"September 11th was a horrific day in the airline industry, yet in the wake of that event, I believe carriers and airports have used that as an excuse to make the air travel experience as inelegant as possible."

Yeah ... tossing off people who go into the bathroom to scream and pound the walls. How inelegant!

A spokesman for the working-class Irish airline said, "Fuck you, ya la-di-da herring-eating cunts."

(Actually, their spokesman did say that, but not in those exact words.)

Sure, it sounds weird to us, but remember that in Vietnam they do everything with fishing nets, including catching their brides. Hell, their catchers use fishing nets to catch potential base stealers. If I remember right, John McCain was trapped in one of their nets for years.

"He had been lying on his back between the tracks as the southbound freight train passed over him."

"He said he was playing a game, but he was actually talking on the phone. She [the flight attendant] was very nice. The door was closed they just announced that they were pulling away from the gate. He got up threw his papers on the floor stormed into the bathroom, slammed the door closed, beat on the wall and then came back.”

He said ‘If you want to kick me off, kick me off.’ He was just crazy, he just flipped out, the guy has problems.

A crew member who dealt with (Baldwin) said he couldn’t stay on the flight.

'He was violent, abusive and aggressive. He got into the bathroom and started beating on the wall and he pounded his fists on the galley counter. Yelling, screaming, very ugly. It was unsafe to keep him on board that’s why he got kicked out.'

The crew member did not want to give her name, but said she asked him five times to get off his phone.

'He was asked five times. I contacted the captain. We were brought back in and he was let off the plane.'”

She must be some progressive new kind of vampire because she's on a beach - in daylight. You don't really see that many sun-worshipping vampires. Maybe she has an SPF of, like, a billion.

And here is his complete show from 12/6/11.

"Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, joined Jon Huntsman and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in declining to participate. So far, only Newt Gingrich, who met with Trump on Monday at Trump Tower in New York, and Rick Santorum have said they will appear at the debate."

The Big East possesses an automatic BCS bid in football, and every team in the conference sucks. That's appealing to both Boise and Houston, who are tired of being on the outside and powerless. (There are five teams in the BCS bowls rated lower than Boise, including the two at-large teams.)

The question is - will that autobid get lost soon?

It's several days longer than the 2012 Aztec Calendar, and with quite a bit more nudity.

"In anticipation of Lindsay Lohan's appearance in Playboy (due to hit newsstands later this month), here's a gallery full of her wardrobe malfunctions over the years, both accidental and purposeful."

"David Fincher weighs in on the controversy regarding The New Yorker's embargo-busting review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

Will the Kutcher Kurse be broken?

In Ashton Kutcher's entire lackluster career, he has never been in a film with more positive reviews than negative. It doesn't even matter if you give him a bit part. If he's in your movie, you will get more pans than raves. If you were to re-release Casablanca unchanged except for a brief insert of Kutcher into a crowd scene, anyone who has ever praised the film will rush to re-evaluate it.

This week he comes out in New Year's Eve, the latest Garry Marshall rip-off of Love, Actually. The previous Marshall/Kutcher collaboration, Valentine's Day (also a rip-off of Love, Actually), produced only 18% positive reviews, and Marshall himself has not received a "fresh" tomato for any film he's directed after 1991, so I don't expect this one to break the Kutcher Kurse, but you never know.

The other film in wide release this week is The Babysitter with Jonah Hill. For reasons not apparent to me at the moment, neither the theater counts nor any reviews are available.

You are stuck with those two choices unless you live in NY or LA, in which case you can check out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (94%), or Young Adult (82%), or any of several other arthouse runs by Oscar wannabees.

"Scoop, are you implying that Kutcher is not in line for an Oscar this year?"

Well, I don't know if "implying" is the correct word.

Key awards:

Best picture: The Artist. The NY Critics made the same choice.

Best director: Scorsese for Hugo. The NY critics picked Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist.

Best actor: Clooney for The Descendants. The NY critics went with Brad Pitt in Moneyball.

Best actress: Michelle Williams for her Marilyn Monroe impersonation. The NY Critics picked Meryl Streep for her Margaret Thatcher impersonation.

Best foreign language: The Skin I Live In (dir: Almodovar). The NY Film Critics picked A Separation, the Iranian film which is #1 of the year at both Rotten Tomatoes (100%) and IMDb (8.6). The Skin I Live In has good, not great scores (79%, 7.8), but has a famous director, whatever that means.

CBS keeps changing their strategy with Letterman and Ferguson. Most recently, they're not posting the monologues on a regular basis.

And we have an exclusive sample.

"Hey, did you every think you'd wake up and not remember what happened in Las Vegas Bangkok Los Angeles"

"Great Britain's annual $37,000 (US) Turner Prize for Modern Art has been awarded. The finalists included

* a Scottish artist who filled a room with wadded-up paper, cellophane, soap and deodorant;

* an artist whose paintings of his house included one titled "Landscape With Dog Shit Bin"

* a video called "Floor" that consists of nothing but some footage of a floorboard.

But the Turner Prize went to Martin Boyce, whose winning artwork, "Perforated And Porous," was a collection of sculptures made of industrial junk that suggested a park, with a centerpiece of a bent, rusty garbage bin. Judges hailed it as "pioneering" and said it displayed "a new sense of poetry," although one gallery visitor said he thought it was an actual beat-up garbage can and nearly threw some litter into it.

There is one city sadder than Detroit. Can you guess it? (I would not have.)

America's happiest city is Honolulu, followed by 8 very cold places in New England and the upper midwest.

This is exciting because this planet is TRULY similar to Earth. It's about 15% closer to its star, but its star is 25% weaker than ours. It has a 290 day year, and an average temperature of 71 degrees. The only significant difference from Earth is that Kepler 22-b is 2.4 times larger, but that's quite similar in cosmic terms.

It is "only" about 600 light-years away.

That was a month earlier than I expected. I've noted in past comments that it should overtake MSIE to take the #1 spot approximately next September, assuming a continuation of the trends of the past two years.

Nice. It would have been nicer if they had elected the guy a year or two ago, when he was alive to enjoy it.

Ron Santo's lifetime stats are pretty good, not spectacular, but are misleading since he had his best years in the second deadball era, when a .400 OBP with 30 homers was a major achievement. Nobody did that in the National league in 1964, for example, when Santo was the only guy to hit 30 homers with an OBP as high as .385. And Santo lead the league with .398. And there were some mighty good players in that league: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Cepeda, Clemente, etc.

In 1967, for another example, nobody hit 40 homers, and only four guys in the league reached 30 homers. Santo was the only one of the four to finish among the OBP leaders. (And was the league's best defensive player, based on WAR.)

Based on Wins Above Replacement, in 1964-1966, Santo was the second-best position player in the NL, behind only Willie Mays. In 1967, he was the best by far, reaching a level of 10.2, which few men have every attained.

Since WW2, the position players who have reached 10.2 without steroids is a very short list: Mays, Mantle, Williams, Yastrzemski, Morgan, Musial, Yount, Ripken, Carew, Pujols, Boudreau, Schmidt, Robinson, Santo. As of today, all the guys on that list are in the Hall of Fame (or obviously will be, in Pujols' case.)

Schmidt is the only other third baseman ever to reach that level. Mathews and Brett never did, and many other A-list players at other positions never made it: Banks, Aaron, Bench, Henderson, Reggie, DiMaggio ...

In other words, Santo could play a bit. I've gone into such detail because the offensive numbers in that era are so depressed that it is not immediately obvious how good Ron Santo was. In 1967 he batted .300 with 96 walks, 31 homers and 98 RBI. That sounds ho-hum to our steroid-inflated ears, but it was actually better than Brett's big year when he batted .390 with one RBI per game.

"This could be footage in those local news stories they do every year about how people gain a lot of weight around the holidays."

(Proudly holds up big foam rubber #1 finger)

Given the legendary politeness of Canadians, Roller Derby doesn't really seem like a sport they are destined to dominate.

I was surprised to read that they now play this game on a flat track rather than a banked one.

I don't even know how they keep score in roller derby, but I'd like to note that the semi-final game between the USA and Australia resulted in a real nail-biter with the final score of 532 to 4.

Oklahoma State came oh-so-close to the #2 spot and a shot at the national title, but fell just short of 'Bama.

As expected, the national title game will be a LSU/Alabama rematch. (So if Alabama wins the rematch by three, are the two teams co-champions?)

Oklahoma State finished third, Stanford fourth, therefore Stanford gets the automatic bid since OSU is already in the BCS group by virtue of its Big 12 championship. Those two teams will play each other in the Fiesta Bowl.

We already knew that Wisconsin will play Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

TCU did NOT make it to #16, which is what they needed to do in order to qualify for an automatic bid. They made it #15 on both human polls, but the computer rankings dragged them down. Therefore, there were two at-large bids available instead of one. Those two slots went to #11 Virginia Tech and #13 Michigan, and they will end up playing each other in the Inconsequential Bowl, aka the Sugar Bowl.

#15 Clemson and #23 West Virginia will meet each other in the Even More Inconsequential Bowl, aka the Orange Bowl.

These are the other teams that were in the at-large pool formed by the top 14:

#6 Arkansas was not eligible for the BCS series because of the "limit two teams per conference" rule.

#7 Boise was by-passed for teams from major conferences.

#8 Kansas State. They command a small media audience, but they were rated #4 in the nation by the computer systems!

#9 South Carolina was not eligible for the BCS series because of the "limit two teams per conference" rule.

#12 Baylor, with an explosive offense, is far more exciting than either Virginia Tech or Michigan, and their QB is in the Heisman short list.

#14 Oklahoma. There were just too many better teams ahead of them in line, including two from their own conference.

So who got screwed? Maybe nobody. Here's why. If I had been running the Sugar Bowl, I would have wanted Baylor for sure, because they are really fun to watch. But I can't really get them. It is not possible to take Baylor over Kansas State, because Kansas State is in the same conference and was stronger in every way. KSU finished higher in the conference; KSU finished higher in the national rankings; KSU beat Baylor head-to-head (36-35).

So then should I take Kansas State? The problem is that Oklahoma was also in the at-large pool, and Oklahoma totally destroyed KSU (58-17). Do I take the loser of that lopsided game over the winner? No. Plus I'm just not enthusiastic about Kansas State's ability to sell tickets and command TV viewers.

So I look elsewhere.

By eliminating those three teams, I am left with only three choices: Virginia Tech, Michigan, and Boise. Boise is from a minor conference and commands no national audience, so I'm left with the other two. I'm also left with a very boring game.

======

The non-BCS Cotton Bowl will probably end up the big winner in the situation. It will probably end up with #8 Kansas State against #6 Arkansas. Big 12 vs SEC. Those teams are actually rated #4 and #5 by the computers, which makes this the third best post-season game, even though it's not part of the championship series.

As ol' Mel Allen would say, "How about that?"

Another week, another miraculous 4th-quarter comeback, and another miraculous win for the Broncos in a game where they were generally outplayed.

Also, somebody turned their Gatorade into wine.

Just sayin'

Woo hoo!!

I guess I won't be posting for a couple of hours. I have to run to the store for some lotion, and then God knows how many times I may have to masturbate.

All kidding aside, she is ... well, unlike most images of Victoria, she does look like she belongs to our species.

If you use your imagination.

This is clearly because neither of them is named Mitt.

Seriously, Newt's performance is quite impressive, given that he hasn't run a single ad in that state. And Mitt must be thinking long and hard about the possibility that he might lose second place to America's favorite dotty uncle!

"The holiday season is a time of traditions. Here in America, the most popular holiday tradition, observed by millions, is to celebrate the birth of Jesus by going to a Walmart at 4 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving and getting into fistfights over steeply discounted TV sets.

But many other nations around the world have equally colorful holiday traditions of their own. For example: In Spain, on Christmas Eve, children traditionally fill their parents’ best shoes with yogurt, then hide in the woods for two to three weeks.

In Austria, instead of Santa Claus they have Father Wurmwerfer, a man dressed in a duck costume who rides a unicycle around tossing earthworms to everyone he sees. Legend has it that if you catch one, you will soon wash your hands."

Least corrupt: New Zealand.

Most corrupt: Somalia

Skip forward to about 8:25 minutes into the interview.

Michigan State blew their final chance by roughing Wisconsin's punter with a couple of minutes still on the clock, thus turning their own first down into a Wisconsin first down. (They had used up their time outs.)

==================
Round-up:

It's pretty obvious that Virginia Tech and Houston were not really the #5 and #6 teams in the country. But then again, we really already knew that.

I'm assuming that LSU and Alabama will finish 1-2 in the polls and will have a rematch for the national championship.

That leaves eight other teams to compete in the BCS series:

It appears that these seven will be in automatically:

Clemson (ACC champ)
Wisconsin (Big 10 champ)
Oregon (Pac 12 champ)
Oklahoma State (Big 12 champ)
West Virginia (Big East champ)
TCU (Presumably. They are the top conference champ of the "other group." They will need to rise to #16 or higher and finish higher than West Virginia. It appears that they will.)
Stanford (Presumably. It is automatic if they are #4 and LSU-Alabama finish 1-2.)

There will be one at-large team. Who will that be? That depends on the final rankings, because it must be one of the top 14 (and must NOT be from the SEC). It is difficult to say precisely which teams will be in the top 14 pool, because of the Saturday results. Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Houston, Michigan State and Georgia lost, but will they fall enough to leave the top 14? Baylor, TCU, West Virginia, Southern Miss and Clemson all won, but will they rise enough to make the top and push other teams out? We don't know for sure. This is a difficult situation even for teams which were idle, like #16 Michigan, which really has no idea whether it will finish in the top 14.

The probable match-ups:

LSU vs Alabama
Wisconsin vs Oregon
Clemson vs West Virginia or at large
Oklahoma State vs Stanford
TCU vs West Virginia or at-large

NOTES

Presumed #4 Stanford will an automatic bid if Alabama is #2, and Oklahoma State is #3, but will not get an autobid if the #2 and #3 teams finish the other way around. The way it works is that the #3 gets an automatic bid if it needs one, but if it already qualifies in some other way, then the automatic bid goes to #4. If Alabama is #3, it would need the bid, since it is not a conference champion. On the other hand, if Oklahoma State is #3 it would not need a bid (the Big 12 champ gets in automatically), and the autobid automatically passes to #4, presumably Stanford.

That point is just academic. Stanford is just about certain to get an at-large bid if they don't get the automatic one. They are the #4 team in the nation and have a strong Heisman candidate, which makes them a good ticket-seller.

Very stylish! They also double as softball uniforms when the Putas de Palma play their Sunday double-headers against the Caballeros.

Oh, wait. Bad translation. I just realized that a cabecera doble is not two softball games.

Oops.

As evidenced by the act of publishing the study.

They had a major bowl locked in if they could have won today. They could not. In fact, they were crushed 49-28, although the game was dead even statistically.

It's just as well that they lost now. If they lost by 3 TDs to Southern Miss, imagine what a bowl game against Oklahoma would have been like.

Houston's loss opened up some interesting possibilities for Southern Miss and TCU.

Southern Miss was rated 24th coming into that game and pounded the #7 team. If they get elevated to #16 or better, they could get an automatic bid, provided that they are ranked higher than West Virginia and TCU.

* They have to be higher than TCU, because only the top-rated conference champ from a non-BCS conference gets an automatic bid.

* And they have to be higher than West Virginia, because the automatic bid requires them to be ranked 16th or better, AND higher than at least one conference champion from the BCS conferences.

TCU is in the same situation. They are currently ranked #18. If they can climb to #16 or better, and are ranked higher than Southern Miss and West Virginia, they would get an automatic bid.

Being ranked higher than West Virginia does not seem to be a problem for either team, so the only question is whether either of them can make the top 16. (If they both make it, only the one with the better ranking would qualify.) That might be a significant hurdle. I looked at the 17 teams ranked above TCU, and I'm not sure if there's room for two of them to drop down, even if TCU wins today's game by 50 (which is a distinct possibility).

But it's all in the hands of the voters now.

There are no new films in wide release this week. The week after Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the worst of the year for the film business.

Twilight easily held on to first among the holdovers.

In the unending conservative quest to come up with someone not named Mitt, conservative icon George Will comes out with a ringing "yea" for ... (wait for it) ... Jon Huntsman.

(And a blistering condemnation of the Newtmeister in phrases which were not oblique: "Gingrich, however, embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive.")

"Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative."

As much as I usually despise every single politician of every party, I have to admit I'm actually starting to like Jon Huntsman as a person. You've probably read that Donald Trump is going to host a presidential debate between Christmas and New Year's Day. Huntsman declined to participate and sent the following statement through his spokesman: "We look forward to watching Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich suck up to Trump with a big bowl of popcorn.". That's pretty much what I would have said in the same circumstances, except that I would have sprinkled in the word "douchebag" a few times. Huntsman couldn't have done that out loud, of course, but it's definitely in the sub-text.

Congressman Ron Paul also declined to participate.

Trump's classy response? "Few people take Ron Paul seriously and many of his views and presentation make him a clown-like candidate," he said. "I am glad he and Jon Huntsman, who has inconsequential poll numbers or a chance of winning, will not be attending the debate and wasting the time of the viewers who are trying very hard to make a very important decision."

Here is a version with some black bars in strategic areas. I don't know whether an uncensored one is available.

But where's the long-lost Danny DeVito tape?

The colognes — called Alibis — give men an excuse for being late home.

My Car Broke Down smells of fuel, burnt rubber, grease, oil and steel.

We Were Out Sailing smells like fresh ocean spray, sunscreen, aqua and cotton rope.

The third and final fragrance, I Was Working Late, smells of cigarettes, coffee, ink and wool suits.

But apparently there's also a downside.

Here is the group's home page. It's in the Cyrillic alphabet, but it includes naughty videos and pictures of hot topless chicks, which is pretty much the only Eastern European knowledge you'll ever need.

There is no indication that teen sex harms females, so it's good news for Roman Polanski.

But the whole thing is bad news for Richard Gere.

As far as I can tell, this is a real pro-Cain site, not a spoof.

Although I have to admit that the line between those is becoming ever blurrier in this world.

Well, you have to admit she is correct. It is literally true that gay people already have the universal right to get married, just not to each other.

Perfect case in point: her husband.

Damn. I'll have to put the annual Mayan Swimsuit calendar back in my budget.

"New trends this year include naming kids after children of celebrities; names from nature (Summer or Clover for girls, Rain or River for boys); and names with a Spanish influence, such as Xavier or Valentina, says BabyCenter editor in chief Linda Murray.

Though not in the top 10, other popular names include Harper (daughter of soccer star David Beckham and singer wife Victoria) and both Anderson and Cooper (CNN's Anderson Cooper)."

They have stopped posting Craig's monologues.

Although the New York Times, with its infinite pretensions, insists on calling him "Flying" Jimmy Elvis with the trailing "g." Later in the article they follow their own notoriously (and often hilariously) pompous style manual and call him Mr. Elvis, just as they refer to Meat Loaf as Mr. Loaf.

"The 2011 show, a four-hour extravaganza of demolition derbies, figure-eight school bus races and airborne automobiles, was opened by Flying Jimmy Elvis, whose success in launching a Lincoln Town Car super-stretch limousine off a ramp and into a 14 foot by 65 foot mobile home set the tone for the rest of the evening."

I'm surprised that they don't follow my lead and refer to the evening's entertainer, Larry the Cable Guy, as Lawrence.

Or Mr. Guy.

Or, as the Germans call him, "Der kabelier."

Anyway, Jimbo did fly a Lincoln Town Car into a mobile home, which must truly represent both the acme of redneck entertainment and the nadir of the redneck housing crisis.

Why do we need an "or" in that question? I vote for "both."

The first Olympics were naked. It's time to restore our proud ancient heritage. And not just to this event. Make it every event.

What the hell, make it everyone of both sexes. I'm even willing to endure looking at some dicks in order to avoid any charges of sexism. And I gotta believe that some events will pull in TV ratings that will smash the Super Bowl records. To watch figure skating is pretty close to my least favorite human activity. It ranks just barely ahead of cutting off my own arm like Franco did in that one movie. But I'd be glued to the TV if those chicks were naked.

Francais: Nouvelles Captures

English: New Captures

Just as soon as she wraps up her cure for Keith Richards.