Not much toil or trouble, actually

Alma, taking a page from my dad's book, couldn't wait until the ninth to give me at least one of my "thirdiversary" presents, so she gave it to me tonight: a make-your-own bubble tea kit. She kept on telling me how much I was going to like it (until I had to tell her, "Stop overhyping it!"), but of course she was right. Although she cooked the first batch of pearls; we'll see what happens when I'm boiling them up myself at home. They have all kinds of syrups and powders you can get for flavor, but I think it's probably healthier just to make yourself a real fruit smoothie and get some pearls into it. (I did that tonight with frozen raspberries and it was plenty delicious, although incredibly full of seeds.)

Considering how often I stop in at Boba Bee these days, this is a nice alternative to have. I mean, you can get 90 servings' worth of pearls for 13 bucks, which will buy you three or four bubble teas at retail price, so... mmmmmmm. I wonder if Alma realizes she's created a monster.

Feliz Navidad

So the Bowl Challenge is off to a hot start. Currently JQ and I are tied at 5-2, and then there's a big group at either 3 or 4 correct picks, so it's still on. Unless you're NU Dave; I think my new rule for making picks is going to be wait for his to come in, then take the opposite for every game. I'm teasing of course, but damn, 0-7? That is a major confluence of bad luck picking. There are quite a few bowls coming up where he picked with the majority, so odds are he gets off the schneid soon, but wow. Previous long 0-fer to start a Challenge? 0-2. So congratulations, Dave - you may not win the Challenge, but you've made your way into history, however ignominiously.

"Back" in DC for Christmas, which is tomorrow. It's been pretty laid back, which is just as well, since work was stressful as hell for the second half of last week. I miss Alma, though.

Business: does anyone out there like Camera Obscura? They're playing Logan Square Auditorium on February 3. I actually know nothing about them besides the name and an album title, but they're playing with the Essex Green, whom I love. (And if you're wondering why I didn't just ask about the Essex Green, I figured you'd be much less likely to have heard of them, unless you are Marc Hogan or someone I told about them.) I suspect Alma isn't all that interested (our musical tastes don't have a huge amount of overlap) so possible company would be appreciated. (If Alma does end up wanting to go, well, even better.) Let me know in the comments.

Bowl challenge lineup

It's a bit late to put up everyone's picks, even if the first game is already over (if you had NIU... sorry). I'll try and get them up tomorrow, but until then, here's who you're competing against for a small token of my esteem to be determined (in order of picks received):

Me
Dad
NJ Dave
Stan
Rud
Tyler
Drew
JQ
NU Dave
Rich

A healthy field considering nothing is officially at stake, I think (the token of my esteem could potentially be pocket lint, after all). Good luck to all!

Bowl-a-Rama

In answer to the couple people who have asked, the BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge is making its triumphant return for yet another year. Once again I will not require an entry fee (since I wouldn't get half of them anyway), but the winner will receive a small token of my esteem (to be determined).

To enter, simply send your pick for the winner in each of 32 bowls - PLUS YOUR TIEBREAKER SCORE FOR THE TITLE GAME (someone always forgets this, so here it is in bold type; please don't make me hound you for it) - to bigflax (at) gmail (dot) com by 6 pm CST next Tuesday, December 19th (one hour prior to kickoff of the first game).

Those of you looking for a lineup of bowls from which to make your selections can find it here. You'll have to do your own research.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments. As usual, the contest is open only to people I know in at least some capacity (i.e. FOAFs are okay if you really want in, but no random strangers).

"Jason History: Giants lose ace to rival Dodgers"

Tyler and I make it a game of trying to guess the lame, often pun-based headlines on ESPN.com to accompany various major sports stories. I actually nailed one exactly a couple weeks ago, though regrettably I've already forgotten what it was.

Anyway, today Jason Schmidt, probably second-best in a middling class of free agent pitchers, signed with the Dodgers (only the biggest rival of Schmidt's old team). ESPN, in their infinite wisdom, chose the headline "Schmidt Happens in L.A." Hey, ESPN: did it occur to you that with a last name like Schmidt, this guy has probably had to put up with jokes like this for the last 30-plus years? Way to rub it in his face. With that in mind, I tapped my secret contacts at ESPN and discovered that there were actually a number of similar headlines that the Worldwide Leader considered, but rejected, to lead the story:

"Know Schmidt? Dodgers Do"

"Schmidt Bullish on Dodgers"

"Dodgers In Deep with Schmidt"

"Dodgers Jack Schmidt from Giants"

"Schmidt Out of Luck in San Francisco"

"Taking a Schmidt: Dodgers steal rival's ace"

"Money Talks, J-Schmidt Walks"

"Dodgers Have Schmidt Where They Eat"

"Schmidt Happy as a Pig with New Contract"

"No More Schmidt-Talking in Bay Area"

"Giants Up Schmidt Creek Without a Pitcher"

God, how does he *always* know?

Winter has a knack for showing up like clockwork every December 1, like its alarm clock went off and it suddenly realized it was late for work. This year's edition of the Two Days Ago It Was 60 Degrees show saw a blizzard whomp Chicago. I was staying at Alma's up north and ended up being so snowed in (by about a foot of snow) that I couldn't get to the Metra and eventually had to miss work. That's always pretty embarrassing, because there's really no such thing as a snow day once you're out of high school. I'm going to end up going in either tomorrow or Sunday (preferably tomorrow, but we'll see just how badly I got plowed in and how easy it is to dig out, especially if the snow freezes up overnight) to make up the time, which is always fun.

The annoying thing was expending all this energy trying to dig the car out and just failing miserably. I'd dig out the wheels, try and dig out the space into which I was planning on driving, and then get back in the car - and then I might go two feet and the whole process had to start again. It was a big-time losing battle, considering that there was no fewer than about six inches of snow on the ground in the parking lot and sometimes more where the plows had pushed it up during their first pass some hours before. I ended up having to dig the car out just to get it back into the space from which I had been trying to extract it. Bad, bad times. I've been inside for the past thirteen hours and my pants still aren't totally dry.

You have to expect weather like this when you live in Chicago, and I've dealt with worse (although honestly, it rarely has been this bad for the first snow of the year, the October 14 non-stick aberration notwithstanding), but coming so soon after the balmy weather of midweek (I was able to wear my Man City windbreaker to work on Wednesday!) it was a real kick in the butt.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Alma and I tried a new Indian restaurant in Highland Park today called Curry Hut. This might normally be a Frugal Gourmand entry but I don't really have that much to say about the food itself - it was good but it was also pretty standard. What was most memorable about the evening was that we were one of two tables in the place, and the other table was two late-middle-aged couples and a guy who seemed like a college-aged son of one of them.

Within seconds of walking in, it was obvious that one of the women at the table was a complete know-it-all who absolutely would not stop talking. She was presenting herself as this high arbiter of Indian food, as though she had spent two years backpacking through India or something and knew the country inside and out. She just went on and on, discussing her favorite preparations (tikka masala seemed to be a particular hit), recommending dishes, talking about her first experience with Indian food (apparently it was in London some years ago), and on and on. Eventually the rest of the table had to increase their pretension just to keep up with her.

The worst part was she was obviously a wannabe know-it-all who had been to a few Indian restaurants and considered herself an expert, probably at least partially because she thought her dinner companions knew markedly less and would not be able to call her on it. Two lines of hers in particular stood out as being hilarious for being delivered so authoritatively and yet being so obviously stupid.

(a) "'Tikka' means that it was cooked in the oven."
Alma to me: "Yeah, I read the menu too!"

(b) "You can just tell that these spices are freshly ground."
Me to Alma: "Bullshit."

Maybe it was one of those things where you just had to be there. But it was pretty hilarious. This table spent so much time talking that we were in and out before they had even finished, even though they had clearly been there for a little while when we came in. Sad.

Scattered thoughts

I'll probably put some thoughts on Soriano in the Cubs blog, when it becomes official. Quick thought, though: I'm not unhappy.

This country is too nuts about football. It's bad enough with the commercials that imply that you should be watching every single Monday Night Football game. Why? Because it's on a different day? As multiple games including Raiders/Seahawks have proved just this season, MNF isn't always a great game. And even beyond that, why should I budget an entire night around watching a team I don't even root for? I don't really get that. In the playoffs is one thing, but during the regular season?

But I guess a good game is a good game. That's not what put me over the edge. It's stuff like this. Is somebody actually getting paid to do that? Worse still, are there actually people who are interested in this? "Well, I wasn't going to bet on the game, but now that I see that Ohio State won the NCAA '07 simulation, I figure it's a lock!" It just seems massively idiotic to me. Yet there was a link to this on the front page of ESPN.com the day of the OSU/Michigan game, in addition to a timer counting down the seconds until kickoff. Can we fucking get a grip here, please? Although as Tyler pointed out, it may not be people getting so insane about football as much as it is just ESPN's coverage of football getting progressively more annoying.

Alma and I went for sushi on Friday night, and I continued my theme of trying something I consider kind of crazy off the menu. This time it was octopus. It didn't really taste like much, and I think it had been at least partially cooked, but the outer edges were pretty chewy, which was kind of weird. It certainly wasn't as scary as you'd assume, though. I may try squid next time. I should stop talking about sushi before Rudnik makes fun of me again.

The next day we went to the aquarium. I hadn't been in three years-plus, so that was fun, although we got there kind of late and had to hustle through so that we could see both a dolphin show and the Wild Reef (slogan: Still Only Vaguely Worth the Extra Ten Bucks). That was disappointing because if there's one place I enjoy lingering, it's the aquarium - watching fish swim around can be incredibly relaxing, and there are plenty of cool-looking fish to check out. It almost tempts me to get a membership - you only have to go 4-5 times before it pays for itself, although since in a normal year I probably wouldn't be inclined to go more than twice, it really doesn't pay for itself at all. Although I feel like Alma bought me a year-long pass to the Botanic Gardens a couple years ago and then we went zero times that year, which I feel really bad about now that I remember (although I feel like she never actually gave me the sticker I needed for the car, for whatever reason, so it wasn't entirely my fault). I would at least go to the Shedd more times than zero. Hint, hint, maybe.

Another thing that happened in the last week-ish was we went down to Urbana for TRASH Regionals to compete against possibly the most top-heavy regionals field ever - it featured two former winners of TRASHionals, plus a team led by Greg and Stan, plus the Michigan B team (always at least decent). We finished fifth, behind those four and ahead of just three others, but I think that gives us a decent chance at getting a bid to TRASHionals considering the strength of the field and the fact that we didn't lose to anyone below us (and beat the Greg/Stan team in round robin play). I suppose we'll see, though. Personally, I had my best TRASH tournament (though not Trash tournament) since 2003 Regionals, putting up 48.5 PPG to finish third overall. So that wasn't bad. Alma and I have been planning to retire after this year, so a decent showing at Regionals was a good start to that (and even though I would have liked to finish higher, I generally don't think we could have played too much better, so I don't feel bad about it). I may make a longer version of this at some point, though I've lost a lot of the desire for that. Maybe once we're given the all-clear on the questions (which should be shortly as I believe the last regionals were today), I'll post the scores and my answers, Tyler-style.

And the award for least appropriate use of a conditional goes to

If there's anyone in the world who's more desperate for money than Mike Tyson, it just might be O.J. Simpson. He's still $30 million in the hole to the Goldman family, for example. Maybe that's what led him to pitch the idea for the interview he's going to do on Fox (presumably connected to his related book), tentatively called "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

Um... what?

First of all, terrible use of conditional there. Unless the person in question was a complete moron with no scruples, no innocent person would ever muse over what it would have been like if they had committed the crime of which they were acquitted. Wouldn't happen. And we all know that if the case had happened in this post-CSI age, the jurors would actually have understood what DNA evidence meant and O.J. would be in jail right now. The only reason he's saying this now is because he knows he can't be tried a second time. Why not just call it "I Did It and Here's How It Happened?" Is he afraid that the lack of the "allegedly" tag on the whole affair would scare people off, or maybe just that the police would find a lesser charge on which to try him if he officially admitted it?

Second of all, I love that the second half of the sentence actually forgets to include the conditional, which reinforces the idea that the "if" was added as an afterthought. It should read something like "If I Did It, Here's How It Would Have Happened." But instead, it says "Here's How It Happened," as though whoever came up with the sentence actually forgot, mid-thought, that O.J. was supposed to be innocent. Which makes sense. Because he's not.

I just wonder who else might come out of the woodwork, on the heels of this and Ray Lewis' Sports Illustrated cover. Perhaps Gary Condit could talk about what it would have been like if he'd had Chandra Levy killed, or something like that. Seems about as appealing to me. Really, who would want to watch or read about this? I suppose there's some morbid curiosity aspect to it, but... really, pretty sick. Though the idea that you could be lining the pockets of this murderer is even worse. Sit in Borders if you have to read it.

Second time's the charm

As if to make up for the shenanigans on Thursday, today's return home from Washington was almost surreally pleasant. The flight took off and landed almost exactly on time, there was no turbulence of note, and the landing was perfect. The only small inconveniences, if you could call them that, were the mislabeled gate information (for a while I thought that there might have been a gate change because, for no apparent reason, the flight listed on the screen was the Alaska Airlines code-share information) and the fact that I paid 12 dollars for a personal pizza and a bottle of water (which cost an obscene $2.69 by itself) at the California Pizza Kitchen in the terminal.

Making things even better, the flight was pretty empty - there were probably 40 people on board including the crew, and no one in my row, which is always nice. I got to have a full can of ginger ale and two packages of snack mix, plus I didn't have to feel smushed in. I'm really not a fan of sitting directly alongside a complete stranger if I can help it, which is why I make certain choices at theaters and on buses and trains, but on a plane there's little you can do. I lucked out on this one. I finished the book I had bought for the trip and then tried to see if I could finish the crossword in the American Way magazine before touchdown, which I did with about a minute to spare (I was literally holding it in my hands, since the tray table was up, writing in the last answers as the plane neared the ground).

Best of all, the Blue Line train dropped me at Addison just in time to catch the 9:40 eastbound 152 bus. Had I been two minutes later, I would have had to wait until 10:04. As it was, I was home by that time. All in all, a great travel experience, possibly making up not just for Thursday but for the mediocrity of the weekend in sports.

I'm in Chevy Chase, and you're not

I came "home" - and that word must be used fairly loosely when you consider that I've been to this house a previous total of two times for about a week combined - for the weekend; it's my mom's birthday tomorrow (which just reminded me that I have to go out in the morning and get her present, which I have forgotten to pick up prior to now). I also hadn't seen my niece yet - she's a totally adorable baby and she smiles all the time, and of course babies in general do so many cute things, so how can you not totally love them? But she's a great baby.

Two things that have sucked so far:

1) The trip out, hit with probably the second-worst example of the Flaxman travel jinx in my six-year career of making return trips to the east coast from Chicago (#1 being Thanksgiving freshman year, when the plane sat at the gate, with us on it, for two hours before they decided it had engine trouble, and we all had to stay at the airport hotel overnight and get up at about 5 am to catch the first flight out). In this case, the plane was about an hour late taking off, which isn't so bad in and of itself, except that they also changed the gate and managed to do so without telling anyone, unless they made the announcement only once and during the 30 seconds I was in the bathroom. But not only did the gate move, it moved to a completely different concourse! It started off being K16 and moved to H17, each gate being at the far end of their respective concourses, meaning that I had to walk most of the way back up K before I could finally cut over to H, and then had to walk all the way back down that one. "Fortunately," the plane was delayed further so I missed absolutely nothing and in fact had time to sit there doing nothing and finish a crossword puzzle and intrude comically on someone else's conversation before boarding.

2) I guess this hasn't "sucked," but it's been sort of annoying - listening to everyone complain about how cold it is. It's like, hey guys, it's barely below freezing and it probably won't get more than ten degrees colder all winter. I don't want to hear about it. Also, this week it's supposed to be 75 on Friday, which, while it is also supposed to be unseasonably warm in Chicago during that time, is a good 15-20 degrees warmer than it's going to be where I live any time between now and next April.

The expression "It's a small world" always strikes me as having been invented by someone who was easily impressed, since it in fact is not a small world. But I guess that sounds better than "It's a small country," which is really what people mean 999 times out of 1,000. In this case, the example was that we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Udupi today that has three locations: Takoma Park, MD; Schaumburg, IL; and Chicago, right on Devon. I have no idea why those three places exactly (although the last one is not hard to guess at), but it's pretty funny to think that this restaurant has three locations and I've been to one and walked right past another.

I guess Borat is going to be popular, because tonight all the screenings were sold out for the whole night when I got to the theater at 7. Fortunately I had no intention of seeing Borat. I ended up seeing Flags of Our Fathers because I figured there was absolutely no chance of ending up in a theater crowded with teenagers, douchebags, or douchebag teenagers (redundant). And in fact I was probably the youngest person in the crowd by at least two decades, and so even though the theater was full (mostly because it held about 50 people to start with), everyone was very quiet and respectful. It's a fine movie because it's basically impossible to make a bad war movie, but it has a few very definite issues that prevent it from really being even in the ballpark with the great war movies. But it's certainly watchable, if nothing else. Full review will come soonish, maybe tomorrow. For now I should get to bed so I have time to get my mom's book before her birthday dinner.

Right in the mean bean machine

(Right as I was about to post this entry, I happened to notice that Greg had noted the same thing in his blog. But Greg isn't a Cubs fan, so screw him.)

While I'm somewhat happy for the Cardinals' win in that it should get everyone off the National League's back for a while, I'm more than a trifle annoyed about it for two reasons:

1) The Cardinals just became, record-wise, the worst team in baseball history to win a World Series in a non-shortened season, passing the 1987 Twins and their 85-77 record (coincidentally, the Cardinals lost that Series). That's right, 83-78. 83 wins! That's 2.5 games over .500. Horrendous. As someone informed on the history of baseball, that really grates on me. Also, Jeff Weaver - with a career ERA of 4.58, cast off by the Angels in mid-season after going 3-10, 6.29 for them - became the winning pitcher in a World Series clincher. He won three games in this postseason, as many as he won with the Angels! Obviously it's idle speculation to say this, but there could well have been a reason Tony La Russa wasn't interested in pushing on the Kenny Rogers thing. I'm not saying there's no way a pitching staff built around one ace and a bunch of rookies and lousy journeymen can't win a World Series... but I am saying that that raises your eyebrow a bit, doesn't it? To be fair, the Tigers forgetting how to take pitches was as much to blame for their loss as anything.

2) This concludes three straight World Series that play like kicks in the pants for Cubs fans, with each one getting progressively kick-in-the-pantsier. First it was the Red Sox in 2004, our partners in famously "cursed" franchises. Then the White Sox in 2005, the obnoxious crosstown rivals who hadn't won in nearly as long. And now the Cardinals in 2006, only our biggest historical rival in league and division. And this is all on the heels of the 2003 NLCS, no less.

The one good thing is that it can't get any worse - even a Yankees "return to glory" in 2007, while annoying, wouldn't have the same meaning as these three did. Maybe the signs are pointing to the Cubs doing something good soon - after four years of misery in one form or another (piled on top of the 94 years before that), don't we think it's about time something happened?

Talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young

There's more than a little of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in Sam's Town, the second and latest album from the Killers, and that's probably not unintentional. From the pomp-and-circumstance close to the title track that recalls Pepper's orchestral touches to the matching tracks that bookend the album's bulk (named, in somewhat effete fashion, "Enterlude" and "Exitlude") and recall Pepper's title tracks, Sam's Town seems to be trying hard to be important. Of course, it isn't really, and a Beatles comparison does a disservice to both bands, but that doesn't mean Sam's Town isn't a pretty strong album - it's just not great in any life-altering sense.

For what it's worth, Brandon Flowers and company do manage to shed most of the lackluster parts of Hot Fuss, an outstanding debut album with five great tracks and six decent ones. It had a bit too much of a rave-pop sentiment, though, spearheaded by "Somebody Told Me," a song that was fine but kind of silly on reflection. Sam's Town doesn't totally abandon the musical trappings of Hot Fuss, but they're less in evidence, thanks in large part to the first single. "When You Were Young" steps out of the club and into an arena rock concert, with blasting chords and a glistening main riff, and it's catchy as all hell. It's also in exactly the right place on the album - the titular opening track is fine, but fans can be excused for thinking they'd accidentally picked up the Killers' excuse for Sufjan Steven's The Avalanche. "Enterlude" hangs around just long enough to lull everyone into complacency, and "Young" swoops in like a thunderclap.

Regrettably, the promise exhibited by "Young" dissipates a little bit over the rest of the album. As with Hot Fuss, there isn't a bad track in the stable, but the remainder aren't as catchy for the most part. If "Young" is this album's "Mr. Brightside," it's hard to argue that there's anything measuring up to the stellar "All These Things That I've Done." The catchiness factor in the latter half of Sam's Town is generated mostly by "Why Do I Keep Counting?", which has a monster refrain but is hiding down at track eleven (though that's probably the best place for it; I think I might like it even better as an album closer), and the bridge of "Uncle Jonny," a stinging, moody song that bursts into major chords for a few lines before winding down again.

This isn't to say that the other tracks aren't very good - "Read My Mind" and "My List" are both quite strong, and none of the others have anything really wrong with them aside from the title of the stupidly-named "Bling (Confession of a King)," which is a much better song than its title would indicate. They're not particularly sticky, though, and where Fuss had five great songs, Town can probably only claim two, though its second-tier tracks are closer to the top than any on Fuss were.

Really, though, the Killers were in an untenable position from the start, as summed up by Bill Simmons in a recent mailbag column - "If they release another album that sounds like the last one, everyone kills them for not being original. If they go in another direction, everyone fumes that they didn't release another album like the last one. So successful bands have one of two choices -- keep shifting gears and taking chances, or convince the lead singer to shoot himself or accidentally drown so they will live on forever and everyone can talk about how great they were. I'm glad they chose the first option."

And I am too. The worst thing you can say about Sam's Town - aside from taking a shot at its slightly inflated sense of self-importance - is that it's just not as great overall as Hot Fuss was, and since most bands would kill to have one album as enjoyable as Hot Fuss, I think that's pretty good. Frankly, the Killers could put out ten more albums that were two awesome tracks and ten listenable ones and I'd be there every two years.

So if you liked Hot Fuss at all, I suggest giving Sam's Town a shot. If you don't let a ton of hype get your expectations too high, I think you'll like what you hear just fine.

Grade: B+

What goes around

Horrible sports weekend. The Cardinals won Game One of the Series - handily! - and that was at most the third-worst thing that happened. #2: Man City getting buried at Wigan (number of goals scored by Man City the last two games: zero; number of own goals scored by Man City the last two games: one). #1: Northwestern blowing the biggest lead in DI-A history, leading Michigan State by no fewer than five touchdowns with about 24 minutes left in the game and allowing a touchdown every four minutes for the next 20, before finally losing 41-38 on a field goal in the last seconds. The biggest choke in major college history, and yet, if you ask me, it barely slips ahead of last year's Sun Bowl as the worst loss in program history (and you could certainly argue that, on a scale of relative importance, there have been worse - the loss to Iowa in 2000 was pretty tough to take). I'm not sure what that says about NU's overall crappiness, but probably nothing good.

One thing that Tyler pointed out: could NU's loss be karmic payback for the Bears pulling off one of the craziest comebacks in NFL history on Monday night? It's certainly true that you don't usually see the same group of fans get rewarded twice in succession by different teams. If the reward is a Bears Super Bowl victory, I suppose I would take pretty much any negative this year (except for anything related to the Cubs), and especially if the Bears put together an undefeated season. I had been avoiding mentioning the Bears in this space, but since they, by all rights, should have lost on Monday, I don't really feel like it matters (obviously it's impossible to really argue that it ever did, but you know how that works).

All the talk leapt to 16-0 after the Seahawks game, despite the fact that it was the first time the Bears had shown anything against a good team, the game was at home, and said good team did not have their leading rusher. As potent as the offense looked, and as good as the defense had been, I think the media trend for years now has been a desperate search to anoint whoever is currently going as the best there was. The constant comparisons to the '85 Bears got so thick that even some of the local drive-time hosts, who tend to thrive on that stuff, had to point out that it's pretty ridiculous to compare a 6-0 team to a team that went 18-1. Sure, the Bears' schedule looks pretty thin besides that East Coast road trip, but there are a couple things about that: first, that the Bears have not looked good on the road so far, squeaking out two of their three victories (and those games were hardly against the Giants and Patriots), and second, that facing a mediocre schedule in the regular season may not bode all that well for the playoffs. It doesn't do the Bears any good if they go 16-0 and then lose to Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, or Philadelphia, or whoever else might line up for a crack in January.

So: guarded optimism for right now. But I'll say this: if Grossman has another game even approaching Monday's at any point this season, the Bears will lose that game. And maybe if it happens again, Smith will consider bringing in Griese. I can understand the desire to show confidence in your first-stringer, but when you don't have it, you don't have it, and on Monday Grossman definitely did not have it. This was definitely the best possible time for a bye week.

Catching up is hard to do

The problem with getting behind on the blog is that I don't usually like making posts that are just big long lists of the last twenty things I did. But let's see.

Two weeks ago I went to Alma's sister's wedding, where Alma was the maid of honor. The ceremony was fine (it went by without being too draggy, which is mostly what I require), and the reception was pretty fun. I got to meet a lot of Alma's relatives, we did some dancing, and I did some drinking (first time I've been able to do that at a wedding since usually I have to drive somewhere afterwards). I guess I don't have that much to say about it, except that it sort of gave me "wedding envy," if that makes any sense. In related news, Alma and I are closing in on three years together.

I haven't been doing that much lately outside of work, which is unfortunate. I've accrued about three vacation days, though we're coming up on "a bad time to take vacation days," i.e. the holiday shopping season. Although I feel like I'm not allowed to accrue any more than 24 vacation hours at one time, so I should probably take some soon so that I don't waste them. The only problem is that I have to spend a day showing someone else how to do my job first.

The other problem is that I would probably just sleep through most of the vacation day anyway.

I've been hungry and tired a lot lately. I should probably go for a physical, since I don't think I've had one in over six years at this point.

I grew the beard back in. I don't know if this will last, though it's never a bad thing to have facial hair during a Chicago winter. Part of this will depend on how much Alma likes it. (Okay, all of it will, who am I kidding.)

We went for sushi again last night. I like sushi reasonably well but it never fails to leave me hungry later. I got a little adventurous and got the spider roll, plus two more exotic pieces from the nigiri menu. Masago was listed as "flying fish," but it turned out to be flying fish roe. It was fine though. The unagi (eel) was also surprisingly un-crazy; it really just tastes like any other piece of fish, and it was even cooked and doused in teriyaki sauce. I had tried to get the anago (sea eel, because it's always smart to order something by how fun you think the name sounds), but they were out.

After that we went to a party at Alma's gym, where they had karaoke. The selection was decent - the one at the redneck dive in Austin was better, but that crowd was significantly shadier. I did "Addicted to Love," during which a surely-drunk woman from the audience came up on stage to play inflatable guitar like one of the women in the video, and "Your Song," and Alma and I did a duet on "Hey Jude." I usually don't really like getting up in front of people, but at least with karaoke it's basically impossible to make an ass out of yourself (certainly not compared to the drunk older guy who stumbled his way through "Rock Around the Clock"), and at least I was never off key. Alma did two solo songs as well, with "Killing Me Softly" and "We've Only Just Begun," and was, as usual, congratulated heavily after each song, because she is awesome. Though I was told I had a good voice after "Your Song," which I can't say I was expecting, and the guy saying it wasn't even drunk. I was happy with how I sounded, but that was surprising.

Anything else? I think this will do for now.

Oh. Quick question: most of you, like me, were probably watching TV aimed at kids/teens in the late 80s and early 90s. Do you remember the Corn Pops and Apple Jacks ad campaigns? These were, even at the time, two of my least favorite things ever. The Corn Pops ones, clearly metaphors for drug addiction, feature kids going through sweaty withdrawal symptoms as Jaws-like music plays when they can't find any Corn Pops. Here's one example. The Apple Jacks ones were also horrible, for various reasons. Here's one, which is by far not the worst of the genre. Maybe the most annoying thing about those was that Kellogg's had spent the past 30 years suggesting that Apple Jacks did, in fact, taste like apples. And now they were throwing that under the bus just to make eating Apple Jacks seem non-conformist somehow. At any rate, the ads would have been much more honest if "they just do!" had been replaced with "they're full of sugar!"

So, if you remember both those ads, which did you hate more? I originally thought I hated the Apple Jacks ones more, but after reacquainting myself with the Corn Pops ads, I'm no longer sure.

Eat it, Yankees!

Think we can get rid of all that "best lineup since the Big Red Machine" talk? We're not playing fantasy baseball. Yankees suck.

Last one in is me

I'm probably the last person on the planet who listens regularly to independent music and had not really heard Sufjan Steven's Illinois album until today. Obviously I had investigated it a couple times, but in every case I had decided that it didn't seem to appeal enough to me. Then I just downloaded the whole thing from eMusic (gotta kill those 90 downloads somehow). Put it this way: I've already listened to the whole thing three times today. And I don't generally do that.

I'm sure if you know who Sufjan Stevens is I don't have to tell you this, but on the off chance that there's someone out there who might be even more woeful than I was, you've gotta give this thing a shot. It is, I must stress, almost surreally good. You'd think that an entire album themed around a state would be a total clusterfuck, but in fact it holds together like crazy. It begs to be listened through all the way - and while I have to say the first half is better (it's certainly where the best full-length songs lie), it's all excellent.

Stevens cheats a little bit on the theme; tiny instrumental bits that are really just codas to full-length songs get their own names (such as "Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell") just so he can work in another reference, but that's obviously a minimal complaint at best (except when it comes to eMusic, where 22 tracks does kind of chew up the old download count). The full songs are uniformly great, with a handful being, in all seriousness, instant classics. This has to be considered a top five album of the decade so far for everything it accomplishes. And yes, I know everyone else in the world already realized this (the album was #1 on Metacritic for 2005).

Top five songs:

1. Casimir Pulaski Day
2. Chicago
3. Jacksonville
4. Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
5. Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is actually a good song too, but it creeps me out too much to be top five.

Pic

I mentioned pictures of Alma's gifts. Here's #1, the US Soccer sweatshirt, as seen on me today.


I'll get a picture of me in the jacket later, perhaps once I've shaved and stop looking so much like a mental patient wandering the grounds.

Study: America Ready for Football

NEW YORK (AP): A landmark research study conducted by the sports network ESPN has finally confirmed what previously was only suspected: America is, unquestionably, ready for some football.

The study, a survey of more than 80,000 visitors to the ESPN.com website, found that not only is America ready for some football, but that we are overwhelmingly ready as a nation. Fully 87% of voters polled described themselves as "ready for some football," compared to just 13% who said they were not ready, a ratio of nearly seven to one.

The poll was conducted in conjunction with ESPN's launch of their new Monday Night Football telecast, taken over from ABC after the end of last season. Operating under the assumption that Americans were ready for some football, ESPN and the NFL decided to broadcast two games back-to-back on the opening Monday, a rare occurrence.

"We suspected all along that the people of this country were ready for some football," said Mike Tirico, the play-by-play announcer for ESPN's coverage. "We were, however, surprised and delighted at just how ready they were."

Not a single state in the union was not ready for football, though some were better prepared than others. Leading all states in football readiness were North and South Dakota, each with 92% of their voting populations declaring that they were adequately prepared for football. Lagging behind the pack was Wyoming, whose voters were a pathetic 80% ready. Reached for comment, Wyoming senator Craig Thomas said that the results were "in no way representative of our great state's readiness for football." Thomas pointed to the low voter turnout and speculated that a large percentage of people in the state who were, in fact, ready for football were simply not signed on to the internet at the time of the poll. "[They were] probably outside, getting ready for football by doing other manly things like barbecuing or playing football themselves," Thomas added.

In order to accurately measure the true readiness for football, ESPN plans a postgame poll with the question, "Were you ready for some football?" Analysts say they expect the number to drop slightly in the wake of a lackluster Redskins-Vikings tilt.

(Multimedia: View America's football readiness prior to Monday night's games.)

Is "FirePatFitzgerald.com" taken yet?

I'm kidding, of course. But rough loss for Northwestern today. I know New Hampshire is a very good I-AA team, but they are still a I-AA team, and this was a home game, and it's not like the final was 21-20. Ugh. Doesn't bode all that well for the Big Ten slate, does it?

I promised you a fall movie preview and here, just a couple days later than I would have liked, is the BigFlax.com Fall Movie Preview. I'm linking it here because it's pretty long and I didn't want to squeeze it onto the blog page.

Because I hadn't made a post in a while, I hadn't gotten around to mentioning the two great presents that Alma got me for my birthday. One is a US Soccer hooded sweatshirt with Claudio Reyna's number on it; the other is a Manchester City warmup-type jacket, which is totally awesome. I can go as Stuart Pearce for Halloween now! Perfect gifts from the perfect girlfriend. I will eventually get the pictures that delayed this entry and post them here, but I still haven't gotten a chance to take them yet. Maybe tomorrow/later today.

Avocado's number

I suppose I should be thankful that Chicago isn't Washington, where the price to pay for what has to be the nation's cleanest subway is a set of ridiculously overbearing transit cops who treat 12-year-olds and pregnant women like threats to national security for, respectively, eating a french fry on a station platform and talking too loudly on a cell phone. But sometimes I see people on the CTA and wish a cop would just bust in and take them down. I thought the guy eating a Corner Bakery salad on the train the other day was going to be my champion for the year, but that was before yesterday on the bus.

I was sitting in the back row of seats. This woman is sitting "across" from me (in the back right sideways-facing group of seats). She pulls out - and I swear to you that I am not making any of the following up - a plastic knife, a plastic spoon, and an avocado.

Yeah.

First she uses the knife to cut the avocado into sections around the pit. Then she starts scraping pieces out with the spoon and eating them. And by eating, I mean "flinging at her mouth with a motion that made it look like she was trying to hack out her own uvula." I may never see anyone with an uglier eating style.

Eventually, she eats the top half of the avocado. But before she can go to town on the bottom part, she pulls out a packet of thousand island dressing. For real. And proceeds to pour it gingerly over the remaining avocado half, and then spooning out and eating that part.

I guarantee you this woman thinks she was eating healthy.

At some point, the pit - which she left in place even though you can't eat it - went flying and rolled down the aisle. She gave chase and changed seats in the process, dropping the knife on the floor where she had been sitting. Shortly after taking up residence in her new seat just shy of the stairs, a piece of avocado made its way to the floor of the aisle as well.

A little while later she moved up a bit further, to a forward-facing pair of seats just shy of the middle of the bus (this was a double-long bus with the accordion middle). When the bus eventually got to her stop, she stumbled to her feet, spilling something on the floor in the process. As she got off the bus, I saw - she was drinking from an open beer.

This probably explains the whole thing. Considering that a single Michelob (this woman's beverage of choice) is nowhere near enough to get anyone stumbling-from-your-seat drunk, she was probably half in the bag by the time she boarded in the first place, which no doubt led her to think that her little avocado shenanigans actually made perfect sense.

So, let's recap. By the time this woman got off the bus, she had left reminders of her presence in three separate spots in the aisle - the plastic knife at the back, the avocado piece just short of the stairs, and the beer spill up near the middle. I wouldn't want to be handcuffed for eating a candy bar, but if anyone deserved to spend a few hours in jail over eating on public transportation, it was our drunken, avocado-loving friend here. I suppose it could have been worse - she could have been eating durian - but among produce readily available in this country I can think of few things more ridiculous or annoying, save perhaps a grapefruit.

The most hilarious present

Way back when I first started working at my current company as a temp employee, there was one day, no more than a few weeks in, when I was in the convenience store downstairs and decided, on a whim, to get some beef jerky. I hadn't eaten the stuff more than a couple times before in my life, but it was one of those "what the hell" moments.

When I brought it upstairs, for some reason it evolved into a running joke in the Graphics department. First, Chris, my boss, decided that this was "a totally Flaxman thing to do," even though this was the first time they'd ever seen me eating it and I'd virtually never had it before in my life. Then, everyone was suitably amused by the name "Jack Link's Premium Cuts," leading to that being a running joke for weeks. The idea of "meat snacks" hung around even longer, especially when it transpired that another Graphics part-timer ate beef jerky nearly every day (although somehow he almost totally escaped being joked with for it).

Time went on and there was something of a diaspora from the department. I ended up in QC; one of the graphics specialists, Chris (not the same person as my boss), became a team leader; the other part-timer got full-time employment somewhere else.

Today Chris (former GS, current TL Chris) came over to my desk to drop off a promotion to be proofed. I had sent out an e-mail earlier informing everyone that I would be leaving early because it was my birthday. Chris wished me a happy birthday and surprised me a little bit by knowing my age. Then he announced he had a present for me and pulled out...

...a Jack Link's Premium Cuts Barbecue Beef Steak stick. With a bow on it.

I mentally rolled my eyes a little bit in the company meeting the other day when the CEO was going on about what a fun place this is to work... but really, it's far more true here than it would be in a lot of other work places. I laughed for about five minutes after Chris handed me the jerky - it was such a perfectly-timed, hilarious callback. Good times.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some jerky to eat.

People cannot tell how old I am, example #11,734

[I ask my boss if I can leave a little early tomorrow because it's my birthday.]

Boss: Oh, it's your birthday! ...26?

Me: Nope.

Boss: 27?

Me: Nope.

Boss: 25?

Me: Nope.

Boss: ...28?

Me: Nope.

Boss: ...you're only 24?

Granted, not guessing across the widest range, but he already knew I was younger than he was - which basically means it took him as many guesses as possible to get to the right age.

My parents sent me a couple packages today, featuring a t-shirt for each of my recently stalled collections (subway maps and Hard Rock locales), a framed photo of ever-adorable Flaxniece Aurora, some Borders gift cards (I always look forward to those), and a check, with a few other things thrown in. I'd say this is exactly the kind of gift haul one should expect (and want) from one's parents at this point in life - nothing lavish (especially as you reach the point where you can buy yourself that kind of gift), but various smaller things that show they still know what you like. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

News and notes

To start off: although I did fantasy baseball with a group of friends for a couple years in high school, I can't recall ever having done a fantasy football league with people I knew in real life before. That's changing this year with the league I'm joining along with Rudnik, Nemo, and a number of "bloggers and regular contributors." We seem to be looking for an extra person to join, so if you'd like to give fantasy football a shot (or if you want to add yet another league) let me know. Fair warning: the league is not contested for free (unless you're an IRS agent, in which case it is).

Next: What is it with candy companies and picking a new random ingredient to add to half their products every six months? Everything goes to white chocolate, or five different products add caramel, or everything goes to dark chocolate. The latest trend, implausibly, appears to be marshmallow, at least at Hershey's; both Take Five and Reese's Cups have added a layer of marshmallow to their mix. With the Take Five it works okay; Take Five is already a kitchen-sink kind of candy, so it's not like it's so ridiculous to stick something else in there. As far as Take Five variations go, though, the peanut butter is always going to be the champion.

Here's the problem I have with marshmallow in general, though - its flavor is surprisingly overpowering. Eating the peanut butter cups, it was virtually all I could taste - and why am I getting peanut butter cups (and all the subsequent fat) if I can't even taste the peanut butter? I guess if you enjoy a fluffernutter this might be the candy for you; I've never had one myself, so I can't say how accurate the comparison is. But while the caramel addition to Reese's Cups worked amazingly well, for me the marshmallow fell flat. If you're going to impersonate a sandwich, why not put a little layer of grape jelly into the cup or something? Actually, that doesn't sound like a terrible idea. You can use it, Hershey's, but I want credit.

Future: there's a Fall Movie Preview coming when I write one. Which I'm planning for this weekend, but who ever knows with me.

Store! Eeee-mail.

I've gotten a couple e-mails from CafePress telling me I have 14 bucks in my account that I can use for products, or whatever. At first I didn't think much about it. But then I realized that I only marked stuff up by a dollar - meaning that I somehow sold 14 things to people who were not me. Two of these were my aunt and one was my dad, but that's still 11 sales to non-Flaxman family members. This girl from Connecticut whose last name is Flax bought a Big Flax Cafe t-shirt back in 2002, and some guy from New Jersey whose last name is also Flax bought a "Please Die" shirt and three Big Flax Cafe shirts in October 2003 and April 2004. The even weirder thing about the latter is that he bought one BFC shirt six months after the other two. Did a relative see him in the shirt and tell him to buy them one? Did he wear one so much that it wore out? These are the kinds of questions I need to know the answers to. Could Mr. Flax still be lurking around my page?

Then in December 2004, this guy from Iowa bought - get ready - a BFC shirt, a Please Die shirt, and an I'm Sorry, Do You Live in This Suite mug. What? Was he dressing up as me for Halloween? I think I recognize the name vaguely, like he was someone I encountered briefly at Northwestern or in some similar locale. But does that justify such purchases?

Finally, I sold two more Please Die shirts - one to an old NJ neighbor, and the final one in January 2006 to some woman from Colorado who I'm quite sure I don't have even the slightest connection to. Bizarre. Though I'm glad to have the money, thanks! (Oh, I almost forgot to mention the mug that Rich Goldberg bought a few years back. I knew about this one before, but I feel like he'd leave some faux-huffy comment if I didn't mention it. And now that I've mentioned him, perhaps he'll be all happy.)

Annoying discovery: CafePress finally clued into the fact that the Big Flax Cafe design is an unauthorized spoof of the Hard Rock Cafe logo, and subsequently suspended my ability to sell it. Since I doubt I have much legal recourse (and frankly, I don't have the desire to "fight the man" on this one), if you haven't already bought your Big Flax Cafe shirt like the five other people in the world who have one, I'm afraid you're SOL. The weeping may commence.

(Incidentally, what would you do if you saw someone on the street wearing the shirt and it wasn't me? Wouldn't that be totally bizarre? Well, except if it were my dad. But what if it were this Iowa guy, whose name isn't even Flax? I suspect I would do a lot of pointing and yelling.)

But now I want to try and think of a good shirt to replace the old Big Flax Cafe shirt. Clearly people will just wander in and buy these things if you choose the right line. The "Are You Man Enough for the Avian Flu?" shirt hasn't sold any yet - and probably won't, besides to me (and even I didn't buy right away, though with the 14-dollar discount I have on the table I may yet).

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

Dividing the post up, Rudnik-style. Not mentioned on the also Rudnik-connected (and mentioned in an earlier post) album release list is the new album from Weird Al Yankovic, Straight Outta Lynwood, which comes out on September 26. Al came off my automatic-purchase list - and you may laugh that he was ever on there, but I like Weird Al - with Poodle Hat, his fairly disappointing 2003 effort, but I like "Don't Download This Song" a whole bunch. (It's an original, not a parody, though it's clearly something of a style parody of "We Are the World" and similar numbers.) Check out his myspace page - one of the few times you'll ever hear me say that - to hear the song, along with "You're Pitiful," Al's James Blunt parody that Blunt okayed but his record label shut down, leading to Al putting the song on the web as a form of protest.

The question is, what are the odds the whole album is worth buying? I can get one track off iTunes, after all. There's no track list yet, but the myspace page mentions parodies of "Chamillionaire, Green Day, Usher, R. Kelly, and Taylor Hicks!"

Well, let's see. The Green Day parody is almost certainly going to be "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." There was already a parody of that on ESPN.com's "Shitty Sports-Related Parodies" page that had to do with Steve Francis (and yes, that's not the real name of the segment, but I really don't feel like looking it up and, frankly, this is way more accurate), so I'm a little burned out on the idea for a parody of this track, but at least I like the music, which is always a start.

The Usher parody is almost certainly "Yeah!" I'm not sure where you go with that, but if Al can do it, more power to him.

I know very little about either Chamillionaire or Taylor Hicks, but Wikipedia confirms that the former's "Ridin'" will be parodied, which isn't surprising. I'm not sure how you parody Taylor Hicks - does he have songs of his own to begin with? - but I'm guessing it will lean at least in part on a vocal impression.

Here's the one I'm worried about: R. Kelly. Considering the timing, I'd have to offer good odds that this will be some sort of "Trapped in the Closet" parody. And, well... how on earth do you do that? It's like Scary Movie 5 including a scene that parodies Snakes on a Plane. Even if R. was being totally serious at first, he's well aware by this point that the "Closet" songs are among the most ridiculous things ever. What's left to parody? There's basically no way you could ever make it funnier, and the original's middling musical value means it would be difficult to make a good song out of it. Sure, it could be a parody of "I Believe I Can Fly" or "Ignition (Remix)" or something, but "Closet" is clearly more timely, and while Al's parodies are not always exclusively of contemporary songs (recent parodies have included send-ups of current movies set to older songs, like "The Saga Begins" for The Phantom Menace being set to "American Pie" and "Ode to a Superhero" for Spider-Man being set to "Piano Man"), they usually are. (And you really can't out-funny "Ignition (Remix)" either, while we're on the subject.)

I realize it's probably too late, but Al, as a fan, I would go with something other than a "Trapped in the Closet" parody if that is in fact the direction in which you went. While I can see why you'd want to parody it, since it was the darling of every Best Week Ever viewer for weeks, I just don't think there's enough to be gained.

Anyhoo. I will be interested to see which songs make the polka parody, which has in recent years become my favorite part of any Yankovic album.

I think that's it for now. I really will try and finish some movie reviews this weekend.

Better living through earwax

An actual conversation that took place tonight:

Me: I guess I'm just a sucker for music with big major-chord flourishes, no matter what it is. Like Christina Aguilera's "Soar," for instance.

Alma: I have no idea what that is.

Me: ...you don't? That song I just downloaded?

Alma: Why would I?

Me: You were dancing to it the other night on the webcam!

Alma: I could barely even hear what it was!

Me: But you laughed when I started playing it! What did you think it was?

Alma: I thought it was that Christina Aguilera song you downloaded!

Me: ...yeah, that's what I said.

Alma: ...oh.

Me: What did you think I said?

Alma: I didn't understand the first part, it sounded like "Mark Belanger."

Me: What?? And how do you even know who that is?

Alma: What? That's a real guy?

Me: Yeah, he was the Orioles' shortstop in the 70s.

Alma: So, I didn't hear what you said, and just came up with a name that I'd never heard before, and it turned out to be a real guy??

A pretty weird coincidence, for sure, though I would say the odds are that somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain Alma had at least heard the name before. But she's right - of all the names to pull instead of "Christina Aguilera?" If she were going to hear some baseball player's name, she could have at least heard "Rick Aguilera." Or maybe "Teddy Higuera."

Splish splash, I've been taking a bath

Netflix finally started letting people see their entire rental history without having to wait for a giant printout or something, so I took a look to confirm my suspicions. And the stats are:

42 months of Netflix membership
82 movies watched and returned

82! I figured the number was fairly low, but less than two a month? It's only just less than two, of course, and I may manage to watch two movies in the next week, but even so. Two a month works out to about nine bucks a pop, which may be only as much as a ticket would cost, but then I don't own a 200-inch TV. Really, I've been paying for the convenience; sure, it might be cheaper in the long run to have a Blockbuster membership, but Netflix has a much bigger selection and comes right to my door.

For comparison's sake, incidentally, Alma has watched and returned 86 discs (not all individual movies, but it works out about the same) in just nine months of membership. Ye gods.

If I weren't so stubborn I'd cancel the membership or at least reduce it, but I happen to have 17.99 a month and I like having three options at once, even if it frequently takes me two months to watch all of them. So whatever, I guess. I'll just try to keep it rolling for now. I've watched and returned five in the past week, a sixteenth of my rental total in a hundred-seventieth of the time.

Speaking of getting wet, I got on the bus this morning and headed toward the back, where I discovered that on the right-middle back row seat, there was a small patch of... well, I'm not sure I'm confident calling it water, so let's say "liquid." I sat down a couple seats away in a sideways-facing row. A couple stops later, a man and a woman get on and head for the back. Oddly, the guy seemed to point out the liquidy seat to the woman! I was about to say something, but before I could she practically threw herself into the seat, so it was too late.

I mean, once someone has sat down in a wet seat, what can you say to them? If you stutter out that the seat is wet, they'll wonder why you didn't try to warn them before. And certainly they're going to figure it out for themselves soon enough.

The odd thing is that this woman never seemed to flinch. Was she wearing Depends? Who knows. However, when they got to their stop, I did notice that she seemed, well, a little reticent to stand up. Big ol' wet spot on the seat of her pants? You'd better believe it.

To make this interactive... what would you do? The woman next to me, who had noticed the liquid and avoided sitting in the seat just prior to the other woman's fateful ensconcing, said nothing either, so I'm clearly not the only one with the tendency to clam up.

Kicked in the Shins

Through the wonder of Rudnik's blog, I found a page at Metacritic that I think has to be an immediate addition to the Favorites menu: Upcoming CD Releases. I always get excited when I find out that bands I like are going to be putting more music out soon. So the good news rolled in, with one exception.

First, the good news. All of the following groups have scheduled upcoming releases in the next nine months or so:

Doves (sometime in 2007, though I suppose it could be over a year away)
Fountains of Wayne (late 2006)
The Killers (October 3)
The Postal Service (sometime in 2007)
Spoon (early 2007), plus Britt Daniel appears to have a solo album due later this year, unless that just ends up being the soundtrack to Stranger than Fiction

Now, the bad news: the Shins are listed as "early 2007." Early 2007! Whatever happened to earlier this year, when I made a list of bands from whom I was anticipating new albums and heard that the new Shins album was supposed to be coming out in August? Every other artist delivered on schedule: Snow Patrol, Guster, and the Long Winters all have their albums out. (Although Ganging Up on the Sun has disappointed me so far and Putting the Days to Bed, while decent, is no When I Pretend to Fall. Although neither are a lot of albums.) Get with it, Shins! Your albums are only 34 minutes long, for crying out loud. (I'm kidding, of course. Considering how great Chutes Too Narrow is, how can you just turn right around and follow that up no problem?)

In other pop culture-related news, I've been trying to pick up the Netflix viewing lately. The problem is that I'm now five movies in the hole, review-wise, and I won't have much time this coming week to write reviews either, since I have to clean my room (seriously), do laundry, and I have three 10pm conference calls for work (again, not kidding). It's going to be hectic.

In other other news, Drew, Karen and I wanted to head out to Twin Links for some mini golf on Saturday... but when we got there, we found that it had closed! For good! This continues a long Flaxman family tradition of having places we like close and products we like get taken off the market. Frankly, it's amazing that Twin Links lasted as long as it did with a kiss of death like my endorsement. Better check your accounting ledger, Par King.

Michigan J. Cricket

Friday was sort of the lost day of the New Orleans weekend for me; after waking with a jolt at 7:30 am from a nightmare featuring a ghost in the attic of my old house (no doubt inspired by the walking tour the previous night) and failing to fall back asleep for at least an hour, I ended up sleeping until 1 in the afternoon, excluding a couple minutes where I was awakened by housekeeping. With Alma out, I then sat around the room for several hours before it occurred to me to turn my phone on and see where she was (having not brought my charger down, I was aiming to conserve batteries). Eventually we went to see Sharks 3D at the aquarium's Imax theater, which was marginally cool (I don't recall having watched a movie in 3D before), but either I'm remembering Imax screens being much bigger than they are or this was a pretty small Imax screen. Whatever. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant (again!) and went upstairs.

At some point, I don't remember when exactly, what sounded like a high-pitched electronic chirping started up. It sounded like it might have something to do with the air conditioning, but I played with the settings to no avail. Finally we called the front desk, who promised to send up engineering. Then I went outside briefly to see if it could be coming from the next room (a conference room). When I came back in and the door slammed behind me, the noise suddenly stopped.

Sure enough, the two engineers showed up before the noise started again, making me feel pretty silly. Naturally, not too long after they left, it began again. This time, we took video evidence so that if it stopped before they came back, we would at least have something to show them to prove that we weren't crazy, or pranksters, or crazy pranksters. As they knocked at the door, the noise was still going, but just as I opened the door - of course! - it stopped again. I made a joke to Alma about the singing frog from Looney Tunes (see title of this entry).

At this point we decided to play the video for them, rather than have our sanity called into question. Yes, it was this loud, and this incessant:



Yeah. The noise eventually started up again with the engineers still in the room, and they determined it was a cricket. (Or, they confirmed it, as the front desk and Alma had already suggested it.) My experience with crickets was pretty much limited to the gentle, almost soothing "ee-ee-ee" from outside in the summer, so to have one that sounded like a smoke alarm going off was a bit jarring. Closing the door to the bedroom didn't do much good either. The engineers tried to find the cricket and couldn't; later I tried the same without luck. Eventually he stopped chirping, probably between 12:30 and 1 am, and I was able to get to sleep. But of course I woke up at 8 am to find that he was going again. I considered dragging the table out into the hall because it sounded like he was in it, but after moving it a few feet I realized he was almost certainly in the wall, or at least nowhere portable. Finally I just tried slamming the bedroom door to spook him again, and it managed to work.

Still, a pretty lousy way to cap off Friday, which was certainly the letdown day of the trip already (due mostly to my laziness shenanigans). That's why it was the one I didn't write about before now. But there you have it.

Home, home again

We came back from New Orleans on an early flight this morning. Check-in was an absolute breeze, mostly because the NO airport is already not the busiest and, well, it was 7:30 am. There was literally no line at security as we strolled up to it and went through without a hassle. The flight was pretty smooth, too. I was thwarted by neck cramps in most of my attempts at sleep, but I did get some reading done. Later Alma and I watched some TV and then Jarhead, and then I fell asleep on her couch for a couple hours or so.

Some pictures and/or video coming soon. I've got one story about a cricket that still needs to be told, but without the accompanying video it's too hard to describe how awful a lot of Friday night was.

Insta-blog

Few, if any, occurrences in my life have ever moved me so significantly that one of the first things I did upon returning home was run onto the internet and post a blog entry about it. But, at the risk of boring the hell out of everyone here, tonight's dinner was one such.

Alma and I went on a harbor cruise today so that we could indulge her desire to take at least one trip on a boat while we were in New Orleans. It was a decent little cruise; regrettably, once you leave the downtown New Orleans skyline behind (and it's not much of a skyline, I tell you what, but then again you have to consider that the city is built mostly on illuvial sand) you're stuck looking mostly at barges and various ships, but then it is a harbor cruise (though technically it's all still part of the river). Anyway, it was fun to get a little wind in our hair, and sights like the Crescent City Connection bridge and Jackson Square in the French Quarter were fairly neat from the water.

Anyway, that's not the part that made me rush back. After the cruise we walked through the Riverwalk mall (tacky, overpriced souvenir stores) and then I walked Alma back to the convention center for a presentation she wanted to attend. On my way back to the hotel, I passed by a restaurant located catty-corner from it called Rio Mar. Rio Mar is, as you may be able to guess, a seafood place, and in fact I think only one entree (a steak) was not some sort of seafood dish. Alma had been talking about having some seafood, and though she'd had salmon at the Hilton on Friday, somehow that didn't seem quite the same. And after eating in the hotel restaurant the previous two nights I thought we needed a little bit more adventure for our last night in the Crescent City (even if such adventure did only constitute walking across the street).

To be perfectly honest, my first glance at the menu was a little terrifying. I am not, it must be known, the world's biggest seafood guy. But I will eat it on occasion and was willing to suck it up, since Alma generally likes fish more than I do. Of course, even as far as that went, the menu featured things like squid in its own ink and octopus.

I wasn't quite that adventurous, but we ordered a Peruvian ceviche to start (having looked up ceviche before leaving the hotel when I read that Rio Mar was somewhat known for its ceviche, I thought the Peruvian sounded like the best option), and then I ordered a pan roasted brook trout wrapped in green onions and stuffed with Serrano ham. (Alma ordered a pan seared yellowfin tuna wrapped in the ham.)

When the trout came, it transpired that (a) the skin was still on (though at least the head and tail were absent) and (b) it was served on a bed of asparagus. Something to know about me is that as recently as, I don't know, last night, I would probably have told you that if you were going to pick an entree to serve to me featuring three things that, individually, I really wasn't wild about, an excellent choice would have been something containing fish with the skin on, ham, and asparagus (which I had refused to try ever since the one time I tried it as a kid and immediately ejected it from my mouth due to the taste).

But here's the thing: everything was AMAZING. To avoid getting ahead of myself, the ceviche was great; it's chunks of just-barely-cooked fish in lemon and lime juices with onions, tomatoes, and cilantro, and it was terrific. Much like my first experience with sushi (documented a while back on these pages), I found the fish's texture to be exactly what I was hoping for, and when you add lemon juice and onions... well, name two things I really enjoy as accents to food.

The trout was... well, I don't want to gross everyone out and toss around the word "orgasmic," but I was barely able to contain my giddiness at how good it was. Alma assured me that she didn't mind that every 30 seconds I would take another bite and then tell her, "This is SO GOOD," but I bet it got tired after a while. The trout and ham blended perfectly together (and while usually the taste of pork products is a bit overwhelming for me, the ham never did that), and the sauce that came on the plate, which by itself wasn't anything too spectacular, was a perfect complement, adding just the right amount of additional flavor but allowing both meats to retain their own nuances. Even the skin worked perfectly (the end piece was all crispy, adding yet another layer to the overall experience).

Finally all that was left was the asparagus. I hadn't so much as tried a piece since that day... probably 15 years ago, give or take. I saved it for last assuming that I might not enjoy it... but, as it turned out, it was actually good! I won't go so far as to say I loved it, but combined with the sauce it was very enjoyable, and I don't have plans to push away asparagus untouched in the future.

After all that, anything else might have seemed like a letdown, but the flan was delicious, and I even decided to indulge with a honey-flavored dessert wine (Casta Diva Cosecha Miel was the name, if I remember right) which wasn't bad at all (though I really still don't have the right appreciation for wine, or really alcohol in general). The flan had a caramel drizzle on the plate, and usually when they do that it's just a sweet caramel sauce, but this was the actual burned sugar and as such it hit the tastebuds from about four different angles.

All told, this was the most expensive two-person dinner I think I've ever had - certainly that I've paid for myself - and yet I couldn't feel more satisfied. Talk about being worth every penny (don't worry, it was still in two pre-decimal-point figures even with tip). It made sense to kind of go whole hog on our last night here - I even got relatively dressed up for the occasion - but even in my wildest pre-dinner dreams I wouldn't have predicted that I would enjoy it just that much.

So if you're ever in New Orleans, and you like seafood even a tiny bit - heck, as long as you're just willing to eat it - I don't think I can recommend Rio Mar enough. Probably a pointless recommendation for this blog's audience, but hey, you never know. It was good enough to take the chance, just so long as I could get it out there.

Tacky, overpriced souvenir stores

Here in New Orleans for Alma's convention thingy. We got in just before that British terror plot was uncovered, so while the trip out was a breeze, the trip back might be a tad different. Fortunately Alma has a bag we can check, but I have a decent-sized carry-on bag that, hopefully, will not pose a significant problem.

In the meantime, we still have two whole days in the Crescent City. Today I did the following things:

1. Slept until about 11. Tried to sleep longer and actually couldn't. 11 hours is probably enough.

2. Walked around the neighborhood here. Alma's cell phone charger broke on the way down, and since I didn't bring mine, I figured we needed to make sure that at least one phone could be guaranteed to work the entire time. So I looked up the directions to Radio Shack and walked over. They were in the process of remodeling but they did have the right part. On the way back I stopped into a mini-mart to look for regional pop or candy, but I was surprisingly disappointed, which has to be about the first time that's ever happened. The best I could do was Sour Nerds, which are apparently new, but I'm guessing they're going to show up in more places soon enough. There was also "Very Berry Nerds Rope," but I didn't bother with that. The Sour Nerds are okay, but they're only marginally more tart than regular Nerds, really. Kind of pointless, I guess. On the bright side, I got a pretty good feel for the streets around here so I'll be able to walk around later if I want, not that there's much to see within reasonable walking distance. Let me clarify that: reasonable walking distance considering the heat and humidity. It's in the high 80s but with the sun and humidity it pushes easily into "feeling like" the high 90s (today, I think, was "89 but feels like 98"). Blech. Though really, the worst part is when you go into an air-conditioned store and the moisture all condenses on your head. The people at Wendy's probably thought I was the sweatiest guy on the planet.

3. I went down to the hotel gift shop to see if they had a travel size shaving cream, since I hadn't brought mine and I only wanted a small amount. The mini-mart hadn't had any as small as I'd wanted. The gift shop did, but it cost - get ready! - $5.99 for a 2.25-oz tube. They also had a 6.25-oz can for the same price, but since I didn't need the big one it didn't really make sense. I'm just astonished that they had the balls to charge that much for the small one, even if it was a hotel gift ship. [Ed: That's gift shop, of course, but Alma is funny.] One small tube of shaving cream and a bottle of root beer? $8.80. It makes the $10-for-24-hours-of-in-room-internet-access seem like a steal.

4. Alma and I went on a "ghosts and spirits" walking tour of the French Quarter, which really means "a walking tour of the French Quarter, except that the guide only says something every four blocks and then it's only about notable historic murders." But it was nice to walk around the French Quarter and see the architecture and stuff, even if we did get devoured by mosquitoes and I spent a significant portion of the walk scratching.

5. Ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. Not bad at all, and my steak cost five bucks less than the menu said.

6. Went in the pool and hot tub.

And that's it. More later, maybe.

And the award for worst pop culture reference in human history goes to

Yesterday's Family Circus:





Seriously, what the fuck is that.

Faked Migration

Alma had Winged Migration from Netflix and we watched the end of it today. Then she put on the "Making of" featurette. And it ruined the entire movie. Seriously. Among the things that were upsetting:

* The filmmakers didn't just "put cameras near the eggs so the birds would be used to the sounds," as I had read. In many cases, they raised the birds from hatching in France, and then flew them out to the various settings to shoot them. So there really was barely any - if any at all - actual migration footage in the film. It's just the birds flying around in the various places they would be migrating if they had been raised in the wild! What??

* Not only that, but they didn't turn the birds loose and then shoot. Instead, they wrote a script and staged scene after scene after scene. There were freaking storyboards! In one shot in Monument Valley, there is a broken-down truck that some geese run past; turns out they drove the truck out there themselves and even took one of the tires off on the spot to make it look more run down.

* Here's a rough quote of what the guy just said while shooting in New York: "A flock of wild geese fly up the East River. Our birds see them and join them. For a while, we fear we've lost them. But after 15 minutes, they turn around and come back to us. They weren't ready for such a long trip." Umm... that's terrible, isn't it? "We've ruined these geese for life, but we got our shot."

* The guy keeps whining about "how are we going to get this shot?" Dude, you're keeping the birds in boxes before the shot starts, and then when they come out, you have to yell at them, "Allez!" Sheesh. You don't have enough control over this? "Migration-like Film Product!"

* Oh, and the guy pronounced "Adirondacks" wrong multiple times. As I assume everyone reading this knows, it's pronounced Ad-ih-RON-dacks. But he kept saying "Ad-EYE-urn-dacks." Gah.

As Alma just said, "It's still a cool movie, it's just disappointing." Agreed. But it's one of those things I could probably have gotten along without knowing. Oh well.

Vote, vote on

The original matchup ended in a tie, so here we go again with a recount in the Cheat Commandos Tournament final:

#3 Fightgar vs. #5 Reynold

Make your vote count! Vote today!

Damn Yankees

People often make jokes along the lines of, "Hey, how cool would it be if baseball had relegation like European soccer? Then the Royals could get sent down to AAA and have to try and battle their way back to the majors!" And so forth. Well, at Monday's trade deadline we saw perhaps the most European soccer-like move we're ever going to see in Major League Baseball: the arrangement for a player to change teams for a transfer fee.

The Phillies, looking to dump Bobby Abreu and his gigantic contract, managed to trade him to the Yankees (along with Cory Lidle, only one of the two or three most coveted arms to change hands at the deadline) for - get ready! - the loaded package of Matt Smith, C.J. Henry, and two low-minors prospects.

Um, what?

Put it this way: if this trade happened in your fantasy league, it would be vetoed by your commissioner within approximately eight seconds. Smith has pitched twelve innings this year; Henry is regarded as a project at best (and he had basically no value to the Yankees considering who they have manning his spot - shortstop - in the field); and the two other players may never even see Triple-A, let alone the majors.

On paper this looks like highway robbery. And, from a personnel standpoint, it was (especially since, as reported by Jayson Stark, multiple other teams offered better prospect deals for Lidle alone; the Yankees somehow convinced the Phillies that they wouldn't make the deal unless Lidle were thrown in). But the catch is what the Yankees sent to the Phillies that wasn't a player: about $21 million in salary relief.

Okay, so the Yankees didn't literally pull out the checkbook and dash off a $21 million check to Philadelphia just for the privilege of paying Abreu some more. But as far as why the deal happened, it was pretty much the same reason. The Phillies wanted Abreu off the books, and when they couldn't get even approximate talent back, they traded him for one cent on the dollar, just to save some cash. And naturally, the only team in the world that could have just suddenly assumed a $15.5 million payroll hit for 2007 - the Yankees - was the team that landed him.

How can you look at a situation like this and tell me there doesn't need to be a hard salary cap in baseball? How long is this crap going to be allowed to happen? It's easy to point at the fact that the Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2000 - and believe me, no one relishes that more than I do - but it's also easy to overlook the fact that they still haven't missed the playoffs in the three-division format. Whether the Abreu deal wins the Yankees the Series this year, or even the pennant, remains to be seen, but it will almost certainly help them get into the playoffs. Most teams have cycles because that's just what's dictated by the way things are supposed to work; the Yankees' utter lack of concern for how much money they're spending (because there are other teams with that kind of money if they really wanted to spend that much, but other teams have a little more fiscal responsibility) allows them to buy their way out of the cycles' low points. Not all the way out, as evidenced by the inability of the $200 million team to win a World Series in this millennium so far, but out more than any other team. Look at the Twins, a young team on the rise thanks to an upswing in talented young players; no team except the Tigers has been hotter over the past two months, and yet the Twins may still miss the playoffs. The team making it at their expense will almost certainly be the Red Sox, White Sox, or the Yankees, conveniently enough the teams with three of the four highest payrolls in baseball. So the Twins should get screwed during what has otherwise been a great year for them because they can't afford to throw out nine figures to bring in one or two more difference-making players? Seems kind of unfair, don't you think? And just wait until five years from now when Morneau, Santana, Hunter, and Liriano have all jumped ship for bigger contracts.

I really want the Yankees to miss the playoffs, just to end the thought that you can buy a winner. But too many other teams are doing it now to end that. The genie is out of the bottle. And you know who opened the bottle in the first place? The Yankees, way back on December 31, 1974, when they signed Catfish Hunter as a free agent to a contract that was triple the salary of anyone else in baseball at the time. Guess who bought the Yankees less than two years earlier? Damn, why couldn't Fay Vincent's lifetime ban of Steinbrenner in 1990 have been held up?

As a wise man once said... fuck the fucking Yankees.

I never doubted that you were a lady, sir

Cheat Commandos Tournament

Semifinal Results

#5 Reynold def. #1 Gunhaver, 5-0

#3 Fightgar def. #7 Reinforcements, 3-2

Final Matchup

#3 Fightgar vs. #5 Reynold

Am I correct in assuming that Reynold has made it this far because he's the character with which most of us most closely identify? Sure seems that way. Fightgar may be a closet wuss, but he spends a lot of time picking on Reynold, calling him "Reynolda" in Shopping for Danger (after laughing at the idea of Reynold coming on the mission) and noting that the bad language in "Pony Fights 2" might give Reynold nightmares in Commandos in the Classroom. So does Reynold roll again? Vote by Monday night to find out!

And they wonder why we don't play ACF

We went to the Trash tournament that followed the ACF-style Chicago Open today. It was supposed to be like "Trash written like ACF questions," and if you ask me, it proved why there is generally so little overlap in the two communities and why this doesn't figure to change anytime soon.

First, the good:

* Things generally ran pretty quickly, although there was a sizable post-lunch delay while playoff brackets were worked out, I think because there were some computer issues.

* It's a good time playing with an Alma/Colby/Tyler team.

* The questions weren't too bad.

And the bad:

* The places where the questions were bad, however, they were pretty bad. It was more just that the overall style was problematic; you could see the places where the writers had limited knowledge. Pretty much every sports tossup went one of two ways:

"Drafted by team, he was traded to other team for some guys. Later he was traded to another team for some other guys. But you would know him mostly from this one team, and here's the really famous thing he did."

or:

"In year, this player had these stats. Later he had these stats. Drafted out of college, he had these stats in his rookie year, and then later he was traded, after which he had these stats."

Just very cookie-cutter, and not indicative of knowing anything about sports beyond how to access baseball-reference.com. In fact, a lot of questions in general seemed to go like this; just a ton of dull listing, and unless you happen to know some guy's batting average in a given year or the eighth track on a band's fifth album, or an actor's bit part from a mid-90s film you've barely heard of, you're going to be doing a lot of sitting until the giveaway rolls around. Is this really how ACF works normally? Why bother having eight-line tossups when the first six are so obscure that they might as well not be there? Bonuses had a similar problem; on a number of occasions we took 20 because the first part of the bonus was so vague that you could barely figure out what was going on, like "This guy played a man in a film. For ten points, name him." Then once you found out who it was, you could actually get the next two parts based on real knowledge. But overall I wasn't terribly impressed by the structure, especially considering that a large part of the reason that tournaments like this exist seems to be that ACF disdains the structure of Trash. I'll grant that Trash sometimes has awkward pyramidality, but even some questions today had certain clues come in too early, and some of the powers ran on forever, well past the point where it seemed like it was still impressive for someone to have gotten it.

* Meta-referential bullshit. I'm sure they had their reasons, whatever they may have been, but I don't think meta questions belong anywhere in any format. Maybe a not-that-helpful clue in a regular question that mentions someone offhand, okay, just for color. No more than once a round or so, though. Here, though, not only were there four or five of those in every round, but there were also various questions like "Name these hsquizbowl.org posters based on profile information" and two tossups to which the answer was Lee Henry, including the very last question of the last round, costing us a chance to tie the game (particularly since I thought it might be Henry but assumed, clearly incorrectly, that they wouldn't repeat an answer). I know this is just one tournament and not necessarily affiliated with anything, but it seems from my vague recollections of message board discussion that a lot of the ACF-related tournaments feature stuff like this, which is conspicuously absent from NAQT and TRASH. I don't understand the point of the circle-jerking, especially if these guys claim to want to be more inclusive. Attend one of these tournaments and it just seems like you're missing a big joke that half the players are in on and half couldn't care less about. It really should just be excised completely.

* This one shitty question. I just have to get this out of my system and I'll be done. There was a question in the final round that started about like so: "One thorn in his side is Jolyon Wagg, who has a habit of descending with his unruly family on Marlinspike Hall." I buzz in and say, "Captain Haddock." Neg. The answer ends up being Tintin.

Now, Tintin is not incorrect there, and of course later clues led exclusively to him. But how can you have a lead-in that not only doesn't distinguish between two main characters in a work but also points better to one when the answer ends up being the other? Wagg is always much more Haddock's nemesis in the Tintin oeuvre, particularly in - IIRC - The Calculus Affair, when Wagg and his family descend on Marlinspike when Tintin and Haddock have left the country chasing the kidnapped Professor Calculus. Marlinspike is really Haddock's mansion, after all; Tintin ends up moving in there, but Haddock really owns it.

You might argue that I just overthought this one. I would argue that it's shitty to write a question about something that punishes someone for having deeper knowledge. Can you name 100 characters from the Tintin books? Yes? Then fuck you. Can you only name Tintin? Congratulations, have these ten points. And, as noted, I would point out that Haddock was, at that point in the question, not only a perfectly acceptable answer but also a BETTER answer, and that at a tournament where there were entire bonuses on genres of music that eight people listen to, Captain Haddock doesn't seem like he should be too obscure an answer to come up.

That question virtually ended up deciding the last game (since the other team picked it up, of course, and we only lost by 40), so it annoys me much more than it would have otherwise, but ultimately I considered protesting and then decided not to because I simply didn't care enough.

And that's the ultimate lesson that I took out of today's tournament. For the first time in a long time, I didn't keep score (except the one round where I kept official score for the reader), and I didn't write down my tossups for the first time since freshman year of college. And this is the only post you're getting, rather than some big rundown. It's not that I don't still enjoy playing quiz bowl on occasion... it's just that I'm rapidly growing out of it. Alma feels the same way, and if either of us is still playing within three years, I think I'd be pretty surprised.

Rock, rock on

Cheat Commandos Tournament

Quarterfinal Results

#1 Gunhaver def. #8 Foxface, 2-1

#5 Reynold def. #13 Blue Laser Minion #2, 2-1

#3 Fightgar def. #11 Blue Laser Commander, 3-0

#7 Reinforcements def. #2 Firebert, 2-1

Semifinal Matchups

#1 Gunhaver vs. #5 Reynold

Opposites attract. Gunhaver is the alpha male leader of the group, while Reynold is the nerdy civilian contractor who's never even eaten pizza. But he knows what it looks like! Gunhaver gets to go on every mission, while Reynold - who insists he would be "a good mission... guy" - always has to stay home, though he sometimes gets into more trouble there. Not that Gunhaver is exempt from mistakes, such as wandering around in a secret desert with no trace of Blue Laser.

#3 Fightgar vs. #7 Reinforcements

Reinforcements has come pretty far for someone with one line. Fightgar may be the toughest-looking commando - seemingly designed after Rambo III - but he's kind of a wimp, as evidenced by his complaining in "Time to Break... Fast!" about being hungry and tired, and his "Gulp!" after being told to go undercover in "Shopping for Danger."

Vote in the comments widget below by Friday night.

Buy all our playsets and toys

Cheat Commandos Tournament

Round One Results

#1 Gunhaver def. #16 Mrs. Commanderson, 2-1

#8 Foxface def. #9 Flashfight, 2-1

#13 Blue Laser Minion #2 def. #4 Silent Rip, 2-1

#5 Reynold def. #12 Blue Laser Minion #1, 2-1

#11 Blue Laser Commander def. #6 Crackotage, 2-1

#3 Fightgar def. #14 Ser-g-geant Marshie, 2-1

#7 Reinforcements def. #10 Ripberger, 2-1

#2 Firebert def. #15 Blue Laser Babies, 2-1

Quarterfinal Matchups

#1 Gunhaver vs. #8 Foxface

Reynold wants to be Gunhaver so he can keep Blue Laser from stealing the Commandos' fiscal reports. "Don't make me use this gun that I have!" But he also has a crush on Foxface and her bulletproof handbag.

#5 Reynold vs. #13 Blue Laser Minion #2

It's hard to top anyone whose idea of a "cuss" is "diaper biscuits," but then there are few Cheat Commandos cartoons lines funnier than "I never doubted that you were a lady, sir. Ma'am."

#3 Fightgar vs. #11 Blue Laser Commander

These two have actually faced off at the Price Style, while Fightgar was in his old lady disguise. BLC didn't bite on the "I was just wondering if you kind sonnies knew anything about making it snow at the beach" bait - and he's also an expert at ending awkward conversations with the elderly.

#2 Firebert vs. #7 Reinforcements

Strong Bad's toy vs. Coach Z's toy. Interestingly, in the cartoons themselves they've combined for just two lines, and Firebert's was just a Cheat noise.

Vote in the comments widget below by 6 pm CDT Wednesday.

And now the reason why nobody shows up

Inspired by what I'm sure was an offhand comment from Greg in Craig's comments, prepare to be bored to tears by the large-part-of-the-audience-isolating Cheat Commandos Tournament.

Round One

#1 Gunhaver
vs.
#16 Mrs. Commanderson

Gunhaver gets the nod at #1 seed for being the leader of the commandos. Mrs. Commanderson is at #16 because she has never actually appeared in a Cheat Commandos cartoon, but rather appears with them in a Teen Girl Squad easter egg. But I needed a 16th spot.

#8 Foxface
vs.
#9 Flashfight

Foxface is the group's lone female, and Flashfight's array of medals suggests that he is the leader of the outfit... but neither has ever really been seen outside of their action figures, unless you count the time Reynold put his glasses on a mop and imagined it was Foxface asking him out.

#4 Silent Rip
vs.
#13 Blue Laser Minion #2

Which of the Blue Laser minions is this? Well, in the one episode where it's reasonably easy to tell them apart, I guess you'd say he was the one who appeared second, telling Fightgar "I never doubted you were a lady, sir." Silent Rip is the Commando with the headset, played by Homestar Runner when we first see the toys, and also the first Commando to speak in a cartoon ("Those loonies are gonna blow up the ocean!"). Plus, his name kinda sounds like a fart joke.

#5 Reynold
vs.
#12 Blue Laser Minion #1

Blue Laser Minion #1 is honest enough to admit that he looks exactly like Blue Laser Minion #2. Reynold has his own playset (his apartment), but he's also pretty embarrassing, and gets tricked into leaving the rest of the group alone in "Commandos in the Classroom."

#6 Crackotage
vs.
#11 Blue Laser Commander

Crackotage is that guy who flies that plane, and makes all the terrible rhyming jokes. Blue Laser Commander might do better at crushing the Cheat Commandos if not for all his (?) strange missteps, including cleaning the bathroom and relocating the Blue Laser base to his grandmother's yard (where he has his minions prepare hamburgers).

#3 Fightgar
vs.
#14 Ser-g-geant Marshie

A conflict in the field of breakfast cereal. Ser-g-geant Marshie appears only to have shown up on the Cheat Commandos show as a tie-in to the Cheat Commandos O's cereal, which features Fluffy Puff marshmallows, and even then, Gunhaver thinks he's a flying cotton ball. Fightgar is good with old lady disguises and wearing ammunition, but he's also the only one who thinks to point out - and does so right on the box - that "these aren't O's!" Fightgar also gets blown up for imagining the Blue Laser minions as slices of pizza during Commandos in the Classroom, one of that cartoon's biggest laughs.

#7 Reinforcements
vs.
#10 Ripberger

Poor Coach Z. He's the one who bought the Reinforcements action figure, and then the guy never shows up again - except late in Commandos in the Classroom, when he gets his only real line: "Hey guys." He is the owner of the Justice Rocket Backpack Rocket Rocket, though it has primarily been seen being misused by Reynold in "Shopping for Danger." Still, he's better off than Ripberger, the one who looks like a ninja except that his outfit is all red, who hasn't shown up at all.

#2 Firebert
vs.
#15 Blue Laser Babies

There's not much to say about the Twins, who have one scene and one line each ("oo-waah"). Firebert was the original Cheat Commando, as the Cheat dressed up in the Strong Bad e-mail "army" and insisted that Strong Bad call him "Firebert." However, as both Strong Bad and Gunhaver have pointed out, Firebert isn't a good commando name.

Vote in the comments widget below by 6 pm CDT Monday! Results will be posted Monday night.