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.