Gotta love Tecmo Bowl highlights

On Leaving Iraq

Sticking with a bad idea may be a great way to demonstrate perseverance however it does not ultimately make the bad idea a good idea. Seven year, hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands permanently affected, and the last American combat troops have finally left Iraq (not necessarily the two gentlemen at left, but I suppose it's possible).

You can argue the "making America safer" argument until you are blue in the face. Frankly the other seven reasons for invading Iraq were essentially lies or misguided at best so I guess you have to go with that one. Iraq was always the wrong war. There was never a valid reason to be there and if Obama accomplishes nothing in the next two years and you hate everything he has done in the last two years he has earned another vote from me.

For some of us, many of us these days, war is not an abstract concept that you debate over drinks, or read about on the news. War is Specialist Anderson nearly losing an arm and being medivac'ed out of theater in the middle of the night. War is the fiery Lieutenant Stovall simply not showing up in your office any more after he was killed by a roadside bomb. War is pointing a weapon at teenagers not knowing if their kids or terrorists. War is the thousands of soldiers who had to come home and work through their problems with the help of professionals and loving families and worse the thousands of soldiers who came home with problems but don't have loving families or access to professional help. There may have been a time for war, but it is most definitely time for peace.

He'll always be little to me

Rrrrrrrrr!!

Family-friendly fun, free, pirates, hours of online entertainment...how could you go wrong? Addictive, somewhat mindless, major waste of time, and possible detrimental to you marriage...you know for starters. Then of course there is the stigma of admitting to playing video games when you are a grown adult in a management position.

I could never really get into the MMO scene (that is massive multi-player online). Frankly, I'm not that social in real life I don't have a lot of interest in being social in the land of make-believe. I will admit to having (and yes using) a PlayStation 2. When I get a little downtime, every six months or so, I do still like to pop in a sports game and run it up on the Yankees or Ohio State. There are just some teams I will always love to hate. Anyway, for World Wide Wednesday I thought I would provide a link to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean which offers a free mode and a naturally more elaborate pay for play mode. And for the record, in my video game world USC never goes on sanctions.

Five movies where you didn’t get what you paid for

When movie price are like $47 per ticket you expect to be entertained. Action movies ought to blow up every damned thing in Los Angeles (or New York, whatever) comedies should make you laugh until you pee your pants. In that light I give you five movies that really didn’t give you what you wanted.

Simon Birch. If your movie poster even mentions Jim Carrey then your movie ought to at least be a little funny. I used to go to the movies a lot when I was stationed in Virginia and the movie poster said Jim Carrey, and we wanted a comedy. Little did we know that this depressing melodrama centered on a dwarf 12 year-old whose family and pastor hate him and then he drowns. Seriously.

Legend. Even the biggest stars have duds. Legend starring Tom Cruise as Jack o’ the Green and, here’s a hint, Tim Curry wasn’t even a good movie when I was 9 years old. From Wikipedia, “the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) instructs his goblin servant Blix (Alice Playten) to locate the two unicorns that roam in the nearby forest and remove their horns. If the unicorns die and their horns are removed, the Lord of Darkness can ensure that dawn never again breaks, and sunshine never returns.” What?

The Adventures of Pluto Nash. I hate to pile on Eddie Murphy but this movie generally appears on everyone’s list of the worst financial failures ever, possibly because it was one of the worst movies ever. The fact that it was expensive only makes it suck more.

The Singing Detective. So obscure I actually stumbled across it by accident, this movie starred and was produced by Mel Gibson, who by 2003 was a fairly bankable star. But when your protagonist is “suffering from the skin disease psoriasis and a crippling arthritis” (thank you Wiki) you may be headed for trouble even with Katie Holmes, Robert Downey Jr., and Adrien Brody. While spending just $8 million to make this movie is fairly impressive, it becomes a lot less impressive when your film grosses $337,000.

Gigli. This movie had an established big budget star, and a Hollywood sex symbol. With Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, how could you go wrong, so very, very, very wrong? On Rotten Tomatoes.com 152 of 162 people rated it negatively.

Top Ten Running Backs of All-Time, says me.

So any top ten lists are going to inherently include the bias of the author. As it relates to running backs are you a power guy, or a speed guy? Short burst of brilliance or do you reward longevity? Where do you put guys like Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson who helped define their era but don’t measure up statistically? In short there are a lot of different ways in which one could go. So I cheated. In a top five list you essentially end up arguing which statistical measure is the most important. In a top ten there is a little more room for deviation from the standard stats.

Yards per game and yards per carry can support your argument for Jim Brown while total yards and touchdowns lend credence to Emmitt Smith. Popular sentiment to the contrary Barry Sanders is third when you look at a broad cross section of rushing statistics, which of course, is where Sanders’ fans jump in with how terrible his team was. So here's my completely unbiased list.

10 Adrian Peterson. Ah potential, every few years some young stud comes in with the potential to rewrite the record book, feed the hungry, and solve the problem of repeatable cold fusion. A glimpse to the future, Peterson is simply the latest, in fairness he is currently fourth all-time in yards per carry and he does have as many rushing titles as Walter Payton (1).

9 Bo Jackson. Perhaps the most talented athlete ever, Bo Jackson is a perfect example of why Mr. Peterson is unlikely to end up at number one. Of a hundred guys who could be in the top ten something usually goes wrong with 90 of them. Amazingly talented in two sports Bo never quite reached his potential when some idiot on the Bengals basically ended two hall of fame careers.

8 Marion Motley. If Peterson is wink to the future, Motley is a nod to the past. Called the Jackie Robinson of football, Motley was also a damned fine running back. One rushing title and the all-time top yards per carry among running backs solidify Motley’s place in history.

7 LaDanian Tomlinson. Easy to lose in the shuffle Tomlinson is second all-time in touchdowns, and also appears in the top eight all-time in yards and yards per game measures of both longevity and talent.

6 Eric Dickerson. Caught between the likes of OJ and Payton who shown brightest before and Emmitt and Barry who came after Dickerson is often left off of top five lists. Dickerson is fifth in yards per game, sixth in yards, and he won four rushing titles in his prime. If you are going to haggle over “the best,” rushing titles demonstrate that you were at least the best during you prime.

5 Walter Payton. Payton is the only back above Dickerson on my list who didn’t win at least four rushing titles (1). A workhorse who mostly played on mediocre teams, Payton is fourth all-time in touchdowns and second in career yards.

4 OJ Simpson. Forget all of the ridiculous drama for a second, OK are you ready…Orenthal James Simpson was a really, really good running back. Perhaps the greatest five-year stretch in NFL history from 1972 through 1976 OJ won an MVP award, was a five time first team all-pro, five time pro bowler, ran for an eye popping 7,699 yards, won four rushing titles, and averaged 5.1 yards every time he ran the ball. OK and he’s a lunatic alleged murderer.

3 Barry Sanders. I say he’s third, write your own damned list and put him at number one. Sanders finished his career second in yards per game and third in yards. Sanders also finished in the top 10 in touchdowns and won four rushing titles running head to head against Emmitt Smith.

2 Emmitt Smith. See above. Every football fan of my generation will debate who was better but the more you look at the numbers of these two the less impressive the numbers of anyone else tend to look. Smith is first all-time in yards, touchdowns, and won four rushing titles. Then why not number one?

1 Jim Brown. Here is where you need to put career statistics aside. Jim Brown played just nine seasons, won eight rushing titles, and never missed a game. Interestingly enough if you project Brown’s 104.3 yards per game over eleven 16-game NFL seasons you would 18,356 yards, one more than Emmitt Smith.

Fishing

World Wide Wednesday

Perfectly normal valedictorian speech until about 1:15 in, then things get a little weird. Credit the young lady for four years of hard work but then you have to scratch your head a little when she lets a puppet give half her speech. God, I love YouTube.

Ten Great Animated Films

So I have been on a little hiatus from the blogulations. The boy, and work, and school can sometimes be a bit overwhelming and frankly the blog finishes a distant fifth to fishing in spite of my lack of fishing prowess (but more on that tomorrow). We are actually all sitting together watching Snow White so I thought for Motion Picture Monday it might be nice to make a list of ten must see (not to be mistaken with top 10) animated films.

1. Remember this one? Cool World featured Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt as some sort of detective in an animated nonsensical world.

2. Snow White was the movie that proved that animation could work in movies. That wacky Walt Disney had to prove it could be done.

3. See also Cool World but Who Framed Roger Rabbit beat the Brad Pitt entry to the punch by four years in the leggy cartoon, animated mayhem, live action, detective drama.

4. Want depressing cartoons? The Secret of NIMH is a real downer about rats subjected to chemical testing, and there’s a sick kid (well mouse kid) and a cinder block house that’s sinking, or something like that.

5. Pinocchio is one of my all-time favorites. Deep, meaningful, without being to preachy and just spooky enough that you can still let your three year-old watch it.

6. Sticking with the Disney theme (hell they invented the genre) Sleeping Beauty is kind of a standard princess fairy tale with one key exception. Maleficent is hands down one of the best villains in cinematic history (animated or otherwise).

7. A generation of boys (including me) grew up waiting for Transformers and GI Joe the movie, not the cheesy big budget remakes but the 80’s cartoon. I’ll give the nod to GI Joe.

8. A beautiful off-beat love story if it had starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and been set in Paris it would have won best picture. Unfortunately Wall-E starred two robots, was set in space and had the misfortune of being animated so it got screwed.

9. Stop-action animation is still animation and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is one of the best. Emblematic of a half dozen great movies you looked forward to every year Rudolph was always my favorite.

10. The photo-negative of Pinocchio, who only wants to be a real boy, is Peter Pan whose entire motivation is to live in a fantasy world and never grow up. Constantly being redone the Disney one is still the best. On the other side of the coin this is one of Disney’s most textbook stereotypical movies with caricatures of Native Americans, disempowered and denigrated women, and frankly it doesn’t do a whole lot for pirates and house pets either.

Little League Baseball

The Sports Calendar in August

So as we close the book on July and say goodbye to France for another year we set our sights on August and one of my favorite events in amateur sports, the regional finals followed by the Little League World Series. The tournament is held annually in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and features 11 and 12 year-olds from around the world in one of the few sports that can truly claim a world champion.

Locally Portsmouth, NH trounced their way through their district tournament, dispatching Laconia along the way. After the districts they went on to win the state tournament to represent New Hampshire in the regional tournament to be held from August 6^th through the 16^th in Bristol, CT. Six of the sixteen tickets to the World Series have been punched (see chart below) and Portsmouth will fight to join the ranks of the world elite. Good competition, good times, and refreshingly, good attitudes rule the day.

Pool A		Pool B
Mid-Atlantic	TBD August 16	New England	TBD August 16
West	TBD August 15	Midwest	TBD August 14
Southeast	TBD August 13	Southwest	TBD August 12
Great Lakes	TBD August 14	Northwest	TBD August 15

Pool C		Pool D
Japan	Edogawa Minami LL	MEA	Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Caribbean	Manati, Puerto Rico	Latin America	Chitre, Panama
Mexico	Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas	Canada	TBD August 14
Europe	Ramstein AB, Germany	Asia-Pacific	Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei