25 most recent entries:
Picture this (Nov 23 2008 05:13 GMT)
Oklahoma beats Texas Tech - Already happened Texas beats Texas A&M (11/28) - Not a given, but it's in Austin this year Auburn beats Alabama (11/29) - The longest of long shots, but it's a rivalry game, so all bets are off Oklahoma beats Oklahoma State (11/29) - Sooners are on a roll Alabama beats Florida in the SEC championship (12/06) - Stranger things have happened Texas, somehow voted ahead of OU in the BCS, beats Mizzou in the Big 12 championship (12/06) With an Alabama loss against AU, an 11-2 Florida, and a USC with a horrible strength of schedule, Texas and Oklahoma could play for the national championship. Should all this bear out, I'll be able to take Miami off of the list of cities I've never been in a fight in.
Rhymes with "pyorrhea" (Nov 19 2008 23:09 GMT)
I made my first trip to the Galleria in about a year last week. It'll probably be my last trip for at least that long. It actually wasn't that bad, even though I noticed the Christmas rush seems to have begun a few weeks early. I had to drive the West Loop last night to make a screening of Twilight last night (I'm still working on the maximally hilarious way to incorporate "sucking" into my review). From 290 to 59S took 25 minutes.
Cold play (Nov 19 2008 06:34 GMT)
Thanksgiving brings with it family togetherness, boring football, and the return of Film Threat's Frigid 50. Our answer to the ubiquitous power lists put forth by other movie sites has been running since 2000, and details "the least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown." It's also an opportunity for cheap shots galore, as should be apparent from the get-go. I think it's funny the amount of shit we get for dumping on millionaires. I contributed a...
Unfortunate word choice (Nov 17 2008 20:52 GMT)
From an e-mail sent by an immediate family member who shall remain nameless: NEIL DIAMOND IS GOD! I don't care if he is 67, he's still got it. Two hours without a break, never missed a beat, had the audience hanging from the rafters in the AT&T Center. I'll be he did.
Giving Solace (Nov 15 2008 14:05 GMT)
I didn't review Quantum of Solace for Film Threat, so I'll post some [non-spoilery] thoughts here. QoS is the 22nd official movie in the James Bond series ("official" meaning "not including Never Say Never Again, the 1967 Casino Royale parody, or either of those TV movies from the 60s), and is a slightly above average entry. Despite having a more "Bond-ian" feel than its predecessor, the entire film is little more than an epilogue to Casino Royale, picking up right where CR left off, and the memory of Vesper Lynd hangs over everything that takes place like a ghost with poorly applied eye shadow. As I mentioned earlier, Quantum of Solace reinstates some of the classic 007 trademarks; the maybe naked dancing girls in the opening titles are back (the Jack White/Alicia Keys song is a complete misfire, however), there's a new evil organization with a new evil plot that's almost - but not quite - as ludicrous as anything Hugo Drax came up with and director Marc Forster and his quartet of screenwriters also throw in a nice shout-out to Goldfinger.
The white man's burden (Nov 13 2008 13:02 GMT)
Think the U.S. military is having a tough time snagging new recruits? They've got nothing on the KKK: Cynthia Lynch, 43, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was fatally shot Sunday during an initiation ceremony in the woods of Louisiana, the St.
Ain't no party like an AIG party (Nov 11 2008 15:37 GMT)
'Cause an AIG party don't stop: Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week. Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement. "AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property," KNXV reported.
Balls...Hair Balls (Nov 10 2008 15:29 GMT)
Over on that other blog I'm currently ruining, we're commemorating the impending release of Quantum of Solace by doing a bunch of 007-related Top Five lists, so check Hair Balls throughout the week. First up: The Top Five Bond Girl Names. "Octopussy" didn't make the list.
Tech is legit (Nov 09 2008 14:16 GMT)
Even though they beat UT last week, I wasn't fully prepared to anoint Texas Tech this year's Big 12 South champs. The Horns had a lot of chances to win that game, and but for a few key drops, fortunes could easily have been reversed. But after Tech's 56-20 shellacking of Oklahoma State, it's obvious they're the real deal. They haven't beaten anybody significant away from home yet (OU is next week), but they look pretty much unstoppable. Assuming they take out the Sooners (and Baylor), they should easily win the Big 12 and play in the title game.
For Your Review - Oct 24 - Nove 7, 2008 (Nov 08 2008 15:48 GMT)
I return once again to inform your movie choices several days/weeks after they've already come out: High School Musical 3: Senior Year **1/2 - Presenting your remale lead as a chaste scholar loses some of its punch when most of the free world has already seen her naked. Changeling **** - Melodramatic, yes, and it lapses into Law and Order: 1928 at the end, but Jolie gives a powerful performance.
Hello Balls - 11/6/2008 (Nov 06 2008 19:29 GMT)
Now that the election's over, I think y'all have earned another serving of Hair Balls. Or at least the few entries I manage to bang out for them every couple of weeks. What History Tells Us: Five Black Presidents (11/6/2008) Five Types of Horror Movies That Suck (10/31/2008) Five Scariest Movie Moments You Probably Haven't Seen (10/31/2008) The Five Worst Basketball Movies of All Time (10/29/2008) Five Movie Presidents Worse Than W. (10/21/2008) Ten Possible Reasons for the Cowboys Missing the Playoffs (10/15/2008) Older entries after the jump.
Thank god that's over (Nov 05 2008 04:19 GMT)
Now I can watch The Shield in peace. Seriously, that was a classy concession speech by John McCain. I applaud him for that. I don't applaud the fundamentalist war-mongers he sucked up to throughout this campaign however. Each and every one of those Hank Williams Jr.
Empty threats (Nov 04 2008 05:18 GMT)
It's time to get our Alec Baldwin on and make ill-advised assertions about what we're planning to do if the election doesn't go our way. Use the following format: I'm going to _________________ because ___________________________ . For example, I'm going to smart smoking (again) because there won't be any Medicare to keep me alive in my 80s. Or:
She blinded me with stupid (Nov 03 2008 05:09 GMT)
Less than a day to go. I seriously doubt there are any "undecideds" reading APCB, mostly because I'm not convinced anyone who hasn't made their mind up yet at this point can read. But just in case, please take a moment to read this column by Christopher Hitchens and consider who you might be electing to the second most powerful office in the land: In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov.
You're doing it wrong (Oct 31 2008 18:54 GMT)
And by "it," I mean "practicing Christianity:" Plunging world stock markets have produced reactions from bewilderment to terror among traders, but one group believes the financial crisis requires an altogether different response -- prayer. On the anniversary of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, a cross-denominational 100-strong group of Christians united in City Temple Church in London's financial district on Wednesday to pray for an end to market instability and ask God that economies should not enter a 1930s-style Great Depression. Carrying a banner depicting a huge lion -- symbolising the biblical Lion of Judah, or Jesus -- with one paw on a bull and other on a bear, the group then headed to the London Stock Exchange, epicentre of the UK's quaking financial system. Awesome.
"Quimby: If you were running for mayor, he'd vote for you." (Oct 02 2008 06:36 GMT)
I see you there, stocking the bar and licking your chops in anticipation of tonight's VP debate/bloodbath. You've watched those YouTube snippets of Sarah Palin unable to answer Katie Couric's softball questions (and probably those Miss Alaska talent show clips as well) and are positively salivating at the way Joe Biden is going to "pwn" her ass. Not a chance. For starters, the McCain camp has been level-setting for weeks, "leaking" alleged rumblings about her lack of preparedness and predicting disaster Thursday night. Expectations are so low for Palin that as long as she doesn't show up drunk, it'll be declared a victory.
"And when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand." (Oct 01 2008 22:27 GMT)
Greetings from Insensitivity, TX: What are the odds privatizing Social Security comes up in the debates?
"Nobody can eat fifty eggs." (Sep 30 2008 06:02 GMT)
DSL isn't hooked up at our apartment yet, so I'm only three days late in commenting - via cell phone - on Paul Newman's death: Newman attained stardom in the 1950s and never lost the movie-star aura, appearing in such classic films as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Exodus," "The Hustler," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting" and "The Verdict." He finally won an Oscar in 1986 -- on his eighth try -- for "The Color of Money," a sequel to "The Hustler." He later received two more Oscar nominations. Among his other awards was the Motion Picture Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
In Valhalla there is no beer (Sep 29 2008 14:12 GMT)
Via Hair Balls, which I am poised to make my triumphant return to Real Soon Now, comes this disturbing tidbit from Rice's Thresher: Valhalla, Rice's graduate student pub, is closed indefinitely because of noncompliance with the dry campus policy that took effect during Hurricane Ike. Rice University Police Department Sergeant Carla Barnette said the pub violated alcohol restrictions that applied to the entire campus, which includes all graduate student institutions. Valhalla manager David Fortunato said he could not comment on the matter, but that the official story was that the pub was closed for renovation. The no-alcohol mandate began last Friday in preparation for Hurricane Ike and ended at noon Monday.
So that's where all the talent went (Sep 26 2008 23:29 GMT)
CD Baby really makes you feel good about yourself: Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!
Angry Beavers (Sep 26 2008 06:12 GMT)
Little did I know, as I fled the house apartment last night to hang out with Sir Not Appearing On This Blog (and to avoid the 2-hour Grey's Anatomy premiere) that I'd be witness to one of the most satisfying college football upsets of all time: It had been 41 years since Oregon State knocked off a No. 1 team. Freshman Jacquizz Rodgers helped the Beavers pull off another stunner -- and Southern California was the victim again. Rodgers ran for 186 yards and two touchdowns, and Oregon State built a 21-point first-half lead before capitalizing on a late turnover and upsetting the Trojans 27-21 on Thursday night.
Et tu, Jorge? (Sep 24 2008 23:10 GMT)
As if the events of the preceding weeks weren't enough, the one possible bright spot in this shitty month was making it to the championship game in my fantasy baseball league this last Sunday. Riding a powerhouse lineup consisting of (among others) Josh Hamilton, Chase Utley, Jose Reyes, and Brandon Webb, I had cruised to a 16-8 record and was set to take my place in the fantasy firmament against a dude I'd already beaten twice during the season. Unfortunately, not even bravura performances by Kevin Kouzmanoff and Brad Lidge (yes, that Brad Lidge) good stave off my opponent. I blame Jon Lester and Edison Volquez - who admirably shit the bed in their respective starts - and myself, who neglected to start Jorge Cantu at 1B ahead of Aubrey Huff. Cantu had 74 points, Huff had 18.
The continuing saga (Sep 21 2008 06:15 GMT)
As The Wife said when perusing my mother's list of TiVo recording, "Awesome; she likes the same crappy TV shows I do." In many ways, we're lucky to have been able to spend the last week of Ike exile up in Bryan where there's ample power, fuel, and satellite TV. On the other hand, I got to watch the season finale of The Closer. Twice.
Gig 'em (Sep 20 2008 20:59 GMT)
Being a Longhorn alum, I'm more or less sworn never to cheer for Texas A&M unless they play someone I hate even more (Oklahoma, and even then, it depends on who's a bigger threat in the conference). I suppose I'd pull for the Aggies if they ever *snerk* made it to the BCS title game, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Like, way ahead of ourselves. However, I think that right now I have no problem rooting for them today as they play the fucking Hurricanes. No sir, no problem at all.
And now, an interlude (Sep 20 2008 05:14 GMT)
Fuck Kid Rock. In the mostly internet-free days since hurricane Ike used my house as a condom, I've been listening to a lot more radio. And in addition to the realization that the state of Florida is single-handedly keeping the classic rock industry alive, I've decided that Kid Rock is just about the worst human being on the planet. I dared to hope he'd disappear after that unfortunate period in our nation's history several years ago, when legions of proto-mulletheads did the lame, early-21st century equivalent of the mosh to his soulless thud-core. That, for a number of reasons (a romance with Pam Anderson, the dunderheadedness of the American population) didn't happen.
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