The 2005-06 BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge

The 2005-06 BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge is officially upon us. We're just playing for pride again this year, both because it's easier and because I was a tad late on coordinating this. If you're up for it, send a list of your bowl picks to the usual e-mail at any time between now and midnight CT on December 20. Include as a tiebreaker your score for the Rose Bowl (be sure you include this - I've had to ask for it again way too many times in the past). Good luck!

You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why

Juan Pierre is coming to town.

It's like an early Christmas present from the Cubs to me. I've had Pierre on my radar since he killed us in '03 - in fact, I wrote the following in the brief period during which I maintained the Cubs blog back in July:

"Trade rumors: ESPN suggested that Hendry might be looking at Juan Pierre; Hendry denied doing any such thing, though it's hard to imagine why he wouldn't. Pierre's having a down year, but in three of the last four he's racked up at least 200 hits. Hendry should know what's up since Pierre killed the Cubs in '03, getting ten hits in 33 at-bats in the NLCS, including two triples. He's also a base-stealing threat, getting at least 45 in each of the last four years, though he does get caught quite a bit (2004: 45 SB, 24 CS), which lowers that value. Still, he plays center and is a proven leadoff commodity, and he would likely come on the cheap in a down year with the Marlins evidently looking to dump salaries."

Is three minor-league pitchers "on the cheap" for a guy who could bang out 200 hits for you for the next ten years? I say yes. Mitre started 18 games in three years for the Cubs, going 4-10 with a 6.12 ERA. Not so good. He had back-to-back nice starts in July this year, but the fact that he could throw sixteen shutout innings over two games and still finish with a 5.37 ERA when he only pitched 44.1 innings the entire rest of the year is pretty damn ugly. The only things I know about Pinto and Nolasco are their stats in that article; it's a shame to give up a lefty who goes 10-3 with a 2.71 ERA in Pinto, but that's Double-A. Who knows if these guys will ever really turn into decent pros? Meanwhile, the Cubs still have a fair number of arms in the system and they just got the hit-machine leadoff hitter they didn't have down there.

One does wonder what happens to CP now - do they try to stick him in right, or is the Corey era just over? It's kind of a shame, but let's face it - the guy simply never showed enough of the skill he was supposed to have. When you're being raved about as a five-tool guy and in your best overall season you hit .266, that's not the best sign.

The Cubs have come up on a few other radar screens - for those of you who don't shell out for ESPN.com Insider, here's some paraphrased information about other possible avenues:

Bobby Abreu: I guess they'd stick him in right (or left; Murton's not that big a lock out there yet). But the Phillies are apparently asking for Prior, so guess what's not happening.

Julio Lugo: It looks like this deal is probably going to go down with other teams and not the Cubs. A shortstop - or at least an infielder - should be the other big key on Hendry's shopping list and Lugo wouldn't have been a bad one, but I won't be that disappointed.

Aubrey Huff and Kevin Mench: Potential guys to play right, according to ESPN. With three pitchers already shipped out and Felix Pie and Rich Hill near-untouchable, though, one wonders who exactly Hendry is going to send off for either of these guys, or indeed anyone else. Hendry has also confirmed that neither Prior nor Zambrano will be traded and Wood has an NTC, so the big pitchers aren't going anywhere (mercifully).

Milton Bradley: The Cubs are allegedly at the top of the list, though I think that was written before the Pierre deal. I don't see what's so great about this deal, anyway - Bradley's stats have never been astonishing and he's a total head case.

Orlando Hudson: I'd love this one. He's a light-ish bat up the middle, but he plays Gold Glove defense and with Lee and Ramirez at the corners we don't need a 40-homer guy in the middle infield.

There are a few other names, but none that seem worth mentioning at the moment. Still, I really hope Hendry keeps going - the Pierre deal alone has me really excited, but why stop there?

Are you ready for a football post?

Except for bitching after the Michigan game, I don't think I've talked much about football this year, either college or pros. So let's do a little of that right now.

First of all, if you're interested in the College Bowl Challenge, let me know in the comments box; last year, as you may recall, I gave up on trying to collect cash - especially as entry fees had previously been a scant two dollars - but put in your two cents (ha!) on whether or not you'd rather play for money if at all possible. We could always up it to a more-worth-trying five bucks, although with the crapshoot nature of bowls I don't know if anyone would care enough. The alternative, of course, is simply to do it for pride, as last year.

So - Northwestern. In the Sun Bowl.

Pros: It's not a bowl we've seen them in before; it's not lame-ass Detroit; it's slightly more "prestigious" than the fairly new Music City Bowl; UCLA doesn't have a great defense.
Cons: UCLA does have a usually strong offense; it's lame-ass El Paso.

This is the kind of game where you could see more combined points scored than in a Northwestern basketball game. The last time Northwestern was in a bowl they came up just short; this year the defense seemed to frequently make plays when it absolutely had to (save the Penn State game), but can they hang around long enough to put themselves in that situation? The Cats never seem to have real bowl chops, so I'm not exactly optimistic, but I'll watch it as long as I can.

In other news.... da Bears.

I've avoided talking about this as long as I could because I figured it couldn't last, but the defense keeps being ridiculous and the offense combines to do just enough to win. Still, the comparisons to the '85 team are a little worrisome - that team, after all, had Walter Payton (1,551 yards that year), and while Jim McMahon may not have been Joe Montana, he wasn't quite as esteemed a graduate of the "Please God, just don't let him mess up" school (McMahon's '85 stats: 178/313, 2,392 passing yards, 15 TDs, 11 INTs; Orton's 2005 stats so far: 165/309, 1,591 passing yards, 9 TDs, 13 INTs). Sure, the defense may be a little better - though there's the argument for the rest of the league being kind of watered down, and certainly the Bears have capitalized to some degree on having a schedule that isn't exactly one of the hardest out there - but despite the old "offense wins games, defense wins championships" adage, it really does help to have some offense. While this team has shown flashes at times, it seems like in general they're content to run it constantly, not ask Orton to do much, settle for field goals, and assume the defense will get stops and turnovers. And it's worked so far, but can that really translate into a playoff run, even in a fairly weak NFC? I don't know. I like Orton (even though he went to Purdue), but can you honestly tell me you wouldn't take someone like Jeff Garcia right about now? 6-for-17 for 68 yards might be enough against the 2-win Packers, but that's not holding up in January (not that Orton doesn't usually have a better game than that, of course, but still). There's now the rumor that Grossman could be back, but do you just throw him back out there if you're Smith, saying he earned the job before going down? I don't know.

I'm also starting to get worried about the Vikings, suddenly one of the hotter teams in the NFL and just two games back with the toughest stretch of the Bears' season coming up in these final four games (at Pittsburgh, Atlanta, at Green Bay and, of course, at Minnesota to finish the year). Of those games, the Bears need only go 1-3 as long as the one is against Minnesota, but it's a little worrying. I have faith in the defense, but Pittsburgh has a pretty good defense too and it takes very little to stop this Bears offense. That's one of those games where there isn't a potential score low enough to surprise me. 6-3? 3-0? How about 4-2? Anything could happen as long as it involves no touchdowns being scored. The Atlanta game - well, you never know what you're getting from Vick. At least this one's in Chicago. I have a hard time believing that the Bears as configured should be losing to either Green Bay or Minnesota, but it's hard to believe that they're going unbeaten in the division (even if it's only 6-0 now with the gerrymandering). I figure they might trip up at Lambeau - Favre is certainly not what he was, and they finally got him at Soldier (first win over Green Bay there since 1993? Ridiculous!), but you can't write him off in a game against the Bears. The Vikings game - well, they'd better win that one, especially if they lose to the Packers.

The weird thing to think of is that if the Bears win 12 games - quite possible, though hardly certain - they might actually be the #1 seed in the NFC and potentially have just two home games - in Chicago, in January, possibly against teams not as familiar with the weather like Seattle, Carolina, or Tampa - standing between them and a trip to the Super Bowl. Bizarre thought. Of course, it didn't help in 2001, but there was something very flukey about that year. This year it seems like the defense might actually be the real deal and ready to hold up in the playoffs, though the offense's mediocrity is going to prevent any blowouts. This team isn't winning any 46-10 games.

The other odd thing is that I find myself caring more than I expected to. I'm a Bears fan, but I'm not a crazy die-hard Bears fan. Their general futility over the past decade and a half - the amount of time that I've really been into sports - has never affected me as much as the Cubs' has. The distinction here can probably be traced to the fact that the Bears have won in my lifetime, even if I have no recollection of it. But this morning I was in the car and they played the call of Vasher's INT return in the fourth. The announcer yelled "Touchdown!" as Vasher scored and immediately followed that with "Touchdown Bears!" - and as he yelled "Touchdown Bears!" I could feel something within me leap, almost palpably, as if I had some deep, buried inner Bears fan conscience that was doing cartwheels. And I was suddenly reminded of what all this means, of what a good Bears season is really supposed to be about, of what it feels like to beat a bitter rival in December (even in 2001, two of the Bears' three losses came to Green Bay), of what it feels like to hear "Touchdown Bears!" and remember, "That's my team doing that." And I suddenly remembered why I cared and how much I cared.

I have often wondered if I'm really the right "kind" of sports fan. I follow the scores and sometimes watch the games, but I am rarely to be found at the stadiums and I cannot recall ever feeling emotional over a big win or a big loss. I didn't cry when the Cubs lost in 2003; I was happy when the Bulls and Devils did all their winning but I cannot say I feel like it provided me with any superlative joy. Yet I care deeply and unreservedly about the outcomes of games. So why is that, I wondered, when what seemed like it should have been the real importance of their outcomes seemed to elude me?

What it comes down to is simply that I do care. I'm not at the games because I don't have the money. I haven't been emotional after a big win because all the big wins in the last 10 years have seemed like foregone conclusions. The Bulls and Devils? They've already won, how could they not do it again? In some respects I was the same person I hated - I could justify it because these were my teams, they had been since before they won (even if in less conscious fashion), but I was spoiled. I expected titles and anything less was simply a bitter disappointment. And that's no way to live.

So what this season's Bears provide, and what I hope at least one future Cubs team will provide for me, is hope. The hope that we will see something we have not seen in a long time and do not feel like we can say for sure if we will ever see again. The way you hear "Touchdown Bears!" and do not simply feel relieved, like "Thank God they finally took control against a 2-10 team," but feel pure joy washing over you, the sheer unadulterated pleasure of your team beating your biggest rival on your field in a critical game for your playoff chances. Feeling so connected to what's going on that referring to the team as "we" no longer sounds toolish. Finally realizing just how much you don't want this run to end.

I can't say I expect the Bears to win the Super Bowl, or even make it. But I hope they do. Of course I do every season, but usually that's over long before this point of the year. Now, it's a hope that for once can have some actual foundation. A hope that lifts my spirits every time a Bear crosses the plane into the end zone. I wasn't even prepared for how good it would make me feel - but I hope it doesn't stop anytime soon.

Commute from Hell

Let's start by describing the commute on most days.

Generally speaking, I leave the apartment around 8:25 and get to the bus stop at about 8:30. There are four lines that service the Cornelia and Lake Shore stop at this time of the morning. In order of preference:

1. 135 (Clarendon/LaSalle Express). This is the preferable one because it gets onto the Outer Drive at Belmont and doesn't get off again until Wacker. I get off at Wacker/Stetson (second stop) and just cross the street to the Illinois Center.
2. 145 (Wilson/Michigan Express). This one gets off Outer Drive at Michigan, which means at least ten minutes for the mile down Michigan between Lake Shore and South Water.
3. 146 (Inner Drive Express). Just like the 145, except it turns off Michigan at Wacker, meaning more walking than either of the other two (albeit not by a significant amount).
4. 151 (Sheridan). Ridiculously suboptimal, as it's the only one of the four that isn't an express bus. And of course a local bus takes about 45 minutes to make this trip despite the fact that it's less than five miles.

Today I was at the bus stop around 8:20. It was also fucking cold. About five degrees on the positive side of zero, in fact. The one good thing was that there was no wind, though this is less a "good thing" than simply "not a bad thing." This was probably the first truly bitter cold day of the year - it was pretty cold on Thanksgiving, but it never got below 15 or so, and anyway almost no one goes to work on Thanksgiving - so of course the CTA picked today to roll out its brand new transportation schedule, tentatively titled "No Buses Show Up, Ever."

From my vantage point at the Cornelia/Lake Shore stop I can see north on the Inner Drive about as far as Grace, which is maybe four full blocks up. Roughly speaking, here was how today went:

8:20: Arrive at bus stop.
8:25: Hey, here comes a bus! Oh... it's a 151. Never mind.
8:27: Another one! [the bus turns onto Addison] Okay, that's a 152 (the Addison bus).
8:29: Is this a bus I can get onto?
8:30: ...no. It's another damn 152.
8:32: Okay, now this bus is definitely coming to us... but people keep getting on at Addison...
8:33: ...and it speeds right past us, totally crammed.
8:35: Here comes another 151. Great.
8:37: Here come two buses now!
8:38: Okay, well, one was a 152, but the other is at Brompton [one block north]...
8:39: ...and it fills up. Well, it was only a 146 anyway, right?
8:41: Another 152 turns off at Addison.
8:44: ANOTHER fucking 152 turns off at Addison. How many goddamn people go west on Addison to get to work?
8:45: Aaaaand it's another 151. A guy at the stop actually snaps and shouts at the driver, "What's going on with the express buses? We've been here half an hour!" The driver, of course, has no idea. I finally get fed up and get on the 151.

To recap: I stood there for 25 minutes and in that time five buses went west on Addison. That's one 152 bus every five minutes. Yet in the same 25 minute period only five buses - on four total lines! - came by our stop. Two of those didn't even stop because they had filled up (gee, I wonder why) and the other three were all from the same, local, line. Also worth noting - not a single one of the five buses that actually came by was a double bus. I mean, why would you want to send a larger-capacity bus along a busy route during AM rush? I can't think of a single fucking reason.

Here's the problem with commuting. Say work starts at nine (as it standardly does). If you leave at 8:30, it might take you 30 minutes to get to work, but if the buses don't feel like showing up or if traffic is particularly bad, it might take 45 (or, in this case if you include the 45 minutes I spent on the 151, over a goddamn hour). But if you leave at 8:00 to account for these problems, it probably takes 20 minutes tops and you're there ridiculously early. (Also, then I have to get up earlier.) The train is also usually more reliable than the bus in terms of showing up, and it takes less time to get to Lake (only 15-20 minutes), but it's nearly a ten-minute walk to the train even if you're rushing, probably a five-minute wait (again, at least) unless you get lucky, and then another ten minutes from the train station to the office. That's nearly half an hour of added time and totally negates the train's advantage, plus doing all that walking when it's five degrees out is not exactly the most awesome thing in the world. Plus the train is never not crammed to bursting, whereas most buses at least have some breathing room, if not any seats.

I guess it all probably gets worse during the winter - at least, that's my impression of it so far, as post-Thanksgiving I don't think there's been a decent commuting day yet. Obviously I haven't had to do any of this prior to now, so I don't have previous years to which I can compare this. But is it too much to ask the CTA to actually send buses to meet the need? It's like they have some mathematical formula where the number of buses released is proportional to the temperature outside - as the mercury falls, the bus flow does too. I imagine that the perfect point is at -40, where Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same and the number of buses is exactly zero. Remind me just to stay home if it ever gets that cold.

For those scoring at home

The review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is here. The condensed thoughts: it's not as good as the book - no duh - but considering how much it had to shear off, it's not bad at all. More details on that and some more praise as well, but you'll have to read it.

Jonesing for trouble

If you were thinking of buying the Jones Holiday Soda pack because you thought it seemed amusing or something... holy shit, do not do it. Alma and I did it for you and I can report that this is not something one can enter into lightly.

The road to wherever the crap

For just the third time since leaving high school, and the first without having to resort to single-elim playoffs, the team I was on won a tournament this past weekend, and in the best possible place - a 9-1, oh-so-close to undefeated campaign at TRASH Midwest Regionals to give ourselves an automatic berth into TRASHionals, wherever it ends up being. (I'd like something fairly close, but que sera sera.)

The recap of the tournament, which is not all that funny but at least tells you what happened, is here.

One of our prizes for winning was a VHS copy of Left Behind: The Movie, which had apparently been left behind (eh? eh?) in the bargain bin at Blockbuster. Alma and I actually subjected ourselves to it; it is indeed pretty terrible. I may actually write a review, or maybe I'll just get bored. Maybe one of these days I'll put up a FOGHAT recap too, but then we didn't win that one.

Tyler gets to see if he's right

The review for Stay is here.

48-7???

I'm not even going to talk about the Northwestern game. Just ugly, and that's that.

It's been a while since I've made an update here, hasn't it? Work is going along; it's kind of the busy season what with Black Friday just two weeks off, so I've been doing more, which is always good. For those of you who don't know what I do, no, I don't really work in retail, but I work for a company that has connections to retail. It's probably best not to discuss it here, but you can always ask if you're so curious.

Someone posted a thread over at Rotten Tomatoes asking what we thought the best songs of 2005 were. I came up with this shortlist of my favorites:

Ben Folds, Landed
The New Pornographers, Use It
Fountains of Wayne, Maureen
Oasis, Lyla

I also included Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends because some people were throwing in songs that had been released as singles in 2005, but since the album came out last year I guess that doesn't really count; many of the bands I listen to these days don't even do a lot of single releasing in the U.S. and I rarely find that singles end up being my favorite songs on particular albums anyway, so counting that way seems kind of silly.

I decided to look at Amazon's Editorial 100 list of the albums of 2005 to see if that would jog my memory at all and found out that Idlewild have a new album out, which somehow escaped me. I'm a big fan of their last effort, The Remote Part, and I own 100 Broken Windows though I'm not sure I've actually listened to it (or if so, not more than once). I listened through Amazon's song samples and the new one, Warnings/Promises, sounds pretty... well, promising. (Pun not intended.) People have called them the "Scottish R.E.M." - if that's the case, I feel sort of like someone who caught on at Life's Rich Pageant. You know, not early enough to feel totally awesome (that would be "Radio Free Europe," I guess), but before any potential explosion (the eventual Automatic for the People breakout).

The other album I'm looking at right now is Out of Nothing by Embrace. As with Oasis' "Lyla," I found out about this one largely due to the influence of the FIFA 2006 video game, which has a playlist coming straight from the Europop scene. Needless to say, it features about three bands I'd heard of pre-game (Oasis, Doves, Bloc Party... there might be one or two others that I'm forgetting), but the finds were "Lyla" - I'd heard of Oasis, of course, but I'll be damned if I knew they had a new album out before then - and "Ashes," by Embrace. Embrace are another British band that have some connection to Coldplay - Chris Martin did some work on some of Out of Nothing's tracks - and draw comparisons to them, but there's something about their sound that strikes out on its own. Coldplay, though I like some of their stuff, tends to strike me as kind of clinical, like the sort of music that might be created by a supercomputer programmed to make Top 40 hits but unable to parse human emotion. Not that Coldplay's stuff can't be emotional ("The Scientist" works for me), but it's the sound I'm talking about... something about the way it's done. I can't really describe it. Anyway, Embrace doesn't do that - there's a recognizable vibe, in particular to "Ashes," that just sounds more to me like there's something else behind it. This probably isn't making much sense, and I'm sure Craig is polishing his gun as we speak, but oh well.

Every once in a while I seem to go through a point where music means a lot more to me. I love movies and I love going to see them, but you can't take movies with you wherever you go, and while the best of them certainly connect to the emotions, they can't really do it in that kind of easily repeatable way that a good song can. (No matter how much I love Shawshank, I'm not going to watch it six consecutive times. But when I first listened to "Landed," I played it at least that many times in a row and maybe more.) Maybe it's the early sunsets or just the cooling temperatures, but the fall always seems to be a time when I want to see more movies and listen to more music. And right now there are still only a few movies out that I'm really that interested in, and since I'm working full-time it's harder to see them... so music takes over. Though I feel in some ways like a different person when this happens, I can't say I don't enjoy it; the prospect of discovering the next great album for myself is always a tantalizing one.

If anyone has any suggestions based on what's been mentioned in this post, I'm open, though Idlewild and Embrace are probably the next two purchases, if and when I buy anything at all.

Movies!

I jumped from five to seven on "movies seen in the theater this year" in the past two days. It's always nice when stuff actually comes out that manages to pique your interest. So what did I see? Well, I saw Good Night, and Good Luck and Elizabethtown. One of them was very good. One was very bad. You can guess which is which before reading the reviews... or you can just read them. But here's a preliminary hint: as with my review of Almost Famous, someone I know will not be thrilled with my review of a Cameron Crowe film.