IMAGE OF THE WEEK

The Eskimo Nebula, as viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

When in doubt, I know I can always rely on the folks at NASA. Here we have the Eskimo Nebula. See those orange streaks pointing outward around the edge of the image? Those are each a lightyear in length. Wow.

NOTE: BTW, what with the Holidays on the next two Thursdays, I'm retiring the Image of the Week until January 8. How 'bout a hand for the folks in the IotW Department! What a crew! (Yeah, they're giving me the finger. They claim to be overworked down there, but I think they're just jealous of the people staffing the Move Over Britney! Division.)

Reactions of the King

For easy reference, here are direct links to Return of the King reactions of just about everybody on my blogroll who, to my knowledge as of this writing, has both seen the film and posted about it. I, of course, believe that the movie is heinous dreck, although this is subject to change when I actually see the thing. I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion upgrades a notch or two.

(This, by the way, was purely facetious. Short of casting Yahoo Serious as the Mouth of Sauron, there's little Peter Jackson could do to shake me at this point.)

John Scalzi

Darth Swank

Sean Meade

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Scott of The Gamer's Nook

Mickey (who seems like he'll have more to say later)

Sarah Jane Elliott

Michael Lopez (whom I was starting to wonder if he'd given up blogging forever) has a one-sentence preview of his review-to-come. I'd summarize, but I have now used more words than he did in his one sentence. But he rather bucks the common opinion I've seen elsewhere.

Oliver Willis thinks we're all a bunch of idiots and AD&D-playing losers. (Oh, and that a teenager gaining spider-powers and putting on a mask to fight crime is somehow "more honest". Anyone who has any idea what he's on about, let me know. I think Oliver has sung "Hail to the Redskins" one too many times.)

And for a couple of fascinating articles about LOTR in general, check these out:

Tolkien and Elf-Sex (via Darth Swank)

Tolkien and Wagner, with a mention of Howard Shore (via John Scalzi)

Tolkien and Spirituality (via Will Duquette)

There you go. Good reading, all. (Except Oliver, who I think let his adoration of Joe Lieberman cloud his thinking.)

Anyone else, feel free to leave links to your own posts about the film in Comments! (Unless you either hated the movie or think that Liv Tyler is a bad choice for Arwen. In either of those cases, stay away!)

Questions I'm glad I can't answer

Someone happened upon Byzantium's Shores via this search. I have a feeling that had I lived in Syracuse for six years, as opposed to six months, I still wouldn't be able to help someone find lutefisk there. Sorry!

The Novels of Guy Gavriel Kay

I was asked in comments the other day about Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry trilogy and how it compares to his latter works. I gave a short response, but it occurs to me that I might not have ever actually delved into my opinions of each of GGK's books (eight so far, with a ninth coming out next April). So I wrote this post in Word, saved it, and then in my sinusitis-induced stupor of the last couple of days forgot about it altogether. Here it is. In short, if you enjoy fantasy and you haven't read GGK, then you are a charlatan who should be thwacked with a big salmon!

(All of GGK's books, to my knowledge, are in print. The first five novels were recently reprinted in trade paperback editions with new artwork. As always, your first stop for GGK info should be Bright Weavings, the "official" home of GGK on the Web.)

:: The Fionavar Tapestry. This is a trilogy consisting of The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road. This trilogy if GGK's first published work, and it does show in some ways. On first reading I found it hard to get into. This isn't a series that really "grabs" the reader. I wasn't engrossed until about halfway through the first book, when one of the characters engages an act of self-sacrifice that was very moving. After that point I could not put the series down. The other big flaw is that I found it very easy to miss key details in the story that end up playing a huge role in the tale later on.

The Tapestry is a Tolkien-style epic fantasy, complete with dwarves and elves (here called the "lios alfar") as well as orc-like creatures ("svart alfar"). The action takes place in Fionavar, which is actually the first of all worlds. Five college students are recruited from our own world to go to Fionavar basically as visitors, but they are soon drawn into the elemental struggle between good and the Dark Lord Rakoth Maugrim, who has recently been freed from his supposedly-eternal prison. Maugrim threatens nothing less than the destruction of all worlds.

In reading this trilogy, the experienced reader of epic fantasy will note the appearance of just about every epic fantasy trope that has ever existed in the genre: Elves leaving forever for the West, Dark elves on wolves, and dwarves in their mountain halls are mixed with Celtic Myth, and King Arthur and Lancelot even show up. This, according to GGK, is purely intentional. GGK pulls out all the stops on this series, crafting a story of epic scale that he doesn't match again in any of his later books (which, to be fair, have a different focus). There are twists, though: characters are not unremittingly "good"; many of the villains are "misguided" as opposed to "purely evil" (although there is quite a bit of the latter as well); and most importantly, there isn't the standard "single quest" upon whose success everything hinges. No "Destroy the Ring to defeat the villain" here; instead, everything hinges on the choices people make and how those choices resonate. I've noted that self-sacrifice is a major theme in all of GGK's books, but in the Tapestry it is the major theme.

The "everything but the kitchen sink" nature of the story might put off some, and readers familiar with the restraint and subtlety of GGK's later works will likely be surprised (to say the least) with the way his heart is on his sleeve here. But even with the rough patches in the Tapestry, the trilogy is still the GGK work that I re-read most often.

:: Tigana. With this book, GGK started his progression away from standard epic fantasy into the use of fantasy to explore historical themes. There is still a great deal of magic here, but the focus on magic starts to lessen. Tigana seems to be, by consensus, GGK's finest novel; it is also, strangely enough, my least favorite of his novels. Go figure. (I hasten to add that for me to claim a least-favorite GGK book is rather like if I were to claim a least-favorite 1990s Super Bowl run-era Buffalo Bills player.)

Tigana is set in a land called "The Peninsula of the Palm", which is so-named because it is roughly hand-shaped. The Palm is divided into a number of small, petty kingdoms that have difficulty ever coming together for any length of time. The amalgam here is Renaissance-era Italy. (All of GGK's post-Tapestry novels are fantasy analogues to real historical locales.) A musician named Devin ends up joining a band of troubadours, who it turns out are actually revolutionaries led by Prince Alessan of Tigana, a kingdom of the Palm whose last ruler so angered a wizard named Brandin that the wizard worked a spell that erased the very memory of Tigana from the entire world, so much so that the very name "Tigana" cannot even be heard by the people of the Palm. Alessan's struggle is to restore his kingdom.

What makes the book so good is its moral ambiguity. Brandin is clearly the villain, but he comes off very sympathetically; likewise, Alessan the hero commits acts that are morally questionable (most notably, when he "binds" a wizard to his service). A question that constantly arises in GGK novels is the degree to which evil can be worked in service to good and vice versa, and he really brings that home here.

My own problem with Tigana is mainly in its pacing. The book suffers a bit because GGK has to resort to "infodumps" on occasion -- there's a big one early on, centering on Dianora, whose personal story is compelling in the end but takes forever to get going, in my eyes. Many of these infodumps follow a shift in scenery after a previous plotline is really getting engrossing. But this is still a great book.

:: A Song for Arbonne. This is the book that introduced me to GGK, and purely by random chance, too: I spotted it in the "New Books" section of the library when it came out, and I thought, "What a cool cover!" (That cover can be seen here.) What luck, eh? Generally, this tends to be the least favored of his books when I see rankings online, but as my first GGK book I have a soft spot for it. I definitely think it's the most "satisfying". There is less of the moral ambiguity of Tigana, and the magic recedes even farther into the background. This could almost be a historical novel, if not for the fact that Arbonne does not exist.

Arbonne is, basically, Provence in disguise, and the whole book is an exploration of the horrible Albigensian Crusade, in which French Lords took a break from crusading for the Holy Land to stamp out the infidels in their own lands. It was in the Albigensian Crusade that one of the most infamous utterances of war ever was spoken: when asked how the soldiers were to differentiate between the faithful and the heretics in a certain city, the commanding Lord is reported to have said: "Kill them all; God will recognize his own." (Given the brutality of the Albigensian Crusade, I am a bit surprised that GGK did not write a more brutal novel.)

The conflicts in A Song for Arbonne aren't as deep as those in Tigana, but they are more "romantic" in nature; love lost and love wronged are the main themes here. This is the GGK book most likely to please fans of romance novels, I think. (I do not share the common prejudice against romance novels.)

:: The Lions of Al-Rassan. Hands-down, this is my favorite GGK novel. There is romance that exists on a more tragic and desperate level than in Arbonne; the setting – a fantastic analogue of Medieval Spain during the time when the Moors were being pushed out – is exotic and evocative; and the religious themes are fascinating. GGK creates three religions to mirror the three real-world monotheistic faiths: the Jaddites (Christians), the Asharites (the Muslims), and the Kindath (the Jews). With this book I really started to understand what GGK was doing in using fantasy to explore themes from our own history. It's quite a tour-de-force.

What's most impressive is that there is no real "plot". Instead, GGK presents a set of lives that intersect in surprising ways in a period of immense turbulence when one nation is passing and another is forming. As such, nearly every development in the book is surprising, including the climax which seemed to me both inevitable and surprising.

I've made the analogy before that Lions is similar to Casablanca in that its greatness really becomes apparent upon a second reading (or viewing, in the case of the film), when early events can be interpreted in the light of what we know is to come.

I dearly love this book. Were I given only a single GGK book for that desert island, this is the one I'd take.

:: The Sarantine Mosaic. This is a duology comprising Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors. Here is another of the "transplanted European history" novels GGK has been doing; now we're in his version of Byzantium. (The fact of this book's setting played a small part in the naming of a certain weblog!) There are more religious themes, here focusing primarily on the Jaddites and a smaller sect within them called "Heladikeans", who are largely viewed as heretics. A major sub-theme is how art properly reflects faith, and the big theme is the universal human desire to leave something of worth behind when we have died. Most of the major characters are striving to leave their mark on the world, and in a lot of different ways. There is an Emperor who wishes to build the greatest temple to Jad in the world; there is a chariot-racer who wishes to be the greatest in memory; there is a cook who wants to leave behind a boy who cooks as well as he does; and the main character, a mosaicist named Crispin, is obsessed with ideas about color and light.

The Sarantine Mosaic is, like The Lions of Al-Rassan, a book without a single plotline. Instead, it is about a handful of lives and how they interact with the backdrop of history and become part of that backdrop. This focus on a number of different lives provides GGK with his literary equivalent of a mosaic, in which tiny squares of colored glass add up to an entire picture.

The Mosaic is set in the same world as Lions, although its action happens five hundred or so years prior to the earlier book. The attentive reader will spot ways in which the action of the Mosaic anticipates that of Lions. I also found this book's prologue very hard to follow, but here again GGK has hinted that this effect is intentional, another literary rumination on the nature of a mosaic. I also found this work to be the least "overtly" emotional of GGK's books. Not that there is less emotion, but it is of a more meditative nature. I have heard other readers refer to earlier GGK books reducing them to tears (I'll admit it, there are scenes in the Tapestry, especially in the third volume, that have me blubbering every time I read them), but I haven't encountered anyone saying this of The Sarantine Mosaic. This is not a fault, though – just a difference.

:: The Last Light of the Sun. No, I haven't read it yet. Apparently Mr. Kay thought I was kidding when I dropped all those hints on the message boards over at Bright Weavings about wanting a signed copy of his manuscript. Tsk.

Pecos Bill's Cannon

Lynn Sislo had a small rant the other day about uncredited musical rip-offs -- how Pachelbel's famous Canon in D has now, seemingly, morphed into something called "Christmas Canon", with no mention at all of poor Pachelbel. (My favorite version of the Canon, by the way, is the Canadian Brass's version -- although I deeply pity that pour soul of a tuba player.)

Anyway, this kind of thing -- stealing melodies for newer works, even popular song -- has been around for years. Two movie scenes leap to mind: First, the wonderful Mr. Holland's Opus (which I seem to cite weekly now) has a scene where Mr. Holland decides to take a different approach to trying to get his students interested in music. He starts playing a pop tune called "Lover's Concerto", gets them excited, and then informs them that it's really a Bach minuet. And in the musical Anchors Aweigh! there is a scene where Dimaggio (Frank Sinatra) comes across a pianist (Jose Iturbi, playing himself -- it's a long story) who is playing the famous melody from Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto #1, but to him it's a pop song that he sings with gusto.

Composers always borrow. It's what they do. (And if you want to see some freewheeling discussion of musical "borrowing", just go to any film music discussion forum and ask about James Horner. You'll get an earful.)

S-E-X!!!

OK. In reading a number of reviews and commentaries on Return of the King in particular and Tolkien in general, a common thread I've seen woven into the comments is that Lord of the Rings is "sex-less". Some simply make that observation, while for others it is an actual criticism, and it's one that I don't understand. It puts me in mind of that infamous attack article on the Harry Potter books Harold Bloom wrote some years ago, when he complained about the lack of "sexuality" in Rowling's books -- sexuality, in books about people who are what, twelve? -- and now I'm struck again by the apparent belief that a lack of sexuality somehow equals adolescence, and the story is not to be taken as seriously. It's weird how we've taken the idea that "Sex is a theme for mature audiences" and twisted it round so it implies that "Sex is a theme of mature stories". I don't get that, I really don't.

To be honest, I've never really needed sex in stories, and I'm perfectly happy when it's either left out or gracefully alluded to with evocative prose. Here is just such a passage, from William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, in which a young boy walking in the woods comes across two people "in the act".

Two people were lying on an Indian blanket and with a hot rush Stan knew that one was a man and the other was a woman and this was what men and women did secretly together that everybody stopped talking about when he came around, only some grownups never talked about it at all. Curiosity leaped inside of him at the though os spying on them when they didn't know he was there. He was seeing it all -- all of it -- the thing that made babies grow inside of women. He could hardly breathe.

No graphic illustration, no description of this-or-that bit of anatomy, no awkward verbs like "heaving" and "thrusting" and "rolling"; just point-of-view and implication. I tend to simply skim over sex scenes in books, and I tend to wince at them in movies. Maybe it's prudishness, although I like to think it's not; it's simply that eroticism for me is contained much more in the careful, and implied, release of pent-up passion (or the culmination of emotion) than in the actual up-close grinding of bodies. Casablanca would not be improved one whit by a scene in which Rick beds Ilsa. Sex is an adult theme, but it isn't the only adult theme; and in a story where love and heroism are the main themes, the inclusion of sex can simply overwhelm and distort everything.

ROTK at GMR

GMR's review of Return of the King is up. No, I didn't write it. But check it out nonetheless.

That's how big the playoffs are!

I believe I forgot to mention in my football post the other day how happy I am that a new batch of commercials for the NFL playoffs featuring Don Cheadle are starting up. I got a big kick out of those ads last year. Maybe they can somehow mention the Bills' Super Bowl run, now that the whole stigma of "They lost four in a row!" is giving way to a mystique of "They went to four in a row!"

(And yes, I'm looking forward to a fresh surge of Google hits from people looking for "Don Cheadle playoff ads", "Don Cheadle playoff commercials", "Don Cheadle NFL", and whatever other formulations there may be!)

Process Failures

Daniel Drezner, the highly respected university professor and conservative blogger, has a fascinating article up at Slate called "The Real Trouble With the President's Foreign Policy". It's a fascinating read, although I think he too quickly breezes over the questions surrounding "foreknowledge" of 9-11-01. On that particular issue I think there tends to be a problem of "degrees": while I certainly don't think anyone in the Administration knew specifically when and what was going to occur, I do think that a lot of warning signs were either ignored, misperceived, or simply not followed up. It's rather like the person who ignores the progress of the odometer on their car, even though it's been eight thousand miles since the last oil change. Sure, they might not know specifically when the engine's going to seize up, but they are ignoring actions they could well take to prevent it. It is entirely reasonable to wonder just what warning signs were missed in the nine months between the Inauguration and the attacks (especially since so many on the right insist that a big part of the blame belongs, inexplicably, on the shoulders of Bill Clinton), and one doesn't need to entertain scenarios involving Fox Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man meeting in a DC parking garage after midnight to follow this line of inquiry. I also think Drezner goes a bit far in his implication that the criticisms he is leveling against the President are rising exclusively from the right. But all in all, it's an excellent article.

Hackery in action!

"Why I Hate The Lord of the Rings", by some hack Hollywood writer. How much of a hack is he? He uses two different spellings of "Isildur" within three sentences of each other, and neither is correct. And more hackery on display, too!

And to think, this guy got paid for this piece.

(crossposted to Collaboratory)

First in Flight

As Darth Swank points out, today is the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. Here is a good resource page on matters historical with regard to flight, including a Brazilian man who might well deserve to share the claim to "first flight". (Mickey mentioned this a few days ago, btw. It turns out that the distinction of who flew first depends, as often is the case, on definitions: what is a "flight?")

Also check out this grouping of seven "flights of fancy that fizzled", although a few toward the end -- relating to spaceflight and colonization -- are things that I don't really think it's fair to characterize as "fizzled" simply because they haven't happened yet. "If we haven't done it by now, we'll never do it" is never a particularly wise thing to believe.

(Speaking of which, I'm often of mixed mind on how the Space Age and the Flight Age intersect. It's not uncommon to read these articles about the Age of Flight and see how what began at Kitty Hawk naturally leads up to, say, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, but this seems to me to completely ignore the development of rocketry, which had its own pioneers -- Tsiolkovsky, Goddard -- and its own set of problems not related to sustained air flight.)

Anyway, it's been a fascinating hundred years!

Belated Answers

OK, anyone still struggling with the "Villain Dispatch Lines" quiz of the other day, Sarah has most of the answers right. The ones that she does not have, I am putting comments to this post. Basically, nobody seems to have identified #3, although in comments to the original quiz, Nefarious Neddie correctly identified #7. (He also hit the "James Bond Specific" version of the quiz out of the ballpark, as I knew he would [he and I used to compete in grade school on knowledge of the Bond films, and at times, I'm not ashamed to say that he won]. I should have disqualified him from entry.)

If you join me, you get to kill the English!

In my sickness-induced stupor yesterday I watched the first half of Braveheart, a film which I used to number highly in my list of personal favorites but which I hadn't seen in quite a while. It still holds up pretty well, although the speech Wallace gives to the Scots army just before the Battle of Stirling still rings hollow in my ears, being as it is a scaled-down version of the greatest pep-talk ever written, King Henry's speech before Agincourt in Shakespeare's Henry V. But the battle scenes of Braveheart have proven to be very influential indeed: the tracking shots of armies rushing toward each other, which the "crash" as they collide, the helter-skelter close-ups of combat, and so forth. My favorites are actually the tracking shots of hundreds of arrows as they arc through a blue sky. Those compositions have become commonplace in epic war films since Braveheart; even the arena-battle at the end of Attack of the Clones had stylistic throwbacks to Braveheart.

If memory serves, the second half of the film isn't as good as the first. I'll find out maybe this weekend. (No, I don't watch Braveheart with the kid. My TV viewing choices with her aren't that outlandish!)

The Prodigal Blogger

Longtime readers will know that I like to measure my success in the TLB Ecosystem by keeping tabs of my ranking versus that of William Burton, who maintained a pretty robust state of evolution despite the fact that he stopped blogging way back in February.

Well, I now need to find a new benchmark, because Mr. Burton is updating again, which frankly makes me quite happy. He's an outstanding voice of liberal reason.

I feel like the floor of a taxicab....

Well, I don't think I have the flu, unless the flu can manifest itself as one hell of a nasty sinus headache. I think I've had sinus headaches before, but never anything like this; the current annoyance has pretty much incapacitated me for two days now. I decided to do some Googling for headache info, and I quickly winnowed down my particular symptoms. The reason I didn't consider sinus headache to start with is that I've never had one like this, so I never really considered sinus headache in the past. What's been astonishing me about this headache is the degree to which it is localized to about three square inches of my skull, coupled with the unique feeling that my right eyeball is about to burst, pop-gun style, from my head. Now I feel like "Mad-Eye Moody" from the Harry Potter books. (Speaking of whom, when they cast him for the movies, I don't think anyone other than Lance Henriksen is acceptable. I love Lance Henriksen; he's one of those actors whose presence can make the worst movie a bit more tolerable.)

The other thing I've learned is this: Ibuprofen appears to have no effect whatsoever on a sinus headache. I have finally upgraded to Excedrin, which seems to be kicking in now. If I still have problems, then I'll reach for the Sinutab. And if that fails, I'll string together some pipe-cleaners and clean the damned sinuses out myself.

Actually, that has me thinking...maybe there's a homing device lodged in my upper sinuses that has Michael Ironside tracking me, even as I write this. Excuse me while I go wrap a wet towel around my head.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I don't know if what I have is the flu or not. I had some sore-throat, mucus-membrane-in-overdrive unplesantness a few days ago, but that seems to be over; yesterday I awoke to a fever of 100.8 degrees but I've been at 98.6 (or within a couple tenths of a degree thereof) pretty much continuously since yesterday evening. However, I've been really lethargic and I have a pretty persistent headache that seems only now to be in the early stages of receding.

So I'm not posting anything meaningful today, because were I to attempt to do so, it would probably read like that Steven Deb Beste post I Babelfish'd into Japanese and back into English last April Fool's Day.

Hopefully things will be better tomorrow.

(The big downside is that even if I feel just ducky tomorrow, I doubt I'll be up to snuff to a sufficient degree to attend the opening day festivities for that Aragorn fellow and his return to power. But since I didn't see either of the first two on their respective opening dates, I'm not worried.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have go drink beer and nail up some drywall!

I was reading this Jim Capozzola post in which he rattles off a long list of bloggers whom he thinks are deserving of mention on one of the "Awards" currently under consideration out there in Blogistan. He actually mentions my humble abode, which made me quite happy – except that he apparently thinks I should be recognized as a female blogger! Well….maybe I should look into some blog-gender-therapy. Maybe Kim DuToit is available?

Tar me and feather me.

I couldn't help myself. I watched the last hour of Survivor, plus a chunk of the "Reunion" show. I wanted to see if Jon, the "My grandmother died!" guy, lost (which he did), and if Sandra won (which she did). And I have to admit: I really dig that Rupert guy. (And his wife is a total babe.) I'll try not to slip again.

Now wake the red dawn!

OK, Sean got my goat with some trash-talk about the Patriots, so anyone who thinks – as I do – that Liv Tyler has made just a peachy-keen Arwen in the Lord of the Rings movies, go leave him a mocking comment. Heck, leave him a mocking comment even if you think that Liv Tyler shouldn't even be allowed into a bookstore that has copies of LOTR on the shelves! No one shall embrace the Patriots and be allowed to walk away unmocked. He will pay the price for his lack of vision! FORTH EORLINGAS!!

(Go there anyway, if only to see "Barbie Arwen" and "Ken Aragorn". Now there are two franchises that should never be brought together!)

Go Bills! Go Bills! Go B--oh, screw it.

The goose is officially cooked: the Bills can do no better than 8-8 this year – identical with last year's record – and they cannot make the playoffs. They are now mathematically "playing out the string". But they made it pretty close; they didn't go down without a fight, and they nearly tied it up in the last minute. A two-point conversion attempt failed, and thus so did the Bills, 28-26. Offensively, play-calling was as odd as usual. A tight game like this, and Travis Henry only had 19 carries; fullback Sam Gash, who is most skilled at lead-blocking for the run, was used again to run screen-pass routes; Eric Moulds was not even on the field for the final two-point-conversion attempt.

The defense was pretty disappointing today. Once again their inability to generate a consistent pass-rush, combined with their inability to create turnovers consistently, hurt them. Yeah, Pat Williams returned a fumble for a touchdown, but there were also several Tennessee fumbles the Bills failed to recover, near interceptions not caught, and little pressure on a quarterback making his first career NFL start. To add insult to injury, a problem that plagued Bills defenses all throughout the 1990s, even when they had one of the NFL's best defenses, cropped up: they allowed a receiver to get open on nearly every third down the Titans faced.

I've never been one to blame the officiating for a lot of problems when my team loses, but there was one long pass that the Titans completed to the two-yard-line that seemed to me to be a clear case of offensive pass interference that wasn't called. That one hurt.

Next week the Dolphins come to town, so the Bills should win that one. After that, the Bills travel to Foxboro to play the Patriots in a game that might not have any meaning for the home team, if the Pats manage to sew up the AFC's top seed before then. The Bills can finish 8-8 if they win both the next two games, but I sadly think that 7-9 is probably more likely. I never thought the Bills would actually end up being a worse team this year than they were last year, after all the work they did to improve the defense that was the big weakness of last year's team. Amazing.

:: I see Sean is starting the taunting; for reasons passing understanding his better angels were abducted and replaced by goofy Patriots fans a year or so back, despite the fact that the Patriots are clearly the greatest force for evil in American sport, now that the Atlanta Braves have been dismantled and the Dallas Cowboys have evolved into being merely annoying. (Belichick is Sauron, Tom Brady is Saruman, et cetera.) I will grant that they look awfully good this year, but I will never change my belief that their Super Bowl win two years ago was the single greatest confluence of luck in the history of professional sports. And as Gregg Easterbrook likes to point out, the Football Gods always exact a price for such things. Sooner or later, the Pats shall stumble, badly. Keep in mind, Pats fans as your team streaks toward home-field advantage, that the AFC's top seed is only 3-8 in converting home-field advantage to a Super Bowl appearance in the last eleven seasons.

:: As much as I think Mike Martz is a boob of a coach, and as much as I hate seeing Kurt Warner reduced to walking the sidelines (I may have shopped at his grocery store while he was stocking shelves!), and as much as I think Dick Vermeil was dumped unceremoniously after he took them to their only title in franchise history, I still kind of dig the Rams. Marshall Faulk is just a good guy, and since his career is probably near to ending, I'd like to see him get one more shot at the title. Maybe they can beat the Pats in the Super Bowl. It would serve those Foxboro pinheads right.

:: Geez, what on Earth has happened to the Steelers? They stink! And I didn't quite catch one of the highlights all the way – did Chad Pennington really complete a pass to a receiver who was way out of bounds, because he couldn't tell where the field ended due to the snow? Yowza!

:: Cruel moments in sportscasting: In the CBS postgame show, host Jim Nance turns to Boomer Esiason and says, "Hey, Boomer! Did watching that 49ers-Bengals game bring back any Super Bowl memories for you?" (Esiason started Super Bowl XXIII for the Bengals and would have been the MVP had his team managed to keep Joe Montana from engineering a comeback-drive in the last two minutes to win the game, 20-16. I of course felt no sympathy for Esiason on that day, since his team had beaten the Bills in the AFC Championship Game to get to the Super Bowl in the first place.)

:: Sunday afternoon goodness is alternating between the Bills game and whatever figure skating event is on ABC or NBC. Today I got to see Michael Weiss do some incredibly-weird looking variation on a back-flip that involved twisting about somehow, and I learned that Alexei Yagudin – so far, the only Russian male skater I have not found boring beyond belief – has some kind of congenital hip problem that may well doom his career. A shame, that. He's way more interesting than Evgeny Pleshenko.