Hail to the Redskins

Last night capped off my best football week ever. Even without the huge fantasy win (BTW, I ended up in second place this week for points, not first...one guy had Tiki Barber and Duce McAllister come up big last night) last night's Redskins game was probably the most satisfying one I've seen in at least 10 years. In fact, it's really the only satisfying Redskins game I can remember watching, save for their Super Bowel win in '91. Sure, they've had some solid wins in the last several years, but this was special. The Cowboys have pulled off miracles against us time and time again, and for us to do it to them, at their house, on the night they honor their favorite players (Aikman, Smith, and Irving) was something I was starting to think could never happen. Here's hoping they can keep the momentum going, even through a bye week, and finally give Washington fans something to be excited about.

FF Week 2 Report: Ownage

“As a child, Vin Diesel could be found staring absently across a large gorge. When asked what he was doing, he said he was going to burn the bridge down. Well I'll be a flyswatter's Aunt Sally if he didn't sit there for 14 years waiting for that bridge to be built, and when it finally was he torched it and was gone in the blink of an eye.”

That’s right; Vin knows how to be patient.  Despite a terrible opening performance in Week 1, The (Vin) Diesels dominated the competition in Week 2, defeating The Homestarmy and scoring enough points to beat any other team in the league as well.  And there’s more to come – the point totals are incomplete as of this writing, pending the results from tonight’s match up between the Redskins and the Cowboys.

So what was the difference?  Well, I attribute the win to a couple of minor coaching decisions, and the awakening of a few key players this week.  First, the coaching decisions.  The Chicago Bears defense out-scored the Pats defense last week, and their match up against the Lions seemed like a good one to exploit.  I was right, in a big way.  6 points allowed, 2 sacks, 5 interceptions, 1 blocked kick, 1 touchdown, and a partridge in a pear tree all adds up to 31 fantasy points for the week.  Only Donovan McNabb produced better results this week.  My other good decision was the acquisition of Willie Parker of the Steelers from Free Agency – he scored me 13 points this week.

Vick and Muhammad each scored me about 11 points, and Shaun Alexander came out of his Week 1 doldrums to rack up 16 points for yours truly.  Thus far, my only starters who didn’t score in the double digits were Vanderjagt with 5, and Boldin, who had enough yards for just shy of 8 points, but never saw the end zone.  The big question for tonight is:  Will Portis and Cooley give me the additional 3 points I need to break 100 for the week?  I’m thinking yes.

Looking ahead to next week, I’m up against the Dark Knight Detectives, who also have a 1-1 record, and are struggling with Daunte Culpepper as their QB.  Vick left his game early with a hamstring injury, so that’s my big question mark for the week.  I’m not sure where I’ll go if he can’t play, as Jake the Snake Plummer isn’t performing all that well.  For now though, I bask in the glory of victory.

I hate Jerry Jones

Watching football today, I saw Verizon’s commercial for their new V-Cast service a few times.  It features Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, bragging about his owners perks (including his Texas stadium-shaped hot tub, which as I heard someone wisely point out, is basically shaped like a toilet seat) and his Verizon cell phone with V-Cast. Here’s my question:  What is Verizon smoking?  Verizon (originally Bell Atlantic) serves the Atlantic coast with its service.  All of the football teams in the NFC East, save the Cowboys, are on the Atlantic Coast.  Any fan of an NFC East team that isn’t the Cowboys, HATES the Cowboys, with extreme passion.  Given all this info, does it really make sense for Verizon to be running commercials featuring the owner of the hated Cowboys acting like a stuck-up jerk?

Listen to Mae

Even if you don’t know me all that well, you probably still know how much I love good music.  For me, ‘good’ and ‘cool/loud guitar parts’ usually go hand in hand.  My favorite band of the moment is a group called Mae.  They’re a Christian band from Norfolk, VA (not too far from me…), and have plenty of really great (and loud) guitar parts.  They’re one of the growing number of Christian groups that doesn’t make a big deal of their religion, instead letting it come through their lyrics in subtle ways, making them more attractive to the mainstream music community.  They’ve got pretty strong ‘emo’ tendencies, but there’s plenty of rock in their albums to go around.  Check out their site to listen to some samples – my personal favorites are “Embers and Envelopes” and “All Deliberate Speed” off of their first CD, Destination: Beautiful, and “Painless” and “Anything” off of their more recent offering, The Everglow.  (As usual with my music tendencies, these are some of Mae’s more rocking tracks)

If you like what you hear, check out This Day and Age, who have a pretty similar sound, though they aren’t Christian.  And if you REALLY like what you hear, and you live near me, I’m hoping to see them at the Norva in Norfolk on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

One more new show...

So, I realized last night that there was one new show that I forgot to mention in my previous post.

Over There on FX
As it follows the story of a squad of Army regulars in Iraq, I can’t ever decide if this show is trying to be political or not.  I tend to err on the side of thinking that the show is really just trying to portray things as they are in Iraq, and not to make a political point one way or the other.  I think the show is unique in that it deals with a war that we are still totally involved with, and that makes it all the more real and interesting.  The characters tend to be a little clichéd, but every once in awhile the actors are able to shine through the writing.  The story tends to be fairly disconnected, and the only continuing plot arcs focus on squad members’ families back home, and one squad member who lost a leg in the first episode and got sent home.  All of this being said, there’s something about the show that makes me want to keep watching, and so I do.  It could just be the amount of action they manage to pack into most shows, or something else, but for now, I’m hooked.  Viewership recommendation:  Give it a shot, even if you don’t know why you’re doing it.

FF Week 1 Report

It was a bad week for The (Vin) Diesels. My first touchdown didn’t come until the Monday night game, and none of my players scored in the double-digits. I lost by about 20 points to my competition, and had the lowest score overall in my league.

On the plus side, I dropped Mike Anderson in favor of Willie Parker after his amazing performance for the Steelers, and Anderson’s injury in the first quarter. Hopefully Parker can replicate that success against the lackluster Texans. I also dropped my backup TE in favor of Alex Smith, who had a good game for the Buccaneers.

Week 2 puts me up against the dreaded Homestarmy: commanded by my brother, led by Tom Brady, and the second-highest scoring team in the league (by a little over a point). Here’s hoping for a quick turnaround! Remember: “Vin Diesel has no bone marrow. Instead, the material is a compound of granite, fiberglass and Rock 'n' Roll.”

Rock on Vin, rock on.

New Show Reviews

Hooray for the beginning of fall, and the return of good television! I watched the season premiere of House last night, which was pretty good (best part: House imitating the Scooby Doo “ruh roh” when Cutty started laying into him for bringing a death row convict to the hospital) and Lost is starting next week, which is sure to be awesome. As with any new season, there are also a bunch of new shows the networks are trying to push on you and, thanks to TiVo, I’ve been checking some of them out as well. Here are some of my thoughts, followed by my recommendations for viewership.

Rome on HBO
I wouldn’t actually pay for HBO, but, through some mistake the cable company made, I get it for free. I’m not telling them this because my reception is so terrible that I feel I deserve something in return. So, I’ve been able to check out their new series in all its primal glory. The plot follows Julius Caesar’s rise to power in Rome, through the eyes of several different players. I find both the characters and the story interesting, but the writers’ use of graphic sex scenes (at least two per episode, it seems) really ruins the show for me. None of these scenes really need to be shown in as much detail as they are, and so they really detract from the integrity of the show by making it seem more like an adult movie and less like a TV drama. Viewership recommendation: Save the HBO money for something more useful, such as violin lessons.

Bones on FOX
The opening shot of Bones was of a plane landing with the US Capitol as a background with the caption “Dulles International Airport: Washington, DC.” This is wrong. Dulles is the most misrepresented airport on the face of the earth. For some reason, writers never want to use Regan National Airport in their scripts, even though it is actually in DC, while Dulles is several miles away in northern VA. Most shows or movies that reference Dulles actually show a totally different airport (I’ve heard you’re not actually allowed to film anything at Dulles because it’s owned by the government or something) but this show actually had the audacity to show a shot of a plane landing at Regan and call it Dulles! There was plenty more wrong with this show (bad acting, writing, editing…pretty much everything) but the opening shot alone was enough for me to know I wasn’t going to like it. Viewership recommendation: Unless you enjoy hearing the line “Don’t call me Bones!” over and over again, definitely a pass.

Prison Break on FOX
I was skeptical when I saw that they were making a TV series based around escaping from a prison. After all, it seems like they’d have to either prolong it to the point where you never actually believed they would make it out, or make it a one-season show and get it over with all at once. The first two hours of the show convinced me otherwise, however. There’s enough story here to keep the show going even after the characters break out (though I guess they’d have to change the name of the show). I’m really into the characters, except for the female lawyer, who seems a little clichéd and whose whiny line delivery is beginning to annoy me. The concept of a tough but smart engineer for the main character is really cool, as is his forethought in planning so much out before getting himself locked up. I can’t wait to see where the writers take this, and to me, that’s the mark of a good drama. Viewership recommendation: Start watching, and start watching soon, or I'll shiv you!

As always, a big thanks goes out to TiVo for making all of this television viewing possible. If you don’t have it, they’ve got a deal going where you get a box for only $50 with a yearly service commitment! Viewership recommendation: Join the Tivolution!

Fantasy Football

So this year I finally decided to join the millions of football fans who create their own fantasy football teams.  I joined a league with some college friends who have been doing this for at least a couple seasons, and I had no clue what was going on.  Fortunately there are still some web sites out there that don’t charge you for fantasy football info, so I studied up a bit before the draft, which took place earlier this afternoon.

Most of the strategies I saw online recommended building your team around some good running backs, so that was my plan.  Our league is set up to give extra points for rushing yards, so I figured a mobile quarterback would be a good way to pick up some bonus points.  Past that, I really didn’t know all that much, so I put my trust in Fox Sports’ rankings and went with those for most of the draft.

I picked up Shaun Alexander with my first pick for my #1 running back, which I was pretty surprised about.  Two of the first three picks were QBs (Payton Manning and Daunte Culpepper) so I ended up with what Fox considered the second best pick in the field.  To round out my backs, I got Clinton Portis and Mike Anderson.  I went with my plan for a mobile QB and selected Michael Vick over some higher-rated QBs.  Later on, I noticed Jake the Snake (Plummer) was still out there, so I grabbed him as a backup.  He could feasibly end up being my starter depending on how the season turns out, so I feel like I’ve got a couple of great choices.

I don’t actually know that much about wide-outs, so it’s no surprise that I don’t even recognize the names of most of my WRs.  Michael Clayton, Anquan Boldin, and Santana Moss make up my receiving corps.  Keeping with the Redskin’s theme, I took Chris Cooley for a TE, backed up by Jeb Putzier.  I got the Patriot’s and Bear’s defenses, and Mike Vanderjagt to kick me some field goals.

All in all I think things went pretty well for my first time out.  I feel like I’m pretty strong in RBs, and at least pretty good in everything else.  Probably my weakest area is WRs, but I don’t really even know these guys, so they could be good!  Plus I’ll be focusing more on rushing anyway.  All the teams in the league seem to be fairly well balanced, so the season should be really fun. I’ll try to keep updated on how things progress…

Oh, by the way, my team name?  The (Vin) Diesels.

Back Again

So, yet again I’ve left this space unattended for quite some time.  It’d be impossible for me to catch up on everything that’s happened in the past three months without this becoming a REALLY long post, so I’ll just say this:  Russia was awesome, then I moved to Williamsburg where I’ve been working for the last two months as the Director of Youth Ministry at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church.  Things have been going really well…everyone is really great here, and the kids who are involved are awesome.  I’ve had a great time getting to know them these past several weeks.

So, where do we go from here?  I’m hoping to once again make some good use of this space, but not just for my friends to see what I’m up to.  I’m also hoping the kids in the ministry would be interested to see what makes me tick, so I’ll be inviting them to keep track of what goes on here as well.

Our website should be launching shortly, so that will be another great way to check up on what’s going on.  I’ll post when that happens.