- I figured I’d wait for the BCS dust to settle before posting my college football thoughts from this past weekend. After the absolute perfect capper to an insane, unpredictable season, the BCS has done what it always does, namely make the biggest possible mess and solve absolutely nothing. The national title game is set, Ohio State versus LSU, a match up that exactly zero people outside of Columbus and Baton Rouge are happy with. LSU inexplicably leapfrogged all the way from seventh to second in the BCS on the strength of an unimpressive 21-14 win over good-but-not-great Tennessee squad in the SEC title game Saturday. They jumped over Virginia Tech even though the Hokies won their own conference title game, 30-16 over Boston College for the ACC crown. I suppose you can’t argue LSU passing Va. Tech because they did beat the Hokies earlier this year. But LSU also jumped over Kansas and Georgia, neither of which played this weekend because they didn’t make it to their respective conference championship games. Yes, Kansas has the 109th ranked schedule in the nation out of 119 Division I-A teams, but they’ve lost once and LSU lost twice to middle-of-the-pack opponents. Kansas lost once, to Top 10-ranked Missouri. It’s moronic to put LSU that far up when they’re looked completely unimpressive for the past two months. To balance things out, we do have a happy BCS story, with Hawaii forcing its way into the mix thanks to a rule that mandates that a non-BCS conference team which finishes in the top 12 of the BCS must get a berth to a BCS bowl game. As a result, Hawaii will take on Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Count me as one of, maybe the only actually, person who thinks Hawaii wins this game. Georgia is being hailed by some as the team playing either the best or second-best football in the country right now. I’ve seen them play and while they’re good, I think people are overestimating them because they play in the almighty SEC. Remember when this game happens Jan. 1 and Hawaii comes out on top, you heard it here first. Hawaii capped off their season with a thrilling comeback win, 35-28 over Washington, and I think they ride that wave right on through the Sugar Bowl. Other BCS bowl matchups include Kansas-Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl (I like Kansas), Oklahoma-West Virginia in the Fiesta bowl (take the over, this game is going into the 40s point-wise for both teams) and USC-Illinois in an unlikely Rose Bowl. USC will be there thanks to a 24-7 win over cross-town rival UCLA that proved to be the final straw for the administration at UCLA in terms of head coach Karl Dorrell’s fate. He’s been fired, joining more than a dozen other coaches who have either quit or been fired since their season ended. The bowl season isn’t that far away, with the first game being the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego on December 20. I’m one of the freaks who watch at least part of every bowl game, so you’ll get lots of thoughts on all of the action here. Yup, 3X bowl games and I’ll be tuning into all of them, I’m demented……
- What with all of the apocalyptic news in TV land right now based on the writers’ strike, it’s easy to overlook some good pieces of news that might make life at least a little more bearable for TV fans in the weeks and months ahead. Two shows I enjoy thoroughly (one more so than the other) are slated for a return next month, those shows being Greek and One Tree Hill. While normally the return of OTH would be good but not great, because all of my other favorite shows are slowly shutting down due to the strike, its return becomes much better news. The scheduled start for the new season is January 8, and if you remember, the show will be making a giant leap ahead in time, with all of the characters now four years ahead of where they were when the show left off last season. The show will skip over the college-years period that kills most teen dramas, advancing the Tree Hill gang straight into the real world. If you want to catch up on the in between, you can check out the short videos posted at cwtv.com to find out what’s happened to the main characters in between high school and when the show picks their stories back up. Meanwhile, Greek is slated to return in January, although with the strike ongoing and schedules fluctuating big time, that return could be pushed back a few weeks. Regardless, there are eight new episodes of the show filmed and ready to air, so if nothing else that’s at least two months’ worth of good viewing even if this stupid strike drags on into the spring and (yikes!) beyond…..
- With all due respect to Donald Trump, do we really have this much time to waste, er, spend focusing on beauty pageants? First, Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera creates a mini-controversy by saying that someone spiked her dress and makeup with pepper spray, prompting news outlets everyone to freak out and actually send reporters to the island to interview the runners up and talk breathlessly about how police investigators were testing her dress and blah, blah, blah….enough. Then, Miss California USA Christina Silva is stripped of her title not because skanky pictures of her showed up on the Internet or because she’s a drug addict, but because a counting error in tabulating the votes resulted in her being erroneously awarded the title. Instead, Raquel Beezley has been awarded the crown, which Silva ceded once informed of the error. Oh, and the CW, the Crappy Watching network, is premiering a new reality show (three of the worst words in the English language) in two weeks about 11 girls and their moms competing in some sort of mother-daughter beauty pageant competition where they live together in a ginormous house (a la most other lame reality series). As far as I knew, beauty pageants were good for one thing – hot chicks getting all dolled up and showing themselves off for a few minutes on stage. Beyond that, can’t say as I have any real value for them. That’s not to demean those who take part, just to say that doing this particular activity is pretty worthless outside of that one positive quality. Don’t take that to mean I don’t still love my girl Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen South Carolina, because she’s still great.
- In the words of Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again. Looking at this past weekend’s box office numbers, Enchanted is once again in the top spot, with Disney story of fairy tale characters in the real world bringing in a total of $17 million, down from its opening weekend but still enough to hold the top spot over the same film it beat out last weekend, This Christmas, which was second for a second consecutive week with $8.4 million in earnings. And surprise, surprise, trailing them once again was Beowulf at $7.9 million. As we approach the year’s end, the numbers are showing that despite a deluge of crappy movies in 2007, overall revenues are up from last year. This is thanks in large part to four summer blockbusters that did ginormous numbers – Bourne Ultimatum, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Ocean’s Thirteen and Spiderman 3. Still ahead are all of the Christmas weekend releases, one big weekend to bump those ticket sale numbers up before the calendar flips….
- Amazing what a little intimidation can do for you in winning an election, no? To be fair, Vladimir Putin’s party used a whole lot of intimidation and brutality to ensure their landslide win in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, but they got the job done. Thanks to bullying tactics that would do Saddam Hussein and Mussolini proud, the outgoing president is now assured of remaining in power even after he leaves office thanks to a stranglehold on parliament by his party. Opposition groups, led by former world chess champion Gary Kasparov, failed in their bid to put the brakes on a government that is gradually dragging Russia back to Communism. “The vote affirmed the main idea: that Vladimir Putin is the national leader, that the people support his course, and that this course will continue,” lied party leader and parliament speaker Boris Gryzlov after the voting results were announced. While Boris may be correct in saying that Putin is the leader and that his course will continue, don’t confuse that with the people of Russia actually supporting that course. They may have been bullied and intimidated into voting for it, you may have fixed the election to make it overwhelming in your favor, but there has been far too much opposition for what you say to be totally true. You basically shut opposition groups out of the election process, so of course you got most of the votes (allegedly). Heck, even the W. administration has called for an investigation into voting irregularities in this election, and if a guy who can’t even count wants you to investigate voting totals, you know you’ve got a problem. Stop rigging elections, Commies, and stop intimidating your citizens into voting the way you want them to vote.
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