weekend in preview

... and cue weekend!

Sport: Ah yes, the return of the New York Football Giants off of the bye week. Will they get off the schnide and get a win after going 0-4 for their past four games? They face an Atlanta team who also come into match at 5-4, also searching to break a bit out of a bit of a funk. Who will rid themselves of the stench of defeat and who will dive fully into the doo doo pit of a 5-5 record? The objective/pessimistic New York sports fan in me wants to say that it will be the Giants taking the poop bath this weekend, so don't expect great things from Eli's Band of Merry (G-)Men. I am pretty sure I could play safety for them at this point, so I kind of expect Matty Ice (does he know that his nickname reminds thousands of people of really shitty beer they drank in college?) to tear the defense a new one. In other, non-handegg news, my soccer men of Madrid are taking on Racing Santander this weekend in a tune-up match for El Clasico, which takes place next week. Racing are pretty terrible about this time of the year, standing at the mighty 17 spot in the table going into the match, so I expect Madrid to win. But will they win with anything resembling grace, style, and team play? Of course not. Will they win next week at Barcelona? Of course not. Will this guy be the coach come Monday, November 30? Of course not. Looks like Madrid are in for The Gene Hackman, professional Uzbekistan coach man!

Cinema: Alright, we all know that New Moon opens in a matter of hours. I will not pretend to notice or care beyond that simple acknowledgement because, well I don't care to notice or care for it. We all know that vampire-based cinema peaked with Interview with the Vampire, a movie featuring then-sane Tom Cruise, then-relatively-childless Brad Pitt, and a then-young Kirsten Dunst. It was fantastic! Anyways, back to the modern day. Is it terrible that I am very intrigued by The Blind Side? I am a sucker for football movies (The Replacements still has a special place in my heart - why?), so naturally this one pairing a warm story and some football naturally makes sense for me. I may spring for a movie ticket to catch a Sunday matinee, depending on how the reviews shake out. Right now, its holding steady at a fantastically mediocre 48, so it looks like I will be waiting for DVD.

Liquor: I really have yet to do enough damage to my new bottle of Eagle Rare, so graciously given to me by dear friend emma. Perhaps some comfort the likes of which only bourbon can provide will be necessary after the Giants shit their season.

Whimsy: So, I look forward (as you all should) to getting a geography lesson this weekend. Most of these renderings are surprisingly decent (Sherrod Brown's Ohio is really quite convincing), save for the abomination provided to us by Georgia's Saxby Chambliss. Really shocking stuff from the senior senator, a purported University of Georgia alum, and all around Georgia man. In case you have a distant relationship with geography, the state he decided to offer up bears a much stronger resemblance to Mississippi than it does to his home state of Georgia. Only a couple of states off, friend! Nice try.

And now its time for the Office - 30 Rock comedy hour of power. Go weekend, go!

tuesday museday

Ah, the super-late edition of the muse!

A single topic, possibly insane one at that!

So, things have been pretty boring as of late, in many respects. My sports teams are either in a holding pattern (Madrid), tanking (Giants), miserable (Rangers), and unwatchable (Knicks). Everyone has kind of settled out to predictability. Wonderful. Professionally, work is kind of meh, as kids are reluctant to come in to work on applications before December, when they will collectively have a shit fit as they realize that applications are due right after Christmas break ends. Womps there. Congress can't get a damn thing done with regard to anything good (Obama isn't getting much traction in getting judges appointed? Sixty vote majority, my ass.) Its all very rich right now. How to solve this? What would bring me, the country, and the WOLRD out of this morass?

Alien invasion.

Come again?

Yes, I could really go for an alien invasion right about now. Now I am not talking about Kang and Kodos style domination of the planet, really who wants to be a slave to some tentacled horrors? No, no, the kind of alien invasion I am talking about is the kind that you get to see in movies like Independence Day (am I continuing last week's pattern?), where the shit hits the fan for a while, lots of shit gets blown up, but in the end the aliens have some kind of hilarious weakness that allows us to pwn them with our puny, non-intergalactic technology. Alright, yes, I realize that is clearly a sub-optimal way of improving things in this country/world, but at the same time you can't deny the potential power of it.

1) Economic Problems Solved: with the expected loss of labor due to the devastation (sorry folks!), and the increased need for infrastructure repair (see previously linked picture), I see many of our economic problems taking care of themselves after the invasion/war. Everyone likes a good postwar boom time, so I say let the good times roll!

2) World Bands Together: surely nothing could bring us together more than having to collectively, as a planet, have to fend off an alien invader. Partisan attacks and political quibbles would be minimized in an ultimate test of planetary survival. That is, unless some rogue nation decides to cut a deal with the aliens in exchange for a lenient slavery policy. I am looking at you, North Korea!

3) Sweet New Technology: you thought your Android 2.0 based phone was cool? Think about the awesome technology we could cop if we harnessed all the good tidbits inside the alien ships (once of course we destroyed the aliens inside) and used them to our own ends. Cancer? Psht, these Klingon bitches figured that shit out millennia ago. Recycling? Look at this doodad they have here, it can turn these copies of Going Rogue into food for starving children. The payoff would be tremendous.

Really these are only the top 3 benefits to be gained by successfully fending off some kind of epic attack. There are definitely at least two more, and quite possibly four! I will let your imaginations run wild!

/ return to sanity next week, or sooner.

avert your eyes!

Starting today, I believe, two of the new Nike Pro Combat football uniforms are going to be featured in "rivalry games." Tech and TCU are the first intrepid teams to don these "uniforms" in real games, and I am curious to see the fan reaction to these ghastly/weird looking unis. Tech's isn't horrible, but I must say that TCU's make me want to gouge my eyes out. The whole thing with the "spiky extensions of our cranium" and "blood shooting" and "super fast frog agility" or whatever is pretty terrible; it seems like some intern at Nike was researching what the hell a "horned frog" (actually not a frog?) is, and saw that it can shoot poisoned blood out of its eyes when threatened... whereupon some middle manager decided to run with it and - zap! there it is in the uni! Awesome!

---- oh it appears that in the middle of writing this post, Ohio State's terrible uniform has also gone live on the site ----

---- never mind, it was just their t-shirt, that also comes with an overwrought explanation ----

Anyways, here is a link to a site where you can see most of the features of all the uniforms. Texas' is probably one of the best, as it doesn't change the uniform all that much from their already clean, classy look. FSU and LSU are the clear losers here, with FSU looking like some kind of mutant version of the Atlanta Falcons uniform and LSU looking like they swapped uniforms with UW. Not so fantastic. The linked site does a pretty good job of poking fun at the other aspects of the unis, so I will leave it to them to eviscerate Nike for this fairly ludicrous campaign.

weekend in preview

Welcome to the new, freewheeling Thursday feature, Weekend in Preview!

Because we all know the weekend starts tonight.

What to watch out for this weekend...

Sport: Actually no too much going on here for my teams of choice. Mercifully, the Knicks will be sparing the world of their horror this weekend. It turns out you can’t blow a 1st half lead when there will be no second half... or any game for that matter! Woop! The Blueshirts will play the Ottawa Senators on Saturday, Ottawa being the capital province of Canada, apparently. That’s why their name is the Senators. To think the Rangers are so named because some Texan owned them once... terrible! In other, non-shitty New York area, team news we have some pretty good football games on our hands. Peyton is going to take on Mr. Brady in what NBC would have us believe to be some kind of armageddon of football - in Week 10 no less! I think it should be a good matchup, but really, nothing will silence the debate between who is the better out-and-out quarterback until we can see them in some kind of one on one deathmatch... where the winner is the crowned the best and the loser, well, dies.

Cinema: Speaking of armageddon, that disaster (of a?) movie 2012 comes out on Friday. It seems like reviews are mixed so far, so maybe I shouldn't judge it too harshly ahead of time. One thing I know for sure is that I am not going to fork over any of my hard earned dough to see it in the theater. Why? Well mainly because I don't need to see it to know generally what is going to happen: the main character is going to have some hardship (the world is ending), will probably reconnect with some old flame as a result of this conflict (the world ending will have that effect on you, see also Jeff Goldblum's character in Independence Day), and he will either sacrifice all (a la Bruce Willis in Armageddon (3rd use so far!)) to save the world, or just do it in some kind of half believable fashion (see Independence Day again). I will save my 12 bucks ($20 if you include the movie-sized Twizzlers and large Diet Coke that are REQUIRED) and probably get 1.5 pounds of Wegmans asian cookery and watch whatever is on cable. Win.

Beer: Is it just me, or did the fall ales this year have too short of a run on store shelves? Just as I was getting into my Sam Adams Octoberfest groove, I can't get it anymore. What gives? Well, I am on a quest to get some new beers in my repertoire this weekend. Those on the hit list include: Brooklyn Pennant Ale '55; Rogue Shakespeare Stout; and some sort of pumpkin ale. If I can manage all three in significant quantity... well kudos to me, I will be in for another weekend I probably won't remember much of. Let's shoot for one or two...

Whimsy: I plan to fully dedicate at least 40 minutes of my weekend exploring the YouTube channel of the fine folks who brought you Auto-Tune the News. Its... fantastic!

Alright, its time to stop previewing and start... viewing?

tuesday museday

After that brief post fail, I bring you the true tues muse:

• So my beloved Merengues fell to AD Alcorcon today (1-0, 1-4 on aggregate) in what was at times a spirited defense of the Bernabeu. As I was telling some friends today, while the loss is disappointing, it must be viewed in the larger context. While this loss may sting (as it came at the hands of a team with roughly 1/400th of the value of Real), it is not by any means a defining moment of the season, or a sign that the Galacticos project is doomed. The team had one bad game (the 0-4 loss at Alcorcon) and could not manage to score 4+ goals on a team that has not given up many throughout their whole campaign. This season does not, and never has, rested on how well the team did in the Copa Del Rey. Imagine for a moment, if at the end of the season the team had come in second in the league, crashed out of the Champions League, yet won the Copa. Would that season be considered a "success" by the fans, the front office, and the media? Heavens no. At best the King's Cup is a cherry on top of a season for Madrid, and at worse its a distraction from other competitions. The Champions League is the stated aim of this Club, and the season truly hinges on success and progress there.

• In other painful sporting news, my beloved New York Football Giants lost a heartbreaker to the Marmalard-powered Chargers. Just imagine if Lawrence Tynes had decided to participate in that field goal attempt on the Giants' first drive? All other things being equal, that would have put the difference at 9 instead of 6 heading into that final Chargers drive, changing the entire complexion of that game and rendering Tom Coughlin's gutless playcalling moot. / tears flow freely for what is shaping up to be a lost season for the GMen.

• Mad Men had an utterly awesome finale! What a bonus after that dreadful JFK penultimate episode. I honestly did not see the Jerry Maguire-esque turn of creating a new firm coming until it did. And the necessary return of Joan? Perfect. I really don't know what I am going to do with myself until next August when Season 4 starts up.

• I am actively looking for the proper chocolate syrup concoction to add to my coffee to make my everyday lattes into mochas. Any suggestions / is this a really unhealthy move on my part?

• Finally got caught up on FlashForward and I must say that I like what I am seeing from the show... **SPOILER ALERT** I was sad to see the suicide of Al, and would really hate to see some shit still happen to that chick he was supposedly trying to save. Maybe he will return to guide Demitri from the other side... and speaking of Demitri, does anyone buy his relationship with Zoey? Their relationship is probably the least believable part of this whole show, one that supposes that everyone on earth blacked out for 2+ minutes by some strange phenomenon cooked up by evil(?) Brits, mind you. Something has got to change here. Can Demitri run off with Janis and be her baby daddy or something? And finally... I am really into Sonya Walger right now in a cougar-prey kinda way. Dr. Benford can perform on me any time...

tuesday museday

And now, with the late-night musing! In quick-hits form because its close to bedtime!

I waited to muse until more of the Election Day results poured in. The results for the Blue Team are turning out to be not so fantastic:

• Alleged candidate Creigh Deeds lost emphatically to Bob McDonnell. Are we surprised at all? No. Deeds ran a terrible campaign and ran away from the bread and butter issues that turned out progressives for Obama last year. Coming out against the public option and cap and trade to appeal to voters who won't swing for you anyway is not the best strategy, Blue Dogs! Sry!
• Jabba the Hut Chris Christie appears to be on his way to victory in the Dirty Jers. This Christie character might lower your taxes, but watch your lunch, New Jerseyans!

The pain in fantasy football continues, as my team of note plummets to a 1-7 mark on a 7 game losing streak. Hmm, the pain in real football also seems pretty tangible, as the Giants fall to a 5-3 record on a 3 game losing streak. Reality imitating fantasy as it would seem.

At least the RMF side of me can take solace in the fact that it would appear that the Yankees are going to doom the Phillies tomorrow's Game 6 of the World Series. Maybe seeing a ticker-tape parade for another team through the city will inspire the Mets to, I don't know, learn how to run the bases properly and stay healthy for more than half a season. One can always hope, right?

I promise myself, and you dear reader, to have a more convincing Halloween costume next year. I was Andy from The Office this year, and just couldn't get into the Halloween spirit, as I felt that I was just dressed especially dweeb-ily and not in any particular costume.

On Monday I saw Michael Jackson's This Is It. I wavered at times from enjoying what I was seeing (Thriller and They Don't Care About Us seemed especially promising) to wondering why I was at the theater in the first place (the entire movie seemed like I could have made it on my Mac, what with its cheap-looking intro and transitions and all). The overall message I got from the movie, though, was that MJ seemed like he was in pretty good health in the weeks before his death, so really he was probably just negligently murdered by his doctor. Oops! Sigh.

Thats all I have for this Tuesday, but more frequent blogging should start later this week.

tuesday museday

Single, extra-long muse today:

On this most auspicious day of days, the 27th of October 2009, I am dedicating my post to a subject that has consumed New York sports talk radio for the past week or so. That subject, for those of you who don't listen to WFAN religiously like I do, is what good Mets fans should do given the horror matchup presented to them by the 2009 World Series pitting the Yankees against the Phillies. In this muse, I present my case for why any Rational Mets Fan (a group of which I consider myself a member) CANNOT root for the Phillies.

The Rational Mets Fan (RMF from here on) gets his own title to distinguish himself from the Irrational Mets Fan (raving idiot from here on), who through some twisted logic finds himself calling into NY sports radio blasting those who would cheer on the Yankees and cursing them to fan purgatory. But onto the substance of the argument:

The RMF has three acceptable courses of action:

(1) Bury head in the sand and ignore baseball for the next month. This is a very sound plan, if you are passive enough about the sport itself to not want to watch the culmination of this very painful baseball season. By late November, all baseball talk will have shifted to free agency and next season, which will hopefully be an improvement on the fucking disgrace of 2009. The RMF is forced to make no hard choices in this scenario.

(2) Watch the Series, just root for good baseball (difficult). Observing games as a neutral has always been hard for me personally, and especially difficult in baseball, as its hard to watch throughout an entire game without a compelling interest the result. I admire fans who are able to just cheer for good baseball, its the sign of true love for the sport. This is an exceedingly dispassionate way of approaching a series with two teams that are none too friendly to the Metropolitans, so again kudos to those fans that take this approach.

(3) Watch the Series, pull for the Yankees (as much as you can given that they are the Yankees). Here is the crux of the debate. Rooting for the "cross-town rivals" can be a difficult pill to swallow, but if you are going to root for a team, this is the only choice. Why? Because while the Yankees may be "cross town rivals", the Phillies are REAL rivals in every sense of the word. They compete in the same division, fight for the same pennant, and ultimately their success comes at the price of the Mets'. The Mets play the Phillies 18 times a year... the Yankees a mere 6, and that is only a recent phenomenon. They also hail from a city with which New York has a direct sporting rivalry, with some of the most obnoxious fans south of New England. They are the real enemy. They win, and the Filthadelphians (Killadephians?) get something they never deserve: a championship.

Possible Raving Idiot rebuttals, rebutted:

• But I have so many obnoxious Yankee fan friends and relatives, I couldn't stand to have them rub another title in my face! Look, they have ultimate scoreboard on us. This title is not going to really change anything. The asshole Yankee fans who make fun of the Mets are not going to change, and whether they have 13 times as many championships as we do or 13.5 as many really won't make a difference in the end.
• I hate what the Yankees stand for, with their ludicrous spending... Well, I hate to say it, but the Mets also know how to splash out a good deal of coin as well, just not as wisely. Sorry, no merits there.
• You have to pull for the National League! Yeah, I would buy this MAYBE if we were talking about the Hollywood Dodgers here or the Astros or something, but no one from the NL East, please. Were you cheering on the Braves in '96 or '99? Come on. We all hated the Braves back then because they consistently kicked our ass. This situation is really no different.
• They are our rivals, too! Not really. But we are the inheritors of the Giants and Dodgers National League tradition, and they had rivalries with the Yankees! I must admit I am a sucker for the New York National League history aspect of the Mets, but that argument will not cut it with me. The Giants had a rivalry with the Yankees going back to when the Yankees weren't even playing in New York (the Giants poached players from the then-Baltimore Orioles). The Dodgers were foiled by the Yankees numerous times in the World Series back in the 40s and 50s, sparking a rivalry then. We didn't inherit those teams' championships, their records, or their names (a la the Cleveland Browns (minus the championships part! Ha!)) so I don't buy that we inherited their rivalries either. Until interleague play started in 1997, the Mets didn't even face the Yankees in meaningful baseball. Sorry, can't form a real rivalry when there is no meaningful competition (and some would even say that calling interleague play "meaningful competition" would be a stretch).

In conclusion, fellow RMFs out there: we have 3 choices before us. Lets pick our poison.

Oh, and I know I said this was a single topic muse, but I can't help myself: reasons to no longer want to be Don Draper. Blasphemy?