Saturday, February 28, 2009

Red Sox Not Interested In Pedro: MLB Rumors - MLBTradeRumors.com
I miss Pedro.

22:25 cdogzilla

Monday, February 23, 2009

"Fun fact: Jeri Ryan [Seven of Nine] dumped her husband [Jack Ryan] to be with [Trek Producer Brannon] Braga, which led to the divorce filing that destroyed her husband's Illinois senate candidacy -- paving the way for Obama to become a senator [by easily defeating Alan Keyes], and then president. Thanks, Brannon Braga!" Star Trek Voyager saved the country.

Labels: Obama, sci-fi, TV

18:39 HD

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Robert Mugabe hoards long-lost Dr. Who episodes thought to be in Zimbabwe. The man's evil knows no bounds.

Labels: crime, doctor who, TV

14:13 HD

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Last Hustler

Over his long and, more importantly, profitable career, John "Fast Jack" Farrell has lived by two rules: Get the money and get out alive.

The first has always been a cinch, easy as breathing for a knock-around kid from Manchester [CT] who became, arguably, the best card and dice hustler on two continents.

And he's still around. That proves he hasn't missed yet on the second rule, even if there have been close moments.

He's been chased by a mob of bat-swinging highway workers. He has been gouged, slashed, stripped, beaten, drugged, dumped in the snow and shot at. He once was warned, as he prepared to beat a mob dice game in Queens, that a "leak" — a slip of his crooked dice — could leave him hanging from a hook in a meat locker. He walked away four hours later, buzzed on adrenaline and thousands of dollars ahead.

There's a movie in the works.

Labels: crime, local flavor

09:55 cdogzilla

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Upon Further Review

Springsteen clearly didn't lip synch at the Super Bowl. He certainly brought the party, and muffed a few lines along the way. I say good. Something's missing when the halftime show and especially the national anthem come out of a can.

Jennifer Hudson sang a perfectly nice anthem. I've never heard her before and she certainly can sing, but what she (and others) do at the Super Bowl is perform while a recording of their voice from some studio is played. At a giant event like this, you no longer get the singer caught up in the emotion of the moment. I'd rather get some hesitation or shake in the voice that might be there in front of millions but not in front of some producer.

I bring this up because tape and instant review have also changed the way I watch football. Two Super Bowls in a row I've watched a spectacular game-changing catch by the team I didn't want to win and had no reaction beyond, "Oh, that didn't happen. They're going to overturn it." (Wrong both times, for the record.) We no longer really celebrate the moment as it happens. We have to wait to see if it's official, if it holds up on tape.

And the reviews don't always get it right anyway. As Bill Simmons points out, that Harrison run back at the end of the first half featured a glaring block in the back. I noticed on the fourth replay, and gave up hope that the announcers might refer to it by the fifteenth. Simmons also argues, and I agree, that Warner's fumble at the end was pretty clearly a forward pass. But they already overturned a "fumble" earlier. Did they not want to overturn the same call twice? (Same thing on the Harrison TD, actually. Big Ben had a TD called back earlier.) Did they now want the game to just happen? If they're still going to make mistakes, they might as well ditch review and at least let the game happen live.

Labels: music, sports, TV

11:18 bone daddy