R be me Favorite Letter!

I have to hand it to the marketing people at Disney. Even though Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest doesn't come out on DVD until December 5, they took advantage of today being National Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day and have been advertising on various web sites. Below are images captured from one of the ads.

My plan to fix college football

1. Eliminate the BCS and all conferences as we currently know them. 2. Organize all 120 Division 1A schools into 4 super conferences of 30 teams each based solely on geography as shown below. 3. Organize each super conference into 3 divisions or tiers of 10 teams. These tiers will come with a certain level of hierarchy. The top tier will consist of the best teams while the bottom tier will consist of the worst teams. 4. Each team will play the other 9 teams in its division with three games left for traditional rivals or other selected match ups. 5. At the end of the season, the champions of each conference's top tier will play in a four-team playoff with the winner crowned national champion. 6. All other teams will play in bowl games as they currently do. 7. The bottom two or three teams from the top tier will then be relegated to the second tier while the top two or three teams from the second tier will move up to the top tier and so on. The Resulting Benefits: It will eliminate controversy as to who should play in the national championship game. There would be fewer coaches abandoning schools on their way to the top as they would now be able to advance a mid-level program up to the top level. Similarly, it will appease the mid-majors as they would have a chance to move up to the big stage It will keep schools that don't really seem to be trying (ie Vanderbilt, Baylor and two thirds of the Big East) from piggy backing on the major programs for money It will preserve the importance that exists in every regular season game (something that a large tournament has failed to do in college basketball)

The Best of Reality TV

Many of you know where I stand on the issue of "Reality TV." I think it is boring and and very low brow. In fact I often consider certain scripted shows to be closer to reality than many of the unscripted ones. However, my opinions might be shifting. Lately I've found myself watching 30 Days (from the creator of Supersize Me). I especially liked the immigration, minimum wage and prison episodes. While I don't often agree with the politics of the show, it is a lot more intelligent and socially relevant than other programs currently on TV, especially other examples of Reality TV. At the opposite end of the spectrum is my favorite reality television show: Dog the Bounty Hunter. If you aren't watching this show (on several times a week on A&E), you're missing out. Let me elaborate. We all know the best part of the show Cops ("filmed on location with the men and women of law enforcement") is the white trash that end up handcuffed face down in the dirt after a brief chase around the trailer. Now imagine this: what if the cops chasing the white trash were also white trash. We're talking mullets, black leather, the works. Add to that a little born-again Christianity and bleeped-out profanity and you get Dog the Bounty Hunter and his family chasing down bail jumpers. It truly is quality television. Below is a clip I strung together. It is probably the greatest moment in the show's history.

The Overlooked Sub-Genre

There are many great sports movies out there, from the inspiring Hoosiers to the comedic Bad News Bears. There are Disney's formulaic, yet heart-tugging based-on-a-true-story stories (Miracle, Remember the Titans) and there are the great sports documentaries like Ken Burns' Baseball or Hoop Dreams. But one often overlooked sub-category of sports films is the K-9 Sports Genre, which today is largely sustained by Air Bud (although I hear Snow Dogs was excellent). Did you know there are now six Air Bud movies? Besides the original Air Bud (basketball), we have Air Bud: Golden Receiver (football), World Pup (soccer), Seventh Inning Fetch (baseball) and Air Bud Spikes Back ("A dog that plays volleyball helps investigators solve a rash of mysterious crimes"). This one inexplicably went straight to video. The latest Air Bud movie marks new territory. It's called Air Buddies (featuring the voice talent of Don Knotts in his last role). When Air Bud and Molly (Air Bud's bitch) are dog napped, their five adorable pups, the Air Buddies, must save the day. I must admit that at first I was concerned with the notion of Air Bud, an institution in the aforementioned K-9 Sports Genre, venturing away from the sports story lines and tackling such a hard-hitting issue as dog napping, but then I got to thinking that if this movie franchise is successful in reinventing itself, the Columbos and Matlocks of the world should be on alert.

Zidane Simpson

Please note: This web log entry contains one or more embedded YouTube videos that no longer work since YouTube permanently disabled my account. I apologize for any inconvenience. Well, we can clearly see where Zidane leaned his tactics. After all, like people, some elephants are just jerks. You might say the same for certain French soccer players.

2006 FIFA World Cup Presented by Adidas

It was an OK World Cup. The fact that Italy won disgusts me. They should never have gotten past Australia. But you knew going in that a European team was going to win. The Cup has alternated between Europe and South America every tournament dating back to 1958. Anyway, here are some of my observations from the 2006 FIFA World Cup Presented by Adidas: I got really sick of Marcelo Balboa for a number of reasons, but mainly for his applauding players for falling after the lightest of fouls. Does he not realize that flopping is the single biggest problem with soccer today? Although, the worst announcer of the cup was Shep Messing. He's the Dick Vitale of soccer broadcasting. Luckily he was done after group play. Sadly, so was Tommy Smyth, the crazy Irish announcer famous for his blunt honesty and catch phrases like "a bulge in the ol' onion bag." I was rooting for Portugal vs France despite the way they played against Holland and my great dislike of Drama Queen Cristiano Ronaldo (the World's best flop artist). The thing I did like about Portugal is their coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari. I actually got my picture taken with him when I was in Brazil and he was a club coach there. It was in 2001 right before he was named Brazil's 2002 World Cup Coach. Our tour guide was a trainer for the team so he took us into the locker room after a game and we got pictures with a lot of the players, including Scolari and Argentina's Sorin. Sadly, I didn't bring my camera to the game so that picture is not in my possession but with someone who did bring their camera. Out of the 15 games that mattered in the knockout round, only twice did the team I was rooting for win: Argentina over Mexico and Germany over Argentina. Australia got screwed. So did Tunisia (vs Ukraine). Speaking of Ukraine, how about Switzerland being eliminated despite not giving up a goal in the entire tournament? Of course, a little more offense wouldn't have hurt and their showing on PKs vs Ukraine was worse than England's showing vs Portugal. Say what you will about Bruce Arena. He did take the US to new heights in 2002. However, this time the US was a disappointment, but I don't know that many other coaches would have done better. Landon Donovan was terrible, so was Claudio Reyna. I could go on. Speaking of the US, Group E (US, Italy, Czech, Ghana) turned out to be the group of death after all. The media kept calling C (Argentina, Netherlands, Serbia & Montenegro, Ivory Coast) the group of death. I'm sorry, but the group of death doesn't have 6-0 results and teams resting players carrying yellow cards on the last day. E was the group of death because it was the only group heading into the last day where any of the four teams could advance and any could be eliminated. No other group could claim that. They all had either at least one team guaranteed to advance or at least one team eliminated after two games. Further proof that soccer hasn't arrived in the US yet: during games ESPN would often cut away to show hoards of people gathered in famous plazas. During the US-Ghana game they showed Time Square which had maybe 50 or 60 people and cars driving though as if it were a normal day. I enjoyed the World Cup. I'm just glad that my school schedule allowed me to see so many games (most of my classes were in the afternoon). I look forward to South Africa 2010. After that the 2014 Cup will most likely be in Brazil. Sherstin and I are planning on being there.

Arrested Development: Dr. Wordsmith

It's moments like these that I will miss from Arrested Development.