Rhodes has been more than adequate as a fill-in so I don’t expect much drop off there. Manning showed last week, against a tough Titans team, that he can win a game when he needs to (except against the Patriots) so I don’t expect any let down for the Colts offense as a whole. Defensively the Colts beat up the Titans last week and the same game plan should work against the Packers. They’ll give up a bunch of yards on the ground, though, and that’s where the Packers might have a chance. Favre and Green Bay’s suspect receiving corps won’t be enough to get it done on the road so Ahman Green will have to have an exceptional day (and no fumbles!) for the Pack to win. I don’t see that happening so my pick is the Colts. Green Bay has lost two DTs and it really showed last week when Thomas Jones (of all people) ran at will through the Packers D-line. And that was the Bears. I think Edge will play and be spelled with Rhodes and I think they’ll combine for over 150 yards. The Packers will run as well… this could be a short, chain-moving game. I give the Colts the nod because of Manning, the future Hall-of-Famer who has yet to peak.
TITANS over Jaguars – Everyone’s preseason sexy dark horse AFC team, the Jaguars, are 2-0. It seems the current story-of-the-week is to compare them to last year’s Panthers. There are some similarities. The second-year coach, the young QB, the defense-first mentality. And twice they’ve found a way to win in the fourth quarter. It’s an apt comparison and they could win 9 games this season. But I still like the Titans at home here. Tennessee is a perennial contender and Steve McNair is not yet nicked up. My gut feeling is that the Titans have dropped a notch from last year, but that still leaves them in the top-6 teams in the league. If this was week 1, maybe they wouldn’t have seen the Jaguars coming and would have been ripe for the upset. Then of course, I’d be saying, “Well, the Jaguars have no chance…”. I look for the Titans to win with authority. Tennessee is a 6-point favorite at home so I think the bookies are expecting a closer game than I am. I see a Jacksonville team that snuck out a win against a sub-par Bills team on the last play of the game and then beat a suspect Denver team that really hasn’t found any sort of offensive rhythm yet. I’m not a believer. The Jaguars will need to dramatically ramp up their offensive production if they want to hang with the Titans and I just don’t see it happening. Titans win big.
ATLANTA over Arizona – This will be a good test for Vick & Co. They’re heavy favorites to win this game against an injury-depleted Arizone team. The Falcons should have Warrick Dunn back after he spent most of the week out of practice. If Atlanta has to rely too heavily on the run they might be in for a closer game than they were figuring on but I still see them winning easily. The Cardinals just don’t have enough healthy parts offensively to compete in a shootout (and then don’t have the defense to prevent a blowout). Falcons win big. Yeah. In my confidence-point pool, this is my top game, the game I feel most confident about. It’s like a Zen riddle: “What happens when a horrible team gets decimated by injuries?” It doesn’t really have an answer. The only answer is the reaction you have within. My reaction is sadness. Falcons win this and it’s not close. Who’s McCown’s backup, anyway?
REDSKINS over Cowboys – Dammit, I’m going to be bold. Gibbs has been preparing for this game for seven months. Ramsey will be mentally ready to take the field, unencumbered by the hot disappointment of losing his job to an out-of-towner. LaVar and Barrow are still out, but it’s not like the Cowboys running game scares anyone but themselves. If you read my Ramsey post, you know I like the switch at QB. The best way to beat the Cowboys is to go up top with Laveranues against those suspect corners. And it’s at home, which could be a factor. Sure the cockroaches will be out, but I think there will be plenty of loud Redskins fans, too. I’m calling for the upset. Let’s see some magic. I know it sounds funny, but the ‘Skins are a slight favorite in this game. This week’s LaVar injury has tightened the spread up a little, but they’re still favored. I like the Redskins here, too. They have a stifling defense and I think you’re right about Gibbs game-planning for 7 months. This is the epitome of a must win game for the Redskins and I think they will pull it out. The Cowboys looked terrible last week against a mediocore Cleveland team and I don’t see them making great strides on Monday night. Redskins win by at least enough to cover.
CNBC is on here all day at work. It’s cool that we get tv all day but because we only watch CNBC we see the same commercials over and over and over.
Sometimes that’s a good thing. The new Arca Ex campaign is touting the huge volume they trade every day.
This commercial is my new fave. It starts simply enough with a couple stopping in the park to enjoy a bag of popcorn. A pigeon flutters down. The girl tosses some popcorn to the bird. Watch the movie to see what happens. It’s pretty funny, in a creepy way.
He wrote and drew it all so it’s pretty funny.
It’s at NYT so there might be a registration.
Upon arriving at the beach a couple weeks ago, I picked up my pre-ordered copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. I haven’t finished it. If/when I do, I’ll let you know what I think. My intial impressions are that it’s big and written in a very “English” style. Not ye olde Enflish or anything like that. Just that the sentence construction is more British than American. It’s not an easy read.
Anyway, I started it on Saturday and was only 100 pages in by midday Tuesday. I realzied that I likely wasn’t going to finish it at the beach and that wouldn’t do. I have to finish something when I spend a week at the beach. Last year I came to the beach halfway through Harry Potter 3 and finished it, three other books, and started a fourth & fifth.
So I set JS&MN aside and picked up Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. It had received strongly favorable reviews in the NYT and the Post. It’s nonfiction about some recreational shipwreck divers who dive to an unknown object 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. The object is very deep, deeper than 98% of divers can reach. They find an unidentifiable U-Boat that, according to the American and German governments, shouldn’t be there. The book is about the divers’ quest to identify the wreck.
It’s a great book. It has all the prequisites for a good fiction drama, with the added bonus of being true. There’s conflict, despair, death, and redemption. And in the end, the book wasn’t what I thought it was about. Not in an M. Night Shymalan “gotcha” way or anything like that. I just realized halfway through that I was reading a different story than I had expected. And it’s a great story. I’ll leave the nature of the true story up to you.
It’s well-written and interestingly structured. The author tells you what you need to know about deep wreck diving, but writes it for the layman. I definitely recommend it.
It’s taken me two months to do it but I’ve finally passed the halfway-full point on my 40GB iPod. It’s a *ton* of music and I love the fact that I can just move it around the house.
The iPod is a magical, magical thing. Best money I’ve spent in a while.
SO, I happened across a copy of the new Hot Snakes record, Audit In Progress. It is excellent. Heavy and loud, just like they do it.
And here’s a copy of ‘Hi-Lights’, also from Audit In Progress, straight from the Swami website. Straight rockers.
