You know the Ebola has gone to your brain when...

So over the last couple days, I suddenly picked up a nasty illness. Headache, fever, sore throat - the works. The last couple nights were particularly awful. Tossing and turning, coughing, crazy dreams, alternating between sweating and freezing, etc. Around 4am last night I had finally had enough. I gave up on sleeping for a while and turned on the TV.

And I wound up watching an entire episode of Full House on Nick at Nite. For those of you not in the know (the fortunate ones), Full House was a late 80s/early 90s "comedy" which starred Bob Saget, the little Olsen twins, and like seven other horribly non-humorous actors including the incomparably awful guy that played the mullet-haired Joey character.

When I woke up for like the 14th time around noon today and finally hoisted myself out of bed for good, it took me a little while to remember all the fabulous details from last night, including: the 2am chocking on phlegm incident... spending a demented hour lying in bed and stressing over the Asian tsunami disaster because I somehow thought I was in charge of coordinating the immense and complicated aid effort... and the best of all, *voluntarily* watching Full House.

addendum to my last post

I should have added that, in addition to being thankful for the Rooneys and the Steelers, I am thankful that I live in a country that has the resources to maintain a warning system and communications infrastructure which makes tsunamis more of a novelty than a potential nation-crushing disaster.

I cannot help but feel guilty about my feelings on Sunday morning when I heard the first reports of the earthquake/tsunami on the radio as I drove in from Maryland for the Steelers game. I felt sad. However, there I was, off to get all fired up about shit that doesn't matter while possibly the most devastating natural disaster in decades had just occurred on the other side of the world.

Additionally, thinking about how the big networks handled coverage of the disaster disappoints me. As far as I know, there was no "breaking news" disruption of regularly scheduled (profitable) programming. Admittedly, the killer waves probably were not connected with the murder of Laci Peterson and probably cannot be blamed for another shitty Redskins season, but on the other hand, it WAS arguably the single biggest event to hit the planet Earth in years!

WTF?? This was on par with an explosive volcanic eruption or maybe a meteor strike in a heavily populated area. A once a century or worse kind of thing. Whole towns were pushed off the map in seconds. Yet over here, it was not a big enough deal to merit OJ Simpson-type "breaking news" coverage. I guess I have myself at least partially to blame... after hearing a brief report on the radio, I was still fired up for the Steelers game when kickoff time approached on Sunday afternoon. And I was still happy to be watching football on TV after getting home from the game. The TV executives were showing us want we wanted to see.

Going to the Game

Coming home from the Steelers game yesterday, fully satisfied after watching our boys take an extended piss on the Ravens' playoff hopes, I thought about how lucky Steelers fans are in terms of game-day logistics. We left for the 1:00 game at 11:50 and got home around 4:30. No traffic, no hassle. Less than five hours for the whole thing.

Meanwhile, down in DC, Mary's brother has season tickets for the Redskins and deals with a whole different dimension of headache. Because of beltway traffic, a disaster of a parking situation, and no available alternate routes or parking sites, he needs to leave before 11:00 for a 1:00 kickoff at FedEx field in Landover. And when the game ends, he does not get home for about four hours.

So Redskins fans invests about nine hours of their Sundays in home games where they get a pretty awful product on the field in return. Yet here in Pittsburgh, we put in no more than five hours for home games and get to see championship caliber football on a consistent basis from year to year.

An explanation? Just look at who owns the Steelers and who owns the Redskins. We should be thankful.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Chanukah, Happy Kwanza, etc, etc. Christmas at the Weilands has been nice so far. However, I just checked my bank account online and was disappointed to see an extra $337 in there. This means that I did not get my Steelers playoff tickets this year.    :-(

Oh well. No Christmas miracle for me. That's okay because I'm finally getting to spend some time with Mary.

Hope everyone has a happy new year.

T-MINUS FIVE MONTHS!

No, I'm not thinking about how much time I have left in law school. Since I've still got plenty of work ahead of me before I wrap up the current semester, I am of course thinking about the least relevant and least productive thing possible to avoid such work: Star Wars III, due out May 19, 2004.

I am pretty damn excited for this movie despite a few glaring flaws in Episode II and the train-wreck that was Episode I. Though a bit nervous, I still have faith in Lucas to pull it off. Hopefully he didn't wuss out and actually allowed the movie to have the dark and disturbing edge we all know it needs.

In anticipation of the release, I've come up with a couple questions about key characters who seem likely to bite it before the movie ends. [note - if you have insider info, pirated scenes, or have heard serious rumors about this stuff, keep it to yourself, I don't really want to know anything in advance]

Issue 1: Who takes out Mace Windu?

the likely suspects:
   Dooku
   Anakin
   overwhelming barrage of random droids or storm troopers
long-shots:
   Palpatine
   young Boba Fett

Issue 2: Who administers the Dooku beatdown?

the likely suspects:
   Anakin
   Yoda
a bit less likely:
   Obi-won
   Windu
long-shots:
   Palpatine
   Amidala
   Willow

Issue 3: Jar-Jar?

   killed by long fall
   killed by light-saber, preferably Dooku's
   killed by blaster fire
   killed by explosion
   killed by Willow
   fate ambiguous / character left out of movie
   terrible ending - he's clearly alive when the film ends

Commence the Crapfest!

There are 28 college football bowl games to be played over the next month. There are eight good ones in the first week of January. Of the 20 that kickoff in 2004, there is one surprisingly huge game -- the New Year's Eve Liberty Bowl matchup between #10 Boise State and #7 Louisville -- and two other respectable second tier games (the Holiday Bowl and the Peach Bowl on December 30 and 31).

Starting with tonight's New Orleans Bowl "showdown" between North Texas and Southern Miss, there are also 17 completely worthless mid-to-late December games that cheapen the achievement and privilege of playing in a bowl game. In the good old days, there were the four or five major bowls: the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, and Fiesta. Then there were a few second tier games: the Gator, Peach, Citrus, and Holiday. And then there were six or seven lesser bowls which teams were still quite happy to play in such as the Sun, Independence, BlueBonnet, and Liberty. Maybe a total of 16 or so games overall compared to today's 28.

The current system stinks from both ends. There is of course the much publicized issue at the top with the BCS not solving the old problem of crowning a true champion. And there is also this problem at the bottom with the current system flat out killing the classic status and mystique that used to come with just making it to a bowl game.

This year, we have three undefeated teams that will not even get a sniff at the national championship. And at the same time we also have 56 of the 117 Division I programs (48%) making the "post season." The college football "national championship" has always been a farce, and always will be until a four or eight team playoff is instituted. But at least in the past, teams with not-so-special 7-4 records had to sweat out the bowl selection process. Now, even thoroughly mediocre 6-5 teams are almost guaranteed a bowl game.

Bowl games used to come in only two varieties: Worth Watching and Must-See-TV. The current set-up adds a third category to the mix: "snoozer." These extra games water down the whole postseason and tarnish the idea of what a bowl is supposed to be -- a reward for a GOOD season.

Could there be a more awful election for Pittsburghers??

A big-time Eagles fan vs. an actual Steelers Hall of Famer... and in this potential showdown we'd have to vote for the guy from Philly. Ouch. (Post-Gazette story)

Okay - now back to finals.