The last undefeated team went down today, really by their own hand, as the Jets beat the Colts 29-15. They really buy into that resting their main players and giving those with nicks and bump-ups time to heal a bit after things are in hand(as in home field advantage). Apparently, the coach’s word is law there, unlike up at the Vikings camp where Favre and Childress are in the midst of a childish spat over who runs the team.

There’s still a jumble for the two AFC wild card spots, but it’s not nearly as complicated as one might assume. I can see five teams with 8-7 records and two more with 7-8 and a not very likely shot. But… all the Jets and Ravens have to do is win and they are in. That’s it. Nothing else matters. The rest are really at the mercy of those two teams. But any losses by those two complicates matters and THAT I’m not going to try to figure.

The Panthers played very well yesterday in swamping the Giants 41-9, virtually eliminating the New York team from the playoffs(they still technically had a shot until the Cowboys won over the ‘Skins later in the day).

Stewart rushed for 206 yards in 28 carries with one TD. Moore threw for three TDs, one to Steve Smith who received a broken forearm on the play while managing to hold onto the ball. The defense looked good as usual, picking off Manning twice, sacking him four times, and recovering two fumbles.

Once again I wonder what next season will bring with Moore and Jake.

The ‘Skins played better this week than that whatever the F last week. Didn’t help as the offense is pretty beat up with a number of their starters out of the game. They went down to the Cowboys 17-0.

Which brings us to the Saints. I’m not sure what’s up with them. All we got was the overtime after the Panthers. I know they went up 17-0, then let the Bucs come back to tie and force the overtime, never getting their hands on the ball, losing by a field goal.

Which puts me in a quandary for next week. The Panthers and the Saints play. A win for the Panthers would let them finish 8-8, a nice recovery from the 0-3 start. But I certainly don’t want the Saints to stumble into the playoffs with a three game losing streak.

I think I might have to go with the Saints.

I’d never heard of Little Chenier before a friend brought it by and insisted I needed to watch. I was amazed at how good this film was and wondered how I’d never heard of it. In following the history, I see it was completed in 2006, had trouble finding a distributor, and was finally released in 2008, quickly going to DVD later in the year.

The heart of the movie is the love between two brothers, Beaux and Pemon Dupuis, one of them, Pemon, mentally challenged, and the lengths Beaux would go to to protect him. The two live a quiet life, selling bait and such to others, and fishing, except when their father infrequently drops in to take whatever cash is on hand for his drinking and whoring. Their Mother had left the day after the younger brother’s birth and hadn’t been seen since.

Note: Frederick Koehler is outstanding as the mentally challenged brother. He brings out the gentle soul there marvelously.

The Sheriff’s son and Beaux don’t like each other, Beaux’s girl friend having suddenly married the other unexpectedly. We wonder what’s going on as she never looks happy when she’s with her husband and “visits” Beaux quite often.

When the sheriff is suddenly killed stopping a robbery, his son takes over and we just know it spells no good for the two brothers. His father had been the only thing holding him back.

He arrests Pemon for a crime that he likely didn’t commit, simply because he’s a “retard,” and gives him three days, keeping Beaux from seeing him. When he finally gets in, he finds Pemon unconscious on a bunk, one arm shackled to the bars on the window. He goes nuts and attacks the new Sheriff.

This was a quiet little movie, no explosions, only a few gunshots, yet it was good. That Cajun music popping up here and there is fine as well.

In reading some of the reactions on IMDB, there seemed to be no middle ground here. It was authentic Cajun, it didn’t ring true. The mentally challenged brother was endearing, he was annoying.

I’m certainly no expert on the Cajun folk, but I liked this one. Worth checking out if, like me, It has slipped by you.

Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law star in this 1968 film that is, at heart, a revenge plot, though it rises above that to become one of the better spaghetti westerns of the era.

The opening section sets the tone as an outlaw band attacks a ranch where a shipment of money, $200,000, is being guarded during a thunderstorm. Some sort of layover I suspect. Everyone is killed, including the family, the women raped before being murdered.

It’s particularly effective around the thunderstorm, with Morricone’s score playing, the gunfire, the house set on fire as the gang finishes off any witnesses.

They miss one though, a six year old boy, who sees everything as the carnage follows. A man with four aces tattooed on his chest, an oddly shaped earring, a man with a scar running from his hairline by one eye to his jaw. As the gang leaves, the boy is pulled by the fire from someone. All he sees is a silver skull dangling from a necklace.

The last we see of the boy he’s picking up a spur, a specially designed one, lost by one of the gang members as they race away.

Next we see an earnest faced young man named Bill Meceita practicing with guns. The entire sequence has him working with various pistols, sharpening both his aim and draw, rifles, and working on moves to avoid returned fired, diving and rolling while keeping up gun play of his own. We just know it’s that small boy grown up.

At the same time, Lee Van Cleef’s character, Ryan, is getting out of prison after fifteern years. As he leaves, two men are following him. After he ditches them, he turns up at Bill’s ranch looking at the three graves. The two meet and converse a bit.

The two men soon learn they are after the same men after the two he’d lost try to murder Ryan and the sheriff finds one dead man wearing unusual-styled spurs and shows them to Bill.

The main men have become important people in the fifteen years Ryan was in prison and Bill was growing up with a festering hate in him. A banker and a saloon owner in their towns.

A bond grows between the pair in their pursuit, Ryan becoming almost a father figure to Bill, dispensing badly needed advice to the young man. Although now good with any weapon, he’s sadly naive about the ways of those he pursues. Ryan wants money from each because of some betrayal in the past and Bill just wants them dead.

It’s almost amusing as each takes turns leaving the other afoot to get a leg up. it never works as Bill has to rescue Ryan from an arrest for a robbery and murder charge, then Ryan finds Bill buried up to his neck in the hot sun.

The final showdown between the gang and the two is well done down to the final surprise revealed at the end about both men’s motivations.

Recommended.

Growing up, I always looked forward to Christmas. I suppose that’s not unusual for most kids though. Around our house, it was just my Mother, my two sisters, and myself. No dad, a story best left untold.

Mama worked hard to provide for my siblings and me, sometimes to her own detriment. I can say that we always had everything we needed. There was always food to eat and our clothes were always clean and neat. We even got some of the things we wanted. Not everything though.

Mama rarely bought anything for herself. A woman raising three kids alone, with only a high school education, it was a grind for her, had to be, but she never complained. We didn’t think of it at the time, kids you know, but we were never lacking in the important things.

Our home, the one in which I now live, was a small shotgun house, three rooms. Living room, one bedroom, the kitchen. We had running water, but our first bathroom was that little building in the back of the property.

As we grew, in addition to the essentials, Mama paid for the house, added two rooms and a bath, built porches front and rear, and two cars as well. All on a single salary, no help from “dear old dad.”

Christmas was a fun time for the four of us. One of the things we did together was sit before the fireplace at night, sharing fruit and nuts while we talked and watched television. One favorite treat was an orange rolled a lot to break it up a bit, then Mama would cut a hole in the end and poke in a stick of peppermint candy, the porous type. We loved squeezing juice up through that candy.

Santa Claus, when we were small, was a lot of fun. I remember one year being worried that, not being asleep when I though I heard reindeer hooves on the roof, he might not stop. Mama reassured me and I went on to sleep, waking early, as always, to rush into that front room to see what was left. I never could figure how he got down that small chimney.

I wasn’t disappointed to learn the truth when I got older. On that note, Mama’s youngest brother and my aunt always refused to play Santa with their children, not wanting to “lie” to them. I always believed my cousins missed something with that attitude.

Everyone out there have a nice Christmas!

My adopted team had a misstep this week. I don’t get the NFL Network, so all I had was highlights to go by. They seemed to play bad in the first half, only three points, then rallied in the second a little late. They let the Cowboys beat them 24-17, but I won’t hold that against them, much as I dislike their opponent.

The undefeated season is gone, but that may be for the best. They were still likely to win home field advantage throughout the playoffs anyway, but that was almost guaranteed by the Panthers trouncing the Vikings last night.

You’re welcome, Charles.

The Panthers played the best I’ve seen them in a while in the night game. The Vikings looked almost helpless as they went down 26-7. Peppers harried Favre all night long, rushing passes and getting one sack(four total for the team), causing one pick in the end zone. Stewart rushed for 107 yards(the first given up by the Vikings in 36 games). Matt Moore was 21/33 for 299 yards and three TDs.

It will be interesting to see what happens next year with Moore and Jake.

The Jets probably ended their playoff hopes in losing to the Falcons 10-7 in a pretty ugly game in the cold. One mishandled field goal snap, one missed field goal, and one blocked attempt certainly didn’t help their cause.

We’ve still got the ‘Skins tonight against the Giants. Doesn’t look good. The Giants need this one bad in their hopes for a playoff berth.

OH MY LORD!

That first half was ugly. I didn’t expect much as the ‘Skins didn’t have much to play for, but WHEW! 24-0 and it wasn’t that close.

I’m going to bed.

John Ireland stars as the Colonel in this 1968 western. As the movie opens, he’s looking for his two partners in a bank robbery that double-crossed him and disappeared with $200,000 in loot. One, Roy Fulton(Gordon Mitchell), had been shot in the gut in the heist and Ireland finds him being buried. That leaves the third partner, Il Portoghese, to find.

When the Colonel tracks him down, he learns that the funeral had been faked and the fat man knows where Fulton is hiding. That’s where the pair head.

The priest that had done the burial, Glenn(George Hilton), was a fake and Fulton’s new partner. The coffin held the bank loot. He goes for a doctor and when he returns, Fulton is gone and Glenn believes he’s been double-crossed. Digging the coffin up, he’s surprised to find the money gone and Fulton’s body there instead.

This was an okay movie, but it was filled with coincidence and double-cross. The Colonel crosses the Portoghese and leaves him afoot, barefoot, and takes the money. Along comes Glenn, who stops when he sees a man lying in the road. It’s a trap and now Glenn is left afoot. The fat man catches up and is ready to kill his ex-partner until he finds that the money has been hidden. They slug it out until both are worn down, then decide-what the hell?-let’s split the money, each heading for the “only” woman they trusted. Turns out to be the same woman, Liz(Sandra Milo).

Meanwhile Glenn goes to town, only having a description of Fulton’s two partners: a fat Portoghese and the Colonel who wears a heavy ring. He wanders into the wrong room, it’s dark, and gets invited to bed by a woman who thinks he’s her man. When her man arrives, a fight breaks out, disturbing the one in the next room, who just happens to be the Colonel.

Liz is the next double-cross, who grabs the money and leaves town. A gang shows up, lead by the banker who wants his half of the money for the robbery he arranged. He’s then double-crossed by the gang and teams up with the three men and Liz to take them on.

Everyone is out for themselves in this one and the double-crosses are not through yet. A decent western, but not outstanding. About a B-, maybe a C.

The silliest thing happens near the end of the movie when Glenn and Liz are enjoying a turkey dinner in her rooms. Why we were subjected to extreme close-ups of their lips gnawing and chewing the bird, I have no idea. I suppose it was some sort of sexual innuendo as it ended with Liz licking her lips, her forefinger, and extinquishing a candle with the damp digits.

Really strange.

DIAMOND HEAD was a selection by Richard Robinson one Friday and I liked the review, deciding to find it. It is the first adventure of P.I. John Caine, who lives on a sailboat on the island of Oahu and earns a living by doing favors for people.

This time an old friend from his Navy days comes looking for help for their old commander, now an Admiral. His daughter had been murdered a couple of months before and he wants the killer found and “dealt” with for two reasons. His old commander has political aspirations, as did his father before him.

The daughter may have been involved in some pretty bad stuff, porn, and worse, ending up a victim herself. Caine’s job is twofold: find the killer and bury whatever embarrassing things turn up. Caine owes the man his life and can’t turn it down.

Along the way things get rough with a Hawaiian crime lord involved and a female cop he becomes close with and has to work around, not to mention battles with sea predators and Mother Nature herself.

I liked this one and may have to find the several other novels featuring ex-Navy Seal John Caine.

The latest episode of David Tennant’s farewell tour as Doctor Who, THE WATERS OF MARS, aired last night on BBC America. A young actor named Matt Smith takes over the role in the next year(judging by his appearance, he looks about half the age of the show itself, a kid really).

****SOME SPOILERS AHEAD*****

As the story opens, the TARDIS lands on Mars and the Doctor emerges wearing a space suit. Walking across the landscape, he comes to a ridge and looks down at a base on the plain. He learns it is Bowie Base One(more on this later) when he’s taken captive by a robot and brought into the base.

I have to do an aside here. Though this may be one of the darkest Who tales I’ve seen, there are moments of humor as well. The robot is a flimsy looking construct(resembling the robot in Short Circuit) which keeps uttering “Gadget, Gadget!” which is it’s name.

“I hate funny robots with cute names!” he utters until someone mentions a friend dressing one up that looked like a dog. “Dogs! That’s different.” Long time Who fans know that he once built a robot dog named K-9(actually two of them).

Since the Doctor never goes anywhere that trouble isn’t about to erupt, we know something’s up. He asks the date and the answer, 2059, makes him realize exactly where he is and, as he starts calling off each crew member’s name, his mind is flashing on an obituary. Everyone has a date of death as 2059. Asking the exact day, his mind flashes on a headline citing this day as the one that Bowie Base One was destroyed by a nuclear blast.

It’s not long before we learn that the water used in the botanical gardens came from one of the icecaps and seems to have a parasite in it that begins infecting crew members one by one. The human body is mostly water and the infected begin to break down, spewing water from their mouths, fingers, whatever it takes to burst the seals preventing them from getting at the unaffected.

There seems to be some intelligence to the parasite as one such affected crew sees Earth on a monitor and they decide that’s where they need to go. By whatever means possible.

The Doctor seems helpless as all this is going on, standing around, saying he has to leave, nothing can be done. it’s already been established that there are fixed points in time that can’t be altered without changing everything that is to come later(it’s what prevents the Doctor from going back in time and stopping Gallifrey and all his fellow Time Lords from being destroyed in the war with the Daleks).

The base commander. Adelaide Brooke, is one such fixed point. Her death inspires her granddaughter and her descendants to push the human race to explore further and further into space.

The look on the Doctor’s face as he walks way from the base, a sort of helpless rage, as he listens to the unaffected crew’s desperate battle to escape over the radio says it all.

And then his ego takes over. The Doctor, in all his various lives, has always had a large ego and it’s stood him in good stead until now. He suddenly decides he can save the crew and work out a way to avoid the consequences.

That’s all. I won’t tell how it comes out in case anyone wants to see this episode. It’s very good, one of the best, and, with the two part finale, winds up both David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor and Russell Davies’ as the writer/producer.

On the subject of the base’s name, Bowie Base One, I read a number of reviews this morning before doing this one and not a single one mentioned what seemed obvious to me. It might be because I’m an old fogie and most of the other reviewers were probably young squirts.

At the beginning, as the Doctor first spots the base, we see the main hub with spokes radiating out all around to smaller domes, looking for all the world like a spider. Bowie Base One? One of David Bowie’s signature albums was ZIGGIE STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS OF MARS. Hello!

I’m looking forward to the finale which starts next weekend, THE END OF TIME. The next Doctor, young Matt Smith, has a hard act to follow.

Here’s the trailer:

My niece sent me this a bit ago. They live in Martinsville , Virginia and got some more of the snow than we did. Ryan, the oldest, and Gabriel are her two sons, my great-nephews.

I sit here at my computer looking out the window watching the snow fall, it’s up to about six inches now, and my mind can’t help but wander back to my childhood. The house I live in is the one I grew up in and have lived here, except for a twenty-two year gap, most of my life.

The neighborhood has grown older along with me. When I was a child, every house had kids and we all looked forward to winters. Looking back from an adult perspective, I know now it was a lot of headaches for the adults. But you’d never know it from them.

Sledding was a prime form of entertainment for us back then. With no cable, we got three TV stations( a fourth, PBS, occasionally when weather conditions were right; but what self-respecting kid would watch that). No such things as video games,VCRs, or DVDs.

But let it snow!

My home sits at the bottom of a hill, the side I’m on long and sloping, the other a steeper grade. We got some good snows back then and every night we were out there hitting the hills. There would be big fires at the top and the bottom of each side tended to by an adult, fed by a seemingly unending supply of old car tires(yes, I know that’s not done these days, but who knew back then).

Every kid had a sled and one of our favorite tricks on the steep side was to line four sleds up side-by-side and make a pyramid with the biggest boys on the bottom(that was me), piling kids up until ten were aboard and take off down the hill. Once we hit the flat and were going pretty good, one wag would usually turn us into the ditch and we’d suddenly have a mass of tumbling kids laughing hysterically. No one ever got hurt(oh, the resiliency of youth).

The part of the street my home is located ran between two hills. I sit atop one and the back side of the one across was another sled area. The neighbor on that street over there had a tractor and hooked up a heavy roll(I want to say it was made of concrete and on a spindle, but I’m not sure. And I have no idea how it was normally used). He would go down the hill, hanging a sharp right at the bottom, and packing the snow down tight.

It made for great sledding!

I remember one foolish move I made when I decide to go down the hill sitting up and steering with my feet. Bad idea! I wasn’t as good as I thought and was a little to close to the fire. I managed to hit that pile of burning tires head-on, crashing through, scattering them in all directions. Once I realized I was okay, I was ready to do it again! Cooler heads prevailed.

One of our favorite snacks in the winter time was snow creme. Made of fresh snow, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla flavoring(don’t ask me if there was anything else), it sure was good once we were back inside sitting before the fireplace.

Fond memories. Kids today don’t get to do that sort of thing. The snows seem a lot tamer nowadays. What we got in this event is equal to the sum total of the last several winters. We only got one light dusting last year.

Besides, the young ones have so many other distractions these days, what with video games, computers, and DVDs, and so many cable channels(or dish). Something like sledding likely wouldn’t interest them.

They know not what they miss!

Well, time to go. My nose tells me the coffee is ready.