weekend in preview

Ah yes, another return fail. Sorry about that!

and, the weekend!

Sport. Oh, okay, okay, yes, THIS is the "must win" game for the Giants. They are going to treat it like a playoff game, leave it all out on the field, fix the problems, etc. Sorry dudes, I am not aware of any playoff system that allows you to lose a game, narrowly win another, then lose next and still be in the competition. Thats just not how it works. Look for the Giants to continue their slide to mediocrity this Sunday against the Cowboys at the Meadowlands. Really this terrible nightmare of a season needs to mercifully end. This team is going nowhere. Why am I so downcast on my dudes? Well, for one, they have a literal moron running their defense. Bill Sheridan is the worst, injuries to the secondary or not. The secondary is not the issue. The problem is that somehow he has managed to turn Tuck, Umenyiora, Kiwanuka, et al. into a bunch of average to below average joes. Also, Brandon Jacobs is literal doo doo. He refuses to run like he used to, and subsequently refuse to believe in him like I used to. He will either hit the hole with authority, or he can hit the fucking bus to the glue factory. Bye.

Also, the USMNT gets to find out their group fate tomorrow at noon. I plan on following the action on ESPN360 intently. Come on Group of Life!

Cinema. Alright, I might be three weeks early on this, but at least I am in the same month as the release. I am ready for Nine to rock my world. Today, I found myself singing "Be Italian" in the shower. I fully expect this to continue until I am sitting Diet Coke and Twizzlers in hand, watching DDL to his thing in the highly anticipated musical. Gah. Cannot wait. What this has to do with this weekend, I really can't say. Maybe I will watch the "Cinema Italiano" video on loop during my free time. Or perhaps this nice trailer?

Drink. Ah, well, I had thoughts of concocting my favorite Puerto Rican coconut-based nog drink, coquito, but realistically I am not sure if I could do my father's version justice. Its pretty much the most delicious holiday drink imaginable, and I have been a devoted fan since I was but a wee lad. I plan to devote my holiday in Florida to learning the art of making the family recipe, drinking dozens of eggs and a handle of rum in the process. As for this weekend, I again strive to try some seasonal brews, as they are a thing right now.

Whimsy. I am really thinking about delving more into my interest in uniform design. Perchance on Sunday I will finally get around to reworking my alma mater's football getup for my first piece of work. Or maybe I will just wallow after the Giants sure loss. Guh.

tuesday museday? tuesday museday.

Hmmm, retroactive Tuesday Museday on a Wednesday. What is this skullduggery? Sorry, had some Business that kept me busy last night, so I couldn't do the usual Tuesday edition of musings. Most sincere apologies!

But this bastardization of the muse allows me to segue into what should be a New Feature of the blog that should bring more Entertainment to the legion of loyal readers.

What is this brand-new Thing? Well while many blogs may have link dumps once in a while, I propose an even FINER link dump for the middle of the workweek. Why is it better? Because it is an All Star collection of links, from all corners of The Internet. Naming suggestions for this amazing new feature welcome. I am thinking something along the lines of Hump Day Heroics, or something.

Anyways, the segue will be me providing a sort of hybrid between the Tuesday and Wednesday features. And away we go!

• Here we have a perfect example of how ab-so-freaking-lutely talented some Internet People can be. Well that or they are so incredibly bored that they produce such works of genius. I mean this video combines two loves of mine (Mario games and Queen songs) into one sinfully glorious union. I am not sure if my excited brain made this up or if it is an actual feature of the video, but I believe the game sounds are some way made to sound like features of the song. And then we have the lyrics being introduced in various forms in the background of the four windows, another stroke of brilliance.

• This, this, and especially this are the opposite of said brilliance. They are the work of a hackery of the highest order. If you at one point were ever a fan of Family Guy, it may pain you to watch. I encourage you to do so, though, because any shred of affinity you once had for that hollow shell of a show will disappear.

• I really wish this nifty little tool had been invented when I was a senior in high school. That was about the last time that calculus actually mattered in my life, and having this Internet Thing able to solve problems for me (and show all work!) would have been quite useful. The computers, I tell you, they will be self aware before we know it. Now I know recently I called for an epic struggle against a mighty foe, but I am pretty sure self aware machines are sure to crush the entirety of the human race. Or maybe I watched Terminator at too young of an age.

• I am really not sure if I like what Time, Inc. is showing me with their 'Manhattan Project.' It seems to me like a spiffy PDF or a neat way to interact with a website. I am not sure if its entirely viable as an alternative to print magazines or web pages. I really want great publications like Sports Illustrated and Time to survive the great journalism purge, but I am not convinced that this is a way to weather the downturn.

• TMZ goes to Taiwan, meets the Sims and talks Tiger. Hilarity ensues.

And then there was this image that captured my imagination yesterday. I would just like to note the a) dog wearing a sweater, and b) the fact that he has clearly made it rain on this tortoise in addition to enslaving it as his means of transportation.

tuesday museday

Back to the quick hits version of the muse, because really, alien invasion?

• Thanksgiving is a mere two days away. How fucking exciting is that? In case I have never mentioned it before, its my favorite holiday. ORLY BRENDAN? ITS BETTER THAN CHRISTMAS?! Yes. Yes it is. I put it up against Easter, Halloween, New Years, et al. It trumps all. Christmas is awesome, don't get me wrong. But that is ostensibly only for one of the major religions of our melting pot of a country. Thanksgiving is for everyone, though, even vegetarians. How about that? Sure, its kind of fraught with some questionable overtones (sorry Amerindians), but what good holiday isn't? Halloween is inherently morbid, while New Years just reminds most people about how overrated New Years is. Don't even get me started on Valentine's Day, as it is pretty much universally boycotted/ignored by those not in a relationship. Thanksgiving has the three F's you need for an amazing day: Food, Football, and Family, probably in that order of descending necessity/enjoyment. There is also a fourth F. F-off if you are thinking about hating on this awesome day.

• Early entry for donkey of the week, nay month, nay year! Les Miles shows us how to lose a football game in the most inept manner possible. National Championship notwithstanding, he could be one of the worst coaches in HISTORY. What was he DOING?! He goes on to claim that he did not ask for the spike, when video evidence clearly shows that he DID (1:27). To call him "retarded" as many irate LSU fans have over the past couple of days would be both politically incorrect and a disservice to legitimately mentally challenged people across the world, so I will refrain. Les Miles, ladies and gentlemen, idiot and liar.

• Continuing with the football theme, I must have watched this clip about a hundred times at work today. You can literally taste the children's pain. Now I know that is horrible to say, but really, who doesn't like to see people get lit up? Its pretty much primal human instinct. Plus, I am pretty sure all those dads on the field could have prevented that first tackle from happening, but they wanted to see how the whole scenario would play out as well. What they got instead was the first entry in a longitudinal study of football-related brain injury. Well, that is, if that quarterback can ever muster the courage to step on a football field again. In happier news, I am pretty sure Nyrel Sevilla's parents don't have to worry about college tuition for the lad, as he will be playing on Saturdays.

• Fun fact: despite all the various criticisms leveled at Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini, Madrid are off to their best start in over 15 years. Bring on El Clasico!

Thats all for the muse today because hey, Thanksgiving break started like 4 hours ago.

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?