Just saw War of the Worlds...

Definitely too long and not enough happened, but not quite as terrible as I had been led to believe by many.


Both kids were obnoxious, and I could have gone without hearing Tom Cruise sing Little Deuce Coupe in falsetto.

Also, did they really need to bring in Morgan Freeman for about 30 seconds of narration?



I also can't believe they couldn't kill someone in the family, not Robbie, not even the damn grandparents.

And germs? That's how they died? How lame is that - how does that even help me if I ever have to fight aliens?



the best part was probably the basement scene with the mechanical arm. a pretty good horrorish movie could probably made in which 8 people start in a basement and the mechanical arm comes looking for them one by one.

anyway, not a particularly good movie, but I don't feel like I wasted two hours of life either.

Okay, on Newville's blog (just ignore if you don't know who he is, or visit it here: http://www.xanga.com/Bart51285/545139491/erics-official-uber-detailed-election-predictions.html), he asserted that one did not have the right to make fun of his election predictions, unless they made their own.

And I figured hell, I love predicting things, and if I can predict baseball games wrong, I can sure as heck predict elections wrong.

So here goes:

(I'm made mine intentionally pessimistic, in order to counter the natural balance of the world of my predictions being wrong (though I suppose it could be optimistic, depending on your point of view))

Senate: Dems pick up four seats (PA, OH, RI, MT) GOP keeps VA, MO

House: Dems pick up 14 seats, one short of grabbing the House.

Special predictions:

Some confused Connecticut voters voting for Lieberman grimace when they realize that they thought they were voting for former Women's Basketball star Nancy Lieberman.

Peter King, GOP congressman, wins but resigns, and immediately offers his seat to Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King.

After Rick Santorum loses his Senate seat in PA, he will buy some crystal meth and not use it, and hire a male prostitutde to massage him, but not sleep with him. (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/03/haggard.allegations/index.html)

George W. Bush will attempt to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a 3rd term, and the Democrats will support it, knowing they have a better chance against him than against John McCain

To assauge the request of one reader (of which there are of course many) , I will attempt to talk about something other than sports for a minute. Since the most productive thing I have done all fall in my mind has been read, I will attempt to rate the books that I read (both past and future) and if I'm really ambitious, write something about then.

The scale will be from 1-10 with decimals, possibly only at the .5s but maybe getting into smaller intervals if I feel it necessary later on. Basically, if a book is higher on the scale than a second book, it means, if you have a choice, you should read the first book instead of the second book. If a book is rated at higher than 5, it means that you should read the book instead of nothing, where as a 5 exactly means, you should be indifferent between reading the book or nothing. Because the books are prescreened by me to be books I'm likely to enjoy, very few if any will probably be at 5 or lower. But it's nice to have just in case. Soon, I will follow with actually book ratings. Look forward to them!

Now, if I was smart I would just claim that I had not made a World Series prediction, because my picks are so bad, that it would be unfair to the team I picked.

If I was even smarter than that, I would pick St. Louis in 4, because I wanted Detroit to win, and a pick for St. Louis, let alone the sweep, should just about guarentee this.

However, I'm going to reveal to you my actual pick. Now, of course I could be making this up right on the spot, but since my pick can't even happen, after four games, I think even I would be capable of making up a better prediction.

Detroit in 6 (gulp) - I'm not even going to try to explain except I thought Detroit would hit a little, and not make stupid fielding miscues (I'm looking at you, Curtis Granderson and Fernando Rodney.)

Alas, I had to set the bar low in predictions, so that I can improve upon it in the future...exactly. Well, I can't get worse.

All right. Man, my picks in the baseball playoffs have been terrible so far. Time to make excuses.

Justin Verlander's own mother didn't have them beating the Yankees. But the A's, well, she probably had them beating them. But the A's pitching looked so sharp! And Frank Thomas and Nick Swisher! Alas, even the best among us are wrong sometimes. And so am I.

So goes the Twins, and the Pads as well. At least I got the Mets, albeit, not in the right number of games. Now let's just see if the Mets can validate me in one of the two LCSs.

How about the NFL this week? Or tonight most notably, when the Cards blow one big time to the Bears - blame it on the kicker, Neil Rackers, blame it on the offense, blame it on the special teams. It's strange how sports work in that, if you said before the game, that the Cardinals would lose by just 1 to the Bears, you'd say spectacular effort, that's all you could ask from them. But the way it went down, with the Cards in control of the whole game, you've got to finish it out. Exciting for viewers, but ugly. Goes back to old school Bears form with the Defense pretty much singlehandedly winning the game, with an assist from the special teams, but none from the offense.

On to Hockey. I've been trying to watch a bit more this year, but won't get fully into it 'til baseball ends. What I love though, is the idea of awarding the best players in any particular game "stars" - a first, second and third. Why doesn't every sport do it? Something to think about, Bud Selig, Roger Goodell, David Stern.

More explanation later when I have time - but just to get my picks out there before the games start, Oakland over Detroit in 7, and Mets over St. Louis in Six

Notes from yesterday's games:

- Hindsight is always 20/20, but the biggest question for me in the Twins game is not why they couldn't get runners over in a couple of key spots, but why they didn't bring in Joe Nathan in the top of the ninth - this being a home game, he would never have a chance for a save situation - and while you're still very much in the game with a one run defecit, why not make sure it stays that way. Unlike, say, Mariano Rivera, Nathan doesn't need to worry about pitching consecutive days, and even pitched on four days in a row in late September. If you're the Twins, you want to hold on to those Santana games anyway you can.

- When will people learn to pitch around Albert Pujols? The man is a machine. San Diego burned, like so many teams before them, when, with a runner on, they threw it right at him. Sure, the Cards scored a couple more runs, but that Pujols homer really set the pace. When a guy is that head and shoulders above the rest of the lineup, no reason to let him beat you.

- I think I got just about what I expected from the Yankees-Tigers game. Yankees winning, putting the most runs on the board, but the Tigers scoring a few as well. Not a blowout, making the Tigers at least seem competitive, but the Tigers didn't show enough to make me thing they're going to take any games in this series yet. We'll see if Verlander can harken back to his stuff from July, when he had a 1.01 ERA. I hope this gets interesting.

- The team that I think needs to be least worried after their loss is San Diego. The Cardinals really need to win each time Carpenter steps to the mound. The Padres can wait on their pitching depth, and the bats are plenty likely to come around against the rest of the Cards' rotation.