Sportsy Post (tm)

Some thoughts on a few current sports topics:

The Patriots can complete the first perfect regular season with by winning its final three games. This would be the first perfect season since the Dolphins did it in 1972. New England's next game is against the Jets. Conventional wisdom prior to this week was that the Pats would destroy this team, mainly because Jets coach Eric Mangini was the one who ratted them out in Cameragate.

But after learning that the forecast in Foxboro for Sunday is snowy with 40 m.p.h. winds, I'm thinking it wouldn't be that much of a shock if the Jets won. The Patriots have been less than impressive on the ground, averaging 78 ypg on the ground over the past five games. Sure, this is mainly due to the fact that Brady has been slinging the ball around like he's Brett Favre, but I'm not sure that Laurence Maroney can run the ball 30 times in a win.

The other fun aspect of the Pats' quest for perfection is that the Dolphins are winless, and have a great chance to go 0-17, setting a new NFL record for futility. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14, but 17 losses is that much more impressive. The Fins have no defense and a horrible offense. Former BYU QB John Beck started a few games for Miami and didn't achieve any better results than Trent Green or Cleo Lemon have this season.

For one team to go unbeaten and one team to go winless in the same season would be pretty historic. And for the team that went winless to be the same team that first went unbeaten is even more interesting. I think Dolphins fans may commit mass hara-kiri.

Why did the Mitchell Report cost $20 million to make when it basically says, "A bunch of MLB players took steroids and HGH. Roger Clemens is one of them. We got this information from a couple batboys and Jason Giambi."

In other news, the Jazz still stink. They lost to Portland last night, 91-99. Two more games like that and Utah will sit at .500 on the season, after starting 13-5.

Go Jazz go!

Hey Rexburg, maybe you should plow your streets

Ever since the snow finally arrived in Rexburg, the roads have been horrible. As usual. For whatever reason, the city refuses to plow its roads, and as a result, stuff like this happens.



I enjoy how you can see the tire track of the car that ran it over... and it continues straight on to the main road.

I have to wonder if city council feels the cost of running snowplows is more than the total cost of car accidents that result from not doing so.

Competence

When it comes to movies, I can be pretty picky. There are several factors I consider when deciding if a movie is good or not. If, after considering these factors, I decide a movie is good, then I'll see it again in the theater. If after this I still love the movie, I'll buy the DVD.

Currently, I have awarded seven movies "great" status by purchasing them.

This is the first in a series of posts explaining the criteria I use.

1. Competence. This is about characters doing things that make sense. When they do things that are obviously stupid, suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain. Tip: if the audience is screaming "NO! DON'T DO THAT!", the actor on screen is doing something incompetent.

Classic examples of this are: teenagers going off alone in a haunted house, bad guys explaining their entire plan to the good guys, and protagonists ignoring obvious warning signs that they are about to get shot in the back by a team member.

A common complaint about The Lord of the Rings movies is this: if Gandalf had huge eagles available to haul Frodo and Sam home from Mordor at the end of Return of the King, why not use said eagles in the first movie to drop the Ring into the lava in the first place?

Obviously because the movies wouldn't exist, but still.

Incompetence can come from both sides of the coin... though I often watch the bad guys more closely for signs of it, as it seems to be more frequently the antagonists who mess up. I prefer a movie where good triumphs over evil without evil tripping over its shoelaces.

An couple examples of bad-guy competence are found in Spiderman 2. In the scene where Doctor Octopus has kidnapped Aunt May and taken her up the building, there's a part where she sneaks up behind the villain and prepares to whack him with her umbrella.

Now, in a lesser movie, she would have successfully cracked him over the head and knocked him out, or at least distracted him enough to allow Spiderman to win the fight.

But no, Doc Ock sees it coming and easily brushes her aside with his robotic arms. No easy win for Spidey.

Awesome.

Later in the movie, Spiderman is fighting Doc Ock on a runaway train. After using the limits of his superhuman strength to stop the train from running off the tracks and killing everyone, Spidey passes out and is brought into one of the train cars by the passengers.


Dr. Octopus comes looking for our hero. In a display of courage often seen from the citizens of New York City, the train passengers form a barrier around Spiderman. "You want to get to him, you gotta go through me! " one of these brave souls declares.

Again, in a crappier film, these not-supernaturally enhanced people would defeat this supervillain and everyone would happy.

Instead, Dr. Octopus shrugs and physically crushes the passengers against the walls.

Simply fantastic.

The final example of bad-guy competence comes from The Bourne Ultimatum. On the off chance someone reading this hasn't seen the movie yet, I'll just reference the scene where Bourne is trying to save the life of the CIA-guy-turned-source in Madrid. The antagonist pulls off an excellent maneuver to trick Bourne and ultimately achieve his goal.

I guess the reason competence in film is so important to me is because I have an over-developed sense of fair play. Beating the other team in basketball is almost worthless if their best player is out with a broken arm. Winning a game of Uno because you stacked the deck before dealing is just lame. And if the good guys beat the bad guys because the bad guys screwed up multiple times, it hardly feels like a victory.

More factors to come. If you haven't seen Ultimatum yet, do it over the break. It's about to become the eighth movie I own.

Congratulations to the college grad!

No, not me... I'm talking about my wife, Mandi. She was awarded a bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance tonight. The awesome part is that she was offered a position at the school to teach voice lessons as an adjunct faculty member starting in January. This is a great opportunity... no one gets to teach at the university level with just a bachelor's. But Mandi is just that good. I'm very proud of her.

Here are two pictures of the aftermath:


This is Mandi in front of a plaque about great-great grandma Barrus.


Me and the wife. I'm not sure what's going on here, to be honest. All I know is that my Aunt Becky will make fun of me for it.

I'm starting to get tired of the anti-Mormon rhetoric

Boy, we're a good nine months away from the Republican national convention, and already I'm sick of all the anti-Mormon stuff people are spewing to attack Romney. Why do we start this process so dadgum early? I guess that's a rant for another post.

A blog named Pastors 4 Huckabee.com has raised a lot of hackles in the LDS community after posting an entry titled "7 Questions Christians Must Ask Before Voting For A Mormon."

Ignoring the fact that the author, Sherwood Haisty, Jr. (a fantastic name, by the way), capitalized every word in the title, including "a," this is a ridiculous piece.

Right off the bat, he gets to the point:

#1 Is Mormonism a false cult that decieves people and leads many to hell?

Answer yes!

Well there you go. Can't get much more clearer than that. This guy thinks we are liars and followers of a false religion. Though I suppose he thinks President Hinckley is the leader of a false religion.

Even if this were true, why does it affect Romney's ability to be president?

Haisty makes six more points, some of which are harmless, like "Mormons proselyte!"

But his final point really got me fired up.

#7 Do I believe that voting for a Mormon who prays to a false god and a conterfit Christ, would have any access through prayer to the true God, and do I think prayer matters?

I do not believe that a Mormon praying to his god for help or wisdom has any hope for an answer to his prayer.


This is flat-out offensive. To say that God refuses to listen to the prayer of someone truly seeking His will, just because he doesn't believe in the Trinity, or believes Jesus and Satan are brothers, is mind-numbingly bigoted.

I'm using this as an example of the kind of things people hear about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all the time. It's kind of discouraging, to be honest. I know missionaries in southern states deal with this kind of thing all the time, and I can't imagine how difficult it must be to overcome.

I hope the benefits of Romney's campaign will outweigh the negatives. I hope more people see that LDS members aren't crazy polygamists with horns. I hope they pay attention to how we live our lives and care less about what their pastor says about us.

I also hope that the average American (well, those that vote, anyway) will be able to rise above the venom and decide who to vote for based on more important things, like the candidate's character, past experience and stands on important issues. If that means Billy Bob decides to vote for Huckabee, that's great.

But letting religion influence your vote is wrong.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure God doesn't hear the prayers of people who can't spell.

The Jazz are not doing so well

After losing to Phoenix Wednesday night, the Jazz have extended their losing streak to five games. Since I posted about how great they were playing after dominating the Lakers, they are 1-5.


Sure, three of those losses were to Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix, all on the road, but losing to Sacramento and Portland is not that impressive.

A poster on Cougarboard.com made an interesting point a couple of days ago. His contention is that, yet again, the Jazz are good, but not great.

Every year they look like a carbon copy of the year before. If they'd just get that one additional player. How many times have Jazz fans said that to themselves?

I couldn't agree more. The Stockton and Malone teams needed help at the small forward and center position (Ostertag notwithstanding). Last year the Jazz needed a shooting guard. This year they need a defensive presence under the rim and a third scorer (seeing as to how Okur has decided to take the season off and is scoring 12 ppg while shooting 41% from the field).

Very frustrating. They have a shot to beat the Trailblazers in Portland tonight. Hopefully that will give them the confidence they need to get back on track.

FREEEEEDOOOMMM!!

I'm finally completely finished with Fall Semester 2007.

And what a semester it was. Trying to work 40 hours a week, take 15 credits of classes, work for the student newspaper and start freelancing for the Idaho Falls paper makes for a hectic few months.

I'm feeling great (even though I still have those 40 hours of work on the schedule) but seem to be suffering from PTSD. There's a part of my brain that kicks me every few hours to remind me to check if I have stuff due soon.

For now, I don't. But that annoying kick is still coming strong. It's keeping me on edge and somewhat stressed for no reason.

I wonder if there are meds for this.