Experiment Farm

Downton Abbey

2012-02-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

Diana and I watched the first few episodes of Downton Abbey a while back. It was good, but we weren't dying to see what happened next and it fell out of our viewing queue. Diana even found it more enjoyable to read the Tom and Lorenzo recaps then to watch the show itself. (I find the same is true of Project Runway All-Stars). Still, I found this SNL skit very funny:

And The Onion reports that watching an episode of Downton Abbey counts as reading a book.

We've Only Just Begun

2012-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

It started for me as a mystery. The building where I work is owned by Crocker Plaza Company. Across the street is the Crocker Galleria. The word "Crocker" is all over these few blocks. Who was this mysterious "Crocker" I wondered...

Long term residents of the Bay Area may not find that a mystery at all. Turns out the large Wells Fargo branch across the street used to be the flagship location of Crocker National Bank. They were quite the player in Northern California banking until they fell on some hard times in the 80s and were acquired by Wells Fargo in 1986 for $1.07 billion in the largest banking merger in history at that time. (By comparison, twelve years later NationsBank acquired Bank of America for $64 billion.)

Crocker National Bank has another claim to fame. Nowadays a pop song comes out and immediately gets licensed to the hilt to appear in TV commercials and shows. Like when you could hear Train's Hey Soul Sister every time you turned on the TV a few years ago.. But back in the 1970, it happened the other way round when The Carpenters took a song from a Crocker National Bank commercial, rerecorded it, and made it a hit.

That's right, this is how We've Only Just Begun began:

It was a ground-breaking ad in its day. Crocker didn't want a conventional jingle, and any mention of the bank or its products was deliberately left out of the song. It's shot in a music video style, and the bank's name doesn't appear until the very end. If you updated the clothes and had a celebrity do a voice-over at the end, it would be at home in this Sunday's Super Bowl.

Highlander

2012-01-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Diana and I watched the beginning of Highlander the other day, the original movie. Diana had never seen it, so it was interesting to hear her pick apart all of the huge gaping plot holes and inconsistencies. Still, it's a good movie from a mid-80s sci-fi stand point. I was struck by just how teen-boy centric it is. I mean, it's got immortals, sword fighting, nudity, and gratuitous decapitation. And if you happen to find Christopher Lambert attractive, it works for the teen-girls too. After all, it's got immortals falling in love with mortals, angst, costumes, etc. If the Highlander sparkled and had a clumsy teen love-interest, I'd wonder if Stephenie Meyer was a fan.

I've never seen any of the sequels or the TV show. I always preferred to think of it as a stand-alone kind of thing. The plot is ridiculous enough, trying to make it work beyond one movie is just too big of a stretch. The whole point is "there can be only one," making sequels inherently oxymorons.

If you need an example of how ridiculous the movie is at times, just take a look at Sean Connery's character. In a move called "Highlander" one of the most famous Scotsman of all time plays an Egyptian named "Ramirez". Scratch your head about that one for a while. This was at the end of Connery's really-bad-career-downswing after James Bond but before The Untouchables when he made films like Zardoz and Meteor. Really, 1986 was the beginning of his renaissance. That year he was in Highlander and The Name of the Rose. A year later he'd win his Oscar and by 1989 he'd have re-established himself as a big name at the box-office. Though, no one ever said he made good career moves. He was reportedly offered the role of Gandalf for 15% of worldwide box-office receipts but turned it down. He would have made about $400 million off that, but it's hard to imagine those movies being as good without Ian McKellen.

Unfortunately Highlander was really the pinnacle of Christopher Lambert's career. Well, his Hollywood career anyway. (He's having something of his own renaissance right now in the world of French cinema.) I always thought he did Tarzan after Highlander, but I was wrong. When he made Tarzan he didn't really speak English at all which worked fine for the character (not that it mattered that Andie MacDowell spoke English, as all of her dialogue as Jane was overdubbed by Glenn Close). He'd just learned English when he made Highlander, which explains his completely whacked accent in the film. He's French, but was born in the US, but grew up mostly in Switzerland. So when the Highlander says he's from "lots of different places," it's kinda meta.

And while you may or may not recognize Clancy Brown as the villain, you should recognize his voice. He's done voice acting in just about every animated series on TV in the last 30 years. He's Mr. Krabs:

Crowdsourced Star Wars Remake!

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

I found out about this through a post on Mental Floss. It's a crowdsourced remake of Star Wars called "Star Wars Uncut" where anyone in the world could sign up to be in charge of one 15 second segment of the move. Then they were all cut together into a full-length remake. Some of the segments are really funny, some are clever, some are impressive, and some are just darn cute as people got their kids and pets involved. Some of them are just weird. One way or another though, for a fan, it's highly entertaining:

In Movie News

2012-01-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Artist is the only film nominated for a major Academy Award that I've seen. At least I saw 1. I hope it wins a lot.

***

This is not what you think it is:

It's actually part of a Honda commercial that will air during the Super Bowl.

***

Most (if not all) of the remaining living members of Monty Python are reuniting for a film called "Absolutely Anything" (source), but it's not being called a "Python" movie. It just happens to star them. Robin Williams might also be in the film. Still, it's pretty exciting.

No Winners Yesterday

2012-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

I always find it much more satisfying to watch a team win a game rather than watch a team lose it. Unfortunately, both conference championship games yesterday ended with a team losing.

The Ravens-Patriots game ended on one of the least satisfying final plays in all of professional sports: a missed field goal. Actually, I should qualify that a bit. A missed field goal on its own is not an unsatisfying way to end a game. If a team is down a point or two and the field goal is a game-winning attempt and it's from a challenging distance (be it too close or too far) it's a perfectly satisfying way to end a game. Everyone knows going into the play that it's going to be the last play of the game, and the kicker isn't expected to make it from that distance. The problem with a game-tying attempt from easy distance is that no one expects it to be the end. You assume you're going to overtime. Then suddenly it's over and you've won (or lost) and no one knows quite how to react because no one was prepared for that outcome.

Then you have the Giants-49ers game, which hinged on two special teams turnovers by the back-up kick-off returner pressed into service when the regular guy got injured last week. This is not only ironic, as the 49ers lead the league in turnover ratio, but also sad that the game hinged on a team losing. As the game headed into overtime, I turned to Diana and said "the first team that makes a mistake is going to lose", and then it happened.

I'm not saying that the better team didn't win. Championship teams make fewer mistakes. I'm just saying I would rather have seen Eli Manning lead the Giants on some super-human drive to win the game than see a back-up fail to protect the football. Still, in a championship game between two evenly-matched opponents, it often comes down to either who makes the superstar play or who makes the mistake. Yesterday, in spit of two superstar quarterbacks, both games came down to mistakes.

Niners!

2012-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big NFL fan. I follow it passively and in passing during the regular season, if at all, and mostly only if the Bears are making any noise. I only start paying attention during the postseason, once College Football has wrapped up.

Still, if there's a team I've historically found myself rooting for in Super Bowls more than others, it would be the 49ers. That's partly because they've played in quite a few, but Joe Montana and Steve Young were just so enjoyable to watch. So even though I harbor some issues with Jim Harbaugh because he played at Michigan, I still find myself rooting for the Niners this post season. It'd be fun if they won.

Project Runway All Stars Episode 1: Read All About It

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

I watched Project Runway All Stars on demand last night. I will freely admit I afforded myself the luxury of fast forwarding through large portions of it, including anything that looked like gratuitous drama and most of the runway critiquing and judging. Really, most of the second half. I didn't care what any of those people had to say about the looks, judges and contestants included.

I found watching it a very interesting experience. On the one hand, I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces and was interested in what they were doing. On the other hand I was bored.

Gone are Heidi, Nina, Michael, and Tim. Instead we have host Angela Lindvall. She may be a supermodel, but she is no Heidi Klum. She was wooden and never looked natural on camera. Heidi never looked like she was reading lines even when she clearly was. Angela always looked like she was reading lines even when she clearly wasn't. But if Angela was wooden, than judge Georgina Chapman was a petrified forest. Everything she said sounded like she'd rehearsed it about 70 times and we were watching the 40th take.

Then there's Isaac Mizrahi. You may remember him as the co-host of Bravo's Project Runway replacement The Fashion Show, or from his many TV appearances. He's also apparently a designer. Frankly, he comes off to me as a desperate wannabe. Everything he says sounds fake and insincere. He's doesn't come off as reading lines at least, but he does come off as acting.

Then we have Joanna Coles stepping into Tim Gun's shoes. I actually have no problem with her. She seemed to give good advice, and they've scaled back her role some.

Still, the biggest problem with the show isn't them, it's the designers. They're all there, and they're all the same. Kenely's still a bitch. Austin's still fabulous. April's still soft-spoken. Elisa's still bat-shit crazy, and Michael Costello is still gross. Surprise, surprise, his dress looked exactly like what someone else was making.

That's the problem, though. They're all still the same. Watching the regular show, you don't these people at all. It takes a while to get to know them. You get character development and arcs. Here, we know all these people already. We know how this experience changed them or didn't change them. There's nothing interesting to see here, except how they interact with each other. And that's just going to be over-produced manufactured drama. I just don't care.

All I really wanted to see was the finished dresses, who won and who lost. I'll probably just follow it online.

Oh, they eliminated Elisa (thank god). As stated, she's still crazy, but at least she was grateful in defeat. Rami won. He's my early favorite, mostly because he's the only one who looks like he's enjoying himself, and he looks like he's having a great time. That's compelling to watch.

Literally Pointless or Any Given Sunday Syndrome

2012-01-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Well, that was boring and pointless. I mean, LSU went literally point-less yesterday. I'm not sure there's a top ten team that couldn't have beat LSU last night. I certainly would have taken money on any of the other BCS winners, including Michigan and West Virginia, and some of the losers. Would they have beat Alabama? That's not the point. In the current system it was only ever about who could beat LSU. Do you really think perennial Heisman runner-up Andrew Luck and Standford or 28-year-old wonder-kin Brandon Weeden and Oklahoma State would have lost to LSU last night? I don't think so. The Fiesta Bowl, that was your title game. I don't mean it should have been those teams as #1 and #2, but the game played in the Fiesta Bowl was a game worthy of being a Title Game. The game played last night in New Orleans was a joke.

The inherent problem with football, with any sport really, is the Any Given Sunday Syndrome. It's typified by the NFL. The saying goes "any given Sunday any team can beat any other team." It doesn't matter what their records are going into the game, if the personnel match up right, if the coaching matches up right, if luck matches up right, any team can win. Every sport has their way of dealing with that. Every sport, that is, except College Football.

Baseball is the most susceptible to this because so much depends on starting pitching. Even teams with the best winning percentages over a season in baseball history still lost 25% - 30% of their games. (By contrast, the BCS team with the worst record this season lost less than 30% of their games.) Baseball solves this by playing series, even in their regular season. The NHL and NBA do the same when they get to their post-season. If you can win a best-of-five or best-of-seven series head-to-head with another team, you're the better team. Even that's still a little arbitrary and subject to the whims of luck, but it's a sufficient gauntlet to run.

The NFL can't do that. The physical demands of the sport make that impossible. They use the regular season to narrow things down to a pool of mostly winning teams, and then make them win 3-4 more games against opponents in that pool and crown a champion. Sure Any Given Sunday Syndrome still applies, but if you can run that gauntlet and win those 3-4 games, you've proven yourself a champion.

College Basketball does the same thing. The regular season narrow things down to 68 teams (one team more than there were AQ schools last season in football), and then you give them all a chance. The team that runs that gauntlet proves themselves a champion.

College Football has no answer to the Any Given Sunday Syndrome. It's a little less of an issue to be sure. Northern Illinois could play a whole season against South Carolina and never win a game. But in the higher level programs it's certainly true. If you took the top ten BCS team and made them play each other once, you'd be hard pressed to find an undefeated team at the end of it.

College Football has no gauntlet. Or rather, the regular season is supposed to be the gauntlet. Except that the regular season isn't a basketball tournament where the opponents get more difficult as the season progresses. Instead you have Alabama playing Georgia Southern in mid-November. And before you start hyping the SEC as a gauntlet unto itself, remember that Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and Mississippi State are all SEC teams.

That's why the "plus 1" system is getting so much talk now. That would be a gauntlet. A mini one, but one nonetheless. It would keep fluke wins like Iowa State over OSU from ruining a season, and it would test your unbeatens. If LSU had taken down Stanford before losing big to Alabama, I'd have no complaints.

Instead College Football just takes an arbitrary top two teams and makes them win one head-to-head contest that is completely subject to Any Given Sunday Syndrome. Last night's game was proof of that. On November 5th, LSU won. Last night Alabama won. Play a third game and then you'll know who was really the champion.

Prometheus Trailer

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm a couple weeks behind the times. Somehow in the build up to Christmas I missed the release of the Prometheus trailer!

Aside from a deep personal love of the Alien genre, I also have a couple extremely tangential connections to this movie. A friend of mine's screenplay has been stuck in pre-production limbo for years waiting for this movie to finish production, and another friend of mine is working on the digital effects (but no, he wouldn't leak anything to me). Isn't that fascinating? I'm sure.

Here you go:

Doesn't that look AMAZING.

Noomi Rapace, the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in it, as are Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce. I can't wait!

The Woman in Black

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

When I was a senior in high school I was fortunate enough to go on a trip through the English department to England. It was all arranged through a tour company with an itinerary customized for learning about history and literature and all that. You could even sign up for an optional jaunt to France if you were a French student, which I wasn't so I did not. I can't remember how many of us went, but it was at least 50 and possibly as many as 100 plus chaperons. It was all kind of insane especially when you consider nearly all of us were of legal drinking age in the UK.

I paid for it myself with all my hard earned money from working at the mall, and on Christmas Day 1991, I boarded my first commercial airline for the flight to London. We arrived and had a full day of running around London to do before we were all herded into a theater to see a show. Putting a bunch of jet-lagged teens who hadn't slept in over 24 hours into a dark theater with cushioned seats may not have been the best plan. One imagines an entire section of the house snoring loudly for the bulk of the performance. That may have been true were it not for the choice of play: The Woman in Black.

That name may sound familiar to you as it is about to be a major motion picture starring Daniel Radcliffe in his first post-Harry Potter film role. I confess that I have never read the original novel, but the stage play that I saw on that fateful December day a little over 20 years ago was hands down the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen. Scarier than any movie, any story or novel, any TV show, any performance of Fear, anything. That shit was terrifying. For years I would get goosebumps even talking about it.

Stage Play Trailer:

About 10 years ago I saw a really bad production of it up in Napa that took the bloom of the rose a bit, but in truth, any scary story is really at its scariest the first time you experience it. You can never really recreate that first time huddled in a dark basement that you saw Alien or Aliens or Dawn of the Dead or what have you.

Still, I have to say I'm intrigued by the preview for the movie.

Film Trailer:

The stage adaptation is brilliant and the film will inherently lose the elements of live theater that the play uses to such great effect. But those elements would have been missing from the novel too, so who knows that tricks the film has up its sleeve.

You can still see the stage play, if you're in London and so inclined. It's the second longest running show on the West End after The Mousetrap. I've been back to London many times since that first trip in high school, but I've never dared go back to see The Woman in Black again. I'm not sure I have it in me.

My ND Stats

2011-12-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

I've been very fortunate in my life to have the opportunity to attend many Notre Dame Football games. 36 to be exact, I think. I organized my ticket stubs and put them in a Ticket Stub Diary I got for Christmas (sort of). I'm missing stubs from 4 games, but I remember which games I went to those years. Here's a rough break down:

I've attended 2 road games and 34 home games, including at least 1 home game every year for the last 29 years. My first game was against Navy when I was 9.

They are 24-12 with me in attendance. Not bad. That breaks down to 1-1 in the road games and 23-11 in the home games.

From 1983 through 2000 they were 20-5 with me in attendance, including an 11-game winning streak wherein I did not see them lose for 9 years. I saw them win 3 games during their National Championship year of 1988, and I saw their last regular season game against Miami in 1990 until next year's game in Chicago. I also saw them lose to Northwestern in 1995 in one of the biggest upsets in college football history.

Since 2001, they are an abysmal 4-7 with me in attendance, including a 3-game losing streak that includes ND's only two losses to Navy since 1963.

This year my wive and I had the pleasure of being at the first (and to-date only) game where Notre Dame has evacuated the stadium. We had to leave due to sky to ground lightening.

The Jedi Problem

2011-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

I watched Return of the Jedi the other day. Or rather, I had it on in the background while I was working and only got about half way through it. Still, that's pretty much like watching it, especially for someone who's seen it a lot over the years.

I was struck, during this viewing, by just how strange a movie it is. First off, it's really 2 movies. The first part, "Star Wars Episode 5.5: Save Han from Jabba", is more like a short film and is quite entertaining. All the main characters are working together against a common enemy. Everything goes wrong, but somehow they prevail. If it weren't for the whole Galactic Empire, Darth Vader is Luke's father mess to tie up, the trilogy really could have just ended there. Think about it. Pretty much all of the best lines and memorable moments from the film are from that segment. The movie goes down hill from there.

I mean, sure, you could criticize "Save Han from Jabba" for Mark Hamill's egregiously bad acting, but that could be said of the entire trilogy. Otherwise, it's a good ensemble piece. Everyone plays their part in saving the day and the good-guys win.

Then the movie goes a little strange. All the characters get separated form one another robbing us of their enjoyable interaction. Furry midgets are singing every two minutes. Darth Vader is taking orders from a shriveled old man, and Han isn't even piloting the Millennium Falcon. The only thing that works in the "Blow Up the Death Star" portion of Jedi is that Luke still fails miserably and it takes Darth Vader to save the day. Then we find out *he's* a shriveled up old bald guy, and it all goes to hell again.

Then there's the Harrison Ford problem. What problem? He's different. I spent some time trying to pinpoint how, and near as I can tell the difference is that he's Harrison Ford. During Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Harrison Ford was Han Solo. If you saw him on the street on a warm day in L.A. in May of 1981, you would have pointed and said "hey! That's Han Solo!" After Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in June of 1981, he became Harrison Ford. It didn't seem to really happen retroactively. If you go back and watch Star Wars or Empire, you see Han Solo, but in Jedi he's all Ford. His hair even seems a more Harrison Ford signature light brown than Han Solo black.

(I would argue that this is one of the many reasons why Bladerunner flopped in its original release. Even though it came out in 1982, after Raiders, people still weren't ready to see Han Solo getting the shit kicked out of him by Darryl Hannah. It was too soon. By the 90s, you could go back and watch Bladerunner and see Harrison Ford getting the shit kicked out of him by Darryl Hannah, and it works.)

He just doesn't seem to fit, and his acting isn't very good. In fact, none of the acting in the second half of the film is very good. That is not to say that the acting in any of the original Star Wars films was of Oscar caliber or anything, but they have their moments. None of those moments are in the "Blow Up the Death Star" portion of Jedi.

Then I got to thinking.... The "Blow Up the Death Star" portion of Jedi is just an advertising reel for ILM, just like the prequels. Jedi holds together a little better because it has the first 2.5 movies to fall back on, but taken out of context that last 2/3rds of the movie is pretty crappy.

This calls into question one of the cornerstones of Prequel-Criticism Philosophy: the idea that if only Lucas had just produced the prequels and let other people write and direct them, they would have been good. I no longer think that. Lucas would have screwed them up as the producer just like he screwed up Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In hindsight, it's hard to believe anyone could watch the "Blow Up the Death Star" portion of Jedi and think the prequels would be any good at all.

Every Body's Different

2011-12-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

I read this article today about people removing their SmartMeters because they claim they make them sick. What I found most interesting about it was some of the comments, including this one:

Why not profile someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens and the police won't take her seriously? That has about as much scientific validity as this story.

It seems indicative of an attitude that seems to pervade modern medicine, or maybe it's western medicine. I'm not sure, but it frustrates me. It's this idea that everybody's body is exactly the same. Every body reacts to stimuli the same way. Every body can be treated the same way. That's a load of B.S. If that were true we'd all like the same foods, have the same allergies, like the same colors, weather, etc. We're not like that.

I have no doubt that SmartMeters make some people sick. I also have no doubt that it's such a small percentage that you're never going to get a statistically significant result out of any "scientific" study of the issue. Detractors and companies will always be able to hide behind those statistics and discount people's claims.

That doesn't change the fact that for these people these symptoms are real. (I would even argue it doesn't really matter if the effects are psychosomatic as they're still resulting from the presence of the SmartMeter.)

I get panic attacks when I'm on steroid nasal sprays. That's not an official side effect you'll find on any list. Every doctor I tell that to looks at me like I'm crazy. That doesn't change the fact that when I'm on steroid nasal sprays, I get panic attacks. When I stop using them, the panic attacks go away. This has happened multiple times with different steroids, years apart.

Claritin makes me ADD. Pepcid gives me insomnia. These are all random statistical anomalies, but they happen to me.

Every body is different. Everybody's body chemistry is different. I don't quite understand why this is so hard for people to grasp.

I did it!

2011-11-29T17:18:00.001-08:00

50,075 words, with one day to spare. Woot!

WTF Ebay Users?

2011-11-28T16:31:00.001-08:00

I'm not an Ebay expert. I've bought a handful of things. I've sold a handful of things. Currently I have a sealed 36 ct booster box of Pokemon Neo Genesis cards for sale. I've gotten 4 messages from users asking me if I'd be willing to end the auction and sell it to them for various amounts of money. Several of them are even blatantly offering to do the deal outside of Ebay, which is strictly against the Ebay user rules.

On the one hand, yes you're offering me a lot more money than it's currently being bid at. On the other hand, WHY NOT JUST BID ON IT?!

I briefly thought about emailing the first guy back and saying I got this other offer if you want to match it. I thought maybe I could get a bidding war started. Then I thought... that's the whole point of it being an online auction! Emailing me and offering to buy it completely defeats the whole purpose of my listing.

Is this a new attitude among Ebay users? I sold one of these last year and this didn't happen.

WTF?

NaNoWriMo Update

2011-11-22T15:34:00.001-08:00

As of last night I was sitting at 35,122 words, which for the first time was actually slightly ahead of pace. I need to power through the weekend. I can't believe that I only have until next Wednesday to get to 50,000. That's panic inducing.

How's it going?

It's a holy mess is what it is. It's all out of order; the style and tone are wildly inconsistent; it has gaping plot holes and loose ends that I'll need to find someway to tie up later; my wrists ache from typing, and I should probably be working on it right now rather than writing this.

On the other hand, I've learned a few things.

I've learned the value of the label "first draft". It doesn't need to be perfect. In fact, it can't be perfect. I just need to spew out everything I can and later, once I know what the story actually is, I can go back and get rid of the stuff that shouldn't be there; add in the stuff that's missing; shape the tone and style; and do all that stuff that makes it a novel. Right now I'm just pooping out a pile of clay. Later I can shape it into something.

I've also learned, or really remembered from the last time I wrote a novel, that writing a novel is a lot like reading one. I want to keep working on it because I want to know what happens next. Sure, as the author, I have some idea where it's going, but that's not any different than reading a novel. You always have some idea where the book your reading is going. The interesting part is how it gets there.

Ok, I need to get back to writing or I'm going to let all that hard work to get caught up slip away.

BCS Pointlessness

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

With all the craziness that happened last week in college football, all the smart money seems to be on a national title game rematch between LSU and Alabama. On the one hand, if Alabama's only loss came against the number 1 team in the country in LSU, then doesn't that make them better then everyone else? It makes sense that they would be number 2 in that case.

But does that really entitle them to play in the National Championship Game? Isn't the point of the National Championship to determine the best team in all of college football in 2011? Haven't we already established that LSU is better than Alabama?

Let's play this scenario out and see what happens if you give Alabama a second chance at LSU in the title game:

Option 1: LSU wins.
Well, then you look stupid for giving Alabama second chance and the number 3 teams screams to high heaven that they could have beaten LSU if only they'd had the opportunity.

Option 2: Alabama wins.
What does this prove? At the end of the day you'll have an LSU team with one loss to Alabama on a neutral field and an Alabama team with one loss to LSU at home. Doesn't that still make LSU the better team? What's more, LSU will have a better record thanks to the SEC title game. LSU will be 13-1 to Alabama's 12-1. But that won't matter to the BCS. Alabama would still get the BCS title. Of course, the AP could still award LSU its title and we'll have 2 champions. Isn't that what the BCS is supposed to prevent?

The only way to really tell which team is better in that scenario is to have them play a third deciding game, which would never happen.

Now maybe Alabama will lose to Auburn, or maybe LSU will lose to Arkansas and/or Georgia in the SEC Title Game. Certainly stranger things have happened this season. Heck, stranger things happened last Saturday. Still, the odds of those things happening seem pretty slim. Of course this problem could be avoided if a team had to win its conference title to play for the National Championship or if you just said a number 2 team that's already lost to the number 1 team gets passed over and number 3 gets the title shot. Or, you know, if we had a playoff.

Instead, the BCS is rocketing us towards a completely pointless title game. Yawn.

Snarky Comments on Fall Shows I'm Watching

2011-11-14T16:39:00.001-08:00

RINGER
Still on the fence about you. While having Logan Echolls and Buffy in the same show is kind of geek nirvana, I don't understand why is character is in the show. The whole daughter-hot-for-teach sub-plot has nothing to do with the core plot of the show and just makes it seem more like the soap-opera I fear that it will become (and that I have no interest in).

GRIMM
Bees? Really? Yes there is a Grimm fairy tale about bees, but I had to look it up. They wrote over 200 fairy tales and most of them are not in the popular consciousness. Still, the interplay between our hero and the werewolf is great. Everything else, not so much. And the girlfriend seems pointless.

ONCE UPON A TIME
I like you. I'd like you more if you kept that annoying little kid from ever speaking. EVER. And unless you're going to wrap this story up in one season or two, he's going to get awkwardly pubescent real fast. Have you thought through him as a teenager following Emma around? That's going to be disturbingly Oedipal.

NEW GIRL
The thing I like most about this show is that it's not afraid to linger on something until it becomes funny. It doesn't force a joke to be funny and then move on right away to the next one. It's refreshing.

PSYCH
How can you have an entire episode of Psych dedicated to baseball and not have one single Major League reference? Did the writers forget that Corbin Bernsen was in that movie? I mean, you gave Danny Glover a Lethal Weapon reference for crissakes and had a whole play on the belief monologue from Bull Durham. Oh, the missed opportunity! I thought you were better than that Psych.

NaNoWriMo-ing Progress Update o-rama

2011-11-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year. In case you're unfamiliar, the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I've never really been able to participate before because I've always had a show opening in November. Ok, not always, but I think 2003 was the last time I didn't have a show opening in November.

About a month or so ago, I had several ideas swirling around in my head to write about. My main challenge for myself was to write something simple and grounded in reality. I was pretty confident. Then October hit me like a sumo wrestler on energy drinks. I did quite a bit of traveling, and after returning from a business trip to Ireland, I was immediately thrust into the show I was directing that ran in October. (You can read about Fear over on my other blog.) That show consumed pretty much every ounce of creative energy I had, and when it ended, it was suddenly November 1st.

I had nothing. All those ideas I had were either gone or no longer inspired me. I lost a day or two, got behind, panicked, and just started writing. Actually, Diana started writing for me. Sitting next to me on the couch as I sat staring dumbly at a blank Word document, she reached over and typed the word "happy" with auto-correct faithfully capitalized.

So I started with the word "Happy" which became a person's name, because how else do you start a sentence with the word "Happy" any other way without involving quotation marks?

Did I write something simple? Something grounded in reality? Hell now. I'm writing something incredibly complicated that is of course a sci-fi/fantasy.

Still, I'm enjoying the story at least and I want to know where it's going. Or rather I want to know if it's going where I think it's going and I want to see how it gets there.

Then once I get this out of my system, maybe I can focus on something simpler, more grounded in reality, possibly even something non-fiction (which is Diana's suggestion based on how well I write the odd blog post). In any case, I'm significantly behind in my word count, and as I can't seem to average more than 1,000 words a day, I just keep slipping further away. I can get there though! I want to. It's a challenge. Eight days into it I'm at 8,318 words.

Ok, 8,317 once you minus the one that Diana wrote for me.

Brawl

2011-11-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently, as part of a highlight reel shown before Rangers games, they show a clip of an epic brawl between current Rangers owner Nolan Ryan and current White Sox manager Robin Ventura from back in 1993. Ryan has said they will no longer show the clip when the White Sox come to town as a show of respect for Ventura.

It's a pretty amazing brawl. Ryan's 20 years older then Ventura and schools him. Amazingly, Ventura was ejected but Ryan was allowed to stay in the game. He didn't give up another hit the rest of the game in the Rangers' victory.

If you pay attention, you'll see Bo Jackson in the scrum. Ivan Rodriguez was the Rangers' catcher. Former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen's in there somewhere as is Rafael Palmeiro. Hang on to the end of the clip to see the best replay angle on Ryan pummeling the top of Ventura's head.

Sadie's a Viking Ship! Trick or treat.

2011-10-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

The Cardinals Will Win Tonight

2011-10-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, the Cardinals are going to win the World Series tonight. I will happily eat my words if I am wrong, but I just don't see any way around it.

For one thing, no team can survive such a soul-crushing loss. The Rangers were twice a strike away from winning their first World Series last night. Instead, we're going to a game 7. That kind of loss haunts you for decades. Expecting the Rangers to shake it off and win tonight is ridiculous.

For another, a road team hasn't won a World Series game 7 since the Pirates beat the Orioles in Baltimore in 1979. Thanks to the results of an exhibition game 3 months ago a team that couldn't even win its own division gets home field advantage in its sport's finals. That makes sense.

If that weren't bad enough, the Cardinals have won 7 of their 10 titles in a game 7. They're 7-2 in game 7s over all. That's a pretty good record. Of course they did win 3 of those 7 on the road and lost 1 of those 2 at home.

The only silver-lining I see for the Rangers is that, over all, home teams only have an 18-17 record in game 7s. They've just won 8 in a row. Maybe that means a road team is due, or maybe that means home field advantage means more now than it used to mean.

Prove me wrong, Texas. Please, prove me wrong.

Mmm... Guinness...

2011-10-21T06:56:00.001-07:00

No Country for Bond Beauty

2011-10-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

This is exciting: Javier Bardem has been officially announced as the villain in the next Bond film (link). The as yet unnamed film "Bond 23" will be directed by Sam Mendes and star Daniel Craig. "Bond 23" is something of a misnomer as this will actually be the 25th film to feature Bond. The original Casino Royale comedy and the Warner produced Never Say Never Again generally aren't counted.

Mendes is probably the biggest name to ever take the directorial helm of a Bond film. The late Irvin Kershner of The Empire Strikes Back fame directed the aforementioned Never Say Never Again and Michael Apted directed The World is Not Enough. You might not recognize Apted's name, but he directed several successful and critically acclaimed movies in the 80's, including Coal Miner's Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist. Near as I can tell, Mendes is the first Oscar-winner to direct a Bond film. He won for American Beauty.

I can't wait! "Call it, Mr. Bond"