Alumni's Private Jet Engines to Tuberville:

Tommy can you hear me? Can you feel me near you?

Georgia Tech 23, Auburn 14

Crimsn TiDe: So True

Alabama 26, Middle Tenn. St. 7

The Negatives: We went into the half with a 9-7 lead over MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE. If it is going to take an entire half to get the offense clicking against better opponents, then God help us. The first serious test should be Arkansas (9/24) and their new defense under former Wolfpack Co-Ordinator Reggie Herring. If our D can continue it's dominating play and the Offense can get past the Arkansas defense with a win then there's hope to be found. I doubt there's a better defensive team on the schedule, especially considering the magic Herring worked at NC State.

The Positives: The biggest positive of all has to be Brodie Croyle's continued ability to walk. We have a habit of losing our best against weak teams (Croyle against D-1AA Western Carolina, Hudson at Kentucky) and since the next truly weak spot on the schedule looks like Utah State on 10/9 hopefully the offensive first team can stay intact until then (and hopefully beyond, obviously). Further, save for one drive, Joe Kines again totally dominated the opponent's offense to give the floundering offense a chance to get it's rhythm. Unfortunately, if we are to succeed this year, that's the strategy that must carry us to the promised land.

09-03-2005

694) Anatomy of a Murder. This has a serious shot for the end of year "best" list. It would also be a serious contender for everyday movie if it didn't clock in at 160 minutes. That's a little too serious for light viewing. Anyway, Stewart gives one of his finest performances as the wily small town man against the bigger fish in society, and nothing is better in a movie than simple country folk outwitting the city slickers. There was actually a point near the end when I was on my feet screaming "Didn't see that one coming, DID YOU? IN YOUR CITY SLICKING FACE!" Apparently being a virtual shut-in these past few weeks has really taken it's toll. Further, the Duke Ellington score was magnificent and really a highlight for me. I'll stop gushing now cause I could go on and on.

695) War Paint. Growing up with Unsolved Mysteries has made it virtually impossible for me to think of Robert Stack without his trenchcoat.

695 down, 305 to go.

Boise State, like the Devil before them, finds little success in Georgia

Georgia 48, Boise St. 13

Looks like the poor dumb hicks of the SEC and their neandrathal style of play might still be relevant after all. Offensive masterminds take note, we tend to show game film instead of The Empire Strikes Back before games. Countdown til HP starts claiming a moral victory for Boise State and calling Georgia a bunch of pussies for not playing the Broncos in Idaho begins now. I'm such a poor winner.

Watson Brown: Heartbreaker

Tennessee 17, UAB 10

For all the haters that think Mike Shula is guilty of calling the worst games in the state of Alabama, please take note that Watson Brown routinely attempts to pry defeat from the jaws of victory each time he steps onto the field. Today, he was successful.

Negatives: Unfortunately for UAB, Watson ball is centered around the idea of either running up a score and then trying to run the clock out, or vice versa. The former produced two heart-attack inducing wins over both Memphis and Cincinatti last season when the Blazers blew up the scoreboard in the first half and then had to cling tooth and nail to their lead in the second. The latter produced today's debacle. This was an upset in the making the whole way through, but continuing to advance with a mostly innefective running game behind a sketchy O-line was a bad idea to begin with. Using this strategy to "control the tempo of the game and give us a chance in the 4th quarter" was just nuts. With a QB like Hack under center and a defense that lost it's best linebackers and wasn't anything to brag about last season, there's no call for such a conservative strategy, especially against a questionable secondary and the unbelievably good fortune of Fulmer deciding to start Ainge over Claussen. UAB could have easily taken the wind out of the UT sails and shut their hillbilly fan's whore mouths by coming out gunning and showing them what a big play offense looks like (I'm thinking of the aerial expolsives from the big number games of last season like Baylor, Tulane, and Hawaii). There were fleeting glimpses of the Hack we all know and love at the end of the second quarter, and again in the fourth, but he was mostly absent the rest of the time. The loss of Roddy White may have been a factor in keeping the ball on the ground but both Lindsey and Drinkard are capable wideouts and stretching the field would have also served to showcase both Burks and Corey White at running back, two guys who are more than able to break off big runs. Instead UT was showcasing their D-line and linebackers the entire first half. And yet, UAB hung with the Vols and still had a chance to win. If it weren't for running that same off tackle run that hadn't worked ONCE the entire game in the red zone and costing yardage and a down, UAB could have been sitting on a tie and either OT or possibly holding the Vols offense again and managing the upset. Of course, Watson can't be blamed for the entire ordeal. Each time we started driving and having real success sloppy play would shoot us in the foot. I don't remember exactly how many offsides and illegal formation penalties were called but there were more than enough. This was a huge chance to put UAB firmly on the mid-major map but it was an opportunity wasted. For shame.

Positives: UAB's defense looked sharper than it did all of last season, but the loss (again) of Carlos Hendricks to injury is a bad omen. I liked what I saw and feel better about our chances at a conference title now after seeing them hang with a UT team expected to make a run for the national title (even if I think those expectations are ludicrous). They are going to have to get better on run defense since Riggs pretty well ran all over them and they'll need to get more penetration in the backfield, but overall they've made leaps and bounds over last years unit.

But are they eating pudding?

Gay Cowboy Film Rides Into Venice festival.

09-02-2005

690) Barry Lyndon. If he hadn't been all about making films, Stanley Kubrick could have made a career out of directing historical mini-series for A & E since this felt like a particularly long episode of Horatio Hornblower, that is, if Horatio were played by Ryan O'Neal and also apparently bothered by intense constipational pain since O'Neal appeared to be on the verge of tears from trying his damndest to crap his pants with little to no success. Honestly, I would have really enjoyed this if it hadn't been for O'Neal, but as it is I just couldn't get past him.

691) Family Plot. Another one that I would have liked a lot better if it hadn't been for one person. Blanche had to be the single most annoying character in Hitchcock's entire oeuvre. You couldn't count the number of times I wished Bruce Dern would just load up and slap her into the next room. Every single thing she did had me screaming "SHUT UP" at the screen. I just couldn't take her and was praying for the movie to be over with.

692) Uptown Girls. The "musician"? Douche bag. And his song sucked, too. "Na Na Na Na Na Na/Sheets of Egyptian cotton" is not a hook. I'd almost say three in a row, but even without him I wouldn't have liked it. HATE.

693) Wild Things 2. It was like the exact same movie, but without the horrifying sight of Kevin Bacon's stuff. Which I guess makes it kind of better.

693 down, 307 to go.

I'm just going to update now 'cause Arizona/Utah is on and I CAN'T STOP WATCHING.

Things I would like to see before I die:
1) At least ten more National Championships for Alabama.
2) The Acropolis.
3) This benefit concert.

09-01-2005

688) April Fool's Day. I didn't think much would come of this one, but it turned out to be decently scary. The director used a lot of reflective surfaces to keep movement going in the background and would show scenes from the character's point of view and then quickly cut to a different perspective so that the characters are in different positions and make the whole room seem different and it made me constantly jumpy, all "what the hell was that?!" There wasn't a lot of jump-out scares or grosses out, instead they kept a pervasive sense of dread and menace up through the picutre. It was unsettling since there has only been one movie that consistenly freaked me out since I first saw Nightmare on Elm Street as a kid. Of course, watching it at 3 am didn't really help.

689) I Confess. Middling Hitchcock entry. He shows us the true murderer at the beginning and then works us through an investigation of the the wrong man, which was a neat device, but it never really caught fire.

689 down, 311 to go.

Bad: Instead of watching movies I was watching South Carolina/UCF.
Worse: I was also watching Oregon/Houston.
Worst: I was also running back and forth to the computer to keep tabs on Vandy/Wake Forest
Worstest: I also kept flipping over to CSS to watch Carson-Newman/West Georgia.
There is no way I'll make it only watching Alabama. I am so screwed.

08-31-2005

682) Bride of Chucky. They really just don't make women with the raw sex appeal of Jennifer Tilly anymore.

683) Duplex. This blew apart two of my long held theories. 1. Drew Barrymore doesn't make good movies and 2. Ben Stiller comedies are only good when his wife is the love interest.

684) Superfly. I always felt a little weird about owning a soundtrack to a movie that I've never seen. Now I don't have that problem.

685) The Sagebrush Troubador. Gene temporarily forgot his latin lust and pulled some sophisticated city leg, Smiley fell off his horse, and a good time was had by all.

686) Cold Creek Manor. Why is it that all the really awesome houses are either haunted or formerly owned by psychos? No wonder so many people are choosing to live on golf courses these days.

687) Under Capricorn. Joseph Cotten looks like the love child of William Holden and Steve McQueen.

687 down, 313 to go.

You know, being a Republican is like being a vengeful God. If we're not busy slaughtering the unbeliever we're causing tsunamis and hurricanes, just because we can. Really, why wouldn't anyone want to be a Republican? Wreacking havoc for fun and profit is way more fun than losing all the time.

Not to be too lighthearted about a serious tragedy, please go and give these people money. It's been very surreal watching footage of the looting and recognizing places (hey, that's the McDonald's where Lee peed in the corner!) and realizing that New Orleans as I know it is gone and then realizing that, damn, New Orleans doesn't just exist for two or three weekends out of the year, people lived there. Anyway, not very good with the serious, so I'll stop.

08-30-2005

680) Returner. Lame and unimaginative sci-fi actioner. SUCK.

681) Swindle. It's such a shame that Tom Sizemore is a psycho in real life. He's always realiable as the tough guy.

681 down, 319 to go.

After a long day of screwing with this stupid computer and being too pissed off to watch movies I'm going to bed.

08-29-2005

676) The Hole. Or Robin's nickname. OH NO HE DI'N'T!! Okay, for reals, this was actually a pretty messed up movie. I liked the whole idea of the script and the storytelling was great, but man, it was still messed up.

677) The Shaft. Or what I'd like to give Naomi Watts. OH NO HE DI'N'T!! It was a total accident that I watched "The Hole" and "The Shaft" back to back, I swear. They just happened to be on TV that way, and on different channels so it's not like some programmer was playing a dirty trick on the network's scheduling. So many things to say about this one. First off, Naomi, it was really good to see you. To tell you the truth, I've been thinking a lot about you, too. I know we hit that snag last time we "tried again" but, damn it, when times are good they are soooo good and I really think we can get there again. Honest I do. I'm willing to work on this if you are. Let me know. Second, a murderous elevator is a pretty lame premise for a supernatural thriller, but everyone involved seemed to really believe in the movie and threw themselves into it so whole-heartedly that it actually worked until it veered into the land of ridiculous when the whole "disgraced-former-weapons-developer-turned-elevator-researcher" angle was introduced. I mean, if you want to make a movie about the military developing "biochips" that become sentient then okay. Jim Cameron already mined that territory but this was straight to video and originality has always been overrated when it comes to making pictures. But when elevator company execs are meeting in the middle of the night in cars parked under bridges to discuss how your elevator expirements have gone horribly awry then that's a little more disbelief than the average bear can suspend. I'm just saying. And then it veered into the land of unsettlingly prescience. This was obviously made Pre-9/11 since the World Trade Center was used in several of the establishing shots, so the filmmakers had no idea what they were saying, but when the President gets on TV to say terrorists have attacked one of our nations greatest landmarks it was a little unsettling. I mean, pre-9/11 it would have just been ridiculous cause like four people had been killed by an elevator and declaring a state of emergency and that we were under attack by terrorists who are mysteriously controlling the express elevator in one building so maybe they should shut down half of New York City with SWAT teams would be a bit of overkill, but post-9/11 it was just eerie. And then to top that off, they had SWAT members deploying stinger missiles to the roof "because terrorists can get planes too, you know." At that point I kind of didn't want to watch anymore since it was just creepy, but then it de-evolved back into a lame-o-rama straight to video thriller and so I finished it up, but still. Weird.

678) Marci X. Some of the titles on Dr. $'s album were pretty funny; "It Ain't My Baby Cause I Don't Like You", "The Power in My Pants", and, my favorite, "I Am the King of Your Mouth" come to mind. Other than that, I was embarassed for everyone involved.

678 down, 322 to go.

Well. My computer is completely fucked up right now so I'm just going to update this while I still can and hopefully have everything fixed by tomorrow. It's looking like I'll have to reformat the hard drive though. I fucking hate computers.

Update: Three hours later and I've reformatted and re-installed a couple of things, mostly necessary drivers. I'll work on re-loading/re-downloading all my old programs tomorrow but I'm too frustrated to bother tonight. The power kept blinking on and off, several times when I would be at 99% complete on installs so my little old lady of a neighbor has now received a phd level course in profanity. I did manage to get The Flamingo Kid (#679) watched while I was doing it though, so the night wasn't a total waste.

08-28-2005

671) Seeing Other People. Why do I keep watching indie comedies?! They always sound so funny, but they always end up sucking so incredibly hard. Like this one. It's got Andy Richter. It's got Jay Mohr. It's got Malcom's dad. It's got Lorelei. It's got about a million That Guys, and it has a decently promising premise. It should be funny. But it wasn't. Oh, it so wasn't. Just further proof that for every Napolean Dynamite there will be ten billion craptacular clunkers like this one. IN BED!

672) According to Spencer. As if I didn't learn my lesson with Seeing Other People. I will say that this one wasn't really trying to be a straight up comedy and that David Krumholtz and Adam Goldberg had some good moments, but still, not worth the effort. IN BED!

673) Father of the Bride Part II. After years of explaining how I can have a niece that is only four days younger than me and people saying "Oh, so like Father of the Bride II, right?" I've finally gotten around to actually seeing it. And it was cute. IN BED!

674) The Clearing. ACTING. I don't really like Redford that much. The Sting is the only movie of his that I can remember enjoying off the top of my head. I don't know why I don't like him, I just, I don't know, don't. Anyway, all of his scenes in this were opposite Dafoe and he really wasn't in it that much since most of the focus was on Mirren and the family and so I could stomach him. Unfortunately it was still another one of those movies where the actors don't really serve the story, but the story is there to serve them and let them display their mastery of craft and all that other bullshit and it just got boring. IN BED!

675) Sleepy Hollow. As much as my contrarian spirit wants to dislike Johnny Depp because everyone loves him, you can't deny that he's always been brave in the roles he's chosen and always performs well in them. So, grudgingly, my hat is off to you Mr. Depp. Keep up the good work. IN BED!

675 down, 325 to go. IN BED!

If only we all bled Crimson and White...

...the world would be a much better place.

You can now find a link to Journalism is for Rockstars to your right. Follow that link and you'll see me listed as a required blog along with both Wonkette and Andrew Sullivan, though thankfully not between them. But Todd, why would you link to a site that espouses the virtues of both Journalists AND Rockstars, two classes of society towards which you often show scorn and derision? Simple answer: Reciprocation. Not as simple but certainly not complex answer: He pulls for the right team, and at the end of the day it's not taxation or governmental regulation or all the other many reasons that conservatives and liberals fight that keeps us apart as a people; it's the simple fact that no one looks good in orange. So Roll Tide to you my friend, and Cheney/Rice '08.

08-27-2005

662) Rootin' Tootin' Rhythm. It really doesn't matter what the situation is, Gene Autry is going to pull some hot mexican leg EVERY TIME.

663) Overland Stage Raiders. John Wayne made some weird ones early on. Robbing buses, jumping out of planes, ventriloquism...

664) The Badge of Marshal Brennan. Small roles for future Spaghetti badass Lee Van Cleef and country balladeer Marty Robbins made this interesting. Van Cleef preened and hammed it up the whole time and was hysterical and Robbins had the worst Mexican accent ever besides looking nothing like a Mexican.

665) Outcasts of the Trail. Eh. Standard.

666) The Core. Get it? Because they burrow into "hell"? And it's movie #666? I am so clever.

667) Godsend. It's as bad as you've heard. Their house was pretty sweet, though.

668) The Fighting Temptations. Have you people noticed how hot Beyonce is? Seriously? Cause she is hot. Like, HOT hot.

669) The Big Hit. If within the first ten minutes of your movie Marky-Mark can be seen sporting a pair of denim manpris then you have not only failed your audience, you've failed yourself. Seriously, who writes this crap? It looked like something Maeby would have greenlighted. If it weren't for the fact that the four leads were so insufferably metrosexual it might have been at least worth a watch, but if an action character is only as tough as his wardrobe then these jackasses couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag with a giant hole ripped in the side, blinking exit signs all around it, and a sharply dressed hostess to point the way. And they were all so completely annoying and whiney and the story was really just a cross between 2 Days in the Valley and 8 Heads in A Duffel Bag but without the few redeeming qualities other than Kelly Bundy and the fact that the girl they kidnap kind of looks like the former Sara Skelton so Van can tell people his wife was in pictures and they should rent The Big Hit and she's the one they kidnap and they might actually believe him and I could really go on and on but whatever.

670) Going Greek. It's like PCU, but not funny!

670 down, 330 to go.