HEAVY METAL SUNDAY!!!!!!

Dream Theater is an interesting blend of progressive rock and metal, in the tradition of Queensrÿche.

Today we have The Dark Eternal Night filmed in the studio. Pretty neat stuff.

OK, starting headbanging NOW!

Dare To Be Stupid

Follow these rules, and the Lombardi trophy will be yours!

Scott Ostler is a football sage.

Keys to victory?

Got 'em right here. We have four football coaches in the Bay Area facing extreme football challenges this season, and two of the coaches are brand new to their teams.

For every coach before the season opener, the toughest task is distilling all the teaching, all the preparation down to a few pithy cliches they can impart to their players. So the following list is a public service. (I sent advance copies to Jeff Tedford and Jim Harbaugh.)

"Your Keys to Victory"

1. Take care of the football. (Store that sucker in a safe. If you lose the football, your offense can really bog down.)

2. Put points on the scoreboard early. (Open with big, daring plays. If they don't work, slip some cash to the scoreboard operator.)

3. Avoid costly penalties. (Really work on the snap count. And never declare the end zone a "home office" on your income tax.)

4. Establish the running game. (If that fails, establish the passing game. Plan C: Warm up bus.)

5. Take the crowd out of the game. (Unless you're home, in which case try to keep the crowd in the game at least until halftime, to goose beer sales.)

6. Dominate the clock. (Long drives tire the defense. Why long drives don't also tire the offense, I have no idea. Who do I look like, Isaac Newton?)

7. Pressure the quarterback. (Preferably before he throws or hands the football to a teammate.)

8. Convert third-down opportunities. (If you convert too many first- and second-down opportunities, you'll get a rep for not being an effective third-down team.)

9. On defense, bend but don't break. (One word: yoga.)

10. Take what the defense gives you. (Unless it's a communicable disease.)

11. Play physical football. (Pronounced "fizzkul.")

12. Make plays. (Lombardian, not Shakespearean.)

13. Execute! (Gesundheit!)

14. Focus. (The exact meaning of this one is fuzzy.)

I'm compost!

( Ack. Thud. So, where am I? )

Hey gang, Mad-Libs!

Over in stupid_free, a butt-hurt loser has demanded we paste and copy an apology letter. A better idea has been put forward. Mad-lib it!

I need the following:

1. name
2. adjective
3. past tense verb
4. plural epithet
5. verb
6. adjective
7. verb
8. verb
9. noun
10. noun
11. noun
12. noun
13. noun
14. adjective
15. type of fruit
16. animal sound effect
17. verb
18. plural noun
19. another fruit
20. smarmy adverb
21. name

Go wild folks. I'll post a link to the thread when I've got some good ones.

Smarmy adverb,

name on stupid_free

OK, I'm a wimp

The Natural has one of the cheesiest, most predictable, Hollywood, endings in the history of film. It uses every cliche, every camera trick, every sound trick.

It is pure Hollywood schmaltz.

And I tear up every time.

Second best baseball movie ever made.

For 25 penguin points, guess my favorite baseball movie of all time.

It was a very busy war.

I just caught the M*A*S*H episode "The Moon Is Not Blue". This episode concerns Hawkeye, BJ, and KLlinger trying to get a copy of The Moon is Blue, a racy film banned in Boston.

Here's the fun part. The Moon is Blue was released on 8 July, 1953.

The war ended on 27 July, 1953.

So, the film has to be banned in Boston, make its way to Korea, sit in the office for a few days while Klinger deals, and then make it's way to the 4077th. All this has to happen before the events of Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.

M*A*S*H often tripped over real world events. The episode A War for all Seasons was wrapped around the year 1951 , with Major Winchester betting heavily against the Giants coming back. Russ Hodges' famous call is played as we see Winchester passed out in the compound. However Winchester is present for the entire episode, which starts with a New Years Eve Party where Col. Potter plays Fathertime. Neither are being treated as newcomers. So every episode with LTC Blake and Frank Burns has to happen between October and early December of 1950! (They used the same set, showing that the MASH wasn't moving as part of the Pusan Breakout. Also, there were constant references to HQ being in Seoul or Uijeongbu, so the window for those early shows are very, very short.)

Yes, I'm too damn logical.