Party like it's 2007?

UPDATED Below.

Jen14221 asked me over on Facebook about the Buffalo Bloggercon that's still tentatively a go, I guess, for this coming Saturday evening. I say "tentatively" because I haven't heard much by way of interest in this in my past postings about the event (aside from Paul, and I may have even annoyed him by floating the notion of a date change last time I posted on this topic). Many, if not most, of the folks who have contacted me regarding this particular Bloggercon have given regrets for various family or work related reasons, and believe me, I totally understand! While I thought that picking a date in December several months in advance might help that cause, it hasn't turned out that way, and in the realm of Real Life in and around Casa Jaquandor, this weekend has turned out to be completely packed as well (although not so packed as to render impossible my attendance on Saturday night): between tonight and Sunday, we'll have three events at our church (four if you include the regular Sunday service), one work-related Christmas party, two events at The Daughter's school, The Wife's out-of-town work meeting, and the weekend grocery shopping. Where did all that come from? Is there something about this weekend that stands out, sore-thumb-like, on the calendar for people looking to schedule stuff? Ye Gods!

So anyway, is there sufficient interest to bother, or are we better served waiting until sometime in January or February when we're not all inundated with Christmas-related events and family stuff and expenses? I'm honestly asking here -- while I think that our Bloggercons have become way too infrequent, I also know that we're all pretty busy people to begin with, and anyway, there's a reason why organizing bloggers has occasionally been likened to herding cats. I also freely admit my less-than-impressive skills when it comes to event planning. (My involvement in the planning of our wedding, way back when, mainly consisted of, "I wanna wear a black tux with a white tie", "Hmmm...I like the chicken better than the steak and it's cheaper too", "Mmmmmm, carrot cake!", and "Nice invites, except that's not my actual middle initial.")

The first Bloggercon I ever attended was in January 2006, and it was a great time for all, in downtown Buffalo. Now, I know that it's become an "unofficial Bloggercon" to gather at a particular bar and watch the State of the Union address, but I don't think I'd do that one -- nothing against the company involved, but frankly, even if Kate Winslet showed up on my doorstep to watch the SOTU with me, and even if when she did she was wearing a pair of overalls and bearing with her several tubs of Cool-Whip, I'd probably turn her away, so low is my desire to listen to George W. Bush orate about anything at all.

But anyhow, was anyone still planning to go to this Saturday evening's proto-event? Or should we live to fight again another day?

UPDATE 12-7-07: Well, the consensus seems to be that this date is bad, and something early next year would be much better. Fair enough; this one didn't work out, then. Maybe next time.

Sunday Burst of Weirdness (Monday Edition)

I just totally forgot to post a Burst of Weirdness yesterday, so here's one a day late:



Whoops!

(via)

Sentential Links #120

One hundred twenty of these posts! That's pretty...ummm...persistent?

Anyway....

:: Colonize the Gobi desert, colonise the North Atlantic in winter — then get back to me about the rest of the solar system! (I might have linked this before, when it first ran, but I'm linking it again. He's right, of course -- but I still want spaceships and deep space rockets and all that jazz!)

:: Fact is, at the end of the day, no matter how cool and stylish every Apple product is, I sort of resent that they all drive you to suckle exclusively at Steve Job’s hairy manteat. (Ewwwwww!)

:: I have to admit that I really don’t understand people who don’t get excited about the Internet. (Me too! Oh, and Lynn's got new digs. Check them out.)

:: Some while ago, I was chatting with a youngster who was attending the Self-Checkout lines. A young man of obvious humor and intelligence, he allowed as to how he found Nice Lady's voice kinda sexy. I agreed warmly, and told him to wait just a second so he could hear her say my absolute, all-time favorite robotic Self-Checkout Nice Lady phrase.

:: I'm bringing this, my favorite blog, back from the dead after 13 or so months. (Hooray! Always liked this one, even if he's promising not to blog about his job anymore, which were always, well, intriguing posts of his. Take note, Buffalo readers! Warning, by the way, for people who don't like salty language.)

:: Walt Disney's biggest crime with this film is not being a racist, but being naive in his depictions of a situation that more people want to see as something dangerous and insulting. The film may have its slow points, but racist it is not. And hiding it is frankly dishonest; being open about depictions of stereotypes in the past helps to teach future generations that those kinds of depictions are misguided and wrong. Whitewashing history, even film history, is absolutely the worst kind of revisionism. (Every year at the Erie County Fair there's a booth devoted to selling bootleg copies of this movie. One year I'm going to knuckle under and buy one.)

:: I like the going definition of transhumanism which proclaims that human beings can and should seek biological enhancement, whether it be physical or cognitive traits, and/or the advent of new capacities all together.

:: Nothing I have ever read, not by Heinlein and not by Ayn Rand has been more blatant in dropping the story-telling, and devoting its pages to preaching a message (Huh? Philip Pullman outdoes Ayn Rand in the "preaching" department? Ayn Rand, who brings Atlas Shrugged screeching -- well, that's the wrong word, since to make a screeching sound by applying the brakes, the book would have had to have been maintaining a brisk pace already, and that's certainly not the case -- to a halt so that John Galt can dissemble about stuff for over sixty pages?! Now, I haven't read His Dark Materials past the first book -- I kinda-sorta liked it, but not enough to make a super high priority in finishing the series -- so if Pullman actually manages to outdo John Galt's act of serial blathering (and if you don't believe me in its length, here it is, then I can't believe the book ever got published as a children's book in the first place.)

Bills 17, Redskins 16

This was a strange game to watch. First, the whole Sean Taylor thing; I can't imagine how gut-wrenching that must be for that team. Second, the way the game unfolded was just...weird. It's interesting that the Bills apparently believe in themselves, because as a fan, I'm not there yet; the idea doesn't start seeping into my head that they can win after all until well after they've been entertaining that same thought. And that's why they're on the field and I'm watching them on the teevee. Anyway:

:: Rian Lindell. Lots of folks like to claim that he's not a "clutch" kicker, despite his statistical status as the most accurate kicker the Bills have ever had. Well, he was sure clutch in this game, wasn't he?

:: Trent Edwards played extremely well, I thought, for a rookie. He didn't lead any touchdown drives (the Bills' scoring consisted of five FGs and a safety), but he threw for over 250 yards and didn't turn the ball over at all. He showed more command managing the tempo of the game than JP Losman did most of the time he was here. Now I'm starting to look with hope on what things might be like when the Bills have a slightly better offensive line (they need a new center, I think) and they upgrade their receiving corps and tight ends.

:: Joe Gibbs. Geez, I like that the Bills won, but how bad a call was that at the end, when Gibbs apparently was unaware of a pretty important rule? I've always liked Gibbs, even when he beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVI, but wow, maybe he needs to look into re-retiring from the NFL.

:: For once, nothing, really. This was a gut-check of a game. The Bills didn't let themselves get buried under the emotion that was running rampant in Washington, they kept their heads clear and played their style of football. This may have been their best executed game all year, and it could be a harbinger of better things to come. We'll see.

Next week: the Bills host the still-winless Miami Dolphins. They barely got by the Dolphins a few weeks ago, but this one's at home and the Dolphins will probably be feeling more demoralized now that they got shellacked by the not-very-good Jets this week. I canna wait!

And of course, let's pray that Baltimore can knock off the New England Montgomery Burnses tomorrow night!

One Hundred Movies!!! (41 through 50)

Wow...it's been almost a month since the last time I posted an entry in this series. I'm not sure how the time got away from me there, but let's get back into it, shall we? We're now entering the top fifty (although these rankings only get more "serious" as we approach the top of the list; my rankings in the top twenty will be more reflective of which movies I like more than others than this part of the list, where I'm just basically listing movies I love). How much longer can we go before I start writing about a certain group of movies conceived by George Lucas? Let's find out!

50. Dances With Wolves

It seems to almost be a shibboleth these days that this movie is at best overrated and at worst downright bad, and that its Best Picture Oscar (over Goodfellas) is one of the greatest injustices in Academy Award history. Well, I may be the only person left on Earth who believes this, but I think the Academy got it right. Dances With Wolves actually is a magnificent film. Visually it's terrific; the story is told exceedingly well; I actually like Kevin Costner's understated portrayal of Lt. John Dunbar. For more on why I like this movie, here's an old post of mine on the topic. Keeping it brief here, this film is one of those where I am never aware of the running time while I'm watching it.

Signature moment: Wow, so many that I could choose, but I'll take the almost-imperceptible smile of Wind In His Hair when he tastes sugar for the first time.

49. Say Anything

Any readers who were around at the very beginning of this blog may remember my outrage that Say Anything inexplicably failed to make the cut of the AFI's "100 Years, 100 Romances" list of the best romantic movies of all time. I continue to be mystified by this, as Say Anything is, quite simply, the best teen romance movie ever filmed, and I'll have words with anyone who claims otherwise. There's nothing in this movie that isn't terrific. Every character is sharply drawn, even the most insignificant extras or bit players, and of course John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler is iconic.

Signature moment: "I gave her my heart...she gave me a pen."

48. Jerry Maguire

Sticking with Cameron Crowe. Remember when Tom Cruise could be a romantic lead and not be really creepy about it? When did that all change? Anyhow, this movie's grasp of sports lore still holds true even now, twelve or thirteen years after its release, and the film's romance story works too. I love how it takes its time with its story, too; the movie's on the long side, but it ends up not feeling overlong to me.

(When this movie came out, the memory of the Bills' losses to the Cowboys in their third and fourth Super Bowls was still pretty fresh, so much so that in the theater where I saw Jerry Maguire the first time, a few audience members actually cheered during the Cardinals-Cowboys game at the end of the movie when an annoyed Barry Switzer was shown on screen. And Switzer wasn't even the Cowboys coach in either of the Bills' Super Bowls!)

Signature moment: I don't care if it became cliché almost instantly: "You had me at hello" always gets me. Every time.

47. Almost Famous

I might as well finish my Cameron Crowe triptych. I honestly can't tell which of these three movies is my favorite Crowe film (I liked his recent Elizabethtown, but it's not as good as any of these), which is why I lumped them together on this list. Almost Famous is one of those period movies that makes me wish I'd been around during its time. It's so convincing that, famously, lots of people actually claim to have heard the band Stillwater in concert in real life, when of course, the band is wholly fictitious. The movie's funny, bittersweet, interesting – and it has no plot. Just a bunch of people living their lives and dealing with consequences.

Signature moment: "I am a golden God!"

46. Clerks

I love what Kevin Smith created here, with his true-to-life focus on the doings of a couple of ne'er-do-wells in their dead-end retail jobs. The film is raunchy, gritty, and harsh, but it's also funny and, in its way, wise.

Signature moment: Someone puts, for reasons passing understanding, a cat-litter box on the counter of the store. And then a cat comes along, and...well, you know.

45. Kiki's Delivery Service

It starts off seeming like some kind of Harry Potter-type of story: a thirteen year old girl, who happens to be a witch, must leave her family for one year to live in the world as a witch. Along with her black cat, with whom she has long conversations in which she shares her dreams and doubts, Kiki sets out into the unfamiliar world and confronts the evils of...well, that's just what makes this such a magical movie. Kiki doesn't end up confronting any evil at all. She just goes to a city by the sea and carves out a life for herself there, living in the upstairs apartment of a bakery, supporting herself by launching her own parcel delivery service (delivering packages via flying broom), meeting a local boy, and so on. This is a quiet, gentle movie about what happens in a world where there happen to be witches and where nobody much thinks about the fact that there are witches. It's everything you'd expect from Hayao Miyazaki.

Signature moment: Any of the flying sequences. Hayao Miyazaki's most wonderful sequences often seem to involve flight of some kind.

44. The Wind and the Lion

This is a grand-style adventure film made in the early 1970s, featuring Sean Connery as Raisuli, a Berber warlord and Brian Keith as President Teddy Roosevelt, who become adversaries after Raisuli abducts an American woman and her children. Despite the kidnapping, Raisuli quickly becomes one of the film's good guys. The film is both a throwback to romantic epic adventures and a complicated, thoughtful examination of how people can be adversaries without necessarily being enemies. Oh, Jerry Goldsmith wrote one of his greatest scores for this film. "Raisuli Attacks" is one of the best action cues in all of film music.

Signature moment: This movie has the third best closing line -- "Is there nothing in your life worth losing everything for?" -- of all the movies on this list.

43. The Emperor's New Groove

I can't imagine how this movie got made, what with the reputation the Disney folks have carefully cultivated for themselves as staid, corporate, "Nobody shall have any fun that we don't personally micromanage!" stuffed shirts. Seriously, The Emperor's New Groove channels the spirit of Chuck Jones far more than it does that of Walt Disney, and it's terrific for all that. Jokes the break the "fourth wall", cheerful leaps in logic, characters who are jerks and who are aware that they're jerks and are perfectly happy to be jerks – Daffy Duck would be perfectly at home in this movie.

Signature moment: "Now what are the odds that trapdoor would have led out here!"

42. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I need to watch this again. It's one of those mind-bending films whose story wraps in and around itself, jumping forward and backward in time, delving into mental states of its characters, doing all that self-referential stuff that's extremely compelling when done well (and, sadly, terribly lame when not – luckily, not the case here). Jim Carrey is a man who learns of a medical procedure whereby memories can be erased, so he decides to undergo the procedure to have his memories of his departed girlfriend (Kate Winslet) removed. However, he soon has second thoughts. At times it's a funny film, at other times it's a disturbing one. Jim Carrey is a terrifically talented actor, in my opinion.

Signature moment: In response to being asked if the procedure can cause brain damage, the inventor guy chillingly replies, "Well, technically, it is brain damage."

41. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

I think this film gets short shrift a lot of the time. I myself didn't really come to appreciate it until I was in college and got copies of the entire Indy trilogy on tape and watched them all back-to-back-to-back, and I was surprised to note that Temple holds up for me much better than Last Crusade does. (Last Crusade's plot is basically a reworking of Raiders, with a different Judeo-Christian relic substituted and, of course, that wonderful chemistry between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.) Temple is a much darker film, with some moments that are pure horror. It's not perfect (a bit too much of the Kate Capshaw character being whiny), but I do like it more than Last Crusade.

Signature moment: Indy's about to drop Short Round into the lava pit to his death, when he winks and says, "I'm all right, kid". And then he yanks Shorty back from the brink and starts beating the snot out of Mola Ram's thugs.

And there we have it for now. Only 40 more movies to go! You'd think we'd get to one of those movies with the laser swords sooner or later. Maybe next time!

Unidentified Earth 25

I kind of figured that LC Scotty would get Unidentified Earth 24, but I didn't figure he'd beat it up and take its lunch money! His comment was gold, so I'll let him have the last word on that one:

Oh, I so efffing have this one!!!! It's Halona Cove, on the Eastern side of Oahu-made famous as the beach from From Here to Eternity. I can't believe I got one!!

Interesting tidbit: I went SCUBA diving there when I was stationed at Pearl Harbor. On our way back in, well after dusk (read well into shark feeding time) there was group of locals on the point at the south end of the cove. When we surfaced they started freaking out. When we heard what they were shouting, we beat a real hast retreat to the beach. Their cries? "Chum in de water, Brah!"

Yup.

So there you have it.

And now, on to the new installment.



Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses, please!

I'm just a kid who's four, each day I grow some more!

In an odd moment during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when the Dora the Explorer balloon floated by, The Daughter voiced her strenuous dislike of Dora. This took me by surprise, because time was – and not too long ago, either – when The Daughter liked Dora a great deal. But now? Not so much. She insists that Dora is for babies and she's not a baby, so no Dora for her anymore, thank you very much.

But she still likes watching Caillou, whose appeal is, I think, even more limited than Dora's.

For those who haven't seen Caillou, he's a four-year-old boy who lives with his parents and his toddler sister somewhere in pseudo-urban Canada, where he basically does all the normal stuff a four-year-old kid does. He plays with his toys, he gets upset when he's left home with a babysitter but ends up having fun, he pouts about doing chores until his Mommy finds a way to make it fun, he helps Daddy wash the car (which consists of sitting inside it pretending to drive while Daddy does the work). Now, I personally don't find Caillou all that objectionable, but I know that a lot of folks find him unbearably whiny, which I can certainly understand. I like that the show's not grounded in any kind of fantasy or magical make-believe at all (although no explanation is ever offered as to just why if is that Caillou is as bald as a stone whilst every other member of his family has a nice thick head of hair). It does get annoying that every problem this family ever has is so easily defused and that the parents always know exactly how to fix any conflict or say the right thing or whatever.

Anyway, last time I was in the room whilst Caillou was on TV, I thought it would be funny if everyone in the Caillou-verse aged except Caillou himself. Imagine Caillou as an eternal four-year-old, reacting to stuff!

Caillou, Daddy, and the Three-Day Bender!

Daddy walks in. His ever-present green sweater is ripped at the hem and has some spots of brown goo on it. Daddy's face is slightly green, his cheeks sport three days' growth of beard, and his eyes are bloodshot.

CAILLOU: Mommy, Daddy's home! Where have you been, Daddy? It's Friday and you haven't been home since Tuesday.

DADDY: Ooooooggg... (runs into bathroom)

CAILLOU: Daddy, you don't look so good.

MOMMY: Maybe you should leave Daddy alone, Caillou. Maybe tomorrow when he feels better you can help him look for a new job by cutting out some of the want-ads for him!

CAILLOU: Was Daddy fired, Mommy?

MOMMY: Sometimes bosses and employees don't agree on things, Caillou. And sometimes bosses are skinflint bastards who only care about the bottom line.

CAILLOU: Mommy, you told me not to call people 'bastards'.

MOMMY: Yes, I'm sorry, Caillou. Hey! Can you come downstairs and help me bake some cookies?

CAILLOU: OK Mommy!

Caillou runs downstairs. Meanwhile, the sounds of retching come from the bathroom.

Caillou, Rosie, and Sneaking Out At Night!

Caillou knocks softly on Rosie's door. Rosie, now a teenager, is putting the finishing touches on her Goth outfit, dabbing black lipstick on her lips and getting the chain around her neck just the right tightness.

CAILLOU: Rosie? I can't sleep!

ROSIE: Go talk to Mom, Caillou. I'm busy.

CAILLOU: I knocked on their door, but Mommy's moaning a lot and Daddy threw a shoe at the door.

ROSIE: Well, maybe you should leave them alone, Caillou. Adults like to be alone sometimes.

CAILLOU: Not Mommy! She loves me. We're going to bake cookies later!

ROSIE: Yeah...well, why don't you go down to the kitchen and start getting the stuff for cookies ready? That way it'll all be out when Mommy gets up to get a glass of water in about fifteen minutes.

CAILLOU: Okay Rosie! Are you sure it will be fifteen minutes?

ROSIE: That's usually how long it takes them.

CAILLOU: Okay!

Caillou runs out, singing something about cookie baking with Mommy. Rosie shakes her head, puts own her black leather jacket, opens her window, and jumps over to the oak tree that's her usual means of nocturnal escape.

Caillou Looks For Gilbert the Cat!

Mommy and Daddy are in the kitchen. Mommy is doing dishes, while Daddy reads the paper, smokes a cigarette, and drinks coffee. Caillou can be heard offscreen, calling the cat.

CAILLOU: Gilbert! Gilbert! Come out wherever you are!

Caillou comes into the kitchen. Daddy quickly stubs out his cigarette and stuffs the butt into his pocket.

DADDY: Uh, hi there, Caillou!

CAILLOU: Hi Daddy. Wow, it always smells smoky in the morning in here.

MOMMY: That's the garbage disposal, Caillou! The motor is breaking. I keep telling Daddy to get a new one.

DADDY: Yeah, but I just like that smell so much!

CAILLOU: I can't find Gilbert anywhere!

DADDY: Really? He was just here. I think he went that way! (points to living room)

CAILLOU: Here I come, Gilbert!

Certain that he's on the trail for sure this time, Caillou goes running out of the room.

CAILLOU: Come out wherever you are, Gilbert!

MOMMY: You know, most families tell their kids some lie about the cat going to live on a farm or a petting zoo.

DADDY: (pulls out his cigarette butt) Just shut up and get me another match, will you?

Caillou's Uncle Timmie and the Magic Brownies!

The living room in Caillou's house. Lots of people are around. Everyone's wearing black, except for Caillou, who's in that eternal yellow shirt of his. Everyone's crying too, except Caillou.

CAILLOU: I didn't know they made boxes big enough for people, Grandma!

Grandma pretty much ignores Caillou completely.

CAILLOU: Will you need help pushing Grandpa's box upstairs, Grandma? He's pretty fat, you know.

Some guy we've never seen before, a long-haired guy who has paired a black suit with a tie-dyed necktie, appears beside Caillou and steers him away from Grandma.

UNCLE TIMMIE: Hey, little dude! Why don'tcha come outside with me, eh?

CAILLOU: Okay, Uncle Timmie!

Caillou follows Timmie to the kitchen, where they find Mommy and Daddy, who are standing over by the fridge in very close proximity to one another.

MOMMY: My, darling! You haven't been like this in six days!

DADDY: You should wear black more often, dear! It makes your chest look so--

TIMMIE: (loudly) Oh, well, we'd better go outside, Caillou!

MOMMY: Oh Caillou! Yeah. Go outside. We'll be out ourselves in a while. First we have some stuff to do upstairs.

DADDY: Heh!

MOMMY: Hee hee hee....

Caillou follows Timmie outside.

DADDY: Should Caillou spend so much time with Timmie?

MOMMY: Forget Caillou for once! I'm so sick of baking cookies with that kid!

Outside, Timmie sits down on the stoop with Caillou.

TIMMIE: Say, none of the people in there are cops, are they?

CAILLOU: No. Why, Uncle Timmie?

TIMMIE: Oh, nothing. Here, hold Uncle Timmie's flask for a few minutes. (hands Caillou his whiskey flask) Oh, and hold this too.

CAILLOU: (takes a ziploc bag from Timmie) This looks like what Mommy puts in the lasagna.

TIMMIE: Ha! Well, this stuff wouldn't taste too good in lasagna, Caillou! But it sure makes for some great brownies!

CAILLOU: Brownies? I love brownies!

TIMMIE: Me too, kid!

CAILLOU: Did you bake brownies with this stuff with Grandpa?

TIMMIE: (laughing) One time, yeah. He kicked me out of the house after that.

CAILLOU: He did?

TIMMIT: Uh-huh. Say, why don't you show Uncle Timmie where Mommy keeps her baking supplies? I'll let you lick the beaters when I'm done mixing the batter!

CAILLOU: Yayyyy!

(I know, I know...the subject of this post is sure to come up when I'm sitting down for my one-on-one Life Performance Review with Saint Peter.)

Two years ago

Little Quinn's Grave II, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

It was two years ago today. Part of me feels as though it was twenty years ago...another part feels like it was two hours ago.

From The Two Towers:

Aragorn:
Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows,
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?'
'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.'
'O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.'

Legolas:
From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies, from the sandhills and the stones;
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans.
'What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve.'
'Ask not of me where he doth dwell - so many bones there lie
On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky;
So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing Sea.
Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!'
'O Boromir! Beyond the gate the seaward road runs south,
But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea's mouth.'

Aragorn:
From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls;
And clear and cold about the tower its loud horn calls.
'What news from the North, O mighty wind, do you bring to me today?
What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away.'
'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.
His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;
And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'
'O Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.

Be well, Little Quinn, wherever you are.

A random photo

Flower Festival, originally uploaded by Beto e Rosalia.

I just spotted this photo by chance on Flickr, and it caught my eye. Do I need a better reason than that? I think not!

Still going to Middle Earth

I've been listening, off and on, to my recently-acquired The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: The Complete Recordings set. Interestingly enough, this still isn't the end of the major descent into the world of LotR music: Doug Adams, the guy who wrote the liner notes for the Complete Recordings releases, is working on a book about the music for release sometime in late 2008, and this book is supposed to include yet another CD of "rarities", meaning, out-takes and un-used musical concepts and demos and all that sort of thing, in order to highlight the compositional process of Howard Shore. And he's started a blog on the topic of that book. Check it out!

Yub yub!

Over at SFSignal they're discussing just when Star Wars jumped the shark. Of course, I'm of the opinion that it hasn't, but I seem to be in a minority on that. Fine by me.

But it's the opinion of the poster linked above that it was the Ewoks that did it. Again, fine by me; I don't hate the Ewoks, but most people do. (I like them and think they just weren't savage enough. Too comedic.) However, I wonder about this, which is become something of a shibboleth in Star Wars crit:

That's right, the moment Lucas decided to put merchandising above storytelling, the shark was well and truly jumped. Not only did we get cute, cuddly Ewok toys and the execrable Ewok adventure movie, we were also cheated out of seeing the Wookies kick some Empire butt during the fight to eliminate the shield generator.

Because Lucas saw $$$, the Wookies were relegated to a bit-part in Episode III, and the Ewoks took their glory, and we got the shaft. Episode VI could have been so much better without Ewoks, too bad Lucas was eying the killer fish in the water in front of him.

My question is simply this: is there any evidence at all for the belief that Lucas was going to have the Wookiees in Return of the Jedi until he got the idea of marketing Ewok teddy bears? Where on Earth did this come from, anyway? Everything I've read on the subject indicates that Lucas decided on Ewoks because he wanted a non-technological race to play a role in defeating the Empire in the final battle, and he'd already depicted the Wookiees as being quite technologically proficient. That makes sense from a story standpoint, so why do people believe that Lucas just made whatever he thought would sell the most toys? I genuinely don't understand this.

After all, it's not like he couldn't have simply made Wookiee toys in the same vein as the Ewok ones. There could have been Wookiee plush toys and Wookiee tree village playsets. Those two Ewok TV-movies? Sure, he could have made a Wookiee TV movie. In fact, he'd already done so, and maybe that was part of the problem, since when RotJ was on its way to theaters, that Holiday Special was a lot fresher on the brain for Star Wars fans.

Unless someone can point to an interview in which George Lucas specifically states something along the lines of "I thought Ewoks would sell better for Kenner", I see no reason to take this line of thought. It seems awfully cynical to me.

But for the Grace....

Imagine turning on the news and seeing photos of your former residence, burning to the ground. Wow.

(Note to self: Buy her new CD!)

Jaguars 36, Bills 14

Well, at least we finally got some definitive answers about one of the Bills' quarterbacks in this game!

:: Well...er...hmmmmm. Yeah, I got nothin'.

:: The offensive line. I know, I harp on this all the time, but it's still an issue, isn't it? They do OK in pass protection, but the run blocking is terrible. They still don't overpower guys off the line of scrimmage, so Bills running backs are either doing too much east-west running or having to push their way through crowds at the line for any positive gain. The line's gone from jaw-droppingly-bad a couple of years ago to "Meh", which I guess is an improvement, but Melvin Fowler's just an awful center. I wonder if in spending so much energy wondering who the next Jim Kelly's going to be, we've lost sight of the fact that this team won't be a great team until we find the next Kent Hull.

:: Josh Reed whiffing on a pass toward the end of the game. At this point, the outcome was pretty much set, and the pass was way too high, but Reed should have gone up for it. It did, however, look to me that Reed may have had the sun in his eyes when he turned for the ball and whiffed on it because he just couldn't see where the heck it was.

:: It's over, folks. JP Losman's era in Buffalo is done. He had his chance this year, and frankly, he blew it. I find this a bummer because I like the guy, but his inability to hit receivers on the numbers no matter how open they are, coupled with his inability to hit receivers in stride (every catch of a Losman pass seems to come when the receiver has come to a dead stop) and his generally bad decision process means that he's just not going to get it done. It's time for Trent Edwards.

:: Defensive line. They play hard, but without a large body in the middle to clog lanes and occupy multiple blockers, the smaller guys on the ends just get lost. Aaron Schobel has just 2.5 sacks so far this year. Ugh.

Like last year, this year has become about letting talented youngsters emerge and finding out about Losman. Maybe next year can actually be about getting good again. I think it can happen, but they have to get better at the line of scrimmage. Please oh please.

(Oh, and a giant raspberry to the Philadelphia Eagles, who toyed with my emotions last night in nearly knocking off the New England Baby Seal Clubbers, but instead allowing the Evil Ones to escape with the win. Ugh!)

Heading behind the dark side of the moon....

UPDATED Below.

Hey folks! I hope you're all having a fine weekend. And for those of you who were out early shopping yesterday morning, What on Earth is wrong with you??!!

Anyhow, this blog will be on kinda-sorta-hiatus for an undetermined time, due to an annoying change in circumstances -- specifically, our DSL connection has decided to go on something of a vacation. Thus we have no Interweb at Casa Jaquandor. Oh noes!

Of course, I will be doing everything humanly within my power to fix this problem, because not having Interweb is like not having...oh I don't know, coffee? Milk? Toilet paper? But obviously, until the Interweb is restored at Casa Jaquandor, posting here will be pretty much nonexistent.

I will be writing posts and saving them to disk and flash-drive so that when I am back online, content will flow again. I will be able to check my e-mail during my breaks while I am at The Store, so I won't be completely incognito. There are, however, a number of folks out there to whom I owe longer responses on some e-mails and comments left on old posts here; I hope you folks (who likely know who you are!) won't mind waiting for those responses.

Meantime, be excellent to one another! We'll be back as soon as we can.

UPDATE 11-25-07: Well, the problem appears to be fixed for now. I say "for now" because I'm not totally sure it's fixed, but after I last night put some recommendations I got from an Earthlink rep into place, our connection has been a lot more solid, only going off for a couple of minutes at a time, here and there, and it hasn't gone out at all in several hours as of this writing. Here's hoping.

(For the tech-heads out there, I'd feared that our DSL modem had conked out, and thus we'd be offline until I could get a new one. However, the Earthlink guy suggested removing the DSL filter between the modem and the wall-jack and just plugging the modem into the phone jack directly, and that seems to be working just fine. So instead of having both the phone and the DSL connection plugged into the same jack and using a filter to split the signal -- and leaving our other phone jack unoccupied -- I have the phone plugged into one, using a filter, and the DSL directly into another. I've also moved the modem the recommended distance from anything else that's electrical, although I never took that action in the first place, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it, but hey, why not.)

As for the blog, I'll remain quiet until tomorrow afternoon. The Burst of Weirdness will return next week. I'll also skip a week on Sentential Links, so that won't be running tomorrow afternoon either. Unidentified Earth will return to its Thursday schedule. And so on. (All this is, of course, contingent on our Interweb working right from here on out.)

Answer me these questions three eight!

Another quiz-thing from Erin, who didn't specifically tag me but rather tossed out an open invitation. It's "Eight Things" of various sorts. I'm also adding a new category, at the very end. Here we go!

8 things I am passionate about:

1. Pizza in all its forms
2. Good writing
3. Science Fiction
4. Fantasy
5. Liberal politics
6. Workwear
7. The proper use of the English language
8. Ice Cream

8 things I want to do before I die

1. Watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended editions) back-to-back-to-back.
2. Watch the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl. The Buffalo Bills. Not the Toronto Bills, the San Antonio Bills, or any other Bills.
3. Write something that gets read widely.
4. Travel to Great Britain and see various locales related to the Arthurian legends.
5. Go to New Zealand and walk the Milford Track.
6. See the populations of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and other Upstate New York locales start to go up again.
7. Meet more of my favorite blog-friends in person.
8. Thank George Lucas in person.

8 things I say often

1. "For the LOVE of GOD!"
2. "Yeah, that's a good idea."
3. "Oh, my, my, my my my. What a mess."
4. "Oh noes!"
5. "Yeah. I'll get right on that."
6. "Lester, DOWN!" (often repeated several times, while Lester mulls over whether I'm addressing him or some other cat named Lester.)
7. "So do you have homework tonight?"
8. "Ahhh, f***." (I admit it. This tends to be my first utterance upon hearing the alarm clock in the morning.)

8 books I’ve read recently (Some of these I've blogged about here, but I'm not going to dig through archives for links to posts just now.)

1. The Griffin and Sabine trilogy, Nick Bantock
2. The Morningstar trilogy, also Nick Bantock
3. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
4. The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross (still reading it)
5. Fray, Joss Whedon
6. Kingdom Come, Alex Ross (the other Alex Ross)
7. The Nasty Bits, Anthony Bourdain
8. The Bible (Genesis and Exodus thus far. An ongoing project.)

8 songs I could listen to over and over

1."Fernando", Abba (Seriously. I love this song. There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Fernando!)
2."On the Street Where You Live", Lerner and Loewe, from Brigadoon My Fair Lady. (How on Earth did I type Brigadoon? Yeesh! But for a Brigadoon song, there's always "There But For You Go I".)
3."I'm All Right", Jo Dee Messina. I'm not a big country fan, but this song just sticks in my head in a big way.
4."People Get Ready", Curtis Mayfield. (I especially love the Rod Stewart-Jeff Beck cover from the 80s.)
5."Into the West", Howard Shore, from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Sung by Annie Lennox.
6."Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", the Platters.
7."I Dreamed a Dream", from Les Miserables.
8."Scythe Song", Dougie MacLean.

8 things that attract me to my best friends

1. Ability to get my more obscure jokes
2. Their interesting things to say
3. Their reliability
4. Their loyalty
5. Their refusal to pass judgment on things
6. Their steadfastedness
7. Their laughter
8. Their dislike of the New England Stupid Patriots (OK, this isn't necessarily a dealbreaker. But it helps!)

8 (or more) things that I am thankful for this year

1. Books.
2. Music.
3. Movies.
4. The Store.
5. Coconut cream pie.
6. Pizza.
7. Yeungling Lager, chilled almost to the point of freezing.
8. Spiced Rum.
9. Vanilla Rum.
10. Coconut rum.
11. Chocolate.
12. Overalls.
13. Friends, in real life and online.
14. This blog.
15. The readers of this blog.
16. A roof above my head.
17. Paper to write on.
18. Stories in my head to tell.
19. The Wife and Daughter.

By way of a meta-blog note, posting will be light over the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, and may the Force be with you all!

It's my gift...it's my curse

According to AICN, Lance Henriksen may be in the new X-Files movie...which means that we may not have seen the last of Millennium's Frank Black. I'm not sure what to make of this, really; I never much liked the idea that Frank Black operated in the same universe as Mulder and Scully.

Millennium was such a great show -- for two seasons, anyway. I should watch it again one of these days.

Fixing the Prequels - The Phantom Menace (part three)

part one
part two

Continuing our re-imagining of The Phantom Menace, we are now at the droid invasion of Naboo and the rescue of the Queen.

Before I begin, a couple of points that have occurred to me since I posted the first two installments of this series:

:: The words "Roger Roger!" should never be uttered by a battle droid or anybody else. First, "Roger" as a response to a command is way too Earth-reminiscent for a Star Wars movie. Second, "Roger Roger!" makes me think of the classic scene in Airplane!. You know the scene I mean. All we need is a droid named "Oveur" and we're all set.

:: In comments to the last post, Jason makes the point that the Gungan's use of a pidgin form of English doesn't work; he'd just give them an alien tongue of their own and use subtitles, the way most alien species in Star Wars are handled. I suppose that's a fair point, but for the most part, the pidgin thing never really bothers me (except in places where it gets too hard to understand), and if we subtitle the Gungans, we'd have to explain how everyone understands them or have protocol droids standing around to do translating or whatever.

OK, onto the movie. The droid army has landed in the forests of Naboo and are now advancing on Theed, the capital city. This whole sequence is pretty effective, I think, except that we don't really get a sense of the population of Naboo. This is actually a more generic problem I've always had with TPM; there's just not that much of a sense of the Naboo society. As the battle droids and their machines enter Theed (the capital city of Naboo), we should see the citizenry being rounded up and taken to the "camps" that the droids refer to. Now, this being Star Wars and all, this doesn't have to be a Schindler's List type of thing; it doesn't need to feature brutal violence a la the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. But there isn't that much sense of a forced invasion in the finished movie. There should be some shots of battle droids rounding up normal people, forcing them out of their homes, little kids being forced apart from their friends and toys, and the like.

There's a brief shot of Queen Amidala standing at a window watching sadly as the droid armies enter her city. At this point, I'd add something like this:

Queen Amidala watches as the droid armies approach the palace. In the distance, her citizens are being rounded up and led away. A transport approaches, and Nute Gunray disembarks. Captain Panaka comes up to her from behind.

PANAKA: My Lady, we must take you into hiding.

AMIDALA: I will not go into hiding. My fate will be that of my people.

PANAKA: My Lady, please.

AMIDALA: Go, Captain. I will come when I am ready.

Panaka recognizes that he will not win this argument and leaves. Amidala turns to one of her handmaidens, who is standing nearby.

HANDMAIDEN: Your Majesty?

AMIDALA: We must do what we discussed before. We have very little time.

HANDMAIDEN: I will serve you well, My Lady.

And then we'd cut to the Bongo emerging from the water, in the middle of the river.

Seeing this the first time, we of course wouldn't know what plan the Queen is hatching, but it would establish that there is a plan. Thus, in the third act of the film when the Queen reveals that she has been "hiding in plain sight" all along, using her handmaiden as a decoy, we'd already be prepared for it: the old idea of Anton Chekhov's that the gun that is fired in the third act needs to be on the mantelpiece in the first act. Also, from a standpoint of character, we'd get a hint that maybe this young girl of a Queen isn't quite as naïve and overmatched in the face of superior force than we've been already led to believe.

OK. The two Jedi and Jar Jar arrive in the middle of Theed and come ashore. In the original script there's some stuff about their narrow escape as their sub is pulled over a waterfall (this was actually filmed and can be seen as a deleted scene on the TPM DVD). No, I wouldn't restore this; it doesn't really add much. I would add a small bit of dialogue after the Jedi have come ashore:

OBI WAN: We're too late, Master. The droid army is already here.

QUI GON: We must still find the Queen, and if she is already a prisoner, we will free her and take her to Coruscant. (turns to Jar Jar) Go in peace, Gungan. Your debt to me is paid.

JAR JAR: But where will mesa go? Mesa does not know--

QUI GON: (waves hand) You will go someplace else.

JAR JAR: Mesa go someplace else.

Jar Jar wanders off; Qui Gon and Obi Wan run off in another direction.

QUI GON: In a large city like this, the largest streets will lead to the Palace. That is where we must go.

There's a scene where the Queen and her entourage are escorted as prisoners out of the Palace; Nute Gunray says something like "In time the suffering of your people will compel you to sign the treaty." All I'd change here would be to add something to Gunray's line like, "You should have given us permission to use your trade routes when you had the chance. Now you will all pay a heavier price." I'd only add that in order to give some small idea as to what the dispute here is, in the first place.

We would then see the Queen's entourage being led away from the Palace, while they would be shadowed by Qui Gon and Obi Wan, who are waiting until they reach a perfect secluded place to spring their attack. Before they attack, I'd have them observe the approaching party using a pair of macrobinoculars, mainly because the view through macrobinoculars is one of those iconic visuals of the original trilogy. And I'd have an exchange like this:

OBI WAN: The Queen – she is a child!

QUI GON: She is young, but hardly a child. Judge her not by her age, young padawan...she is the same age you were when you accompanied me against the uprising on Ord Mandell.

OBI WAN: Yes, master.

Why do this? Well, it would disarm the whole "They elected a teenager to rule their whole planet!" thing a bit, and even better, it would predispose the audience to take Anakin Skywalker more seriously when we meet him later on.

When their attack on the droids finally comes, I'd have them jump down from the balcony as in the movie, with Qui Gon leaping forward to engage the battle droids on his side of the fight. Meanwhile, Obi Wan would do the same – and, referring back to his failure earlier (see previous post) to seal his lightsaber before going underwater, he'd try to ignite his saber only to see the blade flicker and fail. I'd have the action sequence progress then with Qui Gon doing his "tiptoe through the battle droids" thing, but with Obi Wan having to evade blaster fire and fight the droids without the benefit of his lightsaber. He'd use the Force to toss one droid into another, to dodge laser blasts, and the like. He'd have to think fast, of course, and get creative with the Force, and maybe he'd even be overmatched at first before he gets his bearings and figures things out until Qui Gon saves him:

OBI WAN: I am sorry, Master.

QUI GON: You did well using the Force, young Padawan. Just have more care in the future. The Force will guide you. Always trust it.

SIO BIBBLE: [this is the white-haired governor guy, one of the Queen's main advisors] Who are you?

QUI GON: I am Qui Gon Jinn, and this is my apprentice, Obi Wan Kenobi. We are the Ambassadors, sent by the Chancellor to force a settlement.

HANDMAIDEN: (the same one as before) The Chancellor sent Jedi Knights as his ambassadors?

The Queen silences the handmaiden with a glance.

PANAKA: Your negotiations have failed, Ambassador.

QUI GON: Our negotiations never took place. The situation here is far more explosive than even the Chancellor predicted. Your Highness, we must take you to Coruscant and meet with Chancellor Valorum.

PANAKA: Leave Naboo? With the Queen gone, the Federation army will only tighten their grip on the system!

OBI WAN: There seems to be little we could do to prevent that, even if we stayed.

QUI GON: If the Federation takes you, they will destroy you.

SIO BIBBLE: They wouldn't dare!

PANAKA: They need her to sign a treaty to make their occupation of Naboo legal. They can't afford to kill her.

QUI GON: They have dared much already, sir. They have dared to blockade your system's trade routes, and they have dared invade a fellow sovereign system of the Republic. Their actions are not those of a powerful Federation embroiled in a simple trade dispute with a small and peaceful system. There is no logic to what they have done here, unless something else is at work that we do not yet know. Your Majesty, my feelings tell me they will destroy you if you stay.

The Queen glances at her handmaiden, who nods.

HANDMAIDEN: We go where you go, Majesty.

AMIDALA: Then we will go to Coruscant and plead our case with the Senate.

Sio Bibble nods.

SIO BIBBLE: With you at his side, Senator Palpatine may be able to convince the Senate to help us.

QUI GON: Do you have a ship?

PANAKA: In the main hangar. This way.

He gestures to a passage that leads through a tunnel beneath a larger building. However, as they begin to move, two battle droids emerge from the shadow and level their blasters at the party.

BATTLE DROID: Freeze! Hands up, prisoners.

Qui Gon's lightsaber is in his hand instantly, but even as he ignites the blade and moves forward, a giant stone flowerpot drops from a balcony above and crushes the battle droids. All eyes look up to the balcony to see a grinning Jar Jar, who has pushed the flowerpot from its ledge.

JAR JAR: Hello!

Jar Jar drops nimbly to the pavement.

JAR JAR: Mesa tried to find my way back to the forests, but mesa got lost...and then mesa heard fighting, and since wesa Gungans are warriors--

QUI GON: Well done, my friend. You may be a warrior yet, and I see now how hard it truly is for anyone to banish you.

Jar Jar grins.

QUI GON: Now, your ship, Captain?

PANAKA: Grab their weapons. This way.

His men take up the blasters of the dead battle droids; the currently weaponless Obi Wan grabs one too. Then they run off into the city.

I like how Lucas has one of the handmaidens speak up in his original scene, a bit out of place; this ends up making sense later on when we learn that she is the Queen after all. I'd emphasize that, just a little, by having it happen more than once. Also, note that there's a reason now for Jar Jar to be tagging along, and he's even proven his worth a little. (Also notice how he's always getting cut off in mid-sentence.)

I also like how Lucas made the situation on Naboo rather confusing, putting the Jedi off their game a bit because of the seeming lack of a point behind what's going on.

Now we'd cut to the hangar bay, where the Queen's entourage would enter, led by the two Jedi:

PANAKA: We need to free those pilots.

OBI WAN: (brandishing blaster) I'll take care of that.

Qui Gon approaches the battle droids guarding th ship's entrance, while Obi Wan approaches the droids guarding the captive pilots.

QUI GON: I am an ambassador to the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. These people are under my protection, and I am taking them to Coruscant.

BATTLE DROID: You are under arrest!

The fight would take place pretty much as in the film, but with Obi Wan using the blaster he's commandeered instead of his lightsaber to dispatch the battle droids guarding the pilots. Ric Olie, the head pilot, would start warming up the ship's engines as the others board. Then, as Qui Gon and Obi Wan stand at the bottom of the entry ramp, keeping an eye out for other battle droids, I'd add this exchange just before they board the ship themselves:

OBI WAN: No destroyer droids. This is going well.

QUI GON: Droids are slow to react to the unexpected. The blockade ships will be ready for us, though. Come.

They turn to board the ship, but just before doing so, Qui Gon turns back to his apprentice, takes the blaster from his hand, and tosses it aside.

QUI GON: When we've escaped into hyperspace, please fix your lightsaber. You're a Jedi, not a Corellian.

OBI WAN: Yes master.

And then the ship would blast off into space.

In our next installment, we meet some really important folks: Darth Maul, R2-D2, and a kid named Anakin Skywalker who will have an important role to play in the entire Star Wars tale. Also, in the next installment we'll fix the single worst scene in Star Wars history. Tune in!

Tears in Rain

This is turning out to be quite the Holiday Season for Geek Music Stuff:

:: The Lord of the Rings Complete Recordings: The Return of the King is available as of tomorrow. Mine should arrive via UPS the day after tomorrow. I can't wait to spend a big chunk of Thanksgiving Weekend journeying by music back to Minas Tirith, and through Mordor, and thence to the Grey Havens.

:: Intrada Records has issued the complete score to Alien, music by Jerry Goldsmith, on a two-disc set. I don't know if I'll pick this up or not; I'm not that big a Goldsmith fan, and I'm definitely not an Alien fan.

:: I probably will pick up the three-disc Blade Runner score release, though. I'm not the biggest fan of that film, but the music by Vangelis is wonderful stuff, and I look forward to hearing it in full. (I'll probably also get the new version of the film on DVD, albeit not the superduper one that comes in a briefcase or something like that.)

Sentential Links #119

Dispensing with the pleasantries:

:: When I was in the 5th grade, I got my very first handbag.

:: A chilly morning and the crows are cawing overhead as they fly out for a day of adventure before coming home to roost and talk about it together.

:: At any [rate] it seems clear to me that even the "optimistic" scenarios for Iraq now amount to promising to bear huge costs for a smallish chance at an unclear payoff.

:: Aging and retirement hardly resemble the "golden years" one often sees and hears.

:: The reason I wouldn’t call it [Firefly] the best science fiction show is because it isn’t science fiction. It’s space opera. (BZZZT! Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction, not something separate entirely.)

:: Think about that, won’t you; eat one piece of fruit and suddenly you’re responsible for the inevitable heat death of the universe. God’s kind of mean.

:: They've got our future, damn it.

It's not the shiny future of jet packs and food pills — oh no, that's not what Japan is about. Nevertheless, they've got it and they're living in it, damn them. They've got express trains that run on time and accelerate so fast they push you back into your seat like an airliner on take-off. They've got skyscrapers with running lights, looming out of the sodium-lit evening haze — a skyline just like the famous nighttime scene from Blade Runner except for the shortage of giant pyramids (and they're building one of those out in Tokyo bay). And they shave their cats.

:: Ah, if there’s one thing that’s going defuse a violent situation and calm down a dude who’s got a gun out in his boat, it’s condescendingly tousling his hair, then pumping him full of caffeine. That’s just the sort of crowd control techniques you learn at Mountie Academy!

:: I turned fifty a couple of months ago, and this is my first letter to Santa since I was five, so I have a long list: (Lots of snark here, and salty language. Also, it's a weird hybrid of blog and message board.)

OK, that seems like a good place to stop. Tune in next week!

New England Satanic Puppy Eaters 56, Bills 10

Lord, now that was a steamrolling. Holy crap. I'm still not sure that Belichick's Boys of Ultimate Evil are going to go undefeated, but yeesh, they've probably got a better shot at it than anybody has in years.

Why am I not convinced that the Foxborough Hitlers are going to go 16-0? Because of the way the standings work out. They'll clinch the AFC East with just one more win (probably this weekend), and assuming Indianapolis doesn't lose again, they'll clinch the top seed with four more wins, which would leave two meaningless games at the end of their schedule. Now, their last two games are one at home against Miami (no problem), but then on the road at the Giants, who may need that game for either playoff position or possibly even a division crown. And they could end up playing meaningless games sooner than that, if Indy loses again. So, you never know.

Anyhow....

:: Kevin Everett is out of the hospital.

:: The game ended.

:: Al Michaels and John Madden, who acted like Buffalo's City Hall is the single largest City Hall they've ever seen in their lives. Come on, guys. It would have been nice to hear them say, "That's Buffalo's City Hall, and let me tell you, that is one beautiful building, and this city is full of 'em."

:: Again, JP Losman. It's official, folks: I have given up on him. Not that I expected him to beat New England -- that would have required, oh, some kind of event involving two snipers on the roof of Ralph Wilson Stadium, the ritual sacrifice of six goats, and a DVD of a Jerry Lewis movie -- but can't he at least complete short passes to open receivers? Apparently not, sadly enough.

Losman strikes me as a terrific guy, which makes this kind of sad for me. I didn't just want him to succeed here because he was here, but because he's genuinely likable. But sometime you just wanna win, you know?

:: Smuggy McBrady left the game with his knee intact. What somebody needs to do is send all eleven guys after him, on the game's first play from scrimmage. Come on, remaining 2007 opponents of the New England Genghis Khans! Take him out! Do it for the children!

Next up: the Bills go to Jacksonville. Apparently JP Losman is still the starter, and Marshawn Lynch may still be out. Whoopee.