Month: February 2012

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A quiz-thing

I haven’t done one of these in quite some time! Roger did this one, and I think I will, too.

1. One of my favorite TV shows recently changed the actors who played two characters. Have you ever been bothered by a TV show or movie series changing actors who play a character you love?

At first glance, I didn’t think I really had very many good examples of this, but thinking about it more, it’s obvious that I have a bunch. First we have the James Bond movies; you can’t be a long-time Bond fan and not have some strong opinions as to which one’s the best. (Mine is that I really, truly, honestly like every single Bond actor, and that the one most generally viewed as the worst — George Lazenby — was not only pretty good, but starred in the best Bond film ever made. How do you like that!)

Then we have things like the ongoing reboot of Star Trek, with younger actors cast as Captain Kirk and company, and there’s the new version of Spider Man coming out soon. I’m fine with Trek, although I’m not as thrilled with the resulting movie as some and I think the goofy “But it’s just a new timeline!” excuses are pretty weak; I’m not fine with Spider-Man, though, because it’s unnecessary when a perfectly acceptable (even if most folks didn’t like III all that much) series of films could have been continued, and the only reason this one’s happening at all is because Sony has to make a movie or they lose the Spider-Man rights.

I also remember things like the year that Donna Reed played Miss Ellie on Dallas, because they didn’t want to write out Miss Ellie but Barbara Bel Geddes needed time off. I was OK with that; by that point, Miss Ellie was mainly a supporting character, anyway.

So basically, I go with a case-by-case basis on this kind of thing.

2. A coworker recently shared a link to a blog listing the “five things you should know before dating a journalist.” As a journalist, I can honestly say the writer was spot-on. What are some things people should know before spending time with you?

I’m kind of confoozled by this question…if they want to spend time with me then they gotta know something about me to begin with, right? But anyway, I guess people should know that I tend to value honest conversation and laughter, and that I find racism and paranoia a major turnoff. Singing the praises of the New England Patriots is right out.

3. What is something you often do without realizing that you’re doing it?


Knuckle-cracking. Humming. Muttering to myself. Staring off into space because I’m thinking about something.

4. Who has the capacity to make you angrier than anyone else in your life, and what in particular does he or she do to make you so angry?

Yeesh, I don’t know…various Republicans, maybe? I can feel anger pretty intensely, but it burns itself out pretty quickly. The whole Tea Party thing makes me pretty mad, though. So do young people who bleat about Ron Paul and how awesome it would be if we hitched our 21st-century economy to 19th-century economic theory; what irritates me is how intensely clueless these folks are, and yet they’ll tell me, “Educate yourself!” And climate-change deniers strikes me as not just angering, but downright dangerous.

5. If a fairy waved a magic wand and gave you the house of your dreams, where would it be and what features would it have?


A large kitchen with really great ventilation, large bedrooms, a room big enough for the books (and with enough shelves), and it should be on a nice-sized lot bounded by a bunch of trees, for cooling and privacy. Oh, and a woodstove, and an outbuilding of some sort — maybe an old, ramshackle garage — where I could set up some kind of workshop so I could finally start exploring woodworking on a real basis and not just piecemeal via the projects I get at The Store.

6. What’s a belief that you hold with which many people disagree?

Obviously, that the Star Wars prequels don’t suck! And also, that Super Bowl commercials are generally lame and not interesting enough to bother watching. I pay so little attention that there could be an ad during a Super Bowl featuring Kat Dennings wearing overalls while engaging in a pie fight, and I wouldn’t know until the next day. (And maybe a good thing…that scenario might well make my head explode.)

7. I used to talk in my sleep. In fact, I could carry on a conversation with someone when I was fully asleep, and my mom used this fact when I was a teenager to find out if I did anything wrong and was hiding it from my parents. If you were talking your sleep tonight, what do you think you would say?

“Cersei, you lying whore.” (I’m reading A Clash of Kings right now.)

8. The fourth installment of the “Twilight” movie series (“Breaking Dawn Part I”) will be released in theaters soon. Movie theaters started selling advance tickets for midnight showings months ago. Have you ever attended a midnight premiere showing of a movie?

Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Those are the only midnight movies I’ve done. I’ve seen a host of others on opening day, though.

9. On Tuesday, tigers, lions and bears were let loose in Zanesville, Ohio, by their owner before he committed suicide, leading to a hunt in which 49 of the animals, including 18 endangered Bengal tigers, were killed. How would you react if you saw “Caution exotic animals. Stay in your vehicle” being displayed on a road sign?

OK, this quiz is officially dated now. If I’m in the car with a person I don’t like, maybe I distract them so they don’t see the sign and then trick them into getting outside? No, that’s mean. I guess I just drive away until I figure I’m safe and then call someone to find out what’s going on.

10. If a company opened a theme park aimed at adults, what would you name one of the rides?


The Princess Leia Organa Slave Girl Revue. This would take place at the Star Wars theme park. Which needs to exist.

11. Imagine you just moved onto Sesame Street. Which puppet would you want as your new roommate?


Since Kermit exists on both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, I will assume that Sesame Street is somewhat close to whatever street the Muppet Theater is on. This, therefore, gives me access to all the Muppets, and not just the ones on Sesame Street. For a roommate? I’d take Scooter. I think he’d be fairly quiet and conscientious. (I’ll bet Animal throws some wild parties….)

12. Have you ever had a weird crush on a famous person that didn’t make sense to you?


Nah, they all make sense to me. Some of them may not make sense to you, but I can’t help that!

13. If you get ten minutes to interview any celebrity of your choice, who would you like it to be?


George Lucas. Or Barack Obama. Or Joss Whedon. Or…I’ll just stop there, I guess.

14. You’ve just won the complete DVD collection of all the movies starring one actor or actress. Which actor/actress would you pick?


Ooooh, tough one. I think I’d go with Humphrey Bogart. Or Meryl Streep. Or Marilyn Monroe. Or…yeah, I’ll stop there.

15. Actor George Clooney recently told People Magazine that he doesn’t use Twitter “because I will drink in the evening and I don’t want anything that I could possibly write at midnight to actually end my career.” What is something you’ve said through social media and then regretted it?


A Facebook friend posted that he was going off to work as a polling place volunteer on either Election Day or Primary Day, and I posted something like “Good luck, and make sure you demand ID and do whatever you need to do to keep those pesky brown people from voting!” He’s pretty liberal, so I figured he and his friends would recognize that I was mocking the GOP’s jihad against ‘voter fraud’, none of which actually exists and which really gives rise to policies that just happen to also heavily discourage minority voters, who tend to vote for Democrats. My phrasing, though was not well-considered or well-received, so I apologized and deleted the comment. Not my finest moment online.

16. VH1 has re-introduced its hit show “Pop-Up Video,” which gives behind-the-scenes facts for popular music videos. What musician would you be most interested in learning behind-the-scenes facts about?


John Williams. Or the Beatles.

17. If you stumbled across someone’s personal written journal that was accidentally left in a public place, would you read any of the content?


That’s tough…I think I’d thumb through it, in the hopes of seeing if I could find any identifying marks within it, so that I might try to contact the owner and return it to them. If it was completely anonymous, though…maybe I’d read it. I’m honestly not sure.

18. What is the title of a self-help book that you’d never want to see on a store bookshelf?

Finding the Super Model In Your Life, by Tom Brady.

19. Many media outlets have been asking this question a lot this week… Which Halloween costume do you think will be overdone this year?

Well, obviously this quiz has been knocking around for a few months. Right now I have no idea…but the idea of a bunch of kids dressed up as Mitt Romney is pretty unsettling.

20. Should a marriage license have a renewal date or expiration date, like a driver’s license?

Ye Gods, why would we want to do this? Is someone seriously suggesting this? As in, you have to renew by a certain date or your marriage simply ends? Is this an actual idea out there somewhere? It seems to me that this, far more than allowing gays to marry, would fundamentally alter the notion of what marriage is about.

And there, the quiz ends. Huzzah!

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“This just might be my masterpiece.”

Pulp Fiction has been a favorite film of mine ever since it came out…which is why it strikes me as odd that until quite recently, it was the only Quentin Tarantino film I’ve seen since I first heard of him. All I’ve seen of Tarantino’s work was Pulp Fiction and episodes of ER and CSI that he directed (both of which, very well, in my view). I did start to watch Kill Bill Volume One a few years ago but never finished it, for no real reason. And there I stopped, until I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds a month or so ago.

I loved this movie. Absolutely loved it. I loved it for what it is: a big, violent, gory, profane cartoon parody of jingoistic war movies.

Tarantino is not everyone’s cup of tea. He tends to construct long scenes consisting of conversational duels that are punctuated by violence, and that’s certainly on display here, several times, in sequences whose tension increases as Tarantino delays the violent payoff, and delays it again, and delays it still again. The very first scene does this, when a Gestapo commander drops in to visit a French farmer. His visit seems dull and routine; our Gestapo fellow at first doesn’t seem terribly invested in what he’s doing: searching for hiding Jews. He initially gives off an air of a man just going through the bureaucratic motions, and the farmer seems to be just answering his questions until he buggers off. But at some point it becomes clear that he’s not going to bugger off, and that this dull Gestapo bureaucrat is anything but. As I thought back over this scene, I kept trying to pinpoint exactly when it is that this man, Colonel Landa, takes on an air of quiet malice, but he does. It’s the most unsettling kind of malice, the smiling malice of a man who knows that his job is to mete out death and that he will do his job and then go home and go to bed at night.

This ‘delaying of the payoff’ recurs over and over again throughout the film, such as an extremely tense scene set in an basement tavern in France that never seems to end, or in a moment in a restaurant when a girl who is hiding the fact that she is a Jew finds herself at a table with Hermann Goering. In fact, this payoff-delaying tactic of Tarantino’s shows up in the very first shot, as our French farmer watches the Nazis driving up his road. Watch this scene and realize, several times, that the Nazis should be there by now.

The seriousness of this scene contrasts with the sheer absurdity of the storyline that has a drawling American, Aldo Raine, recruiting a special team of assassins – out of Jewish-Americans – whose job will be nothing more than to operate in Europe and kill as many Nazis as possible, in as violent a way as possible, so that their reputation – the ‘Basterds’ – will reach back to Berlin and strike fear into the heart of the highest command, including Hitler himself. Raine’s team and their casual acceptance of torture and execution is a bit unsettling, but there’s also something weirdly exhilarating about it all. Maybe it’s because it’s the Nazis and we know that we can hate on them just fine, but Tarantino allows the ‘rank and file’ Nazis to have just enough personality that it’s a bit unsettling when Raine uses his bowie knife to carve a swastika into the forehead of one of them (“I’m gonna give you something you can’t take off”). But only a little.

And as usual, in a Tarantino film, so much of the weight is carried by the dialogue, such as when Raine realizes that a captive Nazi has decided to be defiant, so he shouts to one of his men: “We got a German here who wants to die for his country! Oblige him!”

This parody material exists alongside a revenge story, as an escapee from the film’s first scene later encounters Colonel Landa again (in a scene that made me realize that never has whipped cream looked creepier). She hatches a plan to do nothing more than kill Hitler himself. How? Well, he’s coming to see a movie. In the theater she owns. She’s going to get everyone in there, bar the doors, and set the theater on fire. I can only assume that this is an allusion to the infamous events at Oradour-sur-Glane.

Why is Hitler coming to France to see a movie? The film explains that, too, but I’d just as soon not get into it. The whole film is awash in odd coincidences, broad strokes, and scenes stitched together with narration by Samuel L. Jackson.

Since it’s Tarantino, it’s not unexpected that his knowledge of film history is going to come into play at some point. The key location of the second half of the film is a movie theater, a key plot point hinges on the flammability of film stock used in the 1940s, the timing of the plot hinges on a reel change, and so on. Tarantino’s visual sense is as keen as ever; Inglourious Basterds includes one of the most striking visuals I’ve ever seen, as the movie keeps projecting onto clouds of smoke, creating swirling images of film in a film.

Ultimately the movie seems by turns serious and silly, which I think is rather the point; it’s not unlike that old Captain America cover that has Cap punching Hitler’s lights out. And it all helps that the film is acted almost perfectly. There isn’t a single weak spot in the cast, so far as I can recall, and it’s all grounded by Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine and Christoph Waltz (who won an Academy Award) as Colonel Landa. Even so, I think the best performance belongs to Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna, the escaped Jew who later gets her chance for revenge. She perfectly captures the tension of someone walking a tightrope as trying to maintain a secret identity, carry off a revenge plot, and fend off the advances of a smitten Nazi.

This film has a certain unsettling effect, because I found myself laughing at a lot of very violent death being meted out in large quantities against Nazis. But it’s so over-the-top, so cartoonish, that ultimately I think that the film works best as gonzo comedy that is a blending of genres than anything else.

(Poster above via)

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Super Thoughts: Giants 21, Patriots 17

I’m thrilled to get to use this again:

Ahhhh, how sweet it is! Watching the Patriots lose just doesn’t get old, folks. Nosiree Bob. Without further ado, some random thoughts on the game:

::  He’s been retired and broadcasting for three or four years now, but I still want someone to take Rodney Harrison’s knee out. What a goon he was as a player.

::  1st quarter tweet: “Mental errors by the Pats? But…but…I thought they were Gods of Football!!!”

Seriously, the Patriots looked sloppy early and they looked sloppy late. St. Tom giving up a safety on a panic throw to avoid a sack? Twelve men on the field? The Pats have a reputation for not playing that sloppily. I’m not sure the rep is as earned as it should be, but there it is. They put it back together, though, and played well for the second and third quarters, before getting sloppy again in the fourth, with Brady throwing the game’s only interception (and only turnover, period) on an ill-advised, dumbass play and his receivers getting a bad case of the Drops.

:: I think that the best quarterbacks in football right now, in high-pressure situations, are most definitely Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger (last year’s flat performance in the Super Bowl notwithstanding, and the Steelers were actually very competitive in that game after digging a surprising early hole). St. Tom’s pressure-QB reputation is, for my money, not well-earned. He lost Super Bowl XLVI, Super Bowl XLII, and the 2006 AFC Championship games, despite having the ball for the last minute of each of those games (and in one of those, he only needed a field goal). And even going back to his “big winning drives” in Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII, well…those were drives in which he took over with the score tied, so unless he turns the ball over, the worst thing that happens is the game goes to overtime. I think that the Myth of St. Tom took a big hit last night.

:: Put it another way: Joe Montana never lost a single Super Bowl, much less two Super Bowls. Joe Montana drove his team ninety-two yards for the winning touchdown in Super Bowl XXIII (yes, he had two minutes and change to do it in, but so what? He got the job done), and he also produced two Super Bowl blowouts in games in which he was supposed to produce Super Bowl blowouts. St. Tom is a great quarterback and will be a well-deserved Hall of Fame player. But the discussion of St. Tom as the ‘best ever quarterback’ is, for me, over.

:: Continuing a theme: I don’t think that the Patriots are going to fall apart as a team, but I do think that this year is probably St. Tom’s last, best chance to win a Super Bowl. He’s going to be another year older, and like I’ve said before, physical decline comes to everyone, and it’s going to come to him — especially now that he’s going into his twelfth year as a starter, who has also played more than twenty post-season games. That’s literally packing an extra season-and-one-third into his career. It takes its toll, and I think we’ll start seeing that toll before long. Brady likes to talk about playing until he’s 40, but I’d bet that if he does, he’s playing someplace else, because the physical decline will have become undeniable to the point that Belichick either trades or cuts him after drafting his heir-apparent.

:: Interesting article along those same lines:

Dynasties always believe they can last forever, until they begin to crumble. And their greatest men and fiercest warriors — their Tom Bradys — always believe in their own excellence and its nearly immutable power to make things work out as they’re supposed to.

Until they are bested enough times to know better.

“We just didn’t make enough plays,” Brady said. “We all wish we could have done a little bit more. It comes down to one play at the end. If we make it, we’re world champions; if we don’t, we wish we were.”

Yes, but the fact is the Patriots had to have it come down to one miracle play. And the Giants, in not getting beaten by the long-shot throw, may have shown Sunday that the Patriots’ time is over. Super Bowls are incredibly difficult to get to, even for teams that have made five of the past 11.

:: No one will mention it much because they’ve got three titles to their credit, but this Super Bowl loss means that the Bills, Vikings, and Broncos have new company in the “four-time Super Bowl loser” club. Huzzah!!

:: Cris Collinsworth wasn’t as annoying as I thought he might be. But I did find it odd that at the end of the Giants’ last drive, when the Giants were trying to put up the go-ahead points without leaving too much time on the clock, they mentioned that they might want to get a first-down at the 1 without scoring and then just run the clock all the way down until they have to kick the field goal…Al Michaels and Collinsworth kept discussing this whole series without mentioning that the Pats lost to the Bills back in Week Three on an identical situation.

:: Random goofy fact: Only six teams have lost to the Bills during the regular season and still gone on to win the Super Bowl. (This year’s Giants are not one of those.)

:: Another random goofy fact: the AFC East is 2-9 in Super Bowls against NFC East teams. Ouch.

:: On the commercials: As usual, I don’t care and pay little attention. I use commercials for their intended purpose: going to the bathroom, getting food, writing, checking Facebook, et cetera. The only ones I watched were a few of the movie trailers (none of which looked all that good, except for The Avengers), a pretty sappy Toyota Camry commercial, and a Clint Eastwood commercial for Chrysler that ratcheted up the “America, YAY!” to 11 and seemed to also be saying, “Hey, remember that Camry commercial from before? F*** those people.” (But here’s a thought: the fact that such a grittily optimistic ad could be aired this year might say something about the mood of the country that might, in turn, be good news for a certain sitting President.)

:: On the halftime show: I liked it a lot. It was actually a show, and featured an artist who is still producing new material and who wasn’t content to just do a quick “greatest hits” thing. I loved the goofy Egyptian panoply, and I started Tweeting a bunch of Egyptian and Roman-related pop culture quotes, such as “Give my regards to King Tut, asshole!” (from Stargate) and “If you wanna find all the cops, they’re hangin’ out in the donut shops” (by the Bangles). Still, it was a really good show by Madonna. Color me impressed!

That’s about all…except for these, because really, I could look at scenes like this all day:

Ahhhh! Thanks, 2011 NFL! Next up, free agency and the Draft. Football never stops! It just slows down a bit.

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Sentential Links

Time for linkage…but first, Plinko!

OK, the links:

:: Not wanting to look at this girl directly (lest I be turned to stone) I quickly grabbed a shirt and walked fast to the counter. The T-shirt Girl running the till had heard what I did and we both smiled at each other with our shared secret. For a brief second, we were both in on the same joke.

:: Either way, Komen has stained their charity and it’s going to stay stained when they inevitably cave in to right wing ideological demands again. (I, for one, will never support any Komen-based drive or program again. I will go out of my way to buy stuff without the pink ribbon on it, and I will not donate any money to them. They’ve proven what they’re about. In all honesty, I was already down on Komen with their habit of sending teams of lawyers to enforce their trademark on the phrase “For the Cure”, so that any mom-and-pop selling cupcakes in hopes of raising a few hundred bucks for some disease’s respective research facility had to shut down or change their name. Along these lines, John Scalzi is doing some limited-time fundraising for Planned Parenthood.)

:: There is just something wonderful when Hubble points to nearby spiral galaxies. Sprawling and detailed, we get both great resolution on smaller features as well as a jaw-dropping overview of a grand spiral… like, say, NGC 1073: (Oh, wow….)

:: There were only two shots fired from Greg Stratton’s .22 Magnum rifle. (If you’ve ever wondered what slaughtering a farm animal for meat looks like, this is the post for you. If not…then don’t click.)

:: So I kind of grew up immersed in poetry (some of my older relatives used to recite poetry as well, having learned it in school). I recognize that some people did not. And yet, at the same time, I think the fact that I know it and like it isn’t anything I should have to apologize for or be ashamed for.

:: I’m not a climber and I never will be. I love mountains, but I love the feeling of being in them, surrounded by them. I don’t feel the need to stand on top, to measure myself against them because, well, the mountain wins. Every time. I have no desire to climb Everest or anything else. My fascination is akin to the one I have for polar exploration–the extremes are just so mind-boggling, the bizarre things that this planet can throw up in the face of humans poking their heads into remote and untouched places.

:: I’m not gonna lie, folks: I had high hopes for this storyline after Rose got in her auto accident, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by the way it all played out. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly want to see Rose careen off the highway and carve a swath of destruction through the playground at the Toledo School For Adorable But Tragically Blinded Orphans, I’m just saying that in this strip, that’s actually a pretty likely outcome.

:: It was my favorite type of career. Long-lasting, diverse, a little bit chaotic, not overly managed, with moments of brilliance, moments of just good workmanship … and you can tell, you can just tell, that his career has been about acting, yes, but it was about forming relationships. (I hope that when I die, Sheila writes a tribute. Of course, this assumes that when the time comes, I have something to my name to form the meat of a Sheila O’Malley tribute….)

More next week.

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Saturday Centus

Just a normal prompt this week! (Although I shouldn’t say ‘just’ a normal prompt, as a lot of times it’s been the seemingly simplest prompts that have tripped me up and made me take hours just to mull them over to come up with something.)

“And these are–?” asked the lady in the floppy hat.

“Peas,” said Farmer Jimmy, behind his stall at the market. “Two peas in every pod.”

“Two?”

“Two. Two peas in a pod.”

“Only two?”

“Yessum…but these peas are three inches in diameter.”

“These peas are genetically modified, aren’t they?”

“Don’t think so. Just good old SuperMegaTechnoCorp seed.”

“OK, thanks.” And the lady moved on to the next stall, not even looking at Farmer Jimmy’s football apples. The exact size and shape, naturally, of a regulation football.

“Hippie farmers with their organic food,” Jimmy growsed. “Probably wear tie-dye under their overalls, too.”

And hey, Centusians, feel free to participate in my twice-annual Ask Me Anything! festival, in which you get to…well, you know.

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Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom…. (Answers the first!)

So usually I wait until the second half of the month to start giving answers to “Ask Me Anything!” questions, but Roger has a couple that are time sensitive, pertaining as they do to the impending Super Bowl. So here they are:

Why do you hate Tom Brady so much?

Hoo boy. You know, I was all prepared with this answer. I was going to write about how I don’t hate Tom Brady personally, because it’s not like I know him or anything, and that more than anything else, my hatred for Brady is the “sports fan’s hatred of the other guy”. You know, it’s how sports fans feel about that one guy who always seems to have your team’s number, no matter what. It’s like how Boston sports fans likely felt for years about Bucky Dent or Mookie Wilson.

But then, St. Tommy had to go and open his mouth at a Super Bowl press thing the other day, in the context of talking about how his father has made all kinds of sacrifices to follow his son’s football career:

“He’s been there every step of the way,” Brady said of his dad. “Then I went to school a long ways from home, and he and my mom were there at every home football game that they could possibly be at and a lot of road games, too. And even when I started my pro career, he traveled to Buffalo. I don’t know if you guys have ever been to the hotels in Buffalo — they’re not the nicest places in the world — but he would travel to those.”

Wow. Thanks for that, Tom.

Now, most of the folks I follow online – few of whom blog anymore, and most of whom are on Twitter, which makes me sad – are of the “Who cares what some football player thinks” camp, or the “Hey, he’s just telling the truth, because Buffalo kind of sucks” camp, or a combination of both camps. This goes along with “Geez, Buffalo, do you gotta get so upset any time somebody says something mean about your city?” And those folks are right.

But still…yeah. I hear you, folks. I really do. But still: f*** Tom Brady.

Here’s why: There was really no reason for it. He didn’t need to say it. Buffalo wasn’t part of the conversation in any way, until he cited it as an example of awful hardships his father has had to endure in the purpose of following his son’s career. “Hey, he’s come to Buffalo. That’s a commitment!” And he said it on an enormous media stage.

Look, I am well aware that Buffalo isn’t the nicest city in the world, or even the country, or even the state. I’m well aware that this city’s warts are openly displayed for all to see. I’m well aware that this city continues to rust and crumble while we continually shoot ourselves in the foot, development-wise. But that doesn’t mean that I should be happy to hear continued use of my city, my home, as a national short-hand for “crappy cesspool of a city” to which no one in their right mind would want to go unless it’s for business and you’re only going to be there for the shortest time possible.

Here’s the bottom line: We get to say these things. Brady doesn’t. At least, not for me. The “Brady is right and it shouldn’t matter” crowd will have to bear with me if I’m not willing to say “Thank you, Mr Brady, may I have another?” on this one. Harumph!

There’s also some rhetoric going around that this kind of thing – the impression our city makes on visiting athletes who are in town for a game – is part of what keeps star players from entertaining Buffalo as a possible spot for when they are free agents. To this I say, simply, nonsense. Look, I know that the view from the Kensington Expressway into downtown from the airport isn’t terribly inspiring. But in my experience there’s not a city in the world that doesn’t have such a route, somewhere. I read things like this – “Buffalo’s hotels aren’t super nice and the town’s nightlife isn’t terribly exciting” – and I think, “Huh. Does Green Bay hear things like this?”

Probably not…and the reason why is glaringly obvious. Why don’t star players avoid Green Bay like the plague and refuse to entertain the possibility of signing there? Because Green Bay has a team that wins. Buffalo does not. I guarantee that as long as the Bills are here, it won’t matter how the city looks: if the team gets good again, players will be more willing to sign here.

So: Why do I hate Tom Brady? Because he’s great and he kicks my team’s ass constantly. Because he lives a ridiculously charmed life. Because as great as he clearly is, I still think he’s overrated; he’s never really produced a signature win and a huge moment that will live in sports lore forever, there’s nothing he’s ever done that makes me think, “Wow, I remember when Tom Brady did ____”; I tire of the man-crushes that many sports commentators have on the guy.

Here’s a true story: I’ve always thought that NBC’s Cris Collinsworth has been overly obsessive about Brady, and that he brings Brady into conversations entirely too often, whether the discussion involves the Patriots or not. I mentioned this once on Facebook, and another friend disagreed, saying that Collinsworth simply has a lot of respect for one of the game’s best players. Fine. Except that during last year’s Winter Olympics, Collinsworth at one point presented a profile piece he’d done on short-track speed skater Apollo Anton Ohno, after which he said to Bob Costas and those of us at home, “Apollo Anton Ohno really reminds me of Tom Brady.”

GAHHH!!!

So there’s why I hate Tom Brady. (Kinda sorta. I mean, I’m sure he loves his mother.)

Oh, and a prediction? I really don’t like offering predictions, but I’ll offer a hope: Giants 30, Patriots 16. Not only do I want Brady to lose, but I want him to lose fairly convincingly. I want his defeat to be large enough that no one can whitewash this game for him if he does lose. I don’t think a blow-out is likely, but if Brady loses by 10-14 points and only puts up pedestrian numbers – say, 200 yards, 1 TD, 2 picks – it’ll make me feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy inside. But I guess it’s OK if he wins his fourth, tying him with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw. After all, neither one of those guys ever lost a Super Bowl.

And hey, folks, questions aren’t exactly flying in the door yet, so Ask Me Anything!

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