HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We celebrate with Universal Horror!


This one started it all. The first time you see Dr. Frankenstein, he is behind bars (a fence) and has his face between two pointed bars, which suggests the devil. Gotta love a strong opening image! James Whale broke a lot of new ground here.


This is just a great movie. Not only is it incredibly poignant on one level, but it's incredibly cool on every other level. Dr. Frankenstein doesn't want to do it again, but Dr. Praetorius makes him! The Burgermeister is obsessed! This is the one where they really established a broader (not in the bad sense) universe for these characters. This was James Whale's second and last Frankenstein movie.


You've learned that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? Meet Ygor!This is another outstanding film, and the set design and art direction are amazing. I have always had a problem with Basil Rathbone in the title role. I love him in everything else, but not here, where he is a little two emotionally overwrought. This was Boris Karloff's last turn as the monster, but he'd be back in the series!



The Wolf Man is another great flick. Meet Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) - he's tortured I tell ya! Meet his messed up dad (Claude Rains!), meet Maria Ouspenskaya as a gypsy empath! This was directed by George Waggner, and I believe he is the same guy who later worked on the Batman show. Nice training!


Here Ygor is back, coercing another Dr. Frankenstein to put his brain into the Monster's body. This time the Monster is played by Lon Chaney Jr. This one was followed by the grandaddy of all fight flicks!


Lawrence Talbot - he's tortured I tell ya! travels to Transylvania to see if Dr. Frankenstein can cure him, but the doctor is dead. Alas, the Monster is not! This is the first team up of the Universal Monsters, and as such was a crowd pleasing stroke of genius. Roy William Neil directed and seemed to really embrace the mythmaking that was going on. With the Monster and the Wolfman together at last, could Dracula be far behind?

Everybody's in the haunted hizzy! This one features John Carradine as Dracula. He has an interesting take on the role. This is sort of a travels with hunchback flick, as Karloff is back in the series, but this time playing an evil scientist posing as a travelling entertainer but really out to find the Monsters. Good stuff!


The series finale (if you don't include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). Here, Carradine is back as Drac, and a doctor is trying to cure the Monsters! He, like the flick itself, is a little too ambitious. After this the Universal Monsters as entities unto themselves were put on the shelf. Thirteen years later, Hammer would start spinning new myths around the same characters, but the Universal monsters never came back. Let's hope the ice floe that no doubt holds them in suspended animation succombs to global warming in the not too distant future.

Happy Haunting, friends!

Rangers LOSE 4-1

They made a soft team look tough. These three phonies must go.

This team doesn't play enough or hard enough to be as flat as they have looked most nights.

Rangers DOWN 4-1 after 2

I thought the next two games had a chance to be embarrassing. I was too optimistic. This is an absolutel disgrace. Lundqvist gave up two more goals this period and both time Kasparaitis stood helplessly in front of the net, screening him. Shanny scored when it was 3-0, but the Ozolinsh/Kasparaitis abomination gave it right back. The Rangers need to cut bait on these old, soft, lazy players.

Rangers DOWN 2-0 after 1

Lundqvist is not good enough this year to make up for the severe defensive deficiencies of the Rangers. The vets on the team - an not just the defenders - would rather hook than skate and the refs are calling it tonight. This is a team that needs to unload most of the d, and some of the veteran forwards. They have no energy, no jump and a coach who doesn't know where the on switch is.

Rangers Game Night

It's amazing that Jagr is leading the league in scoring and he's not 100%. Sam Rosen, who did the Giants game yesterday is calling the Rangers from LA tonight. Lundqvist will be in goal again. They better win, cause the schedule gets tougher after tonight.

Rangers Tonight

At Kings at 10:30 pm est. This is another game the Rangers should and sort of must win. The two games coming up later this week could be embarrassing.

Hammertime: Frankensteil!

Alright, the pics of today's five movies should be here now. The Frankenstein series was Hammer's most successful, and started the whole Hammer craze back in 1958. Here we'll look at the first three starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein, then the last two. One is missing from my collection: Frankenstein Created Woman. And one of the Hammer flicks, The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) sought to restart the series with Ralph Bates as Dr. Frankenstein. It's a good flick, but I'm not watching another version of the origin today.

Meanwhile, you'll notice that none of these Frankenstein Monsters look like Universal's monster. Given that Universal was the distributor of these flicks and as such a partner in them, their decision not to license the likeness must be questioned. A few years later they were willing to give it to Herman Munster, and to a large degree, Lurch.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the Universal Frankenstein Saga.

Glitches today

Today's Hammer Frankentstein Movies will be up later hopefully. In the meantime, there's been some minor Knick and Yankee news. According to the Times, the Knicks are in the process of buying out Jalen Rose. This is unquestionably a good move since he seemed to have nothing left. I wonder if they can do the same for Malik Rose, but I think he has more than one year left on his deal.

In Yankee news, Dotel, Wilson and Cairo have all filed for free agency. Dotel was a disappointment this year and I'd only want him back on a make good deal like he had last year. Wilson didn't show much in his small sample, and I think we can get younger at the UT position Cairo fills.

Giants Highlights

once again from Khandom! http://www.khanhdom.com/?page.id=1000190&targetclip=562

Coming Tomorrow and Staying Till Wednesday!

Muahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Tonight's Halloween Treats!

Three Vincent Price flicks from before the Corman/Poe period. House of Wax, from 1954 was directed by Andre DeToth. This was the one that really got him going as a star of Horror movies. It was one of the biggest hits of the 3D era. The secong two came out in 1959 and were directed by William Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Castle who was know for his gimmicks. For example when the Tingler was released he equipped several theaters with equipment that would give viewers a low voltage electrical shock when the Tingler tingled! It was called Percepto. The flicks can make you tingle without it, though, and Castle's films always looked good. Happy Haunting!

Giants Win 17-3

And Jeff Feagles is the player of the game. He made good kicks all day to help us with field position and late even got one off after a bad snap. This was a trap game, but we didn't get trapped against a season on the line Bucs team. We couldn't establish the run till our late FG drive, but we also didn't panic and starting shooting ourselves in the foot. The D played well, though coverage was the beneficiary of some drops. Late in the game Brandon Jacobs limped off after a carry, and that merits watching and concern.

You can get all the postgame scoop at Giants.com which is linked below! Way to go Giants!

Giants Lead 14-3 at the Half

Additionally, they will get the ball to start the second half. They have been successful playing field position, but they have not been able to establish the run against Tampa's combo blitzes. They need to get it established on their first drive. The D looks good and Matthias Kiwanuka got his first NFL Sack. Eli's completion % was hindered by the wind and some drops. Touchdowns were scored by Plax on a 7 yard pass from Eli, and Jacobs on a one yard tumble.

GO GIANTS!

Giants Inactives

GIANTS INACTIVES8 T.Hasselbeck QB22 S.Madison CB 41 F.Walker CB 72 O.Umenyiora DE 74 N.Goddard OL79 G.Whimper T83 S.Moss WR 91 J.Tuck DE

OUCH!

Giants Gameday!

Play Giant Football! On D, watch out for tricks and delays that the Bucs will use to try to spring Cadillac. Watch out for the end around with Galloway. Take away the run, then take advanatage of their OL which features rookies at right guard and right tackle. Go play action and don't get cure or impatient. Go Giants!

You can listen live and for free here http://wfan.com/

And you can find all game relevant material at http://giants.com/ btw, they may also have a live listening link now, so, check it out!

Giants to Look at Another Jake?

This time it's Omar Jacobs, formerly of Pittsburgh and Bowling Green, and according to this, he'll be trying out on Monday.http://www.palmbeachpost.com/dolphins/content/sports/epaper/2006/10/29/a9b_jacobs_1029.html I rally liked him as a developmental project back in April. He came out of Bowling Green a year early, but if we could stash him on the Practice Squad and bring him to camp next year, I'd be all for it. When you have a franchise QB like Eli, you can really benefit by developing QB's behind him and eventually trading them off for picks. I'm glad to know the Giants are giving him a look.

Bonus Horror For the Night We Turn the Clocks Back

Yet another Vincent Price/Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe flick from 1965. This was Corman's favorite and was an early screenplay from the man who wrote Chinatown (!) Robert Towne. Got a lot of work done today, and this is the only way to chill on a Halloween weekend.

Rangers Win 7-3!

Matt Cullen is your player of the game, though Jagr was strongly considered till his give away lead to the Coyotes' second goal. Straka also had a strong game but, Cullen was all over the ice all night making plays and making himself a pain for the Coyotes. Aaron Ward and Brendan Shanahan added the 6th and 7th goals. Rozsival was once again awful, as were Malik and Kasparaitas. Cut bait please! The Rangers record rises to a mediocre 5-5.

Rangers LEAD 5-1 After 2.

Goals by Cullen, Jagr, Straka and Prucha (or Hall). 3 more observations 1) Jagr is feeling better 2) Cullen is good 3) Hollweg can punch a little bit.

Rangers Tied 1-1 After 1

They scored quickly off of a Kaspar brain freeze to start the first. But then Straka scored via some crisp first line play and it remains tied. Three observations 1) Kaspar is an idiot who should be waived. 2) Rozsival should not be on the power play. 3) Petr Prucha always gets up. Too bad Dawes and Pock aren't flying around instead of some of the veteran scrubs.

Rest in Peace, Red!

Though you were the guiding force behind a rival team, your greatest shown to all. You understood what basketball must be, and so did all those you told. Prayers to your family, friends and fans. The greatest Celtic of all wasn't even Irish.

No Dawes Tonight

For the Rangers, and no Pock either. Just because they are playing in retirement community, doesn't mean they should play all old vets. Are we the slowest team in the NHL? Probably.

Texas Tech Still Up 3

as the 4th quarter begins.

Giants Tomorrow

Huge trap game for the Giants tomorrow agains the Bucs. The key will be maintaining their intensity and playing Giant Football. That means running with Tiki and Jake, deploying play action, and avoiding turnovers and penalties. The Bucs give up 5.1 ypc. We should be able to do a lot better than that with Tiki and Jacobs and two TE's out there. The Tampa safeties are not great, so if we can set them up, we can burn them, but it's crucial that we don't get cute. Just play Giant Football.

On D, we have to stop the run, as we always do. Watch out for the short stuff in the passing game as Gradkowski doesn't have a particularly big arm. Naturally, it would also be nice to add to our string of 6 or more sack perfomances. Gradkowski is mobile, but he's not Vick, and we should be able to bury him some.

On specials, keep up the good coverage, and let's try to get some returns for a change.

This is a trap game against a flawed opponent, but if we play Giants Football, we won't be trapped!

GO GIANTS!

Texas has closed to 31-28

Texas Tech needs to drive and get more points if they want to avoid a second half steam rolling.

Great Game Alert!

Texas Tech is up 31-21 on Texas with ten minutes to go in the 3rd. This could be another great one, and has been entertaining as hell throughout.

Rangers Tonight

At Phoenix 10 pm EST. The Coyotes have gotten off to a poor start, and the Rangers might just what they need. Patience is thin with the clown in the picture.

USC LOSES

33-31, after a great comeback, that they never would have had to make if they hadn't had 3 fumbles and a pick. This will have a pretty big effect on the polls. Terrible loss.

Yankee Pitching Prospect Philip Hughes

has a new website! http://www.philiphughes.net/

Holy Crap

USC gives up a punt return TD and now it's 30-10! C'mon, Trojans!

Great Game Alert

Oregon State is up 23-10 on USC with about 9 minutes to go in the 3rd. Now, SC should come back, but they keep fumbling. This is would be a huge upset. It's on FSN, if you're interested. C'mon Trojans!

Are You Ready For Two Days Of

Me starting Monday? Muahahahahahahahahahaha!

Keep Clicking!

This is just another test to see if the blog is publishing yet. Apparently scores and scores of people are encountering the same issue. But do keep clicking ads!

Movies Today

I don't know when these will show up, but there are some really good flicks on TCM today for those who don't love college football.

2:00pm
Haunting, The (1963) A team of psychic investigators moves into a haunted house that destroys all who live there.Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn. Dir: Robert Wise. BW-112 mins, TV-PG

4:00pm
Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951) An alien demands that Earth's leaders choose between peace and destruction.Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe. Dir: Robert Wise. BW-92 mins, TV-PG

6:00pm
King Kong (1933) A film crew discovers the "eighth wonder of the world," a giant prehistoric ape, and brings him back to New York, where he wreaks havoc.Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong. Dir: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. BW-100 mins, TV-PG

Ride The High Country (1962) Two aging gunslingers sign on to transport gold from a remote mining town.Cast: Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Mariette Hartley. Dir: Sam Peckinpah. C-94 mins, TV-PG

10:00pm
Westerner, The (1940) A drifter accused of horse stealing faces off against the notorious Judge Roy Bean.Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport. Dir: William Wyler. BW-100 mins, TV-PG

11:45pm
Scarface (1932) A murderous thug shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.Cast: Paul Muni, Karen Morley, Ann Dvorak. Dir: Howard Hawks. BW-93 mins, TV-PG

1:30am
Force of Evil (1948) A crooked lawyer tries to protect his numbers running brother from a ruthless crime boss.Cast: John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez. Dir: Abraham Polonsky. BW-78 mins, TV-14

3:00am
G-Men (1935) A mob protege joins the FBI when a friend is gunned down.Cast: James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, Margaret Lindsay. Dir: William Keighley. BW-85 mins, TV-PG

You've probably seen most of them, but Ride the High Country, an early Peckinpah, and Force of Evil must be seen at some point.

Possible Upset Alert!

Illinois leads Wisconsin 24-10 at the half!

College Game Day

Hey, lost my original write up, but
12:00 PM #11 Notre Dame at Navy CBS
12:00 PM #19 Oklahoma at #23 Missouri
3:30 PM Minnesota at #1 Ohio State
3:30 PM Georgia at #9 Florida CBS
3:30 PM #3 USC at Oregon State
7:00 PM #5 Texas at Texas Tech
7:45 PM #8 Tennessee at South Carolina

Are the ones I'll be watching. I'll be back with great game alerts. I don't expect any, but that's what's great about College Football, you just never know.

College Game Day

Okay, at 12:00 the best game ought to be Oklahoma/Missouri. Without Peterson of Ok, I like Mizzou. That said, I will be watching Notre Dame/Navy, cause I always watch Notre Dame.

Wow, I don't have a another must watch till USC/Oregon State at 3:30, though Georgia at Florida will also be good around then.

At 7:00 Texas at Texas Tech should be good for at least a half.

At 7:45 Tennessee plays at South Carolina, and that should be excellent.

I'll be back with great game alerts, if there are any!

Rest in Peace, Joe Niekro

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-obit-joeniekro&prov=ap&type=lgns

Not as famous as his brother, but an outstanding pitcher in his own right. Late in his career, while with the Yankees, he was caught on the mound with a nail file. He seemed to have a great sense of humor about that, and I always liked him. My prayers go out to his family and friends.

Knick Lose 138-121

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=261027017

There's the boxscore. This was a bad overall game, and they sure didn't do much of what I wanted them to do before the game. But there were some good signs, and since this is the last preseason game, I'll focus on them. First, Steve Francis played his ass off and seemed to spark the team by doing so. He still doesn't get the ball to Curry enough, or play good d, but he did play hard and stand up for himself.

Curry had 19 points, 9 boards, 4 assists and 1 block, and would have had more if they ran the O through him like they should. He played tougher, and that's a good sign.

Quentin Richardson played with passion and that's an element we have lacked. I think he could be a big help this year.

Craw still looks for Curry like he should.

Lee got his boards, but really needs to take a little more pride in his passing (note to whole team!).

They came back and tied it in the 3rd, and that was a good sign. They took up for each other, even if they didn't always play like a team when they had the ball or played D. There's some material here. Go Knicks!

Knicks Down 68-57 at the Half

Ugh. They didn't get the ball to Curry enough until Crawford came in, and that's when they started catching up (believe me it was much worse than this early in the second). Still, Curry should have 20 already in a game like this.

The Knicks aren't playing D and they are allowing wide open shots to a fairly slow Nets team. Richard Jefferson is going off for the Nets, partly because the guy we signed to stop guys like him - Jered Jeffries - is still out as a product of wrist surgery. That aside, the team D is terrible. The Knicks have Herb Williams and Mark Agguire on the coaching staff, yet neither of these two former low post players has been able to teach Curry and Frye how to play some D, or how to be physical without fouling.

Steve Francis is looking much better, but he's still not getting the ball to the bigs. Marbury is playing like his foot hurts and he has the team made. I'd start Crawford over one of these guys if I was Thomas. The second team guys haven't done anything sensational yet... Let's see if Zeke can motivate them at halftime.

Knicks Game Night!

Obviously, we're looking for a strong close to the preseason schedule. We want to see them get the ball to Curry and Frye, we want to see them play d, limit turnovers and move that basketball. Let's go...

BTW, if you're blacked out on MSG, like I am it's also on YES. That's the Nets feed, and it features former Garden staples Marv Albert and Mark Jackson on the call.

Testing

Let's see if we have a pic of Knicks first round pick Renaldo Balkman...

Tomorrow's College Football Schedule

12:00 PM Northwestern at #2 Michigan
12:00 PM #11 Notre Dame at Navy CBS
12:00 PM Illinois at #17 Wisconsin
12:00 PM #19 Oklahoma at #23 Missouri
12:00 PM Michigan State at Indiana
12:00 PM North Carolina State at Virginia
12:00 PM Syracuse at Cincinnati
12:00 PM Penn State at Purdue
12:03 PM Northern Illinois at Iowa
12:30 PM #7 Auburn at Mississippi
1:00 PM Buffalo at #18 Boston College
1:00 PM Vanderbilt at Duke
1:00 PM Bowling Green at Temple
2:00 PM Ball State at Miami (OH)
2:00 PM Brigham Young at Air Force
2:00 PM Colorado at Kansas
2:00 PM Ohio at Kent State
2:00 PM Army at Tulane
2:30 PM Kentucky at Mississippi State
3:07 PM Florida International at Alabama
3:30 PM Minnesota at #1 Ohio State
3:30 PM #3 USC at Oregon State
3:30 PM Georgia at #9 Florida CBS
3:30 PM #20 Nebraska at Oklahoma State
3:30 PM Miami (FL) at #21 Georgia Tech
3:30 PM #24 Wake Forest at North Carolina
3:30 PM North Texas at Troy
3:30 PM Eastern Michigan at Western Michigan
3:30 PM Arizona State at Washington
3:35 PM Iowa State at Kansas State
4:00 PM UCF at Houston
4:00 PM UNLV at Utah
4:00 PM Arkansas State at Florida Atlantic
4:00 PM New Mexico State at Nevada
4:30 PM Memphis at Marshall
5:00 PM Middle Tennessee State at Louisiana-Lafayette
5:30 PM New Mexico at Colorado State
6:00 PM Louisiana Tech at San Jose State
7:00 PM #5 Texas at Texas Tech
7:00 PM Louisiana-Monroe at #13 Arkansas
7:00 PM Portland State at #25 Oregon
7:00 PM Florida State at Maryland
7:00 PM Washington State at UCLA
7:00 PM Akron at Toledo
7:05 PM #22 Texas A&M at Baylor
7:30 PM Wyoming at TCU
7:45 PM #8 Tennessee at South Carolina
8:00 PM East Carolina at Southern Miss
8:00 PM Cal Poly at San Diego State Tickets

Tomorrow morning I'll give you the scoop on what I will be watching.

More Yanks

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20061026&content_id=1724045&vkey=news_nyy&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy

Eric Duncan is heating up in the AFL. When he's healthy, he's still a very good hitting prospect.

Zombie Night on TCM

8:00pm
White Zombie (1932) A zombie master menaces newlyweds on a Haitian plantation.Cast: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, John Harron. Dir: Victor Halperin. BW-69 mins, TV-PG

9:15pm
I Walked With A Zombie (1943) A nurse in the Caribbean resorts to voodoo to cure her patient, even though she's in love with the woman's husband.Cast: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison. Dir: Jacques Tourneur. BW-69 mins, TV-PG

10:30pm
Walking Dead, The (1936) A framed man comes back from the dead to seek revenge.Cast: Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-66 mins, TV-PG

11:45pm
Creature With the Atom Brain (1955) A gangster enlists a mad Nazi scientist to create an army of atomic zombies.Cast: Richard Denning, Angela Stevens, S. John Launer. Dir: Edward L. Cahn. BW-69 mins

1:00am
Mysterious Doctor, The (1943) Nazi agents use a headless ghost as a front.Cast: John Loder, Eleanor Parker, Bruce Lester. Dir: Ben Stoloff. BW-57 mins, TV-PG

2:00am
Night of the Living Dead (1968) A space probe unleashes microbes that turn the dead into flesh-eating zombies.Cast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman. Dir: George A. Romero. BW-96 mins, TV-MA

3:45am
Crazies, The (1973) An experimental virus turns the inhabitants of a small-town into killers.Cast: Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones. Dir: George A. Romero. C-103 mins, TV-MA

TiVO time...

College Football Tonight

8:00 PM UTEP at Tulsa. Carson Palmer's kid brother is the QB for UTEP and is a prospect, Tulsa is a growing program. Could be entertaining. Later today, I will post tomorrow's college football schedule.

Knicks Tonight!

Knicks @ Nets to close out the pre-season on MSG, 7:30 est. Go Knicks!

Kevin Long?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/sports/baseball/27base.html According to this, AAA batting coach Kevin Long will replace Don Mattingly as hitting instructor while Mattingly takes over as bench coach. Long has been with the Yanks for 3 years, and the two best hitters we've promoted over those years are Cano and Melky, and neither spent much time at AAA before promotion. Before the he was with the Royals. I don't know what he had to do with Beltran, Sweeney or Damon, but I sure feel like Rudy Jamarillo would have been a stronger move, particularly given his bond with ARod. I question whether or not Long will get max performance out of the greatest line-up ever assembled. In Cash I trust, but this seems like a bit of a gamble.

Virginia Tech Smack Clemson 24-7

Wow. This is an upset, and if I were a Clemson fan, I'd be upset with the playbook tonight. They really didn't seem to be ready after their emotional win last Saturday. Their QB couldn't get anything going once the less than creative running game wash shut down... Big win for Va Tech, who live to play another big game.

Clemson Trailing 10-7

at the half. This is a very physical game and Virginia Tech has pretty much shut down the Clemson running game. I don't know why Clemson hasn't done anything to get Spiller out on the perimeter, but this will be a big upset if Clemson doesn't right the ship.

Mattingly Takes a Seat on the Bench

http://www.amny.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spwebdonnie1027,0,7112727.story?coll=ny-sports-headlines

The Yanks go with another one of my suggestions!!!!!!!! It seems clear that Mattingly has a lot of support in the organization and I'm pretty sure he'll be the next manager. I wonder who will replace him as hitting coach. If Rudy Jaramillo is available, that should be the call.

More Yanks

The Ten Yankee pitching prospects I am most excited about.

1. Philip Hughes - This is the ultimate no brainer, outstanding fastball control, outstanding curve, nasty change and he's still working on cutters and a split. I wish every Yankee prospect would work as hard as Hughes has. We'll mee two who haven't down the list some.

2. Tyler Clippard - he's in second place because of level of development, most of the other guys have better fastballs, but TyClip's got a terrific curve and secondary stuff. His fastball isn't 95, but his command of it took a big step forward this year.

3. Dellin Betances - the first of a pair of 18 year olds who will probably move through the system together. Betances has a great fastball that projects to add velocity and a great curve, and a developing change. His command surprised everyone this year. He's apparently a hard worker, and the Yanks seem excited about his future.

4. Zach McAllister - the second 18 year old. Not as tall as Betances, but thicker with a classic power pitcher's body. Since coming to the Yanks he's added velocity and is learning a curve to add to his already impressive change. Now they're comparing him to Hughes at 18. That's great, let's hope he keeps up the good work.

5. Christian Garcia - the first of a pair who may not be working hard enough. He still has a great fastball and a great curve. His change has come along. In other words, he has completely dominant stuff, he's just not consistently dominating like Hughes has been. 2007 is a big year for him. He has front of the rotation stuff, but now it's a question of wanting it.

6. Joba Chamberlain - big power pitcher who had some arm pain and fell in the draft. He has a big time fastball, slider and developing change. He's got a big body and is a college pitcher who still projects because his delivery in college was inconsistent. The Yanks have him in Hawaii now and he's shown "some things" to be excited about.

7. Jeff Marquez - the second of the possible party boys. He added a good 4 seamer to his sinker this year, and his K's started going up. He has good, good stuff, but needs to prove he's a big time prospect in 2007.

8. Angel Reyes - slender lefty with an explosive fastball, good curve and developing change. He wants to be like Santana and Liriano. I don't think you need to be told, I am all for that.

9. George Kontos - another power arm. He was impressive when I saw him on TV his summer.

10. Mark Melancon - power reliever with a big fastball, big curve and big change. Could be the closer of the future.

Bubbling under: Kennedy, Cox, Abreu, Tim Norton, Nova, White, Horne, Robertson, Gil, and Castillo.

More Yanks

The Yanks have followed my advice;) and picked up their option on Gary Sheffield. This gives them a couple of other options, keep him, or trade him. Since I believe that they are not going to trade Alex Rodriguez, Sheff is a nice chip for them to shop. I'd assume Brian Cashman already knows just what the market is and a decision could be made by the General Managers meeting (which annually proceeds the Winter Meetings). I've gotten several e-mails asking for more prospect stuff, so later or tomorrow, I'll be looking at the Yankee minor league pitchers I am most excited about. Interestingly, it seems they will be arriving in pairs...

The First Three Vincent Price Flicks

are all from his Roger Corman/American International/Edgar Allan Poe period. The first started the craze, 1960's The Fall of the House of Usher http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=16639 this classic, based on the Edgar Allen Poe story was a huge hit, and began a strong identifiable style and subgenre. Just as Hammer had kicked off their own fright phenomenon by reviving the Universal monsters with "The Horror of Frankenstein" in 1957, AIP developed their own unique atmospheric tales of terror starting with the Fall. While they didn't have a license arrangement that would let them use Frankenstein or Dracula, they had Vincent Price, a brilliant actor who was more than ready to answer the Monster Mash.

The second flick we'll look at in our Price fest is The Pit and Pendulum, from 1961 http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=38241 . And finally we'll look at The Haunted Palace, from 1963 http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=21677 , I had a few other Price/Corman options here, The Raven, Tomb of Ligea, but I really like this one because it takes place in a New England town where a Warlock's curse has mutated everyone. Anyway, Price, the Warlock's great, great grandson comes to town to try to get the old family house going and that's when the fun starts. Check them out some time, some will definitely be on this weekend.

Due to an Abundance of Horror Flicks

I've had to move more up to the days leading up to Halloween. Today, I'll be watching three Universals, then maybe three Vincent Price's. First on the list is Dracula http://www.filmsite.org/drac.html from 1931, it was directed by Tod "Freaks" Browning. Interestingly enough, Browning is more closely associated with Freaks, than with his vastly bigger hit, Dracula. 1931 saw the birth of the Universal Horror Machine. Both Dracula and Frankenstein debuted that year and caused an understandable sensation. This original "talky" Dracula features an old less dynamic Van Helsing and an outstanding Renfield played by Dwight Frye.

Next, I will watch Dracula's Daughter (1936) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula's_Daughter which was the first of the Universal sequels, and does not feature Bela Lugosi. It is good, however. Finally, on the Universal side, I'm screening Son of Dracula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Dracula_(1943_film) This one features Lon Chaney Jr (the Wolfman!) in the title role. The casting makes it a bit of an oddity, but we're gonna be thorough with these Univeral movies. Dracula will appear again, in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula on Tuesday. I'll be back later with some info on the Vincent Price stuff.

Movies Tonight

Adam's Rib starring Tracey and Hepburn 9:15 pm est TCM.
The African Queen 12:15 am est TCM.

These are worth tivoing. Rib is directed by "women's" director George Cukor and features the star making performance by Judy Holiday. The African Queen, directed by the great John Huston, features Hepburn and Bogart against each other, then against a boatload of Germans in World War I. Hard to beat. Check em out.

College Football Tonight

If you haven't seen Clemson yet, here's your chance. Clemson vs. Virginia Tech 7:30 pm est ESPN. Clemson features an amazing 1-2 punch at tailback, super soph James Davis is a kick ass back and super frosh CJ Spiller can also be split out a la Reggie Bush. They're an exciting team, and Tech is always loaded. Clemson has 1 early season OT loss to BC and Tech is hanging on for dear life. It should be pretty entertaining. Enjoy.

30 Rock/20 Good Years

I think both shows got better again this week, which is all you can ask a show to do - other than go away or recast a lot of rolls.

Rangers Lose 4-2

Well, after three off days of line juggling and soul searching, the Rangers came out looking bad and lost 4-2 at home. The defense is horrendous and Lundqvist is giving them no margin for error so far. Rachunek and Rozsival both had hideous giveaways in the Ranger zone that led to two of the goals. A power play screw up led to the first (when Malik's incompetence drew two other Rangers to his spot and gave the Panthers all sorts of open ice to play with). The fourth goal came on a rebound that was successfully batted by a man that the Rangers were unable to slow on his way to the net. I have no faith in Renney, and no faith the Rangers can compete at all with a still not 100% Jagr, a shakey Lundqvist, and a pathetic defense. This is gonna be a long roadtrip. I only wish there was a brain somewhere at the Garden that could see the problems and pull the trigger on some fixes.

Rangers down 2-1 after 2

This is a truly sickening game, Prucha plays his ass off to give us a two man advantage and finally scores his first goal of the year, only to have Rachunek give it away in the Ranger zone for an easy score while the crowd was still cheering Prucha. What a mentally soft team. Lundqvist ain't what he was last year, and neither is Jagr so far. Jagr and Shanny have been getting stopped left and right tonight. Outside of Prucha, I was impressed by Dawes and Tyutin, who has plainly taken the next step. Aaron Ward is dangerous in the small aread he can still cover... I'll be very surprised if we win this.

Rangers down 1-0 after 1

I don't know what was softest, the goal Lundqvist gave up, our power play, or a coach who can spend the offdays having one on one meetings with most of the players yet still have a team come out flat in their own building against a team they have to be able to beat.

Malik is a disaster this year, and as soft as the goal was, it probably wouldn't have happened if Malik hadn't broken his stick and required the help of two other Rangers to try to get the puck away from one Panther. Brad Sellers was a tougher big man.

Rangers Game Night

Lundqvist between the pipes. We'll have to see what the lines and pairings are after all those heart to hearts.

So it's Election Time Out Here in Cali

and though my blog will never get political, a guy named Phil Angelides - whose action flicks I am unfamiliar with - is challenging Arnold Schwartzenegger - who action flicks I am familiar with - for the Governor's office. I don't know how that's gonna come out, but last week Angelides was flooding the airwaves with a campaign commercial that featured "Let Your Love Flow," by the Bellamy Brothers till the point where I and I must assume other Californians couldn't get it out of our heads! This week, I was braced for more of it, but it never came. Now I'm wondering what happened. Were the Bellamy's charging too much? Were they contributing too much? Were there complaints? I dunno, but the love ain't flowin' anymore.

Heroes!

While my Giants were humiliating and breaking the spirit of the entire Cowboy organization the other night, I missed Heroes. I bet a bunch of you did too, well here's a link so you can watch it online. It's an excellent way to catch up with a show that is growing by the week! http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewind/full_episodes/?show=heroes You can catch up with all of the other NBC shows we've discussed there, too. I tested the format and it's friendly. I think it was the best episode yet.

Brandon Jacobs Get Some Love

From Vic Carucci. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/9752402 he is rapidly moving up from cult hero status. Once he gets in better synch with the OL, he'll bust a few long ones.

TCM Today

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/index.jsp?startDate=10/25/2006&timezone=EST&cid=N

I'm jumping in late, due to site issues. But if you've already missed Ivanhoe! (A good swashbuckler set in the era of Robin Hood but made by Fox not Warners, where, due to rights issues, Robin himself is called Locksley and used as a sort of dramatic wild card, while Ivanhoe does the major heroing) try to see it at some point, if you're into swashbucklers. Directed by Richard Thorpe http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044760/

Starting now is The Prisoner of Zenda, another court politics, lookalikes story that's been told and retold. This is the Stewart Granger version. http://www.amazon.com/Prisoner-Zenda-Richard-Thorpe/dp/6301977807 This was also directed by Richard Thorp and was made in a period when they were remaking lots of Ronald Colman starring Stewart Granger. I'll have to check if Granger ever played Bulldog Drummond, off the top of my head I don't think he did.

Next up will be Knights of the Round Table, also directed by Richard Thorpe http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045966/ Good stuff based on the old Celtic Arthur myths. You need to know about that stuff here's a site with a bunch of links http://www.greatdreams.com/arthur.htm

Next we have Jailhouse Rock, which for my money is one of the 4 greatest Elvis Movies. The other three that I would classify with it are Loving You, King Creole and Viva Las Vegas. The next grouping of Elvis Movies would include Kid Gallahad, Clamebake and Roustabout, after that it's all taster's choice. Enjoy!

Rangers Tonight

The Rangers play the Panthers tonight at the Garden. They have to win this, because they are coming on a lethal road trip. Renney has been moving lines and defensive pairings around and having individual meetings with players since Saturday's game. It would seem to me that he is a coach under pressure, but where is that pressure coming from? Sather doesn't give a crap, and the Dolans defer to Sather on all Hockey Business. Could Renney be putting the pressure on himself? That would be impressive. Maybe Perry Pearn told him to get his head out of his ass. Hard to say, but weird doings in Westchester. Stay tuned!

Knicks Stuff

The Knicks have excersized their third year options on Frye, Lee and Nate. Further they have cut Miller, Clark, Brown and Tskita, and signed Kelvin Cato.http://www.nba.com/playerfile/kelvin_cato/index.html
Whole lotta not much.

Count Yorga: Vampire

This is how disinterested I am in this year's World Series. This flick is from 1970 and kicks off with a an intense seance that the Count is trying to host for humans who have nooooooooooo idea what he's really all about. Famous character actor Michael Murphy is actually in this as one of the human clique the Count gets involved with. It's definitely worth checking out. It's a shame that Count Yorga has never been revived.

Here's a bio of Robert Quarry, I'm not surprised to discover that he is a genius, nor would you be if you saw his work.http://www.geocities.com/agentbillh/ROBERT_QUARRY_PG_02.html

Knicks Win 113-102

It wasn't even that close, but there was extensive garbage time at the end. Mardy Collins had his first impressive showing as a Knick, and several guys were impressive. The Knicks "first" team is still not impressive on D, and does not get the ball to Frye and Curry enough. Crawford does make an effort to feed Curry when they're both out there, but too often his passes were off the mark tonight. Here's the boxscore
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=261024018

Knicks Lead Philly 61-46 at the half

As a result of good ball movement and continually finding the open man, the Knicks are out running and out gunning the `76ers. Francis is playing his best game as a Knick. Curry and Frye have not gotten the ball enough, but they also seem a little lost on D. Craw, QRich, Nate, Lee and the incredible Balkman all played with energy, intensity and a sense of fun in the first half. This team can pass when they want to, and it leads to a lot of runs. They also benefitted from fewer turnovers, and the second teamers playing D. I can't wait to see the second half!

Knicks Game Night!

For out of towners, like me, it's on NBA Channel, not MSG. NBA channel has that huge banner at the bottom that cuts off a ton of the picture. Argh! Marbury is sitting out with a sore foot. Could it be from his new sneakers?

Giants@Dallas Sets Cable TV Record!

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/football/nfl/10/24/bc.fbn.mondaynightratin.ap/index.html

I've been telling people the Giants are a ratings machine here's more proof. Now, Dallas contributed plenty to that number, but for the last two years, the Giants have generated high ratings regardless of opponent. Is it Eli? Is it Tiki? Is it Tom Coughlin? What I think it is, is that the Giants are starting to play like Giants again and the marginal fans are back on board and driving numbers up.

Long Giant Highlights From Last Night!

http://www.khanhdom.com/cms/htmlos/08184.1.22758026953610693523/1000190

Go Giants!

Another plug

http://yankees.scout.com/ has part 1 of a great, in depth, 6 part series with Yankee Minor Pitching Czar Nardi Contreras. I wish I could tell you all about it, but my membership there requires that I don't. But if you want to subscribe to a site, make it that one. You not only get all the exclusive Yankee features of Pinstripes Plus, but you also get the full run of scout sites and that covers everything you could want. So get it, so we as subscribers can talk about all the cool info!

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Before the Knicks game, I'll be revisiting this classic, which I believe features Bela Lugosi's last Universal licensed appearance as Dracula. Later he would wander through Ed Wood films in the costume and make-up, but this was his swan song as the genuine Count and he does good work here. Lon Chaney Jr. is once again tremendous as the eternally tortured Lawrence Talbot AKA The Wolfman!

This really is a perfect mixture of comedy and horror as Abbot and Costello are funny, but the monsters remain true to their Universal identities, so we are able to believe that A and C exist in the same reality as the monsters. Cool, cool stuff. This lead to a series of A and C "meet" various monsters and villains movies, but it remains the best of the bunch . I think it will be on TV this week and I'll see if I can link it for you!

Kicks Tonight

Knicks host Philly tonight at 7:30 on MSG.

The Giants Pound Dallas in Dallas! 36-22

A huge win! The Giants take hold of the NFC East, and they won't let go! They battered the Cowboys all night, and were it not for some crazy play calls in the first half, it wouldn't even have been as close as a garbage time TD made it. Eli was not at his best, going 12-26, but was the victim of a few drops, and some challenging playcalls. Still he had two TD and 1 pick.

Sadly, the Giants lost LaVar Arrington for the season when he ruptured his achilles. I wish him a full and happy recovery. He was having a break out game when he got hurt. There were other injuries to Osi, Madison and Walker, I hope those are manageable.

You can find more post game stuff at Giants.com http://giants.com/

GO GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Giants Lead 12-7 at the Half

But they should be up by more. Playcaller John Hufnagel has once again put the Giants behind the 8-ball by refusing to establish the run and play action. We got a touchdown, then a safety then a field goal. We have one three and out that was caused by a stupid deep pass call on first d0wn after. Later, we were driving and instead of running it with Jacobs on 3rd and 1, we tried another bomb. Plax lost it in a hand fight with Newman and it was picked.

Moments later, LaVar Arrington who already had a sack and a pass deflection left the game on the cart with a foot injury. From there it was more bad news as the Cowboys scored, and we lost Osi.

Chad Morton, then, let the kick off bounce and for the second time tonight left us in crummy field position. Right aftere that Tiki was clubbed in the facemask and fumbled. That was clearly a personal foul, but the refs didn't call it.

Fortunately, Sam Madison intercepted a Bledsoe pass and we ran the ball out, with some Hufnagel hiccups, to end the half.

Dallas will start with the ball, and we have to get after Bledsoe again. We finally had a dominant first quarter, but then killed ourselves in the 2nd. We need another great second half from Eli Manning to get this win. We are the better team and need to establish that!

Giant and Cowboy Inactives

GIANTS8 T.Hasselbeck QB33 J.Bell S34 D.Ward RB51 C.Emmons LB74 N.Goddard OL75 J.Seawright DT79 G.Whimper T83 S.Moss WR

COWBOYS10 S.Green WR14 M.Austin WR29 K.Davis S33 N.Jones CB71 C.Procter G77 P.McQuistan T97 J.Hatcher DE

We get Wilson back, but still no Moss.

Giants Game Night!

The Giants have a huge game against the Dallas Cowboys on MNF tonight, it's on ESPN these days. Don't miss it. The Giants should be able to beat this team, because the Cowboys have a poor offensive line and an immobile quarterback in Drew Bledsoe. The mismatch favors the Giant DL, and that's why the Giants have to watch out for all sorts of delayed draws, screens and TRICK PLAYS! I'm talking flea flickers, option passes, reverses, double reverses, fake punts, fake field goals, onside kicks where you wouldn't expect them, direct snaps to people who aren't immobile, center sneaks, etc. etc. They will also try some three step drops and hope for YAC out Owens and Glenn. The Giants need to bring pressure right up the gut to make them take deeper drops. If they play contain against those like they did against Vick last week, and attack Bledsoe up the middle, they should have great luck. Bledsoe gets emotional and makes mistakes when frustrated or battered. If the Giants can do both, they should really limit the Cowboys.

On O, it's really important that the Giants get off to a good start. The Cowboy D really stymied the Giants in both games, and Eli didn't get hot till late. We can't afford that this year with first place at stake. The Giants need to eliminate turnovers and procedural penalties. They need to establish the run and set up play action. That means they have to do what they did last week in the second half against Atlanta. That's Giant football and if they play it, they should win.

You can get pertinent Game info here: http://giants.com/

And you can listen to the game, for free, here: http://wfan.com/ just click on "live feed" once you get there!

GO GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kenny Rogers CHEATS

MLB doesn't care. Reason to be cynical about baseball #714. Last night, Fox cameras caught Detroit's sudden ace, Kenny Rogers poised to pitch, while his pitching hand was covered with pine tar. Pine tar is an extremelt sticky substance that will material effect the way the ball comes out of your hand. Anything, including pine tar, that adds or subtracts even a speck of mass to or from a baseball's surface, will necessarily change the baseball's rotation. That's just true, so anyone who you hear essentially saying, "it didn't help him," is full of crap. It helped him plenty.

Later last night, ESPN produced film from Kenny Rogers' last two post season starts, agains the Yanks and the A's and he was sporting the same pine tar. He went from eminently hittable with nothing ever noticed on his hand, to nigh on unhittable with a load of gunk on his hand. The difference is that stark, and the cheating that apparent.

Baseball is poised to announce a new pact with the Players' Union and they aren't gonna let a little cheating in the World Series get in the way of their joy. Where have you gone, Judge Landis? And isn't it a good thing that no one is watching this piece of crap series?

The Vampire Lovers!

Another Hammer featuring Ingrid Pitt. For my money, this has always been the superior film. Peter Cushing is back, playing "The General." I think we're gonna push the Yorga flicks to another day this week. I have too much stuff for the Halloween Weekend, so I'll be watching some during the week. Tomorrow, the Giants are on MNF and we'll be talking about that, but then it's back to Monster and Haunted House Movies till Halloween.

Countess Dracula

IS begun. You might recognize Ingrid Pitt from "Where Eagles Dare." If you don't you should watch it again, and keep watching it until I don't have to remind you of stuff like this anymore. She was an underrated member of the `60's era of European uber vixens. No way Elke Summer should have had a seat on Match Game before Ingrid. Just no way. I have to get my friend fatman to tell me how to post pics here. Ones are called for now.

Okay

Dracula 1972 AD still rocks, and provides an important lesson about hanging with the wrong crowd. I'm gonna take a short break, out of respect to the second to last Lee/Cushing Drac flick (they made another one 1973 called Rites of Dracula, or Satanic Rites of Dracula or Dracula and his Bride, I haven't seen it on DVD), then come right back with Countess Dracula, starring Ingrid Pitt http://www.pittofhorror.com/ !

Dracula Has Been Stopped!

And he would remain stopped, until 1972 AD. Some genius, and I do not use the word lightly in this or any context, had a notion: Dracula + Hippies will = Money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Dracula - Gothic Scenery will = savings! And Dracula in 1972+ a Descendant of Dr. Van Helsing will = genre dynamite! I don't know who this person was, but he or she has my undying praise and thanks. And now I will watch Dracula 1972 AD. It actually starts in 1872 with a hell of a fight between Drac and Van Helsing, who puts the Count down with a wooden spoke from a wagon wheel, but it takes every last beat of heart to do so! This along with "Kiss of the Vampire" has the coolest pretitles sequence.

Onto

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave! It's a shame I couldn't find Prince of Darkness today, but, though part of a series, these movies do stand alone. This one was directed by Freddie Francis and doesn't feature Peter Cushing or his Van Helsing character.

Kiss of the Vampire

was more sophisticated than the Dracula/Van Helsing series, but that doesn't mean it was better, which it wasn't! It was good though. Now, for some reason, perhaps FRIEND THEFT! I cannot find my copy of Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which features the return of Christopher Lee to the series. So, I'll take a food break then start back up with Dracula Has Risen From the Grave!

Brides was Excellent

Now it's onto Kiss of the Vampire, which features neither Dracula nor Dr. Van Helsing. Why, it's not even directed by Terence Fisher. It's directed by Don Sharp and it has a kickass pretitles sequence. This clearly takes place a few years after the first two - we know this because the male lead has a car! It's a very early one, but still a car, and it needs "petrol" and that's where the trouble starts.

A general note: these movies are short, averaging about 85 minutes each, and that's why so many can be packed in a single day.

One down!

The Horror of Dracula was once agains awesome. No spoilers, but it is the classic Harker, Lucy, Mina tale. Also, they do the gag where the toll man's gate gets broken and then re-broken just as he has fixed it, think Stripes. Brides of Dracula is cranking up, and the art on the opening titles rocks! This is not a spoiler, but as I warned you earlier, Dracula is not in this one, in fact the opening narration points out that "Dracula was dead." This is still a good one.

My Next 5 Directors

John Ford http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ford_(film_director
Preston Sturges http://www.prestonsturges.com/
Fritz Lang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Lang
Billy Wilder http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/wilder.html
Frank Capra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Capra

These are five fantastic directors. I like Ford for both his sweep and the fine detail he gave to every character in his movies. I like Sturges for his wit and sense of the absurd. I like Fritz Lang for his brillian camera sense, his development of cinematic expressionism, and his comeback in the noir era. I like Billy Wilder cause you can't not. And I like Frank Capra because he wasn't as corny as some have projected him to have been. There's dark stuff in a lot of his work, and well observed stuff in all of it. I'll try to give you 5 more some time in the next 7 days. Also, I'll cook up my 5 favorite horror directors just for Halloween.

We were down for awhile

Here's what you missed: Me being disgusted by the Rangers for three periods and an overtime until Shanny won it in a shootout. The Knicks taking the night off at the Casino. There were a number of great college games and a few that weren't, notably Georgia Tech at Clemson. GT couldn't get the ball to DJ Johnson, and Clemson could get the ball to Davis and CJ Spiller. It was a slaughter. Here's the scoreboard: http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/ncf/scoreboard

I'm looking forward to Vampire Sunday, how about you?

Washington TIES IT

With no time left on a hail mary and an extra point! OVERTIME!

What a day!

ND wins by going 80 yars in :35. Quinn pump fakes, then rolls and hits Jeff Samardzija for a TD! Cal just got a TD from Marshawn Lynch to put them up, but Washingon has the ball and some time left. Michigan has had their hands full with Iowa all day at the big house, and Alabama is leading Tennessee!

Knicks Tonight!

They're playing the Celts, again, this time at the Mohegan Sun casino in Conn. They won the other night, but missed too many free throws, let's hope they do better, remember to get the ball to Curry, and don't get in any trouble in the Casino. It was be on Fox Sports New England, that channel 620 on DirecTV.

Nebraska Loses

they fumbled the ball back to Texas after they'd converted a first down. Texas drove and kicked a field goal. 22-20 final.

UPSET ALERT

Nebraska leads Texas by 1 point with only three minutes remaining and the ball! Texas has two timouts remaining!

Rangers Tonight

7pm est at Toronto. The game is on MSG, and I'm not too excited about it. Renney has juggled the lines, and broken up his only reliable defensive pair, Tyutin and Ward, to team them with his two worst defenders Rozival and Ozolinsh. So, in effect, he has taken his most talented defender, Tyutin, and made him responsible for all of the bad things Rozsival does. Likewise, Ward goes from having a young partner he can trust, to an old partner he can't in the excursionary Ozo. This looks like another bad one, and it hasn't even started yet.

College Gamedaay!

Okay, lots of big game today. Of the noon games, I'm gonna look in on Texas/Nebraska, Louisville/Syracuse and Wisconsin/Purdue. Now, Texas, Louisville and Wisconsin shoul roll, but I could see Purdue hitting some big plays and beating Wisconsin in a sort of Big Ten version of what Arkansas did to Auburn two weeks ago.

At 2:30 I'm going to watch UCLA at Notre Dame. I always watch Notre Dame.

At 3:30, Iowa at Michigan is one of the key games. Michigan should handle the Hawkeyes, but they do have a veteran qb in Drew Tate, so it could get tight. Alabama at Tenessee, Washington at Cal and BC at Florida State, should also be good games.

Two trap games at 5: Oregon at Washington State, and Boise State at Idaho. In both games, the ranked visitor could be in for an ambush.

At 5:45, we have the biggest Rutgers game of the Sciano era. They travel to Pittsburgh and try to deal with a quality QB in Tyler Palko, and his slew of targets. This is a huge test for Rutgers as Pitt has been getting better and better as the season has progressed. Should be a great one.

Last great game of the day (on paper) starts at 7:45 when Georgia Tech visits Clemson. This should be the game of the day, and if you haven't seen GTech receiver Calvin Johnson yet, you're missing a big time NFL prospect.

One more game to look in on at 8:00, Hawaii at New Mexico State. We saw New Mexico State almost come all the way back on Boise State last week, and Hawaii is not as goo as BSU. Should be good. Both teams have good college qb's who can throw it around.

That's the preview! Enjoy!

Saturday's College Football Schedule

12:00 PM Indiana at #1 Ohio State
12:00 PM #5 Texas at #17 Nebraska
12:00 PM #6 Louisville at Syracuse
12:00 PM #21 Wisconsin at Purdue
12:00 PM Michigan State at Northwestern
12:00 PM North Carolina State at Maryland
12:00 PM Illinois at Penn State
12:30 PM Mississippi at #15 Arkansas
1:00 PM Mississippi State at Georgia
1:00 PM Miami (FL) at Duke
2:00 PM Kansas State at #24 Missouri
2:00 PM Buffalo at Ohio
2:00 PM Western Michigan at Ball State
2:30 PM Tulane at #8 Auburn
2:30 PM UCLA at #10 Notre Dame NBC
3:00 PM Southern Methodist at East Carolina
3:00 PM South Carolina at Vanderbilt
3:00 PM UNLV at Brigham Young
3:05 PM Kansas at Baylor
3:05 PM Temple at Northern Illinois
3:30 PM Iowa at #2 Michigan
3:30 PM Alabama at #7 Tennessee CBS
3:30 PM Washington at #11 California
3:30 PM #22 Boston College at Florida State
3:30 PM Texas Tech at Iowa State
3:30 PM North Dakota State at Minnesota Tickets 3:30 PM TCU at Army Tickets 4:00 PM Toledo at Eastern Michigan
4:00 PM Rice at UCF
4:00 PM Colorado State at Wyoming
5:00 PM #16 Oregon at Washington State
5:00 PM #18 Boise State at Idaho
5:45 PM #19 Rutgers at Pittsburgh
6:00 PM Miami (OH) at Akron
6:30 PM Stanford at Arizona State
7:00 PM Colorado at #20 Oklahoma
7:00 PM Marshall at UAB
7:00 PM Oregon State at Arizona
7:00 PM UTEP at Houston
7:00 PM Southern Miss at Virginia Tech
7:00 PM Utah State at Louisiana Tech
7:00 PM Middle Tennessee State at Louisiana-Monroe
7:00 PM San Jose State at Nevada
7:05 PM #23 Texas A&M at Oklahoma State
7:05 PM North Texas at Arkansas State
7:45 PM #13 Georgia Tech at #12 Clemson
8:00 PM Air Force at San Diego State
8:00 PM Hawaii at New Mexico State
8:00 PM Tulsa at Memphis
9:00 PM Fresno State at #14 LSU Tickets

Lots of great match-ups and I'll mention my favorites tomorrow morning.

Site troubles early

We lost a post about #4WVU against UConn tonight. The main point of it is that WVU is one of the best teams in the country, and though UConn is having a down year, they are in good hands with Randy Edsall locked up for a long time.

Interesting stuff on TCM!

8:00pm
Mark Of The Vampire (1935) Vampires seem to be connected to an unsolved murder.Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Bela Lugosi. Dir: Tod Browning. BW-60 mins, TV-PG

9:15pm
Return of the Vampire, The (1944) A vampire terrorizes a British family during World War II.Cast: Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort, Nina Foch. Dir: Lew Landers. BW-69 mins, TV-PG

10:30pm
Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (1932) Classic tale of a young traveler finding himself in a sinister castle.Cast: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel. Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer. BW-75 mins, TV-PG

12:00am
House Of Dark Shadows (1970) A vampire seeks a cure so he can wed the reincarnation of his lost love.Cast: Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Joan Bennett. Dir: Dan Curtis. C-97 mins, TV-14

2:00am
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) Three go-go dancers resort to murder in search of a family's hidden treasure.Cast: Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams. Dir: Russ Meyer. BW-83 mins, TV-14

3:30am
Mudhoney (1965) A drifter with a past falls for an abused small-town wife.Cast: Hal Hopper, Antoinette Christiani, John Furlong. Dir: Russ Meyer. BW-92 mins, TV-MA

Vampires then Russ Meyer flicks! Mark of the Vampyr re-unites Bela Lugosi with Todd Browning, his Dracula director.

The Russ Meyer stuff speaks for itself. Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! must be seen at some point. Enjoy!

College Football Tonight!

Friday, October 20 Time (ET) 8:00 PM
#4 West Virginia at Connecticut

Tonight we get to look at one of the best teams in the country taking on a rising team that is having a down year. How can a rising team have a down year? Well, they're basically rising because they've got fine, young coach Randy Edsall locked up for the long term, and the committment is there to get him what he needs. He's got a young team but they'll be well coached and he should be able to recruit. Big East Football has NOT taken the hit it was supposed to when Miami, BC, et al, defected for the ACC. West Virginia, Louisville, Rutgers and Pitt can all compete with anyone and the conference should just keep getting stronger with good coaches in place just about everywhere.

http://www.hawaiiwinterbaseball.com/teams/canefiresstats.htm
http://www.hawaiiwinterbaseball.com/

You should be able to follow the 5 Yankee pitchers who are part of the West Oahu Cane Fires. As you'll see Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain are dealing and K'ing dudes in the early surfing. Christian Garcia, who may have the highest ceiling of all, has a healthy K rate, but he's getting touched up. Marquez has been getting bombed in his 11.1 innings, and Melancon has been touched up, too, in less work. Remember, these are small samples, roughly ten or so innings each. It's good to see the K rates, though.

Yanks in the AFL

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=t_ibp&cid=542

This is the link to the Peoria Saguaros, that's where the Yanks have sent their kids for the Arizona fall league. Gargdner and T.J. Beam are doing well so far. Duncan's starting to hit a little better.

The Last Waltz on Flix This Month

Flix is part of the Showtime "family" of channels, and, as such doesn't have its own website. Gee, Showtime, when are the kids gonna get their own rooms? Here's the overall Showtime website http://www.sho.com/site/homepage/index.do on there, you'll find everthing Showtime has to offer, but you won't find Huff anymore, which is why I'm a little pissed at Showtime. Having said that, it's a strong group of channels. I'll be mentioning Extreme, Flix and the Movie Channel as we go forward. But now, more on The Last Waltz which was shot by a guy named Martin Scorsese on Thanksgiving Night, 1976. Oddly enough I was at Madison Square Garden that very night watching the Beach Boys on their Brian is Back tour. It is a magnificent film that rockuments The Band's last show. Not only does The Band sound great, but all of their guests from Bob Dylan, to Van Morrison, to Neil Diamond?, to Eric Clapton, to Mavis Staples to a score of others, too. This Scorsese guy likes to move his camera, which, when the movie debuted in 1978, was like nothing we'd ever seen in rock flicks before. And as a collection of talent on one stage on one night, I'm not sure we've seen anything like it since. Check it out!

You can hear some of it here http://theband.hiof.no/albums/last_waltz.html

read more about it here! There's a reason why the cinematography seemed so amazing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Waltz

College Football Tonight

7:30 PM North Carolina at Virginia
7:30 PM Bowling Green at Central Michigan
9:00 PM Utah at New Mexico

These are actually three good matchups. No ranked teams, but some on the way up and others, possibly, on the way down. Bowling Green and CMU have had interesting offenses the past few years. Enjoy!

Classic Comedies Tonight on TCM

9:15pm
Bringing Up Baby (1938) A madcap heiress upsets the staid existence of a straitlaced scientist.Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Ruggles. Dir: Howard Hawks. BW-102 mins, TV - G

12:15am
Philadelphia Story, The (1940) Tabloid reporters crash a society marriage.Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart. Dir: George Cukor. BW-112 mins, TV-G

2:15am
Woman Of The Year (1942) Opposites distract when a sophisticated political columnist falls for a sportswriter.Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter. Dir: George Stevens. BW-114 mins, TV-PG

Three significant comedies from three significant directors. I mentioned that Howard Hawks is in my top 5, and it's really for his ability to work at the very peak of any genre he tried his hand at. Here he makes what some believe to be the ultimate screwball comedy. Good stuff with lots of nice touches. See also, His Girl Friday if you get the chance.

The Philadelphia Story is one of my favorites. It's not a screwball comedy, even though it features the classic screwball mixture of newspeople, rich people and booze. Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are at their pre-war peaks and are uniformly great in this picture. It was based on a Philip Barry play that Hepburn had starred in on Broadway. Donald Ogden Stewart, notable for his shimmering dialogue, wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for his efforts. That's right, it's well written. George Cukor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cukor who's famous for many things, including getting fired from Gone With the Wind, directs. Everything works in this one.

Woman of the Year was the first teaming of Hepburn with Spencer Tracy. A classy, well articulated comedy that lead to a fine series of movies starring the two of them basically coping with each other. In this one, Hep's a world famous political commentator and Spence is a crusty sports writer, you just can't miss with that kind of arrangement. The movie was written by sportswriting scion Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin and directed by George Stevens, who also directed Gunga Din!!!!! and a lot of heavy post World War II movies. This is one of the last of his comedies and a very enjoyable movie.

Check em out!

30 Rock/20 Good Years Week 2

30 Rock got a little better this week, and somewhat strangely got a little better from the beginning to the episode to the end. I still have cast shock but I'll watch again next week.

20 Good Years is another in a long line of "witty" NBC comedies, think Cheers, think Frazier, think about when they swiped the last seasons of Taxi from ABC, I think that's where it started. Anyway, these are generally good shows, well cast, and ones that wear well in reruns. The relationship between the leads will remind us a little of Oscar and Felix and that's rarely a bad thing in the hands of skilled writers.

Shattered Glass on IFC

Shattered Glass, the 2003 movie about the rise and fall of Stephen Glass is playing on IFC this month. Give it a look, if you haven't. For a film that contains no koong fu or stylized gunplay, I think it's really good. I had been boycotting IFC since they replaced their Samurai Saturday Morning Movie series with an anime Samurai show, but the fact is they are still a valuable channel and their schedule should be checked daily. Here's where to look: http://www.ifc.com/

College Football Heads Up

Louisiana-Lafayette at Florida Atlantic is in the 3rd quarter on ESPN2 and a guy named Franz Joseph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria this guy? Just recovered a fumble for Florida Atlantic, and apparently claimed domain over the entire region... It's a tight game and entertaining enough if Baseball season is over for you like it is for me.

Rangers Shut Out at Home

By the Nashville Predators who have never shut them out before. And that includes all of those years before the lockout when the Rangers weren't good enough to make the playoffs. Right now they're good enough to score against the Predators. They wasted 3 two man advantageous, and several other power play opportunities. They were getting knocked all over the ice, and seemed to take no offense at that treatment. Lundqvist gave up some bad goals, and on at least two of them he was screened by a fellow Ranger. It was a terrible loss, you have to wonder how long the Garden faithful will make the trip if they're gonna see this kind of effort.

The Rangers are Down 3-0 After Two

This is ANOTHER gutless showing at home. The Rangers can't score at even strength, they can't score up a man, and two times tonight they couldn't score up two men. When they get hit they fall down and don't respond. This is a despicably soft team at this point in the season. They'll start the 3rd down a man because Kaspar held Kariya instead of knocking him down, which either of my sisters could do. It is humiliating to have to right about them on nights like this. And unless some things change, there will be many nights like this. The Garden crowd is finally starting the catch on to Roszival and Malik. I wonder when Ranger management will.

Rangers Down 1-0 After One

Lundqvist had a good first ten minutes or so, but then he gave up a long goal, that he clearly should have stopped. The difference between the young players like Prucha, Dawes, Hollweg and Tyutin and the old mediocrities like Roszival, Rachunek and Kasparaitis is stark and unnerving if you are looking for a plan here. It comes down to this: the young guys need more minutes, and the old guys need far fewer. One of the reasons the Sabres cleaned our clocks the other day is that Renney answered their team speed, with our team sloth. The kids need more minutes, and Pock shouldn't be sitting when mediocrities like Roszival, Rachunek and Malik are getting big minutes every night. We have two great vets on this team, Jagr and Shanahan, and the Rangers need to surround them with more youth and speend and fewere veteran slugs.

Rest in Peace, Christopher Glenn

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/22/entertainment/main1337111.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories

An excellent news caster who would just give the news, without extra comment, or faces made. He is close to the hearts of those who grew up listening to him on "In The News." Rest in peace, you were a fine example.

Rangers Gamenight

I can't believe Petr Prucha hasn't scored a goal yet, though, unlike last year, he is racking up assists on a line with Shanny. GO RANGERS! BACK TO BACK WINS PLEASE!

Rangers Tonight!

Versus Nashville, tonight at the Garden, 7pm on MSG. Let's see if we can put out two better team efforts back to back.

Vampire Sunday!

The Giants don't play till Monday this week, so I'll be enjoying Vampire Sunday. There were conflicts in the Hammer day in my Halloween Film Festival.

The conflicts were caused by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cushing
Y'see, there are two really excellent Hammer Horror series: their Frankenstein Series and their Dracula Series. They are both atmospheric and outstanding, mostly cooked up by the writer/directer team of Jimmy Sangster ( http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/ArticleJimmySangster.html )and Terrence Fisher ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Fisher ).

Each series is largely dependant on the performances of Peter Cushing. In the Frankenstein flicks, he plays the psychotically malevolent Dr. Frankenstein - which was a really interesing choice given that the Universal Dr. Frankenstein was often portrayed as a remorseful victim of his own impulse or curse, who, after Frankenstein, had to be blackmailed ( Dr. Praetorius, Ygor) into doing his thing. In the Hammer flicks, Dr. Frankenstein, has done it, loves doing it, will kill you if you try to stop him from doing it and will do it again! His penalty for tattling is severe! He's great in these movies and you have to see them.

In the Dracula Series, Cushing plays the good guy, Van Helsing, who is determined to stop Dracula even if it costs him his life. So you see my conflict: In one series, Cushing is one of my favorite bad guys, in the other, he's a classic hero.

Therefore, for my own suspension of disbelief, I have separated the two series.

Here's my Sunday Menu.
The Horror of Dracula (http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/dracula58.htm
The Brides of Dracula - which Drac's not in.( http://www.1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsh-m/bridesofdracula.htm)
The non-Dracula Kiss of the Vampire ( http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/kissvampire.htm )
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (http://www.tranquility.net/~benedict/draculapod.html)
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave - like that's unusual behavior from the Count... (http://www.mail-archive.com/thedarkgift@yahoogroups.com/msg01129.html)
Dracula A.D. 1972 ( http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/draculaad72.htm ).

It must be mentioned that Christopher Lee, and NOT Bela Lugosi, is the definitive Dracula. I will accept no guff about that.

After the pure Hammer Vampire flicks, I'll look at two Hammer/American International Pictures co-productions: Countess Dracula (http://www.allscifi.com/Topics/Info_24768.asp ) and The Vampire Lovers (http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/vampirelovers.htm ), neither flick features the Dracula or Van Helsing chatacters, but Cushing does show up as a noble general in "Lovers."

Vampire Sunday will end with the Count Yorga movies: Count Yorga Vampire (http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/yorga.htm ) and The Return of Count Yorga (http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/yorga2.htm ). These movies take place in Los Angeles and are a lot of fun.

Gather your Garlic and watch along!

Whither Tiki?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/sports/football/18giants.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=sports&adxnnlx=1161139595-hetfLtFESPNptsgykv1vWg

Tiki says he's pretty much committed to retiring at season's end. This would naturally be a huge blow to the Giants. Though second year pro Brandon Jacobs is ready for primetime, the Giants will have to spend a pick or picks in the draft in search of a complementary back.

And Giant Middle Linebacker and spiritual leader Antonio Pierce has a new website! http://www.antoniopierce58.com/

Knicks WIN to move to 3-0 in the Pre-Season

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=261017018

A few things are becoming apparent. The team is better than they were last year, and when Steve Francis doesn't have the ball, it moves. They already miss Jefferies on D, and will have to come up with something better than Jalen Rose if they want to keep up in first periods. Of the starters, Eddy Curry looked GOOD. They didn't get him the ball as much as they should, but he did a variety of good things and stayed out of foul trouble. He finished up with 19. Though Frye fouled out and made a bunch of mistakes, his points per minute were good. Stephon Marbury seems game, but he hasn't been sharp yet.

The BENCH was more impressive. The Knicks got great energy and contributions from Jamal "Crawdaddy" Crawford, Quentin "Q" Richardson, The Stupendous David Lee, The Phenomenal Renaldo Balkman and Mr. Nate Robinson. Check out the boxscore, they really contributed. Lee and Balkman are the most natural rebounders on the team, though Q isn't far behind. These guys ran the floor, passed the ball and tried hard on D. You have to like them.

Overall note, that's hard to miss: There's serious chemistry between Crawford and Curry, and for that reason above all the other obvious ones he should be starting instead of Steve Francis.

Lots of things to work on, but the arrow is pointing up.

Knicks lead 58-56 at the half

But it's been ugly at times. The Celts jumped out to a 12 point lead after one, mostly because the Knicks couldn't hit their free throws, wouldn't get the ball to Curry, and didn't play good D. They brought the energy guys in in the second and started to get the ball to Curry more. The guard tandem of Marbury/Crawford looked good there. Steve Francis and Jalen Rose look lost and that's a concern. Frye was very up and down and collected 3 pf's already. He got a lot stronger during the offseason, and he may have to get reacclimated. His automatic shots have not been going in as regularly. Crawford seems to be finding his O, but Quentin Richardson is still 0 from the 3 pt. line. Rookie Sensation Renaldo Balkman did his thing, but was the victim of a typical Wally Z. cheap shot. The back of his head slammed into the Garden floor, fortunately, his braids seemed to cushion the blow and he was able to continue. Not since the days of Anthony Mason have we had a player who could bring the ball up the court with Balkman's authority. Balkman seems to have an even better handle than Mase, though.

Young guards Telfair and Rondo looked excellent for the Celts.

Knicks Game Night

Eek! Jalen Rose is starting for Jared Jeffries. The rest of your starters: Curry, Frye, Francis, Marbury. Celts starts Telfair, Ray, Gomes, Olowokandi and Szerbiak.

Cashmoney Green Making Changes

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10172006/sports/yankees/yanks_ax_strength_coach_yankees_george_king.htm

Yankee GM Brian Cashman has been really restructuring to organization from the bottom up since he fought for and achieved greater responsibilities last offseason. Though Torre was recently saved, the major league coaching contracts are up and it will be interesting to see if there's some shuffling there. If Don Mattingly is destined to be the next Yankee Manager, it might be wise to make him bench coach this year. As last season wore on you could see Don and Torre together as often as you'd see Lee Mazzilli and Torre together. If that step is taken, the Yanks would be wise to hire Rudy Jaramillo from the Rangers to be hitting instructor or bring in recently ousted Red Sox hitting instructor Ron Jackson to work with the Yankee line-up. Ideally, they could get both, and make one of them Minor League Hitting Czar, just as Nardi Contreras is Minor League Pitching Czar.

Those are some thoughts for now.

Knicks Preseason Action Tonight!

7PM est on MSG. Yesterday word came out that Jared Jefferies, our premiere offseason signing, went down with a broken wrist. He's expected to be out 3 to 6 weeks. This clearly hurts our D. It will be interesting to see how they cover for his absence. Will Quentin Richardson start at small forward? Will the amazing Renaldo Balkman see more minutes? Will we have to play Jalen Rose? Will David Lee get minutes at small forward? And if we start Richardson, should't we also start Crawford at one of the guard spots, to make up for some of the aggregate height we are losing through this injury? Stay tuned!

More Yanks

If you're thinking about subscribing to a prospect site, sign up for this one http://yankees.scout.com/ and not baseballamerica.com. yankees.scout really focuses on the Yanks, plus, it lets you visit the other scout.com sites, so if you're interested in, say, the NFL draft, the info is there. Right now they are in the midst of a 3 part interview with Carlos Rios where they've got him evaluating a lot of the Yankees Latin American prospects. Good stuff. They seem to update daily. So that's today's tip.

Ugh

The Alex Rodriguez trade ideas from reporters and fans are driving me nuts. The Yanks should hold onto their only under 35 power hitter, extend Sheff (the trade him or keep him), find a catch price with Moose and win the bidding for Matsuzaka. It would be nice to see them start the season with a strong bench for a change

Today's Good Movies

Lady From Shanghai, TCM, 12:15pm.

From Here to Eternity, TCM, 6:00pm.

Orson Welles playing Irish! Rita Hayworth playing seductive! Orson Welles calling the shots! Monty Clift trying to put his past behind him! Frank Sinatra pushed to the brink by Ernie Borgnine! George Reeves in an Hawaiian Shirt! Good, good stuff!

Heroes/Studio 60

Okay, Heroes is moving along and of course the indestructible cheerleader intentionally killed herself at the end of this one to end the life and career of the serial rapist riding next to her. She'll be back next week. The Ali Larter character sort of split into two - one part kicked the crap out of a guy in an elevator, while the other part went to bed with a married politician who can fly but would rather get elected. Go figure him. I can only hope that the Larter character is an homage to Duo Damsel from the old Legion of Superheroes book. Duo Damsel was originally Triplicate Girl, but one of her selves died so that others might live. It was a pretty hairy issue. Anyway, back to Ali, it's also possible that she's just becomes someone else under certain stresses.

Studio 60 is doing the "thoughtful outsider comes in and gets the characters to tell us all about themselves" thing. This time the outsider is Christine Lahti and she is playing a reporter for Vanity Fair, who needs to find out all about the show all the people are working on. They used to have a shrink come in and do this on MASH. Pre-Mash, either Gilligan was keeping a Diary that ended up getting read aloud or Gomer Pyle was writing a letter back to Mayberry. Same stuff dressed differently.

Here's some stunt casting: Ed Asner as the owner of the NBS Network.

Cards blow it

No wonder the Bears ran them out of Chicago all those years ago. That was pathetic, but I think it exposed a few things about the Bears that will come in handy to the teams left of the Bears' schedule. Teams like the Giants. It's interesting that the Chicago D and specials did all the scoring for them, and Rex Grossman wasn't terribly good after he got beat up a bit. Hmmm. Interesting.

Possible Upset Alert!

Monday Night Football: Arizona leads undefeated Chicago 14-0, and have just recovered a fumble in Chicago territory. Arizona just added a field goal. Check it out!

Rangers Win 4-2!

Tough game where the refs did them no favors. Goals by Aaron Ward, Brendan Shanahan, Jason Ward (shorthanded) and Martin Straka. Lundqvist, recapturing his true form, played well enough to shut out the Devils, unfortunately his D did not. There were still a number of disconcerting lapses in the defensive end. The Rangers cannot let Gomez or anyone else just goal hang. Hit him. Meanwhile, the refs seemed to have it in for the Rangers, making a number of borderline to asinine calls against the Blueshirts. What didn't seem to bother the refs was the illegal neutral zone traps the Devils kept playing. Oh well, the good guys won to raise their record to 3-3. They play Nashville on Wednesday at 7pm. We'll look at it then.

Rangers Game Night

Well, Kasparaitis is back tonight. Usually, the first thing you want to do when you've been losing like the Rangers have is get older and slower. I'm kidding, but anyone looking for a lift from Kaspar is likely to be disappointed. He's a big hitter when he connects, but not a very good defenseman, and pairing him with Tyutin last year stunted the prospects growth. Kaspar is constitutionally irresponsible in his own end, and it meant the kid would have to cover for him. As if having Roszival play too much isn't bad enough, now we bring back a veteran defenseman who's not terribly good at defense.

Heroes and Studio 60

That's the post Rangers TV schedule tonight. "Heroes" is interesting and seems to me to owe more to M.Knight Shamalamdingdong's best flick, "Unbreakable" than it does to the X-men franchise. They need to incorporate a little more use of powers to keep things moving, though, if the little, invulnerable cheerleader character has another fatal accident this week, as she has every week so far, I'm gonna start calling her Kenny. It's good enough to stick with so far, and that's good indeed!

"Studio 60," I already talked about. The "faux" show they are all working on needs to be really funny, and so far it's not. Also, Amanda Peet should be in it more. I don't know what this would do to the arcs they have plotted, but I would sure appreciate it.

Give them a look.

Matsuzaka

http://www.matsuzaka.blogspot.com/

Here's a link to a blog that is covering the Yanks pursuit of the Japanese pitching dynamo. Obviously, the blind bidding process is tricky, and I would imagine somewhat nervewracking for the teams involved. But, Matsuzaka is the best bet out there that will only cost money and none of the Yanks top prospects. What the Yanks should resist doing is paying a boatload to a guy like Zito who will require a long term commitment to be suprisingly hittable. It's better for the Yanks to go all out for Matsuzaka and hope they can come to terms with Mike Mussina on a two year deal. That way as pitchers like Hughes, Clippard, Garcia, Chamberlain and Kennedy become ready they won't be terribly blocked, because Moose and Johnson will both be gone by the end of `08. The Yanks can use guys like Karstens, Rasner and White to make up the back end of the rotation until Hughes is ready.

The Halloween Movie Project

Readers know I have been disappointed by this Halloween's movie channel offerings. Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year. I'll start my spookfest on Sunday, October 29th (after the Giants game, which better not be scary!) There will be three different themes. I think Sunday I'll start with the Vincent Price stuff from the `50's and `60's (list to come) then move onto Hammer Horror on Monday, October 30th (list to come), I'll finish up by revisting the classic Universal Monsters (list to come) on Halloween itself. I hope some of you will be able to watch along.

Devils @ Rangers Tonight 7pm MSG

This could get ugly unless they've made significant progress since Saturday. Renney thus far plays a good coach in interviews but is not a particularly good coach when it comes to pulling the switches on the ice. The ice will, hopefully, get thinner for him if the early season losses and bad decisions continue to mount.

What's Up With Eli Manning in the First Half?

5 games into the season and Eli has yet to have a first half that measures up to his second halves. What's the fricking deal? My current belief is that he looks so good in practice that Huffnagle (who is the Giant playcaller) gets a little too excited and orders up risky shots early, instead of establishing the run right way or easing into the game with some short, high percentage passes. I think Eli gets too excited from the pregame speeches or something, and they need to calm him down before they start ordering up the deep outs.

Got a better theory? Let me hear it.

For Fun, My Current Top 5 Directors

And no, none of the directors are current. But here's where I'm at right now

Sergio Leone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Leone

Howard Hawks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hawks

Akira Kurasawa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa

Alfred Hitchcock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock

Orson Welles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles

Who's in your top 5? Later in the week, I'll post a "next 5." BTW, if you want to read some interesting stuff on directors, and how they can influence each other look into the life, writing and monographs of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bogdanovich

It seems to me that he has always tried to capture the ineffable male/female dynamic that appeared to come so easily to Howard Hawks. Anyone who says it's effable is snowing you. He made two movies after he was sort of the flavor of the early `70's called "They All Laughed" and "The Thing Called Love" where he got kind of close. He also made a great flick before he went super nova called, "Targets." A very interesting film buff.

Giant Highlights From Today!

http://www.khanhdom.com/?page.id=1000190&targetclip=509

enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic Finish Alert

#15 Boise State is only up 27-21 at New Mexico State now. Game on with lots of time left in the 3rd. Boise was up 21-0 in the first and needs to turn it back up.

Bonus College Football!

One of my favorite college teams, Boise State will be playing New Mexico State starting at 8pm on ESPN. I think this will be more interesting than watching the Raiders and Broncos on NBC. So it's out there. I don't know why there is college football on a Sunday night, but gee, thanks!

Giants March Through Atlanta

Giants come back from a 14-3 deficit to win 27-14 at Atlanta. They made a statement, and their running game and DL were dominant (save for an embarrassing play where Warrick Dunn ran for a 90 yard TD). They beat on Vick all day, but went too far when Antonio Pierce vaporized the Falcon QB with only seconds left. It's unclear if AP knew where he was, but that is not Giant football. Game ball all over the place, but it great to be able to say WELCOME BACK, JEREMY SHOCKEY! The outstanding TE returned to form with several clutch catches and two TD's on the afternoon.

http://giants.com/

Click above for Giant postgame interviews and game book.

GO GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Giants Trail 7-3 at Halftime

They'll get the ball to start the 3rd. Eli got off to a horrible start throwing two int's before he had completed two passes. Coach Hufnagel, who calls the plays had an absolutely psychotic episode when the Giants got first and goal from the 5. The Giants ended up settling for a field goal, and Atlanta moved the ball down the field and scored a touchdown while the Giant DT's were executing an aesthitcally pleasing but idiotically time consuming stunt.

These teams are alternating shooting themselves in the foot, whoever stops shooting will win. I still like the Giants.

Giant Inactives

Giants Inactives
8 T. Hasselbeck 3rd QB28 G.Wilson S34 D.Ward RB51 C.Emmons LB74 N.Goddard OL75 J.Seawright DT79 G.Whimper T83 S.Moss WR

Losing Wilson this week is tough, but Butler is back, and he's not far behind Gibril.

Radio Link for the Giants

http://www.wfan.com/

Just click listen live around 1pm est. GO GIANTS!

Giants Gameday

Giants play Atlanta today. Atlanta is a one dimensional running team. What they want to do is stop the Falcon running game and make Vick beat them with his arm. It's important for the Giant db's to stay in coverage and not pinch up when Vick is scrambling around. They can't let Lelie get behind them.

On O, the Giants can run on the Falcon D. The Falcon D is fast and the Giants can get them going the wrong way in the run game. DeAngelo Hall is an outstanding corner, but nobody else back there is outstanding and Eli should be able to do some carving.

Get a lead and stop their run. Don't wilt on the road. This is a statement the Giants have to make.

TCM Sunday

15 Sunday

8:00 AM
Fort Apache (1948)

An experienced cavalry officer tries to keep his new, by-the-books commander from triggering an Indian war. Cast: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple. Dir: John Ford. BW-125 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS

12:00 PM
Night to Remember, A (1958)

The crew and passengers of the Titanic fight to survive when the legendary ship strikes an iceberg. Cast: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Anthony Bushell. Dir: Roy Ward Baker. BW-123 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format


2:15 PM
Hell is for Heroes (1962)

A small U.S. squadron holds off the Nazis in a desperate last stand. Cast: Steve McQueen, Bobby Darin, James Coburn. Dir: Don Siegel. BW-90 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format


4:00 PM
Fail Safe (1964)

A failure in the U.S. defense system threatens to start World War III. Cast: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman. Dir: Sidney Lumet. BW-112 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format


6:00 PM
Place in the Sun, A (1951)

An ambitious young man wins an heiress's heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend's pregnancy. Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters. Dir: George Stevens. BW-122 mins, TV-PG, CC


8:15 PM
Touch Of Evil (1958)

A narcotics agent risks his wife's life to investigate a crooked cop. Cast: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh. Dir: Orson Welles. BW-95 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format


10:15 PM
Living It Up (1954)

A newspaper woman turns a man who thinks he's dying into a national hero. Cast: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Janet Leigh. Dir: Norman Taurog. C-95 mins, TV-G


12:00 AM
Penalty, The (1920)

In this silent film, a criminal mastermind plots revenge against the doctor who amputated his legs. Cast: Lon Chaney, Ethel Grey Terry, Charles Clary. Dir: Wallace Worsley. BW-70 mins, TV-PG


2:00 AM
Testament des Dr. Mabuse, Das (1933)

A criminal mastermind uses hypnosis to rule the rackets after death. Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Gustav Diessl. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-122 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format


4:15 AM
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1932)

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of a scientist who unleashes the beast within. Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart. Dir: Rouben Mamoulian. BW-98 mins

Huge movie day Sunday, especially for those with TIVO. Fort Apache is one of John Ford's and Henry Fonda's best. It's the first of Ford's Cavalry trilogy and just another in his long, enduring series of classic Westerns.

The other must see, to me, is A Touch of Evil. Welles' last great work before lapsing into his decline as a professional commercial spokesman and late night guest. The opening shot of the US/Mexican border crossing is one of the greatest in all of cinema. Yeah, I said cinema. It doesn't end there. Good stuff throughout, including Charlton Heston as Mexican Narc. Not sure the casting holds up or why he was cast to begin with, other than Orson's assumption that, like him, any actor could play anything and people would believe.

Here's where your Tivo can come in handy if you like german expressionism (a movement that was in itself cool and led to many cool developments in movie history). Anyway, Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse series is just amazing, as are most flicks concerning criminal masterminds, but Lang was the genuine article as a director and his stuff is always worth checking out. Enjoy!

Boxing Alert

HBO is showing Sakio Bika vs. English sensation Joe Calzaghe. This is for the super middleweight title, and promises to be a pretty good scrap. It's going down in Manchester,England as Calzaghe really only fights there. Good stuff. I'll try to keep you abreast of all the good fights here.

AAAAAH, just found out this one is not live. Calzaghe won in 12.

More Fantastic Finishes Looming?

USC wins 28-21 to move to 6-0. Michigan beats PSU to do likewise. QB Henne for Michigan is one of the most improved players in the county. USC's QB John David Booty had a pair of scary turnovers in the second half. He's gonna have to do better than that if he wants to stay undefeated. Chauncey Washington is stepping up at tailback for USC. More a Lendal White type then a Reggie Bush model (really only one of those).

Auburn wins. There will be some controversy over a Leak fumble that might have been an incomplete pass. It was huge, but the story tonight was the Auburn D in the second half. 27-17 after Auburn runs in a fumble to end it.

Michigan is handling PSU. USC and ASU still tied, but USC is starting to move it.

Auburn up 21-17 with :31 seconds left. Florida has no timeouts left.

ASU has now intercepted Booty and returned it for a game tying touchdown. 21-21...

Yikes, ASU is coming back on USC. Fumble by John David Booty set up the seoond ASU score. 21-14 USC, 3rd quarter.

Florida at Auburn is a 1 point game mid 3rd. Michigan is up 10-3 @ PSU at halftime. USC is handling ASU, up 21-7 at the half.

Florida @ Auburn heading into the 4th quarter and Auburn still has a 1 point lead. This is an intense game.

Rangers Still in the Tank

They were horrible tonight and that's all that can really be said. They are playing the worst d of the goalie mask era, and they won't stand up for themselves or their teammates. Deeply sickening.


On the other hand, the Knicks won their second pre-season game in Philly. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore?gid=2006101420

The great news here is the outstanding play of Curry (25/10 in 25 minutes) and Crawford. Everyone is contributing so far (except Jalen Rose) and that's a far cry from last year.

Ranger Disgust

Rangers went up 2-1 in the first on two power play goals, then quickly gave up two more goals to be down 3-2 after one. They can't play this kind of hockey and win no matter which of their goalies is giving up the hail of pucks.

The Buffalo crowd, which has been digging out from an immense snowfall is rocking and rolling. The Rangers have to come away with two points. Their schedule only gets harder.

GO RANGERS, though I will be ping ponging with the college football games...

Fox has fired Veteran Color Man Steve Lyons

for making a racially insensitive comment during the ALCS...http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2006/news/story?id=2625500

I wonder what they would have done to him had anyone been watching the ALCS...

Rangers Game Night

Rangers play at Buffalo at 7pm est. Kevin Weekes will start in goal. They're giving Lundqvist the night off. Let's hope this works out, the Rangers have historically had trouble with the Sabres.

Fantastic Finish Alert!

Georgia is up 1 point on Vanderbilt with 3:28 and Vandy driving!

Indiana is up 3 on heavily favored Iowa with 6:28 left. You can follow the action on ESPN2. This would be a huge loss for Iowa. Indy won this one!

Cuse at WVU is interesting

It's tied 7-7 in the first, but the Cuse strategy seems to be to go deep. They've already hit one bomb for a score. This could get interesting as WVU is primarily known for their rushig attack. Cuse just hit another deep pass for a first down.

Joba Chamberlain

is rocking the Hawaiian Winter League. I'd give you a link, but the West Oahu site over at MiLB.com is not up right now. Anyway, the Yanks "sandwich pick" from the 2006 draft is power pitching his way to lots of K's and grounders. We like that here. Ian Kennedy is also more than holding his own. These two college pitchers could move quickly starting next spring.

My Favorite Brunette

A classic Bob Hope vehicle, from when he was funny and not contemtuous is on TCM tonight at 10:15. Pokes fun at noir (btw, noir rocks, more on that later). Good stuff.

Here's a bunch of pretentious guys talking about it. http://www.archive.org/details/my_favorite_brunette

College Game Day

ESPN'S College Game Day is one of the best shows on TV. No joke. It, of course features the familiar team of Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit at a different college each week, really discussing all the day's games and showing the kind of chemistry sit-coms want their characters to have. Excellent stuff.

Okay, what should we watch?

Of the 12:00 games, take a look at Syracuse/WVU. WVU carries a #5 ranking into a game that won't give them much trouble, but they are loaded, and worth watching. At 12:30 Iowa State at Oklahoma could be entertaining.

At 2:00, Northern Illinois vs Western Michigan features two programs with some NFL talent who are trying to step up. Should be fun.

Likewise, at 3:00 Tulsa at East Carolina should be good, more great athletes.

3:30 offers Cincinatti/Louisville and Louisville is a team you should know. At the same time UCLA visits Oregon. This could be really good if UCLA brings its A game.

At 5:00 Cal at Washington State should be good, and you have to see Cal's DeSean Jackson.

At 7:45, we have the day's big match-up Florida @ Auburn. Auburn is desperate to stay in the National Title picture, but Arkansas beat them last week by making big plays, and Florida will likely do the same. Auburn's not built for coming back. At 8:00 we have the other big game: Michigan @ Penn State. Last year's game ended in controversy, and this year's game is a classic trap. Michigan is loaded, but PSU's QB has a big time arm, and NFL caliber receivers. Michigan is missing stud WR Mario Manningham, though the cupboard's not bare after him. Michigan should win easily, but they could also be upset here.

Have fun!

Going to Pieces

The Starz Slasher Documentary is just starting now out here. So far so good. It was storming out here, earlier, but, alas, it has stopped. John Carpenter looks like you would have guessed Nick Nolte would look now if he hadn't gotten into HGH, hyperbaric chambers and expansive cosmetic surgery... In other words JC looks authentic.

We Just Don't See Much of This Anymore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSnowOgaFEY

stick with it.

Knicks Win

The Knicks won a fairly meaningless preseason game tonight. There was some meaning in the fact that this was their first game under new coach Isiah Thomas, and they seemed to play hard for him. The Nets were without Jason Kidd and Vince Carter, so beating them is fairly meaningless. Young players Marcus Williams and Matt Walsh impressed for the Nets.

Jared Jeffries and Renaldo Balkman were impressive in their Knick debuts. Frye and Lee look like they spent the offseason in the gym, which they reportedly did. The whole team showed unselfishness and that can only mean good things in hoops.

A nice beginning to the Thomas coaching era. They play in Philly tomorrow, but I don't believe it's televised. I'll give you a heads up if I find it!

behold, the box score!

http://www.nba.com/games/20061013/NJNNYK/boxscore.html

Halftime

Knicks up 11 and showing some life. Everybody's rebounding and sharing the ball. They got some turnovers by swarming to the ball, and got fouled a lot attacking the rim. Nice. They need to hit their free throws, but the energy level is superb. Lee, Balkman and Jeffries are doing all the little things that lead to big things for your team and nothing for the other team. Refreshing!

Knicks

They're shooting a good percentage through a quarter, but got into foul trouble quickly. The guys who needed to get bigger like Frye and Crawford look bigger. The guys who needed to get smaller like Curry and Richardson seem to have done so to one degree or another.

Knicks Game Night

Here we go, pre-game starting on MSG. The Knicks are a complete mystery, we'll get some idea of what's going on tonight. Not much of one, but if we see a pick and roll (something Brown avoided like the plague last year), we can hope they're on the right track. That's one of those no-brainers that we were "too smart" to work last year...

Holy Crap

ESPNU will be covering some early Midnight Madness practices tonight! I hope you get ESPNU. It's probably the best ESPN channel if you are interested in hard core analysis.

Next week, I'll try to come up with a channel guide for the blog. There are some surprisingly good stops on the dial these days, as well as some that could use some work...

College Gameday

Okay, tomorrow and every Saturday during College Football Season is gonna be College Football Centric around here. I actually think College football and college basketball both trump their Major League counterparts for pure entertainment value. You'll find I have a lot of "favorite" college teams but only one in each pro sport. This is probably because I went to a Division III school and don't have any more than a fan connection to the Division One teams. Plus, it's fun to watch a coach go in and put together a program. Good stuff. Here's tomorrow's sched.

Plan your day around it!

Saturday, October 14 Time (ET)
12:00 PM Syracuse at #5 West Virginia
#15 Iowa at Indiana
#21 Nebraska at Kansas State
12:00 PM Minnesota at #25 Wisconsin
12:00 PM Army at Connecticut
12:00 PM Purdue at Northwestern
12:00 PM Wake Forest at North Carolina State
12:00 PM South Florida at North Carolina
12:30 PM Vanderbilt at #16 Georgia
12:30 PM Iowa State at #23 Oklahoma
1:00 PM Florida State at Duke
1:00 PM Miami (OH) at Buffalo
1:00 PM Ball State at Central Michigan
1:30 PM #24 Rutgers at Navy
2:00 PM Southeast Missouri State at #17 Arkansas
2:00 PM Arkansas State at Memphis
2:00 PM Oklahoma State at Kansas
2:00 PM Northern Illinois at Western Michigan
2:30 PM Jacksonville State at Mississippi State
3:00 PM Tulsa at East Carolina
3:00 PM Marshall at Southern Methodist
3:00 PM Utah at Wyoming
3:30 PM #1 Ohio State at Michigan State
3:30 PM Cincinnati at #7 Louisville
3:30 PM UCLA at #18 Oregon
3:30 PM #19 Missouri at Texas A&M
3:30 PM Texas Tech at Colorado
3:30 PM Maryland at Virginia
3:30 PM Oregon State at Washington
3:34 PM Mississippi at Alabama CBS
4:00 PM Eastern Michigan at Bowling Green
4:00 PM Toledo at Kent State
4:00 PM Louisiana-Monroe at Troy
5:00 PM #10 California at Washington State
5:00 PM Arizona at Stanford
5:00 PM Hawaii at Fresno State
6:00 PM Utah State at San Jose State
6:00 PM UAB at Rice CSTV
7:00 PM Baylor at #6 Texas
7:00 PM Ohio at Illinois
7:00 PM Idaho at Louisiana Tech
7:00 PM Florida International at Miami (FL)
7:00 PM Houston at Southern Miss
7:45 PM #2 Florida at #11 Auburn
8:00 PM Arizona State at #3 USC
8:00 PM #4 Michigan at Penn State
8:00 PM Kentucky at #14 LSU
9:00 PM Tulane at UTEP
10:00 PM New Mexico at UNLV

We'll talk about the big match-ups and who you should at least take a look at in the morning.

More Horror

The Starz 24 hours of Terror, starts tonight at 9pm. Anyway, the Slasher flick documentary leads off. Here's where you can find out about Starz.

http://www.starz.com/appmanager/seg/s

Over on TCM they're showing the Uninvited followed by The Haunting followed by Poltergeist. The Haunting has to be seen at least once. I'm sure you've seen the other 2. And here's where you can check TCM flicks.

http://www.tcm.com/index.jsp

College Football Tonight

Friday, October 13 Time (ET) Tickets 8:00 PM
Pittsburgh at UCF

This one could actually be pretty entertaining between programs that are trying to establish or re-establish themselves. Pitt has some wr's who are gonna play on Sundays, though they are not always getting them involved. One of them is the son of the oft-injured Odessa Turner, a Giant 4th rounder from 1987.

My Friend the Fatman

http://fatmanstake.blogspot.com/

You can follow his rantings and ravings above.

Koong Fu Alert

Fearless Fighters, a 1973 wuxia (swordplay) flick. It's a classy independant from Taiwan, like Master of the Flying Guillotine which has been playing on cable for the past two years.

Anyway, it's playing on Extreme this month, dubbed, letterbox and it's well worth your 1:23.

Here's more on it.

http://www.kungfucinema.com/reviews/fearlessfighters_20060127.htm

More Yanks

The Yanks have declined Mike Mussina's 17M option for next year. They're interested in keeping him but not at that price. This is obviously the right move, and hopefully they can get something sane worked out with Moose. Not only did he have a good regular season (though he did need time off his arm) but he's also good with young pitchers - he showed Phil Hughes a new curveball grip last spring and now he's PHIL HUGHES - and the Yanks will be bringing up several of them over the next year or two.

Let's see what happens here. Obviously starting pitching is the big issue for the Yanks this offseason and up to the trade deadline (remember, you have all that time to get a playoff starter). It's important that the Yanks don't do anything stupid - and they haven't since Cashman's power was solidified. They need to be especially patient and picky. They have starters, including Hughes and Tyler Clippard, who will be ready over the next year or so. Blocking them would not be cost effective...

Knicks

Knicks first pres-season game is on tonight. That's right, on a team full of questions (most of them with baaaaaaaaad answers) Isiah Thomas will be making his Knicks coaching debut on Friday the 13th...

More later, I'm hitting the gym.

BC up 20-3 with little time left

I have to swich over to My Name is Earl, but I'm gonna go ahead and call it for BC. Both of these teams are gonna be looking at second tier bowl births during bowl season. We'll talk a lot about bowl season as it approaches and why second tier bowls can be very, very good.

Here's a goofy link to some Redskin whining about his Madden rating.

http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=3159&SectionID=2&LayoutType=1

The above may be a joke. You decide!

Enjoy.

More Yanks

Got some nice feedback on the Prospect stuff earlier. Here's a great free site you can hit if you dig the Spanks. http://www.yankeesprospects.com/default.htm

Also, they have a pretty thorough links section.

Here's another from some friends.

http://yankeefan.blogspot.com/

Gather round the hot stove, but let's protect the farm. I don't want to hear any crazy trade ideas. Not from you, not from the press and especially not out of the Yankee organization. Cashman has done a great job protecting the current crop of top prospects and he can't change plans over the outcome of a best of 5.

Rangers Lose at home 6-5

This is wholly unacceptable. Lundqvist, the second year goalie was horrible tonight, and he had lots of help. Guys were constantly out of place, didn't seem to have any discipline, and didn't even begin resemble a team. The Rangers are now 2-2 overal but 1-2 at home. This is no way to start a season. They play at Buffalo, Saturday night at 7pm est. They have had two and almost three terrible showings in a row. Something needs to get straightened out and soon.

BC is up 7-3 in the 3rd against Va Tech. VaTech came in ranked #22 but if they lose they will surely fall out of the top 25. BC just picked a pass, too.

Rangers 3-3 after 2. This is no way to be. We're (and you'll find all my teams are a "we" to me) giving up too many goals. One positive from the second period was that Jagr scored. He'd gone three games without a goal, and that's unusual by the standard he established last season in YEAR ONE OF THE NEW NHL.

BC and VaTech are scoreless in the second quarter.

Sportsnight

The Rangers still look flat, and I'm concerned that Jagr is not full strength after his offseason surgeries. Their power play has been crap so far when with Jagr and Shanahan it shouldn't be... They're 0-3 on the power play tonight. Sad, really.

BC and Va Tech have ESPN'S A team of Fowler and Herbstreit calling the game. That's the best booth in college football and really add rather than distract from the viewing experience. They can make a strong case for why college football is the best game around, and that's why they make watching it fun.

Being on the West Coast, I'm gonna be able to watch the Rangers, and the BC came, and be done in time to catch the My Name is Earl/The Office quinella at 8 o'clock PST. Good stuff.

Friday the 13th

Apparently Starz channel is showing 24 hours of horror tomorrow for Friday the 13th, including an original documentary about the rise and fall of the slasher film. Probably worth a look. Those slasher flicks are all about.......

timing.

Chan

Crossings: Jackie Chan: A Biography is playing on Flix this month. Try to catch it. It's important to have at least a cursory knowledge of his life and works. Also, the British narrator says "Koong Fu" instead of "Kung Fu" and that's always smile worthy to those of us who remember the early English or Aussie dubs on Jackie's and other Koong Fu movies.

Bava

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Flix is now starting "Planet of th Vampires," a 1965 blending of Sci-Fi and Horror that Mario Bava directed for American International (famous for their beach party flicks and so many others). Anyway, Bava's art sense is awesome and way ahead of `65 here. The script sucks, but the direction doesn't. This was probably the flick he did before Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, which has likely been surpressed.

Yankee Stuff

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/news/article.jsp?ymd=20061009&content_id=136717&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp

Here's an article at the minorleague.com website. That place is a wonderland for those of you interested in following the progress of your team's prospect. It has lots of free radio links and is one of the true delights of summer time.

Currently, the Yanks have players in the Arizona Fall League, and the Hawaiian League. You can get boxscores for West Oahu (where the Yanks have sent 5 hot pitching prospects including Kennedy, Chamberlain, Garcia, Marquez and Melancon) by clicking on Winter over there. AFL has it's own category and the Yanks have sent advanced prospects Jeff Kennard, Darrell Rasner, Sean Henn, T.J. Beam, Eric Duncan, Brett Gardner, and PJ Pilittere there. Most of these guys missed some time with injury during the regular season.

Dig in.

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/index.jsp?startDate=10/12/2006&timezone=EST&cid=N

For those who favor Classic Comedy over sports and what the major networks have to offer, Turner Classics is showing Marx brothers movies tonight! The two best are Duck Soup and Horsefeathers, and they're on late. But the others are great, too, and you should know them.

BTW, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is on Flix right now. Completely idiotic, but on some level you can't beat Frankie Avalon as a secret agent going against Vincent Price as Dr. Goldfoot. By the way, the Bikini Machine needs to be recovered and reactivated.

More to recommend it. Excellent soundtrack and a really unique blend of beach party/James Bond craze/Vincent Price horror/haunted house cycle elements.

The genius Mario Bava actually made a sequel to this flick called "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" but last I checked it was not on DVD and may have been surpressed.

If you want to see Bava's best foray into sixties spy-kitche, check out "Danger: Diabolique" It is available on DVD and in letterbox. Rule of thumb: Letterbox is good, Pan and Scan is utter crap. If you don't like letterbox for some reason, keep trying till you do.

Check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP83IrERdP4

Pretty clever.

Tonight's Sports!

College Football

Tonight we get a choice of 4 games.
7:00 PM Southern Utah at Florida Atlantic
7:30 PM Temple at #12 Clemson
7:30 PM #22 Virginia Tech at Boston College
8:00 PM Colorado State at Air Force

Obviously the big game here is VaTech at BC. They are both struggling throught disappointing seasons at Tech can say goodbye to the tope 25 if they lose at BC tonight.

Colorado State at Air Force should be pretty entertaining. Lots of passing at altitude.

Hockey

Pittsburgh at NY Rangers
FOX PITT
MSG
7:00 PM

Toronto at New Jersey
FOX NY
7:30 PM

Calgary at Ottawa
A Channel
7:30 PM

Boston at St. Louis
NESN
FOX MIDW
8:00 PM

Washington at Minnesota
8:00 PM

Nashville at Chicago
8:30 PM

San Jose at Edmonton
FOX BAY
10:00 PM

Dallas at Los Angeles
FOX SW
FOX WEST
10:30 PM

Now the game I care about is the Pens at Rangers. The Rangers looked flat at home on Tuesday and that needs to stop.

The West Coast games may get a look if the Football sucks. If you haven't seen the "New NHL." Check it out. Teams still trap with a lead, but in general there is more skating and passing and far fewer stalled pucks.

If you ever want to get a quick buzz, watch a hockey game on OLN which is now callled VS and do a shot every time you spot or hear a production gaffe.

Baseball

I'm sort of done with this until the hot stove heats up, but I understand the Mets will play a make-up game today against the Cards. I'm all for anyone making that phony LaRussa look bad, so, go Mets!

I'll be back later.

Okay, so now I'm asking myself why it is bad. I think it's a combination of things. One, is I think Tina Fey is having trouble finding the character she has written for herself. Meaning she tried to write something that is her and isn't her and hasn't yet found the happy - or funny - medium. Two, I think it's way too broad, both in the casting and in the jokes.

A lot of people were concerned that two of NBC new shows, 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip were going to be mining the same ore (90 primetime minutes about a 90 minute late night show. They don't have a lot in common so far. Studio 60 is better and will probably last. They know how to underplay a little.

One problem with both shows is the ersatz comedy that is part of the shows within the shows (ya following me?). Anyway, unless 30 Rock gets good fast, to won't be around long enough to fix itself. And Studio 60 is pretty good, and will at least grip a regular audience. I just wish they would make the show the characters are working on really funny and not ersatz funny.

Ersatz works with pop songs (see Spinal Tap) but it doesn't work with comedy.

Yikes

I'm watching the pilot to 30Rock. Sorry I'm on PST and couldn't warn you. Egad this is bad.

Okay, so I'm still putting this together but here's what we'll be talking about here: things that are fun. I'll be trying to hip you to cool things that are on TV like sports, genre flicks or shows. I'll try to tell you what DVD's are worth leaving the house or trusting the mail for. I'll introduce you to the dual pleasure of wine tasting and pay per view boxing and whatever else I can think of. Have you read Hammett and Chandler? Why don't you?

BTW, it's October and I cannot tell you how disappointed I am with the horror movie selection coming up on TMC, AMC and FMC this month. Where are the Hammer Flicks? Where is the solid block of Universal Horror Classics? Where's the Argento Stuff? Sure, they're showing a Vincent Price tribute on TMC this year, but that won't nearly be enough and they've already shown the Phibes films several times this year. I'm gonna have to go the DVD route this year. I'll post the schedule as the crucial weekend appproaches.

And Sports fans,

Don't miss Florida/Auburn this weekend. Serious SEC stuff, Auburn's already got a loss and should be desperate against the soaring Florida squad. If Florida wins the road to the National Championship game is mostly downhill. Michigan at Penn State should be good. Michigan's been great so far, but they are doing it on talent alone, and Manningham will be out. Penn State has struggled some, but JoePa can outcoach most anyone, and most anyone can outcoach Lloyd Carr.

Also, for my fellow Knick fans, you three know who you are, the Knicks begin their preseason schedule this Friday Night (check local listings). I want to see if they are less neurotic now that Larry Brown is gone. I also want to see if Marbury's cheap sneaks will hold together.

College Hoops Fans: Remember Midnight Madness starts Sunday.

Giants at Falcons this weekend. I'm picking the Giants to win 65-0, and get used to it. I do it every week!

The Rangers are 2-1 and skate again Thursday night (check local listings). I like their chances this year, but they were flat on Tuesday at home against Philly. That's not gonna work. Renney is gonna burn out Shanahan by the all star break...

More later!

A Month Of Fundays

I'll be be blogging here for awhile, while I languish in development hell.

More later.

Rest in peace, Cory Lidle.