Answers, the fifth!

Oy...yeah, I suck. This month has been very hectic, folks and I lost track of this. Ugh! But, let's get it done, shall we? (Not in one post, though. I think.)

Anyway, from Roger:

Still thinking football: what are the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. favorite game you've ever watched? I assume I know #1.

Well, I'm not sure what #1 might be, although I assume it's the Buffalo Bills' "comeback game" against the Houston Oilers in the playoffs after the 1992 season, in which the Bills were down 35-3 in the third quarter before eventually winning, 41-38, in overtime.

Here's the bummer part of that: I didn't watch most of the comeback.

That game took place on the weekend I got back to college for the second semester. I watched the first half, and figured that the Bills' collective geese were cooked, so I decided to go with The Girlfriend (now The Wife) to the grocery store to pick up some provisions. When we got back, the Bills were mysteriously only down 35-24, and immediately made it 35-31. Yes, I missed most of the furious comeback. But hey, at least I admit it; in the Buffalo area you'll find about 200,000 people who claim to have been there that day. The stadium only held about 80000 people at the time and the game wasn't even sold out! (Ha ha, no blackout for me since I went to school 800 miles away...and then I didn't watch.)

I don't know if I can rank the games in general, but here are a few that I really got a kick out of watching:

Bills def. 49ers in 1992: This game, early in the season, was awesome. It was played at Candlestick, and it was the first time in NFL history that neither team punted. Just a great game.

Bills def. Raiders, AFC Championship, Jan 1991: The famous 51-3 throttling. For one day, the best football team on the planet played in Buffalo. Nobody was beating the Bills that day, in that stadium.

Super Bowl XLII: Giants 17, Patriots 14. An astonishing game, an astonishing result, and so so so worth it to see St. Tommy and his hooded master come up short.

Super Bowl XLI: Colts 29, Bears 17. This is one of the weirdest games I've ever seen. It was just strange. At halftime the score was Colts 16, Bears 14 -- and yet, the announcers were saying things like, "Geez, what do the Bears need to do to get back in this game?" It was either the closest blowout in football history, or the most lopsided close game in football history. It was easily the weirdest football game I can remember.

Super Bowl XLIII: Steelers 27, Cardinals 23. I rooted for the Steelers in this game, but it was really hard even despite the fact that the Steelers are my second favorite team, because Kurt Warner was the Arizone quarterback, and he's one of my favorite sports figures ever. I hated seeing him lose a second Super Bowl, and he played pretty heroically. That game was full of amazing plays and individual performances; Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald put up numbers in the fourth quarter that most times would be great numbers for an entire game.

Vikings def. Bears, 1992 season. This was a regular season game that I taped on the VCR for my college roommate, because he was off doing something with the college choir. The fourth quarter began with the Bears up, 20-0, and when he finally got home to watch the game, I had cued the tape to that moment, telling him that he didn't need to watch anything other than the fourth quarter. He turned pretty green when he saw that 20-0 score...and then he watched the Vikes' comeback for a 21-20 victory, a comeback that was sparked when Bears quarterback Jim Harbaugh decided to call an audible at the line with disastrous results. (Guess what? You can actually watch the ESPN NFL Primetime highlights for this game on YouTube. God, I love the Internet!)

That's a pretty good representation of games I loved watching.

Woody/Mia/Dylan - thoughts on whether it will, or should affect Oscar voting, seeing Allen's films, being in Allen's films.

I don't really know what any of this was about. I've never been a huge Woody Allen fan, so I don't usually bother to see his movies on that basis alone. I have no problem with someone deciding that Allen's "squick factor" now looms to large to really enjoy his work. From what little I heard of this there was an awful lot of "He said, she said", but the things getting said seem kind of bad....

OK, more to come. I promise. I also promise that I won't screw up the August edition this badly! A lot of things in real life are in motion right now, though. Good stuff -- I should probably blog about it all at some point....