The Patriots are Mortal!

Total, utter ix-nay on that “Snoozer Bowl” prediction. WHAT a game. For just one minute, my Eli hatred goes out the window — that was a superb defensive outing for the Giants and a downright gutsy, dare I say Patriot-ic final drive for their offense. TD pass to Plaxico? Ecstasy. The earlier, crucial Manning-to-Tyree pass? Simply legendary.

And finally, the discussion for once will be centered around how well the Pats’ opponents won by executing their whole game, not how the Pats’ few key plays in a game kept them on “the road to destiny” (often in spite of themselves).

Big-Ups Movie: Half-Nelson

Just watched Half Nelson. Great movie.

To tell you the truth, the very premise of this movie involving a relationship between a teacher and his middle-school student struck me as a recipe for creepiness, but it turned out to be an utterly appropriate and highly believable one. I’ve gotta give the writers credit for being able to pull off the delicate balance without weirding anyone out.

The story begins with a young inner-city school history teacher and girls’ basketball coach named Dan Dunne, played by Ryan Gosling, who is a crack addict. He has almost nothing going for him — on top of his addiction, his love life is a mess and he’s being scolded by the principal for not following the prescribed school curriculum. The only things that keep him going appear to be his bright passion for teaching history to his kids (as he acknowledges) and his less laudable dependency on drugs.

Bush Lied! & Other Sad News …

This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but it appears Bush lied about Iraq. OK, more specifically, he and his cabal of schemers made 935 false statements about Iraq over a period of two years preceding the war, according to a study by two nonprofit journalism organizations. Well, we can sit back and take this as the latest in a series of after-the-fact revelations about the mistakes made by our top officials going into the war, but am I the only one wondering why there hasn’t been any serious discussion in Washington of how this whole affair appears more and more to reek of criminality? Scandal even? Much more so than possible perjury about a past President’s sexual relationship?

Say It Ain’t So!

Wow, three posts in one day — this is more productive than I’ve been in over a month! Anyhoo … word has come down from on high (that is, espn.com) — our Golden boy DeSean is officially gonna try out his luck in the NFL. No surprise here, despite the suggestion he threw out after the Armed Forces Bowl that a QB change might tempt him to stay. Of course, this would have made very little sense for him to actually do, since he’s already considered a likely first-round pick and is, as far as I know, not an idiot.

But still, a sad day for Bear Territory as our most charismatic and recognizable face departs us and we’re left to dream of what could have been. Thanks for the memories DeSean. In the meantime, I hope we’ll have a receiving corps to complement Riley’s passing game. Oh please Tedford, let it be Riley.

The Small-Mac Unveiled

And the race is back on in Sub-Notebook World. Steve Jobs unveiled a beauty that maxes out at less than 2 cm thick and 3 lb in weight … once again demonstrating that in one fell swoop, he is capable of both topping himself in product-launch style points — Who else would unveil the Next Cool Thing by using a manila envelope? — and resurrecting the inferiority complexes of technophiles everywhere, whose 2.75-cm, 5-lb “classic” MacBooks now feel like glorified paperweights (myself included).

Specs include an 80 GB hard drive with the option of a 64 GB solid-state drive upgrade, 13.3″ widescreen with LED backlighting, anodized aluminum casing, backlit keyboard, ambient light sensor, and multi-touch trackpad a la iPhone. It’s also supposed to turn on instantly upon opening, eliminating any boot time. Altogether priced at $1,799 starting. A beautiful machine, surely, though the Intel Core 2 Duo chip is a 1.6 GHz, upgradeable to a 1.8 GHz — kind of a step down from the 2.2 to 2.6’s available on the previous MBs and MB Pros.