UConn James

If I were a GM and the least bit interested in signing him, the contract would have a clause that he wear a 6-inch piece of duct tape over his mouth at ALL times 24/7 except during plays. Someone takes a time out, get that tape back on! I don't care what his numbers are. TO is a POS.

That actually is a nuance in how they calculate it. If it were going by the same way it's done here, the number would be pretty comparable ~6-7 percent. But it is concentrated in the outskirts.... The snobbery is mostly in the big cities. Like everywhere else, you get out into the smaller towns and the people are generally very nice.

I travel through there every few months on the way further into Maine. Usually, it's at about 3 a.m. and it's low tide and if it's summer especially, it smells something fierce. I guess you can get used to it tho. It is a nice, just-big-enough city. As far as the events in France, they'll be dealt with, but I am a little surprised things got that out of hand. The police over there really can be mean bastids. They're probably a little reluctant to go all-out on the rioters b/c of the comparisons it would draw to '68 and to avoid that muck being raised again. They've got problems with the economy and race there, and often they intersect; France isn't alone with this problem by far. My high school French teacher was there in '68, doing grad school and living in the banlieus b/c he didn't have much money.... Cops just beat people; they say a couple thousand people drowned in the Seine after being thrown in by them -- no official numbers on that. So, he went out one night b/c he just decided he had to get out of there. A cop started toward him with a billy club, he said "Suis American" (which was like saying, "Touch me and you're going to have the entire U.S. Embassy crammed up your ---.") and the guy still didn't back off very fast. But yes. Most people there, just like most people everywhere in the world, are just trying to get through the day and earn enough currency to feed and house their families. From reading the PPP board, you'd swear that everyone who lives outside of U.S. borders spends their entire life shopping for the best prices on AK-47s and practicing their MUWAHAHAHAHAHAs.

And everyone, just remember that the camera adds ten pounds to any inflatable Kate doll.

MM has 3 1/2 years left on his contract. How come Marvin Lewis can start Palmer. Nolan can start Smith. Del Rio went with Leftwich. Due respect, but the choice is not about job security. As long as Ralph is satisfied, it's okay. And Ralph isn't stupid --- he knows that it takes time to develop a starter. The coaching staff has to have the willpower to make a choice to start a young QB, and then (here's the key words, Coach) STICK WITH IT. It sounded like they were going to do this, but after four games, our coaches chose to cut and run to KH, who's shown that he can't direct the O to much more success than JP did. I don't care about a winning record as long as I can see that things are progressing whereby we'll be competitive and might be settled on the QB situation for the next several years.

In the salary-cap era, that's the thing. You can choose to build a Great defense or a Great offense but you usually won't ever have both (Pats were an abarition in that they got very lucky with things converging at the same time, and it's now correcting itself). You can also choose to go the route where you have a Good O and D, and hope that over 16 weeks, you catch the corresponding Great units on their bad days. In the SB run, the O was the primary mover while the D had a lot of stars, but you knew they were always the second banana. Under Wade and GW, the transition was made that this is a defense-first team. Wade made it work with just enough sparks on offense to have a real shot at winning; GW retooled the defense to his brand but while making a stronger unit there, the O was left with the crumbling remnants (esp. OL) that Bledsoe couldn't succeed in (tho he did try admirably). Now, we're left with a question. Do we rebuild/stockpile on O while letting the D slide back, and hope that their paths intersect at a point of high production? Do we retool the D to again make it Top 5 and make nominal improvements to the O?

They're "going to do an evaluation this week of every position"? Really? B/c TD says in every one of his "Ask the GM" thingies that they only do player evaluations at the end of the season. From the sounds of it, it's probably 60-40 that Holcomb is playing vs. KC, and if he still can't put up much better overall results, then it's curtains. With a dink-and-dunk QB, the stats don't matter --- they will usually have good comp/att numbers, and Ds will give them garbagetime-like yardage gains in order to stop them or force FGs. When the field gets shorter, defending the D'n'D gets easier b/c the DBs aren't covering nearly as much ground. What does matter is whether the QB controls the O smoothly, methodically and with results. KH hasn't done that first one very well (to some degree, Tom Clements has a lot to do with this, but by that same token, TCs' craptacular 'Who's Willis?' O when JP was in didn't help the rookie), and the last one, well... you know the answer in that Rian Lindell is the team MVP.

You know, a lot of the Pats' opponents this year have come away from their game thinking the same damn thing. There's a point where it stops being sheer happenstance and starts being a pattern. They simply bring their opponent down to their level, don't allow the score to get too much to overcome, and then Brady lights it up in the 4th and is the Second Coming of John Elway. I can't say this is a good strategy by Bellichick, but he's pulling out some wins with a bunch of 3rd and 4th stringers in his secondary and OL.

Puhonix, Those are pretty cool shots, and the $150 and $100 prices you said seem about right. If someone is interested, you can always strike a bargain, but don't sell yourself short --- takes a lot of time/money to produce these things and people sometimes have a tendency not to realize that. Agree with JC about black/white, but then there is the whole craze with that now and everyone's doing it.... I always wanted to take a photography class at the U, but never had the proper schedule (it was a 6-hour/week class for the same number of credits as a 3-hour/week class, too). In my area of study, photography was kind of a run-along. Have had a lot of times where I've wanted to have a camera with me to take a photo of something that was really beautiful (ie a startlingly red leaf on the top of a gray stone wall last week), but for the moment, I'm pound-wise and penny-poor for one of those new-fangled digital cameras. If you're interested, there was a display in the library a few years back where a woman used light-sensitive photopaper to take pictures of the inside of fruit/vegetables. I was taking a botany course at the time and they just blew my mind how they related to the stuff I was studying, and how beautiful they were. My absolute favorite is "Sugar Peas" These pictures were about 3 feet by 5 feet, so they were BIG, but I looked at the prices for them and about went . Don't know if this link is still active, but you can also try googling if it doesn't work or for more info on how she did them. I've also seen the first name as "Ann." Anne Parker --- Botanical Metamorphics

Nope. Helps him offset when his nose is that W.C. Fields-like shade of maroon. Hell, if I had as much coin as him, I'd go through life drunk too.

How many times did they cut to Bruschi's wife in the stands? I gave up long ago in hoping that announcers talk about things that matter.

I don't leave it to announcers to dictate what is a good hit; you can turn the sound off and watch the game and not get a migraine. The players are the ones who matter. This one learned from the best. Rodney Harrison reincarnate. He was trying to make a highlight reel for a WM career-ending injury.

Well, he is consistent in getting overpowered, then doing his matador impression on nearly every play. I'll give him that....

This is an excellent one for MM's "Ask the Coach" thingy. Unless they're screening out the questions with any criticism of TC. I don't remember one entry with MM being asked about his playcalling, and his tendency of forgetting to run the ball and instead going with the cute plays, especially at the goal line. I don't really like Joe Theisman, but he had one good observation last night. When RP ran the end-around, he said something to the tune of 'This is the type of play you run when you're desperate and you're out of ideas.'

It may have been the Captain Morgan, but was I seeing MW play at LT? If so, it wasn't that bad....

When MM stated why JP was being benched, it was basically that very reason. To which I furrowed my brow and asked, "So, Bob gets fired b/c Bill sucks at his job?"

http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=491500

Kelly, you took the words out of my mouth. Exactly what I've said since word came that JP was being benched. KH may fool you into thinking he's a competent starting QB with his completions/attempts statistics, but vouchsafe that he is a fraud. Did you see what happened in the first half and we got a grand total of 3 points? THREE points? This is exactly what happened that got JP pulled; what does it matter that KH is 17/24 while putting the same crap on the scoreboard? To anyone who thought that KH/The Bills dictated the game last night even with a ~40 min. ball control O, respectfully, you're wrong. Living in Patsie-land, I've seen every NE game in the past five years. I'm not going to say it's a great strategy for winning to stay close and win it with a miracle 4th Q drive --- that's for Bellichick to answer. And it shows in the Pats' record this year. But don't think that KH was doing anything the Pats didn't allow him to do. BB re-invented the dink-and-dunk with Weis. For sure, he knows how to stop it. For everyone who enjoys mediocrity, that's what you get with KH. And next year when this Swiss cheese defense is rebuilding and there will be no falling back on it, the offense will be expected to pick up the slack and we'll again have to turn to an unschooled (b/c TD&MM didn't want to pay the tuition) Losman. And we'll have two suck-ass years when only one may have been necessary.

You know BF, whenever I read one of your posts, I picture that fat kid from the commercials whimpering, "I should've worked at Capital One!"

Well, it has been established that Walt & Michael can finish the joke. It was on one of the cards that he sent Walt, and that they re-read in that ep. The answer was something like "Do you smell carrots?" Thing is, who gave Desmond this riddle to find out his replacement? And, Walt appearing and telling Shannon about the button would indicate that he knows it's what he needs to do. Maybe there's some kind of prophecy involving a child that the Others know about. I don't know about Desmond. It seems that as soon as his replacements got there and he could fob off sleep deprivation on someone else, he was G-O-N-E. Told Jack in the stadium, "See you in another life, brother" and when he saw him again it was in another kind of life. He repeated that quip in when Jack tracked him down. I think he will be back, but again, it's going to be in a different kind of life.

Yaknow, that's probably the best one I've heard this year. You'd need to get a prostetic forehead to get that many wrinkles tho. Guy looked like Wharf on Star Trek.

Awesome Easter Egg find. Have you found out about any more? I meant to check somewhere to see if anyone found some (b/c there have to be some. There just have to) but b/w this, that and the other, never got to it.

Spun, some really good questions, observations, and predictions. Basically what it all boils down to that we're waiting for to develop. And it has been a lot of development this season so far, and not much real action. I guess when someone gets whacked in two weeks, the season might start to pick up steam. Agree that Ana Lucia is going to be facing some serious, "Hey, Brooklyn, shut the !@#$ up already. B word." when they get to the other camp. Not so nice of them to be leading the Others there, don't you know, and I don't think Sayid and everyone will appreciate it very much. I also don't know if she'll mesh with Locke very well --- she's very high-strung and domineering; Locke is congenial and fairly relaxed on the island. As far as the food stockpile, I'm not sure that someone resupplied the hatch frequently. It was said that Desmond only had enough food left for about 3 months; food like that can last for years, and who's to say that it wasn't past its official expiration date, yet still edible (a lot of companies use a rather arbitrary "use-by" date)? The Others could well be split up, and there's not necessarily only the eight or so that walked past. I was conscious of that, just didn't get it down in 12-point Times New Roman.... Rose doesn't have all that much of a story. They introduced her early on last season as the woman who was sitting all alone and not drinking any water, and she 'knew' that her husband was alive even tho he was in the back section of the plane. There was also an ep where she kind of prayed with Charlie. And then she disappeared for like 15 eps, and everyone was like, "WTF happened to Rose?" Bernard is the guy we've just seen among the new group of survivors. Johanna is the one who drowned. Apparently. Even tho she was a "strong swimmer" back in the real world and swam every day. I still think there was something weird about that.... Another "security system" on that side that lets no one get out? For any nookie action, Sawyer said something about that in the season finale as he was reading through the notes people put in the bottle. A woman wrote back to her husband and kids, and he's like "Ahh... but what she doesn't say is she's been shackin' up with Steve this whole time." And, the show is on an hour later now, not earlier. Charlie knows that the Virgin Mary statues have heroin in them. Someone mentioned in passing that it was a drug plane. When they passed by, Charlie saw one that was broken open and heroin bags on the ground. He took an unsmashed statue. Something will come up about this. Especially when Locke sees it; I also think it will lead him to use Charlie as his next "sacrifice," as the plane = heroin = Charlie, in Locke's whole "The Island showed it to me" schtick. I think this is the longest Lost post I've had in quite a while. Thanks.

And when we're playing Pittsburgh, our line can't handle three guys. Hmmm. Maybe we've gone about it in the wrong way.... Let's sign Belladonna to the OL! She could probably "handle" the whole opposing D. All at the same time.

In the "Ask the Coach" one, I'd like for MM to take one about Tom Clements' cutesy play-calling, which IIRC, he hasn't specifically done. I want to know about the man-love TC has for Damion Shelton near the goal line, and just how many times it needs to be shown that DS can't do the job. That and Mark IV's question, which yet stands --- "Coach, why do you abhor the run?"