“Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Donald Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.”

I wasn’t very worried when Trump sent the military. Our troops are professional, well-trained and disciplined, so the risk of craziness was minimal. They weren’t really going to shoot at people throwing rocks.

But a bunch of crazy drunken rednecks facing off against the immigrants … this is a recipe for disaster.

I don’t see a lot of surprises in the NFL lately.

The Rams finally lost, but they played well enough. They just ran into a buzzsaw offense that ran up 35 points in the first half. The Rams lost on the road to an equally good team, and Drew Brees played lights out (Michael Thomas alone had more than 200 receiving yards), so there was no shock there.

The Rams, Saints and Chiefs now have one loss apiece. Four teams have two losses, including the ever-menacing Pats.

Hey, thank heaven for the Raiders. If not for them, my home state of NY would have a monopoly on the really sucky teams (The Bills and Giants are awful- and the Jets aren’t so hot either.)

The week in college football

The rankings mentioned below differ somewhat from the ones we have been discussing in previous weeks, because the official rankings came out for the first time this week. A lot of teams came up with very different results. Houston, for example was #17 in the AP poll, but could not crack the official rankings at all. As it turns out, the official rankers were correct, because Houston lost this week to a team with a losing record.)

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Well, there goes our hope that somebody would give Alabama a game. LSU was ranked #3 in the nation, and couldn’t even score a friggin’ field goal against ‘Bama. Final score 29-zip.

LSU’s humbling loss means that Michigan will join the Fantastic Four. Michigan was ranked #5 and they won 42-7 over the 14th-ranked team, so they clearly will advance at least up to #4, possibly even #3, depending on how the voters feel about Notre Dame’s schedule. The Wolverines also have two pretty easy games coming up, so they should be able to hold their place for a while, at least until they have to play OSU in Columbus.

Georgia is still a legitimate contender to make the playoff. They were ranked #6 and beat the #9 team 34-17. I suppose they will move up to the #5 spot.

As I think we all expected, Utah was nowhere near as good as their #15 ranking, and got soundly trounced by unranked ASU.

Once again, there will be plenty of changes at the bottom of the list. The following teams lost: 3, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25. Next week’s versions of Utah, that is to say the teams that are not as good as their ranking, will include Syracuse, and Cincinnati. (Syracuse was #19, and will probably crack the top 15. Cincinnati defeated Navy 42-0, which is a much worse drubbing than Notre Dame gave the Midshipmen, and they are 8-1, so the Bearcats will probably claw their way back into the rankings. They would love to forget that loss to Temple, which marred their otherwise perfect season.)

Jennifer Connelly’s first topless scene in The Hot Spot (1990)

The film was lensed from August 14, 1989 to October 21, 1989. Connelly was 18 at the time!

If this scene had been released in the internet age, I think it would have been bigger than Katie Holmes in The Gift, which was a cultural phenomenon. Even without the internet, it must have caused a sensation with the male population. (I can’t say for sure. I was living overseas at the time.)

I wouldn’t call Pavarotti a rock star, but I guess he was in a figurative sense.

I do love me the movie mentioned here, Yes, Georgio. Get this, it was directed by a same guy who directed some of the greatest movies of all time: Patton, Papillon, Planet of the Apes, The Best Man, The Good Years …

And then came the 1980s, and ol’ Franklin Schaffner seems to have forgotten everything he knew in the 60s and 70s. He has four IMDb credits in the 80s and they are his four lowest-rated films. The bottom dweller, by a very wide margin, is Yes, Georgio. That may not be the worst movie ever made, but it could be the worst ever made by a guy who once directed Oscar’s Best Picture, and perhaps the worst ever directed by a guy who was President of the Directors’ Guild of America.