Did This Happen on Purpose?

First of all, I'd like to thank the Department of Installing Potholes for being so clever as to wait until there was the pinnacle of inclement weather to install and hide their deepest, most jagged specimens. Not only was there a pothole placed in just such a fashion that it would be mostly underwater, and indistinguishable from the rest of the slushy mess under a viaduct on South 81st Street, but it was made in a way that punctured the hell out of my tire. So, that was great. Also, nice job wrecking the Michigan Avenue-LSD Entrance Merge Tunnel Thing, because that makes people drive three miles an hour to get on The Drive, because the entirety of that roadway looks like the surface of the Moon. Good news: as soon as one gets past the Battle of the Marne area, everybody and their brother wants to floor it, which is a dicey proposition on a donut. I'm friggin' thrilled.

I don't buy the "salt erodes the street, and then eventually a pothole forms" theory of pothole evolution. I'm a Pothole Creationist. Some malevolent organization comes around and removes sections of the street and replaces it with weirdo rebar and, I don't know, caltrops, and then - if they're really dedicated to their craft - they put a decorative layer of grey slush and un-drainable water to mask it. Because really, cars and trucks gradually create potholes? That's insane. Do cars take parts of the roadway with them? Is it like The Great Escape? Do they hide the asphalt in their wheel wells, and then empty them when they're out in the yard for exercise or gardening? "The Krauts found Charlie Pothole. We're going to have to redouble our efforts on Tango."

In other, vaguely related news1, I'm really disturbed by the Carmax radio commercial that starts with "Kelly, I can't believe you're finally sixteen..." because it's at that point where the announcer (who is decidedly NOT sixteen) pauses just a leeeeeeeeettle too long before saying "and your mother and I are very proud of you." The pause makes you sound like a creepy predator in Indiana, Iowa, or Uruguay (um, "thank you," I guess, Wikipedia). It doesn't help that your harpy daughter then launches into fury over the fact that you didn't buy her "the bluuuuue one! BLUE BLUE BLUE!" and then my ears bleed. So, screw you, Carmax Commercial of Creepiness.

1I was driving in the car when I heard the commercial.

This is the Jump.

I Finally Saw "The Depaahted"

Hi. I'm Martin Scorcese.

I made this movie to show you, the general populace, the following things:

• Violence
• Silly accents (damn, I wish I had made Thirteen Days - those accents were wicked crazy.)
• That, since you already think I'm a friggin' genius, I can do whatever I want.

To that end, I have filled this movie with as much weird shit as I can possibly muster. You want a camera angle inside a guy's coat pocket? I'll make you think I used a camera attached to a wood tick. It'll be awesome. I'm going to push in on people as the whim strikes me. You want names? Marky Mark's funky bunch now includes Martin Sheen, and I'll have him make up new clever curse words. How's Jack Nicholson strike you? I won't even direct him. I'm just going to turn the camera on and then I'll let him wander around and say the first shit that pops into his head. Fuck my steadicam operator, I'll give that guy a torn ACL if it kills me. I hate those guys. I'm going to screw with the Foley guys, too. That'll be great. Where was I?

Oh, right. Here's people getting shot for you. Everywhere. If someone's not bleeding from the head, I haven't done my job. This coke-and-hookers scene needs more... opera. That's what it needs, more opera. I'm bored. What's a new way to work in someone being shot in the head?

Damn, I love the Stones.

Isn't this a great movie? I made a friggin' mobius strip, here. Speed up, up the film, slow down the film, dutch angle. It's so tense! SMASH CUT! SMASHCUTSMASHCUTSMASHCUTI'MSOHIGHRIGHTNOW. Iris in.

Wait - where's Alec Baldwin? I haven't seen his Alec Baldwin impersonation in a while. That cracks me up. It's an action movie, it's a thriller, it's a psychodrama, it's everything all in one. And to prove it, I'll use smashed mirrors and picture frames, glass breaking - ooh! Religious imagery, I like that stuff. I wanted President Bartlet to go all kung fu on somebody, but it didn't really work out quite right. That would've been badass, right? Oh, well, I had him drop a bunch of f-bombs instead.

But I digress.

I made a(nother) long-ass movie. Give me an Oscar.

Love,

Martin Scorcese

P.S. You gave that pederast Polanski an Oscar. WHAT DID I DO WRONG? WHAT DO YOU NEED? I'm going to go film someone being shot in the head again.

Update (2/27, 9:15 PST): Thanks. -MS

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Ideas I Wish I Had First

Include this:

http://deadon.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/friday-afternoon-contest-on-trivia-22307/

Lazy post? Yes. I want to share the funny with the "masses," though.

This is the Jump.

Wikipedia at 12:30 AM

Okay, so my new plan is to seduce Zara Phillips, just to screw up the British Line of Succession. I guess we'd have to get married, but that's a price I'm willing to pay, to throw a Catholic monkey wrench into the British Monarchy. I have nothing against the British Monarchy, I just like causing trouble. I could go higher (she's 11th in line), but the next oldest lady-royal was born in 1988. That's a little young.

Anyway, I could've been Pope, but I can't be involved with the British Monarchy. Damn. In case you're curious, The first person skipped now is in position #23.

Additionally, Prince Philip is quite bizarre. I mean, I got that inclination from listening to Eddie Izzard, but, really... When Elizabeth shot down the idea of changing the House of Windsor to the House of Mountbatten (for that is his last name), he apparently said that he had "turned into an amoeba." Phil, you're using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means. Also, if he whacks the 465 people in front of him, and then Liz dies, hey! He gets to be King outright. That's kind of cool and recursive.

----------------------------

Revisited: 4:02 PM. So, I wrote all that this morning, after telling Amy over IM that I didn't want to ask Wikipedia about something, because I knew I'd be on there for an eternity. If you're curious, the trail went like this:

Whig party -> something -> something -> assasinated presidents -> Line of succession -> Lines of succession in other countries (boring) -> Modern pretenders to thrones of wherever (cool!) -> Line of succession, British Monarchy -> Zara Phillips -> Prince Philip.

I also tried to figure out how this creepy vampire guy figures into the whole charade, and it apparently has something to do with James II's kid, who was born of James II and some Roman Catholic second wife lady. Oldest son (thanks, primogeniture), two protestant half-sisters (thanks, Church of England). It was really silly. PLUS, this guy's bloodline doesn't even work out correctly, because the family jumps to Henry Benedict Cardinal Stuart's second cousin from Italy, and then my brain breaks.

This is the Jump.

Brain Dump, Wednesday, 2:45 PM

Here's four six bullet points, comin' at'cha.

• Madame, please endeavor to wear a dress that covers your entire butt when coming into the cathedral. The fact that your coat contends with your dress for length is extremely distracting.
• I think I got an entire palm tree smeared on my head. But that's okay.
• A thing I noticed that I started doing, and now it makes me giggle: I've started blowing by panhandlers and survey-takers by saying "I'm sorry," and doing this hand wave thing. It's sort of morphed into this Obi-Wan, "These aren't the droids you're looking for," kind of thing. I think I want to focus on that, really workshop it.
• Joe (in regard your comment on the previous post): I haven't talked ad nauseum about the College of Cardinals? Dude, Benedict XVI is the coach, clearly. I have a roster on Excel that tells me where everybody is, because of course I import them into Madden and want to keep track of them. Notables: Paul Joseph Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung is a safety for the Ravens, Miloslav Cardinal Vlk won the Groza award and plays for the Bears, and Julius Cardinal Darmaatmadja is a WR/KR who is battling for the Heisman with Tyrell Sutton.
• Oh, also, I'm basically live-blogging my blog, as I'm not putting together any sort of coherent thought process today. (Re: Joe's comment a couple posts ago, which I'm pretty sure was just making fun of me.)
• You can't use punctuation in post labels.

That's all for now.

This is the Jump.

To Dust You Will Return

By the way, Happy Ash Wednesday, everybody.

I'm a little peeved because I wanted to go to Holy Name for the 12:10 Mass with Cardinal George, but my detective work took too long, now it's 12:03, and I have to wait for Schmuckley from Ice Mountain to come back. I would've tried to find time to tell Cardinal George that, according to NCAA Football 2007, he's a monster at middle linebacker, but I'm vaguely afraid that it would've earned me a smiting. I don't know if the actual College of Cardinals would find that amusing or not - I really doubt it, because there's what, 15 American Cardinals who would be likely to get the joke, and I would imagine that most of them take themselves extremely seriously. But I'd like to think that privately, they'd get a little bit of a snicker out of it.

This is the Jump.

File That Under I for "Ideas, Terrible."

Well. I'm about 10 minutes into the MI-5 episode I was referring to yesterday, and I've been distracted by actual work about 35 times. Joe was right, this is a lot of work, and the reward is minimal. Nevertheless, I will perservere.

I don't think I'll be doing this regularly, though. It seemed like a fun way to kill time, but it's pretty detail-oriented, if you want to make the show seem like something you'd actually like someone else to watch.

I have to go figure out why we aren't paying our invoices to Ice Mountain now.

This is the Jump.

Still Fixated on Television - Now With More Accents!

God bless and keep you, BBC America1, for bringing to your subscribers Coupling (the American version? Total crap. The British version? A near-consistent delight until the last season, which was mostly crap.) and, what we're-a gonna discuss today, MI-5. If you happen to be on the side of the Atlantic where the show's produced, it's called Spooks. But that little colloquialism doesn't translate appropriately on the sinister side of the pond. But now you know what you're looking for if you're off to stalk Lucy Davis or something2.

This post catches you up, then, as an experiment, we're going to try recapping an episode of something that TWoP doesn't recap. Josh wants to make our own recappy site for... reasons passing understanding, so that might happen. If anyone else (like there's more than 3 other people that read this site) want to do that, we could do that. It might be fun until our brains melt.

Click the thinghy to continue.

Here's the deal: perhaps you've heard of England. Land of people who are, on the whole, more articulate than you, have funny names for things (bubble and squeak, anyone?), and whose imperial yoke we threw off a zillion years ago in favor of some stuff that seemed like a really good idea at the time. But we have things in common! Things like English, beer, and that terrorists want to kill us. Our story is about the good guys who sneak around, beat up bad guys, foil plots, and have Issues with their significant others because they have to be sneaky all the time, and tell people that they work for the International Peat Bog Preservation Society on the off chance that someone listening works for Al Qaeda3.

So. Series One found us joining Tom Quinn (Matthew Mcfayeden) and his intrepid team of secret agent men and women. He immediately starts hanging out with a wet-blanket girlfriend who has a cute daughter. She figures out that he doesn't work for an import/export firm when he comes back home lightly perforated with gunfire. They deal with can-they-can't-they know who he actually is, and WBG sadly doesn't get blown up at the end of the first season when terrorists plant a bomb in Tom's laptop. Though, she certainly doesn't survive because she was able to defuse it. Oh, no, she's completely worthless at that, and it's only because that bomb's a decoy that she survives. She would've been able to get out of the house if her stupid kid hadn't put peanut butter in the super-secure-door-lock mechanism that they had to install in Tom's house because Tom wanted to make WBG feel safe. She's crappy, and she breaks up with Tom in the beginning of Series Two, because she makes him choose between her and England, and of course, Tom chooses England, because she sucks and England doesn't.

But the cool part is the foiling of terrorists, which happens thusly: pro-life carbomber foiled by the team when they fuck up her cell phone so she can't detonate her bomb. She's American, they give her to the CIA, she's in deep doo-doo, even though Tom and the Gang tell her she won't be if she gives up her accomplices. Oh well, sorry bomber, sucks to be you. Enjoy Florida and the thumbscrews the CIA'll probably put you to. Race Riot Instigator, who's some sort of muckety-muck in the business world gets the attention of Tom and the Gang, but unfortunately, Helen, posing as Tom's wife for this mission, whiffs on a question from RRI's wife, which is overheard by RRI, who sticks her face in a deep-fryer and kills her. For reals. It's awful, and unexpected, and MI-5/Spooks would like you to know that they will be refraining from pulling any punches, thankyoverymuch. Please don't get comfortable, as the captain will not be turning off the fasten seatbelts sign, and will in fact be diverting into a cyclone. Enjoy. Hugh Laurie joins the cast briefly as the best MI-6 officer since Bond, being kind of a dick to our MI-5 clan whilst enjoying an opera and running super-triple-secret-agents against everybody. Good times. One of the 5's, Tessa, gets caught running phantom operatives and pocketing the money herself. Needless to say, this doesn't go over well, so she's not on the show anymore. Mostly. MI-5 foils a plan to make Air Force One land on top of another plane rather than somewhere conventional like a runway at Gatwick. Stuff like that.

While everybody was worried about Tom's stupid girlfriend maybe blowing up at the end of Series 1, they weren't paying attention to the real bomb that blew up the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Whoops. Stupid girlfriend. On the plus side, they figure out that the bombadier is going to blow up a COBRA meeting (This COBRA, not this), foil the guy, and instead of sending him to The Hague for trial, they fool him and send him to Egypt. And tell Egypt that he's also a pedophile, so he'll get the special pedophile treatment. Good for you, Harry Pearce. (Tom's boss, and basically the only guy who's not dead yet. (SPOILER!)) Let's zip through this some more, eh? The possibility of bombs at a mosque introduce us to Dr. Bashir who grudgingly joins the team in return for... something, immunity or whatever, to stop the imam from using children as suicide bombers. For a while, everyone thinks Doc's double crossed our MI-5 guys, but he's just doing things his own way. Of course, he gets his ass blown up for his trouble, just when it looks like he's talked Li'l Boomy out of taking his exploding vest out clubbing. I mention this at length, because it's a really extraordinary episode that doesn't get preachy about Muslim relations in England, AND you get the fake-out of "Oh, everything's all right, now. He's talking to the little kid on the playground, and they wouldn't let anything happ- OH DEAR CHRIST!" So, yeeeeah. There's that. Oh, meanwhile, we're introduced to Christine Dale, who's going to eventually be Tom's new love interest. She works for the CIA, and is able to not be a simpering wreck much. Which is good. Other good times from Series 2 include: mystery bomb goes off in Parliament Square, which turns out to be VX gas and everyone is super-screwed. EXCEPT, it's totally an exercise, and nobody knows about it, making everybody lose their freaking minds and reach the point where they're going to shoot each other. I recommend it. The season ends with everybody being kidnapped and drugged by some freaky-deaky ex-CIA guy who decides that it's time for a spot of revenge and not only kills the defense minister with a bad-ass sniper rifle, but frames Tom for it. Everybody and their mother believes that Tom's somehow lost it and is playing for the bad guys, so the only thing left to do, of course, is to end up in some house in Dover or whatever, and have Tom shoot Harry in the shoulder with a shotgun to escape. He then re-enacts the end of The Awakening, and we're to assume that he's dead by North Sea poisoning.

Season 3! Tom's been washed away to wherever, and Her Majesty's Government is not amused. Nasty Bastard of the Joint Intelligence committee will be a thorn in Harry and co.'s side for the most of the season, until Harry tells him to cram it. Our Gang has some delightful clandestine meeting scenes while they try to prove Tom's innocence (oh, right, he's not dead. Sorry.). Some raving loon (Adam - not a loon, and soon-to-be New Tom) shows up on a bicycle and lets them know they're being surveilled, and they scatter in a thousand directions as people we don't care about arrive in trench coats, and talk into their sleeves about how pissed they are that Section D got away. So Tom's in good standing, until he has to get Emperor Palpatine to be a spy, and has so much fun with it that he doesn't notice that Palpatine is now electrocuting people with his fingers and is building a Death Star in Shropshire. Or, he just can't handle the strain, and the entire operation goes pretty much pear-shaped, but Adam fixes it in a way that's not as interesting as watching Palpatine and Tom lose their collective mind. Harry tells Tom that they can't hang out together anymore.

Zoe meets a charming photographer (aren't they all), who becomes useful to the plot when his no-good brother outs Zoe as a spy with incriminating spy photos of spy stuff. Or something. Whatever, it's no good, but Zoe's real problem comes when an operation goes wrong and a policeman gets killed, and she's put on trial. Found guilty, she's going to go to jail, but Harry can't just follow the rules like normal, and sends her to Argentina, instead. They can't hang out together anymore. And she and Danny certainly can't pork, like Danny wanted to, and I forgot to mention. Oh, and Mr. Photographer has to think that she's in prison, but he's clever, and Danny decides not to keep that secret, so, Mr. Photographer is all "What's new, Buenos Aires," and they can't hang out together anymore. But Zoe and Mr. P can hang out with ex-Nazis4. Danny's not handling things well. Even though Cute Scottish Agent Sam wanted to be all up on him at some point in the season, that doesn't seem to go anywhere, and he gets all snippy with her, and she writes about it in her journal. I don't know. I just wanted to mention Cute Scottish Agent Sam, and I couldn't think of another reason to do it. She's cute and Scottish. Ruth (who I haven't mentioned, but she massages data) has an episode of her own where she falls for (and ultimately poisons awesomely) some computer guy who wants to send a magic algorythm to... essentially make it not secure to use your credit card on Amazon.com anymore. They're having dinner, she figures out that he's the bad guy, and keeps his algorythm in a suitcase, he gets poisoned awesomely, and she's okay. Danny chucks the suitcase into the Thames, because that's what you do.

Adam's wife was MI-6, but now she's MI-5 so she can work on stuff, mostly doing a shocking amount of blow undercover with some rock star and his wife whose baby is kidnapped. Nasty Bastard wants Harry and Co. to work on the case because it's vital to National Security, even though Harry thinks it's a load of bollocks and the police should handle it. Nasty Bastard disagrees. In any event, things aren't going so well for Mrs. Adam, and subsequently, Adam wants her out, Harry wants her in, Harry wins. In the "the show did WHAT?" category, it turns out that the baby was kidnapped at the request of Mrs. Rock Star, and the kidnappers were so incompetent that they thought it'd be a solid idea to put the baby in a duffel bag and toss the duffel bag over the fence to their confederates. Moral: don't toss babies over fences. Dead babies result, and by extention, stabbed fake kidnappers, stabbed MI-5 agents, really violently stabbed Mrs. Rock Stars, and a Mr. Rock Star who relocates the majority of his brains onto a wall that he painted in a club when he was was Mr. Rock... Guy. Not star, is my point.

We're almost caught up.

Bad guys have figured out where Mr. and Mrs. Adam live, and have bugged the place. They're pissed off at Freedom, and so they're going to set up Mrs. Adam (Fiona). They capture Danny and Fiona while they're bugging some house, and bring them off to the countryside for fresh air and torture. Danny and Fiona engineer a daring (and way-cool) escape, but they, sadly, do not succeed. Adam's on the phone with the bad guys, after being hijacked by some terrorist lady. Terrorist Leader tells him to pick who lives and who dies, because Danny and Fiona committed the faux pas of killing a henchman on their (failed) way out. While Adam looks like he's going to vomit, Danny sacks up and tells Terroist Leader that he's a damn dirty facist and that Danny questions his parentage, and that basically Terrorist Leader can go fuck himself. Shockingly, this doesn't go over very well with Terrorist Leader, who shoots Danny. Nobody can hang out with Danny anymore. Except Helen, and maybe Dr. Bashir. Oh, yeah, everybody hears Danny's (quite bad-ass, to be perfectly honest) speeh, and subsequent shooting, because a nice bit of fieldcraft hooked Adam up with a two-way radio. MEANWHILE, Terror Lady has talked Adam into getting her into some dinner with the Prime Minister. Presumably, if he does this, she'll get Terror Leader to let Fiona go. All she wants to do is talk to the PM, really. She doesn't have a bomb SEWN INTO HER ABDOMEN or anything. Whoops. Good news: she has second thoughts about going from Terror Lady to Tiny Bits Lady, hesitates, and tells Adam. Bad news: Terror Leader has control over Terror Lady's detonation. Good news: Adam calls an audible, and makes sure the PM doesn't enter the building. Bad news: this understandably makes Terror Leader unhappy, so he's going to light Fiona on fire, and then maybe blow up Terror Lady anyway. Good news: the SAS crash through skylights, windows, walls, and the space-time continuum, and shoot the bejeezus out of Terror Leader.

Bad news: Danny's still dead.

SO! Things I wanted to mention:

• Harry Pearce = Everybody's Boss. Better get his ass knighted for all the shit he has to put up with.
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #1 (w/Maisy) = "Hey, Tom, choose between England and me." "Well, you suck, but Maisy's adorable.... Ah, Maisy'll probably grow into a shrew like you. I choose England."
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #2 = Batshit insane. I didn't even mention her above, but she tried to get revenge on Tom for dumping her by putting up flyers in the women's restroom that essentially said "For a good time, call this SECRET AGENT OF HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT". This didn't go over very well, so I think she got shipped to Scotland or something.
• Tom Quinn's American CIA Girlfriend = Christine was delightful. Kicked ass, took names, became kind of a sissy when Tom became a sissy. This is right about when they started having Secret Agent Sex. Anyway, when Tom got set up, it was kind of her fault. Neither Uncle Sam nor Aunt... Queen Elizabeth was particularly pleased, so she went back to the United States, never to be heard from again.
• Hugh Laurie used to be a Big Deal MI-6 Agent. This was awesome. He then became a crippled doctor on Fox in America, so now infinitely less cool MI-6 agents show up. They will all be known as "Not Nearly as Awesome as Hugh Laurie Agent."
• Malcom and Colin are tech guys who are really great, but didn't figure into that recap up there. Sorry. I want to mention them now.
• Tom = Canned. Zoe = Chilean. Danny = Corpse.
• Adam = New Tom. His wife is Fiona, and they're a Spy Couple, which is, you know, nice.
• Sam = Current Hotness. Stupid Danny never got around to making his move because he was too busy wanting to have the hook-ups with Zoe. I disagree with his choice.
• Oh, yeah, Danny and Zoe shared a "flat," which is British for "apartment." I hope it's still available to rent, because it was really swanky.

Wow. Them's a lot of words5. I also stopped linking to interesting things - I probably should go back and find some interesting links, if I ever edit this. Eventually, I'll recap Series 4 of MI-5, because I have the DVDs from Netflix, I'm excited about the show, and I hate work. I hope you read this far.

1 Apparently, I'm wrong, as it shows on A&E. Whatever. I Netflix it, anyway.
2 This was originally to be Emma Watson, with a link to one of those creepy "countdown to legal age" clocks, but I was too creeped out after actually finding one. Eew.
3 Hello, NSA! I'm just writing about a television show. Nothing to see here.
4 Apparently, they actually went to Chile. Whatever.
5 A lot = 2,681.

This is the Jump.

Perhaps We Define "Exciting" in Different Ways

I said I'd do it, so here it is, the first... 15 things I can think of that are more exciting than the aforementioned "Most Exciting [whatever] Minutes in College Athletics." I've actually decided to limit myself to things in sports college "athletics" that last longer than 2 minutes and fewer than 6.* This, unfortunately removes these favorite things that don't take long enough*:

1. A safety caused by intentional grounding in the end zone.
2. A safety caused by holding in the end zone.
3. A safety caused by snapping the ball over the punter's head. (Extra credit if it's through the goal posts)
4. Smashing the backboard glass on a dunk. (Though the replacement takes a while...)
5. Smashing the glass at a hockey game with a puck. (See above)
6. The second ending to Push On. (Whatever, it's cooler than The Ex-Chief.)
7. Anything ending in "rooskie."
8. "It's a fake! It's a funny looking fake."
9. Flippy Cup

That said, the following things are more exciting than that thing with the touchy-toes and whatnot:

1. A vast majority of pre-game video montages, most of which lately seem to be scored with the theme from Pirates of the Carribbean.
2. Any play involving multiple laterals.
3. Any band marching into any stadium anywhere.
4. Rushing the field/court.
5. Whenever they blow up an old stadium.
6. Successive fast breaks in basketball. (There'd have to be, like, 4, wouldn't there? That'd be more exciting.)
7. Hockey shootouts. (They have these in college, right?)
8. Recognizing a college athlete in a college bar, and seeing him/her navigate people. Especially if they have the "C'mon, recognize me!" look going.
9. A member of the team conducts the band. Ususally something good has just happened, and everybody's giddy. This is very underrated.
10. On that same note, that one time Willie the Wildcat played drum set during basketball band. That was great.
11. People performing in capacities they have no business performing in. (Ex.: Punter/Kicker throwing passes, basketball player in a dress, linebackers playing "Chubby Bunny.")
12. 4 minutes of an actual football game.
13. Any pivotal baseball/softball at-bat.
14. Coaches going ape-shit on officials.
15. 4 minutes of Joe Paterno falling down.

I was going to say 4 minutes of any sporting event, and then I was going to qualify that, but it turned into this hellish Venn Diagram of scenarios. So, just roll with me on swimming, lacrosse, soccer, basketball, tennis, racquetball, frisbee, squash, field hockey, fencing, and team handball. Diving, shorter track-and-field events, archery, and other things that happen in quick bursts don't fall into this category. Archery, shooting, and the javelin only count if you're being chased by the archers, gunmen, or javelinas^.

Also, I didn't want to go all low-blow and pick other parts of marching band things, but really? Script Ohio isn't more exciting? The imminent death of Double Correct Rights, or the Floating Lion thing PSU does? Anything involving a drum major doing something bizarre? Hell, the Florida State Seminole uses fire! The Ex-Chief just wanders around like a nancy.

Nor did I want to go low-blow on the mascot or tradition thing, because that's pretty subjective, too. Goldy the Gopher spins his head. That'd be bizarre for 4 minutes. A 4-minute mascot fight would be pretty exciting.

Anyway, I'm glad that's over. I thought of a lot of things that were too brief*, which made this more difficult than I expected. Plus, when I started removing things that I thought might be too subjective (maybe people think the Script Ohio is overrated, I don't know) it got pretty hard*.

As always, I accept suggestions on what else is more exciting than the self-proclaimed "most exciting 4 minutes in all of college athletics." I'm positive I missed things.

*Har har.
^Yes, I know what a javelina is. Shut up.

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Hi, Grandma!

Well! I probably should apologize for the occasional blue language now that I know my grandma reads this... Hi, Gram! How's it going? I don't swear in real life, and I also help orphans.

Blind orphans.

I read to them.

Yeah.

This is the Jump.

An Open Letter to Douchebags

Fourth in an occasional series

Dear Chief Illiniwek Apologists:

I hear you're retiring the Chief today. It's about damn time. More specifically, it's about damn time you shut your Big Wampum' Cake Hole about your stupid mascot.

Here's the thing: I can understand tradition, and I can understand how it's fun to have the student section do that thing where they cross their arms like I Dream of Jeannie, and then rotate 90 degrees so that they're, what, offering up football (fine, or basketball) to the heavens? To the happy gridiron in the sky? What are you doing when you do that? Random quasi-Native American imagery is weird if it's that purposeless - you do realize that, right? It just makes everybody that isn't drunk* uncomfortable if some white guy from Bloomington, Pekin, Effingham, or (God forbid) Lake Forest is hopping around your fieldturf with no shoes on, especially if you refer to the dance in reverential tones. WHICH YOU DO - I'VE HEARD YOU DO IT, SO SHUT UP.

You exchanged the eagle feathers (classy!) on the headdress with painted turkey feathers (less classy!).

You also claim that the bit where Chief Mr. Illiniwek prances about doing his toe-touchy thing is part of "the most exciting X minutes in college athletics." This is a lie. The most exciting period of time in college athletics is when something goes horribly awry.^

As a visiting fan and rival, I started out giggling about Mr. Illiniwek and The Chief Dance and may have mocked it a little, with dancing and eye-rolls, and whatnot. But the more I saw, the more I became aware of The Awkward. The icon became divisive and more and more people became aware that it was okay to feel offended by it. Just give up the dance. Keep the logo - that's cool. The guy hasn't even been a mascot-mascot for... how long? He doesn't get in boxing matches with Willy or Herky or Brutus Buckeye. He doesn't get into head-spinning contest with Goldy the Gopher. He struts out for 5 minutes at halftime, makes everybody feel weird, and then goes away. You won't miss him. I swear.

Just shut up about him. It's tiresome.

Oh, and on the flip side? A school that I really like has a mascot that's a diminutive red-haired Irishman who jumps up and down like a monkey on the sidelines. Am I offended? No. But they also don't stop halftime so he can go out there and dance, while everybody acts like it's some sort of solemn ceremony. I don't know, maybe there's a double standard, but I'm tired of hearing your excuses for Mr. Illiniwek, you dumb yokels.

Send The Chief into retirement, give him his gold watch and rock-strewn areas of Arizona and the Dakotas.

But you get to keep the syphilis and the small-pox ridden blankets.

You have died of dysentery,

C-Dog

P.S. Incidentally, your current Mr. Illiniweks are really named Dan Maloney (Galesburg) and Logan Ponce (St. Charles). I have nothing specifically against Messrs. Maloney and Ponce, really. It was -I'm sure- a great honor to be chosen as the symbol of their university. Whatever. Not entirely their fault.

P.P.S. Wait, no, I take that back. In doing a little further research, it turns out they sued the NCAA and the U of I Board of Trustees to keep them from ditching the dance and turkey hat. I was going to try to avoid singling out douchebags, but you clowns, and your Matoon-based lawyer are douchebags nonpareil.

P.P.P.S. Thanks, as usual to Deadspin for the info, and for at least one joke that I stole from the commenters there.

*Here, I'm including drunk on non-traditional intoxicants like "school pride," "sub-par education," or "the Holy Spirit."

^I had so many examples of things going horribly awry that I like more than the Marching Illini + Mr. Illiniwek that it's going to have to be a new post.

This is the Jump.

Studio 60 (or: A Slave to Duty)

Now, I know I touched on this before, in the letter to Mr. Sorkin, but I feel it bears repeating. Studio 60 is a... show with a lot of wasted potential. This week's previouslies reminded us of the following things:

• Reality shows are for dumb people. Didn't you hear? If you like reality shows, you're functionally retarded. Isn't that cute? (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin, and I hate reality shows because I blame them for people not liking my shows. For some reason.")
  
• Danny and Jordan entered a relationship that made me uncomfortable a few times, but then got together, and I genuinely hope that's not going to be a terrible thing. (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. I seem to have written these characters into a corner by making one of them a pretentious douchebag, and the other a terrifying, unstoppable cruise missile of 'love.' Or maybe 'unholy obsession.' Oh, fuck it, let's get together and hope people go with it.")
  
• Matt and Harriet broke up, because they're both irritating, sanctimonious bastards when they're together. (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. Have you met Kristin Chenoweth?")
  

The lesson? "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. I hate."

Oh, my, do I have more to say after the jump.

Let's ignore, for a moment, the bizarre vendetta that Mr. S has against reality television and against people that "don't get" his show. That's pathological and weird, and he's creepy in that sense. What's weirder and creepier and pathologicallier is the bizarre-ass allegory that Johnny Cokefiend has constructed. Matthew Perry is acting his ASS off in this show. I know! Who could've predicted that? But Perry is going to be senza ass, because he acted it clean off in pursuit of... what? Aaron Sorkin's crazyface? It's cheating if you get to write the words for both the character who's ostensibly "you," AND the character who you've pitted yourself against. But you're not even doing it right - you get to make Ma(aaron)tt Alb(sorkin)ie this witty genius and a platform for your ire, and you write him all petty and bitchy. And we have no idea why HarriettotalynotKristen Chenowethayes gave this dickbag the time of day, because he's a baby, and she's... got no redeeming qualities. But your show claims that she's a genius comedienne. Who can't tell a joke. No wonder nobody cares about your show - your main "romantic" storyline doesn't make any fucking sense.

What's even more infuriating is that not only is Perry doing a genius job with this mish-mash of a Sorkin Therapy Session, between great silent reactions, really good chemistry with everybody (specifically Bradley Whitford, Timothy Busfield, and the girl who plays Suzanne the PA), but so is everyone else!

Bradley Whitford, when not saddled with the weirdness of Jordan obsession is funny, per usual, and a delightful producer of shows. He and Perry are best of friends, and you can tell. He pedconferences with the best of them, and gives - at worst - interesting line readings.

Timothy Busfield is my favorite, if for no reason other than the time I took the Warner Bros. studio tour, and we went past the West Wing set. Allison Janney was talking to some production person and studiously ignoring the tram. Timothy Busfield takes the opportunity to wander out of the "White House," and shout "Allison Janney, ladies and gentlemen!" at the tour, and starts applauding. It was terribly funny. ANYway, I could watch Cal operate a TV show for an hour. That'd be good times. They nailed that part of the show last Monday, with the zooming all over the studio during the dress rehearsal. Which was then ruined by Weirdo Jordan being bizarrely insecure about the boobs on the guest artist. I don't get it.

They stopped showing us the sketches that aren't funny, and just started showing us the funny that surrounds the sketches that may or may not be funny. The pitch for "Dolphin Girl," two weeks ago was very funny. Nathan Corddry and Sarah Paulson wander in and pitch it to Matt, and it's spot on. This week, Nathan and Nate Torrence really want a sketch called "Metric Conversion" to be in the show. A sketch called "Metric Conversion" does not strike me as having a ton of hilarity potential, but we don't have to see it. We do, however, see Tom and Dylan be tremendous in their attempts to get it on the show. ("BIG SKETCH," yells Dylan, awkwardly, and I watch that over and over, because it's FUNNY!)

Ed Asner as Yoda of NBS - great times. Steven Weber talking to the Chinese parents of a viola prodigy that wants to get into Tom Jeters pantaloons - exceptional times, all the way around, if a bit repetitive. It was the same story ("What will happen if I'm just honest with Mr. Zhang Tao this time? The same as the last time? Hopefully the Harsh Truth will cause him to respect me again."), but it was well-played. Also the viola prodigy wanting all up on Tom was well-played.

But Amanda Peet has this thankless job of being this bizarro network executive with no sense of propriety. She's handling it admirably, and looks like she's having fun with it, but it's absurd. Even leaving out the weird giving-in to the stalkeration of Bradley Whitford's Danny Tripp, and the insane arguments that she had against dating him (not: "I'm your boss," or "You're stalking me," or anything, it was "I'm scared of feeling," or something. Briefly, "You're a recovering cocaine addict," I think. I don't recall. I passed out from irritation.), she's a loon. And Aaron Sorkin, well, Aaron, it's pretty clear you're just writing based on things you've heard about pregnant women. "I hear the're hungry all the time! And for weird foods! Oh, and their hormones are doing things! WHERE'S MY TYPEWRITER? I have a PREGNANT LADY to write! Genius!"

GOD.

So much potential. Sorkin's a good writer. But there's so much that's weird with it. Just stop being weird. STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP.

Watch it. It's good. It'll probably be canned, and that's a shame, because maybe Aaron'll stop using it as a canvas for weirdo allegory. Because it's way too much insight into the terrifying world of Aaron Sorkin, and eventually, we the audience get tired of saying "OKAY. We get it, you did all this stuff. Isn't it funny that a lot of this happened in real life. If you keep winking at us, we're gonna think you're some sort of predator. Knock it off."

And I like the show. Yeesh.

This is the Jump.

...Wherein I Am Incapable of Concentrating Long Enough to Write A Recap

I've aborted two attempts to write recaps of shows I've decided I really like. I like television, and quality writing/acting/fun is part of why I try to stay in the "business." As it were. Gosh, that was pretentious. I wanted to share why I was enjoying myself with Friday Night Lights (Which Airs On Wednesdays, So Please Don't Be Confused) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip Is a Very Long Title Even When I Don't Add Words to the End, but I'm not nearly as good at writing recaps as TWoP, and besides, who'd read them? What would be the point? Plus, it takes a load of concentration, and I started to get bored and go on tangents. So, I decided to take all my witticisms and dump them here. In a Wit Dump.

First of all, I was going to call the series CDVRs, for C-Dog teleVision Recaps. That's precious, isn't it? Looking at it now, I'm glad I'm a crashing failure at recapping television, because that's just offensive.

Second of all, I realized I didn't want to talk about the episodes, per se, but rather about the shows as a whole.

So, on and ever upward.

Studio 60 will be the next post, and Friday Night Lights will follow. I don't want these posts to be super-long, and this one was just sort of explaining myself. And now I'm explaining why I explain myself.

This is the Jump.

Fine. I Used the Wrong Word. I Admit It.

I did want "Lexi-" something, for my last post. Josh (in the comments) was at least half right. Another definition for lexicography is "the principles and procedures involved in writing, editing, or compiling dictionaries." Which, with a little bit of fudging, could count, because I want to compile a dictionary full of weird stuff. What I wanted was ... lexicality, perhaps? Well, this post went directly to hell in a handbasket. Thanks, Josh.

This is the Jump.

I'm Bringing Lexi(cography) Back...

I'm going to work on peppering my speech with even more bizarre phrases, so I can be completely incomprehensible to the casual observer. My 48-hour obsession with "in all of Christendom" can best be described as... quirky. I shall bring it back into my lexicon for no reason other than no one else does it. However, claiming that, for example, "The Office is currently the greatest show in all of Christendom, and it was disGRACEfully erased from my TiVo before I had a chance to watch it," raises some questions, especially if you think about it too much.

I want it to replace "on the planet," or "in the observable universe," or "ever," but unfortunately, Christendom doesn't really cover that much distance anymore. Does the U.S.A. even fit into the realm of "Christendom," as a secular republic? Where there happens to be a preponderance of Christians? Or am I limited to countries like... the Vatican City and... countries I'm not confident are actually primarily Christian. Well, the CIA Factbook is of no help, because it really doesn't notate "official religions," consistently or not too many countries have state religions anymore. But apparently, any statement I make wouldn't be valid in Nepal, as it's the only offically Hindu country in all of... well, you know. I could feel confident about my statement applying in Monaco, though. Probably not The Gambia. But I digress.

I don't know what sort of idiomatic excavations I can use beyond that, but I'll work on it.

Also, is the "bringing ___ back" construction even humorous anymore?

This is the Jump.

Very Funny, iPod

Yes, it's hilarious that it's 7,000 degrees below zero, and your shuffle feature has just cued up "Too Darn Hot." Cole Porter, you wily sonofabitch, you orchestrated this scenario from beyond the grave, haven't you? You and Ella both, and I'm sure it's a real thigh-slapper for you. My sneezes freeze as they exit my orifices, forming deadly jet-powered lances of grossness to slice through pedestrians on Michigan Avenue, but jazzily, in my ears, it is proclaimed that it's "too darn hot." Over. And over. Again. Because there are no other lyrics to that song.

Okay, mathematically, it's only 23% of the song that involves those words. I've done the math. But it seems like more.

Whatever. I'm cuing up "It Certainly Sucks to Die of Exposure" next.

This is the Jump.

In Other News...

Apparently, there's something that makes the core of the Hancock Building a total wind-tunnel. You can't feel it in the standard elevators, but it's like they're testing the aerodynamics of the service elevator. And the drop in pressure is so precipitous in the emergency stairwells, that one can't actually close the doors, if one were to open the door to see what the sound of rushing wind is coming from.

So that's interesting.

Also interesting is that, since I was bundled up like Tenzig Norgay this morning, it now looks like I stole Barry Melrose's hair. Let me tell you, this is not a good look for me. Barry can get away with it, but I don't believe that I can. Clearly, I need a haircut.

This is the Jump.

So, That Happened

It has come to my attention that teams I like have done astonishingly poorly in games ending in "Bowl" since I can remember. To wit:

1985 Super Bowl: Bears win 46-10. I can apparently read the newspaper at this point in my life, but I remember nothing about this game, other than the vague reollection of people being excited, but I think that's a memory constructed from stories. That doesn't count. The last Bowl-related bright spot, and I'm 4, won't remember, and don't care. But boy, did we whup 'em.

11 years pass, while no team makes it to any bowl of any sort. Huh. At least the White Sox... oh, right. The Blackhawks went to the Stanley Cup Finals. And got waxed. And I don't think it was really on TV, but I just checked, and you can watch the whole thing on Google Video. Weird. Good news: the Bulls won three championships.

The disasters now begin post-jump.

1996 Rose Bowl: Wildcats lose, 41-32. I got a t-shirt at Christmas, and didn't even know I wanted to go there, yet. We're including it in the list, but I might as well include the 1949 Rose Bowl. And the 1963 NFL Championship... Bowl... Okay, that's not what it's called, but I didn't really care about the outcome, yet.

1997 Citrus Bowl: Wildcats lose, 48-28. Again, haven't started to care yet, but this is notable in that Peyton Manning picked Northwestern apart. Thanks, Alison, for bringing that to my attention last night. Yahoo.

2000 Alamo Bowl: Wildcats lose, 66-17. Now I care. The Mighty Zak Kustok leads Northwestern to the Big Ten title, and that's really exciting, because, as I may have mentioned, I went to high school with him. Whee. Everybody has a really good time, Northwestern "storms" out to a 10-7 lead, and then gets stomped, because Nebraska apparently is ANGRY. Also, they are good at football. Our disappointment is meted by the fact that we decide to mosey back to the hotel playing "Tarzan Boy" and whatnot in the streets of San Antonio.

2003 Motor City Bowl: Wildcats lose, 28-24. Now begins the series of games that Just Make Me Angry. The Bowling Green State University Fighting Terrible Fight Songs came back to win after being down 10, with the assistance of NU's decision to stop playing offense. I also recall being backed up into our own end zone and getting off a punt of, like, net 12 yards in the 4th quarter. You're down by 4 - snap the ball over the punter's head out of the end zone, and kick the free kick from the 30! You run no time off the clock, and you have a better chance for decent field position, if you can get the ball back. Which they did (as I recall), but with a) not enough time and b) too much field for the comeback. Gah. Meanwhile, you're in Detroit on the day after Christmas, and somebody gets knifed in your hotel. At least I took a few good photos.

2005 Sun Bowl: Wildcats lose, 50-38. Aaagghh... I thought the Motor City Bowl pissed me off. Northwestern led 22-0. 22-0! This happened while clanking two extra points, incidentally. And then missing a field goal, and replacing Joel Howells and his peg leg with Armand Villareal (okay, I had to look that part up.) Basanez helps claw them back in it, (Yay! Only down 5!) but somehow, UCLA runs an onside kick back for a touchdown (Boo! Down 13. Also - what? How does that happen?). Basanez rockets back down the field and scores! Breazell runs ANOTHER onside kick in to the end zone! WHAT? HUH? HOW? D4adfgafga$#%2sldbh AGHGGH...

By the way, I'm posting this posthumously, because I've just hung myself. I'm really glad I decided to rehash those games. WOO! Oh, wait! There's last night.

2007 Super Bowl: Bears lose, 29-17. Dammit.

By the way, we have a lot of beer left over. Also cake.

This is the Jump.