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I take occasional road trips and afterwards I write up a little journal of my experiences in order to preserve the good memories.  From my latest trip to Vegas I made an entry that I felt was more appropriate for a blog.  It goes as follows:

When it was about a quarter to 7, I headed out for Cashman Stadium.  I arrived without difficulty, paid to park, bought my ticket for nine bucks and was at my seat before the National Anthem was sung.  Since the game hadn’t started I decided to go get something to eat.  I got a hot dog, pretzel and a Pepsi.  I was dressing my dog when the National Anthem started and it’s really starting to peeve me at how un-American people have gotten about showing their patriotism.  As an American, I should not have to observe the National Anthem if I don’t feel like it.  But everyone in the whole damn stadium came to a stand still so I had to stand there at the condiment stand like an idiot waiting for the fat lady to stop singing, else risk offending these so-called Americans.  These people are too stupid to realize that they are acting more like Nazis then Americans.

“Crash” won the Oscar for best picture before I saw it.  I had high expectations when I finally saw it.  I was dissappointed.  I thought it was terrible.  Painfully so.  Now that it’s been a couple of years since I watched it, I don’t remember all the details, I just remember that all of the characters were bi-polar idiots and that all of the conflict could have been avoided if any characters could have used a smidgin of common sense.  But they couldn’t do that because then there wouldn’t be a movie.  I hate movies like that.

“No Country For Old Men” won this year’s Oscar for best picture and last night I finally saw it.  It exceeded my expectations.  In contrast to “Crash” the characters here are driven by their nature, not stupidity.  In fact, the characters are all exceedingly cunning and crafty.  The conflicts are unavoidable.  Some people may fault this movie for being dark and cold-blooded.  Also, they may not appreciate the open ending.  I didn’t have a problem with it.  I was absolutely riveted for 2 hours.  That’s the kind of movie I love.  This definitely gets added to my fantasy blu-ray collection.

In my humble opinion, when choosing a paint color for a car I think people should follow this simple guideline.  Generally speaking, metallic colors look good on cars with sharp angular edges and non-metallic colors look good on cars with rounded edges.  For instance, if you get a Chrysler 300 you want a metallic color.  If you get a VW Bug, you should get a non-metallic color.  The caveat being that some cars look good in any color (Aston Martin DB 9) and some cars look bad in any color (Toyota Prius, doh!) 

I’m going on record that in a few seasons we’ll look back on this post and say “wow, Scott’s scouting ability is the s—.”  Shawn Bailey is an undrafted rookie free-agent.  The Kansas City Chiefs picked him up.  Though undrafted players have a huge hill to climb to make any team, I believe Bailey’s skill and smoothness as a wide receiver will eventually get him on the field and producing good numbers for the Chiefs.  The way teams structure their rosters I doubt he’ll have much of an opportunity to make anything other than the practice squad in his first season.  So we’ll just have to wait a few seasons to determine if I am right or wrong.

Okay, by the third installment, I’ve become familiar with the fact that someone in a CIA office in Langley or NYC can hear and see everything going on at any given place in Europe in real time.  I’ve accepted that outlandishness.

What ticks me off about watching a movie like this is the MTV editing.  The quick cuts, zooms, poor framing and general jostling around of the camera are a total distraction.  I can’t see what the hell is going on.  You know camera manufacturers spent a lot of time in R & D to develop cameras that won’t shake regardless of what the operator is doing.  Why would the director turn off this feature?  Is it to obscure the fact that he has no story and that the action is completely preposterous?

The shortened time for picks was much nicer.  There was just enough time for an interview, analysis by the talking heads, and a commercial and then the next pick would be coming up.  I still wish they would have started it in the morning like they used to.  I’m a West Coast guy.  I like getting up and having sports on in the morning.

 As for the picks themselves, I was pleasantly surprised.  I looked at a bunch of mock drafts that had a lot of picks that I would have questioned.  But in the actual draft, I thought the teams did an overall good job.  For instance, if you include Matt Ryan as a “blue chip” prospect, than the 7 “blue chip” prospects were taken 1-7 in this draft where they should have gone.  Usually some team reaches early and misses out on a stud.  Also, I was pleased to see that all the mock drafts that had 2 and 3 WRs going in the first round were wrong.  Not a single WR was picked in the first round and that’s the way I thought it should be.

 One last thing:  I will make the prediction right now that even though a lot of people were luke warm about this year’s QB crop, I have a feeling that in the end, it will produce more solid starters than the draft of a few years ago that featured Leinart, Cutler and Young.

Since the combine, there hasn’t been much news so I do not have a whole lot to add to the gobs of prognostications all over the internet.  I periodically have checked out different mock draft websites but there hasn’t been much changes in the past month.  I just have some random thoughts to share.

It doesn’t bum me out so much that Jake Long has signed before the draft.  I don’t need the suspense to enjoy the draft. What bums me out more is that they moved the draft to later in the day.  I loved getting up in the morning, having some breakfast and watching the festivities.  Now I have to wait until afternoon.  I suppose I’ll have to go out and run errands in the morning beforehand.  It irks me that nothing is sacred and that greed for the almighty dollar wins out over tradition.

With Jake Long off the board that leaves the other Long, Dorsey, McFadden, Gholston and Ellis as the remaining can’t miss blue chippers.  Teams fortunate enough to be able to draft one of these fine specimens I think will be happy in the end.  After them, it gets a little less predictable.  I think there are a lot of players this year that are being over-valued, especially the wide receivers. 

I would NOT draft as WR in the first round this year.  You need to guarantee me that a WR is going to turn into a #1 receiver before I use a first round pick.  This year the supposed candidates are Malcolm Kelly, Devin Thomas and Limas Swede, give or take a few others.  Yawn.  GMs should have some doubts. 

I like to focus on players who I feel are undervalued.  I always feel like if I were an NFL GM I would be very happy on draft day because I feel like there are always good players who are overlooked and would fall into my lap.  This year I’m looking at Dre Moore, DT, Maryland, Trevor Laws, DT, Notre Dame, Xavier Adibi, LB, Virginia Tech, Eddie Royal, WR, Virginia Tech.  I think all will be drafted lower than what their actual worth will turn out to be.  And I’ll add one more true sleeper who will be drafted in the later rounds.  Mark my words, Thomas Brown, RB, Georgia will out perform at the next level at least half of the RBs drafted ahead of him.

I feel sorry for anyone drafted by the Bengals.  Besides Carson Palmer, that organization has almost nothing going for it.  No one wants to play there.  This Chad Johnson situation is indicative.  Sure, Ocho Cinco is a primadonna.  And I can see the Bengals reasons for wanting to take a stand against letting the inmates “run the asylum.”  But in the end, if they can jettison the malcontent and get something in return it will be better for the team.  The current situation is ugly and I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.

 As a Viking fan, the draft just got much less interesting.  The Vikes paid a pretty hefty price for Jared Allen.  It’s exciting to know they will have one of the best D lines in the league, but they ain’t going anywhere until they get a real QB.  I might have been tempted to stand pat at the 17th pick and take a flier on Brian Brohm who by most accounts would still be on the board at that time.  It’s not likely either he or Flacco will still be there when the Vikes 2nd round pick comes up.  Maybe they’ll go for Chad Henne or John David Booty.  I find both intriguing but I’d be crossing my fingers.  I have more doubts about these two.

Why is it the Mini Coopers and VW Bugs are the only car models that come in a truly wide variety of paint colors?  It’s because people are F—ING BORING!  Everyone who chooses gray, silver or sand for their car’s paint job might as well walk into the dealership and say “Can I have that in INVISIBLE?!?”

… on fossil fuel dependency. Remember the good old days when the USA declared war on its enemies Germany and Japan and the people in this country pulled together and devoted virtually all of its energy to defeating their foes in battle. Neither do I. I was born in 1968 so it would be impossible for me to remember. But I do watch the History Channel. We produced war machines in mind-boggling numbers. We shipped goods all over the world. We unlocked the secrets of the atomic bomb. And we sent thousands of young men overseas to die.

Imagine what this country could do if it devoted the same level of effort that it showed in WWII into ridding itself of its dependency on fossil fuel. With all the research focused on coming up with alternative fuels and alternative energy sources I’m sure it could be done in 5-10 years instead of the decades it will take at the current pace of activity.

Wasn’t the frenzy of spending during WWII the chief reason the US pulled out of the Great Depression. I’m no economist, but wouldn’t a war on fossil fuel dependency also have a positive effect on the economy? To change our sources of energy, whether you are talking about how it’s produced or how it’s delivered, I assume would take an immense amount of funding and investment. And wouldn’t that kind of spending be done here in the States as opposed to the current situation where much of our wealth is shipped off to line the pockets of some Middle Eastern shieks?

Look around. Gas is hitting $4 a gallon. Do you see fewer cars on the road? I don’t. You cannot expect people to give up their mobility. Why should they? There’s nothing evil about it. Maybe the tree huggers would prefer that we all take up bicycling but I don’t see that happening. Nor do I foresee people getting out of their cars in mass and using public transportation. Further, not everyone is as fortunate as I am to live close enough to walk to work. All of these solutions are well and good but they only reduce the problem. They do not eliminate it. A complete overhaul of the system is needed.

Oil is getting too damn expensive. It’s polluting the air. It’s creating political turmoil throughout the world. It’s time to say enough is enough. Picture what a perfect world it would be if your car and your electricity were produced by domestic, environmentally friendly resources. Will it be nuclear, solar, wind, corn, switchgrass, pondscum or whatever? The solution has to be out there. Let’s throw the same kind of effort we did into defeating the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis into finding that solution.

The end.

I was enjoying the Great Escape on television the other day and it occured to me that no matter how many times I watch it, I still enjoy it.  Forget Oscar.  Forget AFI’s top 100.  To me, what makes a great movie is that whenever it comes on, I can get sucked into watching it because it’s either so well made, so entertaining, or in most cases both.  If all of the following titles were available on blu-ray disc and I had the money to spend, this is what I would have in my library:

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Gone With the Wind (1939) The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Citizen Kane (1941) High Sierra (1941) The Maltese Falcon (1941) Casablanca (1942) Edge of Darkness (1943) Double Indemnity (1944) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Dark Passage (1947) Key Largo (1948) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) The Third Man (1949) White Heat (1949) The Asphalt Jungle (1950) High Noon (1952) From Here to Eternity (1953) The Caine Mutiny (1954) On the Waterfront (1954) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 12 Angry Men (1957) Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) The Young Lions (1958) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)  The Longest Day (1962) The Great Escape (1963) Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned … (1964) The Train (1964) Dr. Zhivago (1965) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) In the Heat of the Night (1967) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Tora!Tora!Tora! (1970) The French Connection (1971) Deliverance (1972) The Godfather (1972) American Graffiti (1973) Chinatown (1974) The Godfather, Part II (1974) The Great Gatsby (1974) Jaws (1975) The Bad News Bears (1976) Silver Streak (1976) Star Wars (1977) The Deer Hunter (1978) Superman (1978) Apocalypse Now (1979) Airplane! (1980) The Shining (1980) Das Boot (1981) A Christmas Story (1983) Blood Simple (1984) The Terminator (1984) Top Secret! (1984) Back to the Future (1985) Brazil (1985) Running Scared (1986) Three Amigos! (1986) Matewan (1987) The Princess Bride (1987) Die Hard (1988) A Fish Called Wanda (1988) Frantic (1988) Midnight Run (1988) Batman (1989) Dead Poets Society (1989) Field of Dreams (1989) Glory (1989) Kill Me Again (1989) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) Dances With Wolves (1990) Goodfellas (1990) The Hunt for Red October (1990) City Slickers (1991) Reservoir Dogs (1992) Scent of a Woman (1992) Unforgiven (1992) The Fugitive (1993) Jurassic Park (1993) Groundhog Day (1993) Menace II Society (1993) The Remains of the Day (1993) Schindler’s List (1993) Dumb and Dumber (1994) Pulp Fiction (1994) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Get Shorty (1995) The Usual Suspects (1995) Big Night (1996) The English Patient (1996) Fargo (1996) Lone Star (1996) Swingers (1996) Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) L.A. Confidential (1997) Men With Guns (1998) Saving Private Ryan (1998) Wild Things (1998) Go (1999) The Limey (1999) Office Space (1999) Memento (2000) Sexy Beast (2001) Dirty Pretty Things (2002) Identity (2003) Sideways (2004)