A tale of two teams

What a game for the Patriots on Sunday. I almost felt bad for the Chargers, watching them give the game away in such painful fashion...until they started bitching about it like spoiled little children. Get over it. I love that they tried to accuse the Patriots of lacking class for making fun of a stupid sack dance that is absolutely classless in the first place. Merriman is a cheater and a punk and I'm glad that we got to shove it in his face a little bit. Meanwhile, Landanian Tomlinson is getting a pass on the whole thing because he is "a good guy" and "a class act." But is he really? Ladanian, you got beat. Get over it and get over yourself.

So we've got Pats-Colts again, and obviously the Patriots are going to win this one too. I feel a little bit bad for Peyton Mannning because the national media, and maybe even his own fans, are going to really crush the guy if he loses this week. This one should be another tight game, probably going down to the fourth quarter just like last week. I think that Brady will have a better game, the running game will be a little more successful, and the defense will do enough to contain the Colts offense, which just hasn't been as explosive lately. Pats win by six, sealing the game with an interception late in the fourth quarter.

As for the Super Bowl potential match ups, I'm torn. If the Pats were to lose then I definitely want the Saints to win. But if we do take care of business then I'd almost feel bad about having to beat New Orleans in the Super Bowl. We'd be the clear-cut villains in that scenario and it would be a little weird. So I almost hope that the Bears get in so we can just slap them around.

At the other end of the spectrum is the drama around the Arkansas Razorbacks, who lost their offensive coordinator and their freshman QB this week. It's absurd. Mitch Mustain was the best high school player in the country, a prospect so good that Arkansas wisely hired his old high school coach just to secure the guy. And the coach in question, Gus Malzahn, opened things up and finally gave Razorback fans something to get excited about. Mustain was 8-0 as a starter during the great run the Hogs had...and then somehow it all went wrong. Idiot head coach Houston Nutt benched Mustain and reigned in Malzahn's play-calling duties. WHY? I have no idea. Now Malzahn has bolted to Tulsa of all places, with Mustain probably following him out the door. I'm not really a Hogs fan yet but as somebody who has started to go to games and follow the team, this is simply tragic. Does this mean that 2007 will be a return to the completely predicatable offense that drove fans crazy before? My wife, a diehard Razorback fan, now hopes that everything falls apart next season just so the school will have to fire Nutt. It's a sad state of affairs but that might be the best thing that could happen. What a mess.

Good script, bad football

Eden's Bluff, our screenplay about the "clothing optional resort," is coming along nicely. It has turned out to be much funnier and much easier to write than I had anticipated. When we got the whole batch of producer's notes, I really didn't know how we could manage it all. The protagonist seemed like a character that I couldn't relate to at all, and thus I thought she'd be really hard to write for. But the time in L.A. with Johnny was huge--we came up with a great outline and we've been working faithfully off of that. I don't think that this script would be in nearly the shape that it is if I hadn't made the trip out there. We're turning in the first draft next week and I'm very curious about what kind of feedback we'll get from our producer. The big plan has simply been to make it so funny and so good that he has to shoot it. But with two subsequent drafts in our contract, that would be quite a ways away, if it happens at all.

Last weekend we went up to Fayetteville for the Arkansas-South Carolina game. Let me tell you, it's a strange experience to be at a sporting event with no emotional investment in the game whatsoever. I was even planning to place a bet on Arkansas, just so that I'd have a real reason to root for the Hogs...until I saw that they were favored. I didn't want to be an ass and go the other way, so instead I just went to the game and it was pretty brutal to watch, even from a neutral observer's point of view. Their quarterback situation is a mess but they have a couple of decent young running backs, which translates into the most vanilla, predictable play calling you've ever seen. To sum up: in the 4th quarter, facing a 4th and 1 with the game and, essentially, their season on the line, Arkansas called time out. They came out with a formation that they had used all day, one that I immediately recognized indicated that they would probably run it off tackle. Now, throwing a nice play action pass or a little bootleg out of that set would have been great--it would have been almost guaranteed to pick up a first, if not score. Instead, they ran off right tackle...which they had done about 30 times already. Obviously, they got stuffed, and ended up losing. Their coach needs to go.

On the way back, we stopped on a scenic road called The Pig Trail to scatter some of Jim Bob's ashes. It was a beautiful spot, up in the mountains, surrounded by trees full of autumn foliage. The moment itself passed pretty quickly, but at least it was done nicely.

Other than that, not too much happening on the home front. I can't believe that it's the second week of November already. I find myself saying this every year, but every year it really seems like the holiday season arrives earlier and earlier. Thanksgiving is just over two weeks away! Crazy. The script will keep me busy for a little while but I'm curious to see where things take me after that.