FilteringCraig

Wait until the second take in slow motion.

Kevin Smith has written a new movie and it is set to start filming sometime in January in Pittsburgh, where he previously filmed Dogma. I am a die-hard Kevin Smith fan as many people are too, and my expectations for Zack and Miri are through the roof. Smith has signed on Seth Rogen to play Zack and Elizabeth Banks to play Miri. Smith couldn’t ask for a better situation than this one. Rogen is absolutely on the top of his game right now and he will bring a level of heat and marketability (not to mention the potentially hilarious performance) to this Smith vehicle unlike anything that Smith has ever seen for any of his movies in his entire career.

Of course, Smith had Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez on board for Jersey Girl. There were no two bigger celebrities in the world when they made that movie. But if you remember correctly, Jersey Girl had the unfortunate timing of having to follow one of the most trod upon movies in the history of cinema, Gigli, starring the two biggest pieces of his huge cast. As a result, the general movie-going public didn’t even bother to give Jersey Girl much of a chance. This was especially ridiculous considering the movie was really about Affleck’s character interacting with his father, played by George Carlin, his soon-to-be girlfriend, played by the impossibly cute Liv Tyler, and his daughter, played by Raquel Castro.

But now, there is no doubt about it. Short of Seth Rogen entering a media circus-type situation where he dates Lindsay Lohan, does a bunch of coke and goes to jail, he will undoubtedly bring some serious, legitimate Hollywood heat to Kevin Smith’s new comedy. Let’s look at Rogen’s last few movies.

Although The 40 Year-Old Virgin was a Steve Carell project, Seth Rogen’s performance didn’t hurt that movie at all. It’s worldwide gross was over $177 million according to Box Office Mojo. After that, Seth Rogen produced and starred in Knocked Up which grossed $217 million worldwide. Finally, he wrote and played in Superbad this summer which has grossed over $167 million worldwide, and that doesn’t include DVD numbers as the release date is set for December 4th.

That box office track record would have any director creaming their collective shorts. But the news is even rosier for Kevin Smith and his Weinstein Company backers. When Smith makes a movie, the budget doesn’t look big compared to the catering bill of a Michael Bay production. Smith is reportedly going to make Zack and Miri on a budget of $25 million. If Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are anywhere close to decent in this movie, they will easily be able to make everyone involved supremely rich. Or even more supremely rich in the case of most Hollywood types.

Regardless, Kevin Smith got his man and he potentially has a gateway into the post Silent Bob movie directing career.

I wrote about Randy Moss this week, and the stories are starting to pile up on either side of a debate whether or not the receiver should be acclaimed or ostracized.

Jason Whitlock, who I think is one of the top five sportswriters in the nation thinks Moss should be included in the MVP debate. He says that Moss used to be immature, but that doesn’t matter this season for the purposes of MVP voting. He also says that Moss does more for Tom Brady than Tom Brady does for Randy. I don’t know about all that.

Jim Trotter at SI.com says that there should be no MVP for Moss. I love Jim Trotter’s money quote on this one where he not only talks about Moss quitting on his teams, but how in a bottom line game like the NFL Moss probably cost many a man his job in his campaign to get the hell out of Oakland.

I understand that this debate is framed a little bit differently than the article that I wrote. I wrote that people shouldn’t be praising Randy Moss, and now this will open the argument to people who want to talk about Brady vs. Randy. I have little interest in that argument except where the people are using Moss’ despicable selfishness in the past as an excuse to deny him any special acclaims this season.

Anyway, go ahead and weigh in in the comments if you would like.

I don’t know this Benny Lava, but he sure sounds like a hopping dude if this were 1985. This is a video from India and someone thought that it sounded like weird English phrases. Listen and read and check it out.

The war that started about a month ago with my neighbors never really materialized. The fact is that I am a big pansy and my bark is much larger than my bite. I never went over and said anything to the neighbors.

But today, there was first contact and verbal blows were exchanged, but not over anything that was contained in the previous post.

Today, I had a half day off and got home in the early afternoon to find a huge three-headed monster of a satellite dish planted on a wall that sits right next to my driveway. It isn’t on my property, but having had a dish installed last season so Jen could watch the Colts every week, I know the rules about what it takes to install a dish in my neighborhood.

The rules that are in play in this case are as follows, and I quote from my city’s ordinance website pertaining to ground-mounted earth stations or antennae:

• A. No ground-mounted earth station or antenna shall be constructed in any front or side yard, and , shall be constructed only behind the rear of the residence or main structure and shall be subject to the provisions set forth in this section and Section 1278.09.

• B. No earth station or antenna, including its concrete base slab or other substructure, shall be constructed less than five feet from any property line or easement, nor in any side yard, or rear boundary buffer area.

First of all, one could consider this installation to break all rules. It sits on the wall and protrudes in front of his house into the front yard. The wall extends past the exterior walls of his house, so technically it is also in the side yard. On top of all that, it is definitely within five feet of my property line.

So, first I went outside to let the installer (who was also parked in my driveway GRRRR!) know that the installation didn’t conform to the city ordinance. He kind of dismissed me and a few minutes later, the man of the house came outside and he and I entered into a heated discussion.

Neighbor: “So, you don’t like my dish?”

Me: “Well did you check the codes before having it installed? It is supposed to be in the back of the house and not within five feet of a property line. It’s also not supposed to be in the front or side yard.”

Neighbor: “So, don’t call the city. What, do you have a problem with it?”

Me: “Look, I am not trying to be a jerk, but…”

Neighbor: (more heatedly) “It sure seems like it.”

Me: (more heatedly) “Well, it doesn’t look good. I know my wife isn’t going to like it. What about in the spring when we are going to try and sell our house? The codes are written for a reason.”

Neighbor: (dismissively) “The codes aren’t written because it might annoy the neighbors, it is written for the street.”

Me: (more dismissively) “Aren’t those one in the same?”

Neighbor: “Well, this is an HD dish and there isn’t any other place to put it where I can get a signal.”

Me: (feeling like I didn’t want it to get any more heated because I fear physical confrontations) “I don’t know what to tell you. I have an idea, If you want, you can put it right next to mine on my garage in the back.”

Neighbor: (to installer) “Well, would that work?”

Installer: “I wouldn’t be able to do that today.”

Neighbor: (recognizing my decreased intensity) “Why don’t you talk to your wife and if she hates it, I will take it down.”

Me: “Come on, are you serious?”

Neighbor: “When you go to sell your house in the Spring, I will take it down.”

Me: (in skeptical tone) “OK, but let me just make this promise to you right now. Jen and I are not going to call the city. I just want you to know that when the city calls you about the dish.”

Neighbor: “Come on. Nobody is going to care about it.”

Me: “OK.”

At this point I went back inside. My neighbor is officially a dick. He called me a jerk, basically. He told me that I was crazy to think that a three-pronged dish sitting 15 feet from my house was a big deal. He made insincere offers to take the dish down at some undetermined future date that would require a request on my part.

I really am a pansy. I am putting a whole lot of faith in my neighbors to help me take care of this situation. After some neighborhood parties, it is my belief that at least one will call the city to complain after they have a chance to notice it. My city is crazy like that. I have a neighbor who has a beautiful fence in their side yard and they have to go to the zoning committee every year because it comes an extra 6 feet forward toward the street than is technically permitted. On a street like this, there are at least a few people who will be the types to call and complain.

At least, that is what I am hoping. Where did I go wrong? Should I have kept pushing until I got my way?

Part of the trend where the New England Patriots are slowly becoming the biggest enemies in all of sports is the Randy Moss story. If it were a different guy and a different team, everyone would be giving Randy Moss huge praise for the gaudy numbers and attitude makeover that he has experienced this season. As a member of the New England Patriots that story is all but impossible, but it never should have been an option anyway. Randy Moss has been criticized in the past for dogging it, not trying, and generally being a bad guy when things weren’t going perfectly. With his huge numbers this season in New England he couldn’t be proving the critics more right.

I can understand why some might defend Randy Moss for his time in Oakland where he caught a grand total of 102 passes in two seasons or 29 games. They had problems at quarterback. They weren’t a very good team. They had one of the largest offensive line busts in the history of the NFL draft with Robert Gallery. With all these things probably being true, it might be understandable to feel sorry for Randy Moss and the situation he was in with Oakland. But that isn’t the whole story according to most accounts in Oakland. Moss reportedly embraced his nagging injuries to the point that whispers were thrown about that Moss just didn’t want to play for such a bad team. That lack of competitiveness is disgusting in a league where almost every player is a millionaire and they expect working class stiffs to buy tickets and paint their faces for every game.

So the temperamental millionaire with unbelievable ability refuses to play for the people signing his paychecks in Oakland and he ends up basically forcing the Raiders into trading him. He gets rewarded for dogging it for two seasons in Oakland. And who welcomes him with open arms and a clean slate? The New England Patriots.

And Randy Moss responds as a member of the Patriots. Through nine games, Randy Moss had 56 receptions for 924 yards with 12 touchdowns. With that kind of production and that pace, Moss appears to be trying. And a lot of people seem to want to try and paint this as a “feel-good” story where Moss is the comeback player of the year. I am not buying that kind of a line. Randy Moss has successfully indicted himself with his play this season. It exposes him for what he is; a tempestuous baby that refuses to give it his all, except on his own terms when it suits him. The real victims in this are NFL fans everywhere except in New England.

And the story of Randy Moss as evil villain is yet another piece of the puzzle that is slowly turning into the Patriots and their fans vs. the world.

The Browns game was all but lost. I had already gone “Zen” with the fact that they were going to lose as has become my custom ever since the Indians loss in the ALCS sealed the worst sports year in sports fan history. You see, I have to just go “Zen” with it because my spiritual being can’t possibly handle the downward propulsion that is the Cleveland sports roller coaster any more. So, toward the end of the game as the Ravens were driving and as Matt Stover hit a 47 yarder to put the Ravens up 30-27, just like he did last year in Cleveland, I had already committed to emotional neutrality. Not to rip off a certain sportswriter who is a Boston homer on ESPN’s Page 2, but for me it is like being Ivan Drago in Rocky IV saying “if he dies, he dies” only with more resignation than indifference. I just say to myself, “If they lose, they lose” and try to watch without letting my heart explode.

That emotional neutrality was intact until Phil Dawson’s game-tying field goal bounced off the upright, through the goal posts, off the curved center support bar, back through the uprights and into the end zone between the officials. As one official shook his head yes, the other shook his head no. The no’s won it, albeit temporarily, and the teams started shaking hands. I came out of my cocoon to start screaming that the ball had gone through and should have been counted as a field goal, much to the surprise of my wife who had already been the recipient of the announcement that I was officially emotionally detached from the outcome of the contest.

The moment of honesty comes now because I was really just guessing that it should have been a field goal. I had no idea whether or not the ball just had to cross the plane of the goal posts like a TD or whether it had to go all the way through and hit dirt below. Turns out that it just has to cross the plane. The field goal counts. The Ravens have to get back on the field. We go to overtime. The Ravens inexplicably kick to Browns MVP Joshua “Soulja Boy” Cribbs and a few plays later the Browns are kicking a game winning field goal.

I am not ready to announce the end of my “Zen” moments as they relate to Cleveland sports because frankly, I have let my guard down many times before. I will say that the Browns might have finally turned some kind of a corner where the weirdness that can occur during an NFL contest actually benefits them and causes them to be on the winning end of games occasionally. So, for one day the Browns snapped me out of it. The whole emotional neutrality thing is just a defense mechanism against getting my heart stomped week in and week out. I would happily give it up some time down the line. It probably won’t be this season though.

Other game notes:

• Two weeks in a row now the Browns game has been featured in HD! After being snubbed in all games previous to last week’s, this is an improvement.

• The unhappiness of Brian Billick, Ray Lewis, and Bart Scott is a glorious thing. This trio of personalities might be the cockiest in all of the NFL. Seriously, Belichick is as cantankerous as Billick is cocky.
• Can’t Matt Stover just retire already? He is STILL the last little link between the present day Ravens and the old Browns who were shuttled out of town by Art Modell.
• Kyle Boller is not the answer at QB for the Ravens.
• Derek Anderson looks like the answer when he is hot, but against the Ravens he was far from hot. I am not suggesting any changes for the Browns at QB anytime this season, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Brady Quinn could eventually UPGRADE the QB position.
• The Browns D still looked bad, but for the second week in a row they were able to get sacks. Now if they could do that, while also containing the QB and keeping him from running, that would be swell.
• Eric “Eazy E” Wright went down hurt with a knee injury. Brandon McDonald filled in and looked ok, but Wright will be missed if he is down for long.
• The Browns haven’t lost two in a row yet this year. You have no idea how surprising that statistic is for me.
• The Ravens’ season is all but over as their next three opponents are San Diego, New England and the Colts.
• The Browns’ next three opponents are the Texans, Cardinals and Jets.

So, we have a top five.

1. LSU 10-1 (Lost to Kentucky)
2. Kansas 11-0 (Undefeated)
3. West Virginia 9-1 (Lost to S. Florida)
4. Missouri 10-1 (Lost to Oklahoma)
5. Ohio State 11-1 (Lost to Illinois)

So, tell me why the rankings wouldn’t look like this?

1. Kansas
2. Missouri
3. West Virginia
4. Ohio State
5. LSU

Kansas is undefeated even though they haven’t played as many powerhouses. Of all the losses the least impressive one is probably LSU losing to Kentucky. Oklahoma, South Florida and Illinois are probably all better teams than Kentucky, right?

Anyway, complaining doesn’t do anything, but I don’t understand why timing of your loss should make a bit of difference in the rankings. Any one of the teams in the top five could win a tournament involving the other teams in the top five.

It will be interesting to see if Ohio State does any politicking to try and scooch themselves up a spot.

College football is broken. Everyone knows it and almost everyone wants to fix it. Unfortunately, because the bowl games are so profitable, we continue to live with the BCS instead of having a playoff system in place to settle the score on the field. Everyone knows that playoffs are the solution, and yet it won’t happen because there is very little incentive to change the system. Advertisers, bowl sponsors and fans continue to spend billions of dollars every year to keep the NCAA rich and fat. So, how do you give the NCAA incentive to change their system? You need to cheat it!

What we need to fix Division I College Football is an old-fashioned, dirty conspiracy that calls the entire BCS system into question. By taking the legs out from under the BCS, the system will topple and the NCAA will have to enact serious, widespread change to keep from losing the big-time money maker of all time where they make billions of dollars off of athletes who aren’t allowed to be compensated in monetary form.

What kind of conspiracy would cause the NCAA to do away with the BCS?

I thought of this as I was watching Illinois upset Ohio State when the Illini were unranked and the Buckeyes were number 1 in the country. It is a great win for Illinois and their program, but it was just bad for the Big 10. In fact the entire season was difficult for the Big 10. They had Michigan embarrass themselves horribly despite having some of the gaudiest on-field talent in the country. They had Wisconsin, who played inconsistently all year despite being touted as one of the possible national contenders during the pre-season. They had Penn State, who might have been good enough to beat a top contender from any other conference on a given day. They had Illinois, who had one of the most dangerously talented quarterbacks. Finally they had Ohio State who rose from the lower part of the polls to reach the top, only to get knocked down by the Illini.

My point is that all these teams were pretty good. The Big Ten could have been well served in the BCS by more than one of them. Because they ended up beating the snot out of each other all season long, only to see none of them really in contention for the National Championship game. The solution? The Big Ten would have been better served to serve up an undefeated team from their ranks. The Big Ten stood to make a ton of money off of Ohio State had they not lost to Illinois and been in the National Championship game. Now, they just get the Rose Bowl, when before they would have had that AND the National Championship game. As a league, the Big Ten has incentive under this current system to cheat, make sure one team each year is undefeated and is hopefully among only one other team in the top two in the BCS rankings.

So that’s what I want the Big 10 to do. I want them to cheat. If we could go back in time, I would have Illinois lay down in that game in Columbus. In 2005, instead of having Penn State go 11-1 with a loss to Michigan, Michigan lays down and lets Penn State go 12-0. Michigan was 7-5 that year and had little to gain, while Penn State and the Big 10 had everything to lose. On down the line. The Big Ten should just fix their seasons over and over again.

Then, on someone’s death bed, they have to out the whole league to the country. The media will be in a frenzy that the world hasn’t seen since Barry Bonds was indicted for perjury and obstruction. The congressional hearings on steroids in baseball will seem like a complete joke. The Tim Donaghy scandal in the NBA won’t even register on the same Richter scale. And you know what? The NCAA will be forced to look at the system they created based on subjective rankings of people who don’t watch all the college football games and the computer statistics that run some teams up and some teams out in a ridiculous fashion every week.

And hopefully the only conclusion that they can possibly come up with is a playoff system. Although, who knows, maybe they wouldn’t get it right. I think it is worth the risk anyway.

Larry Hughes was a huge free agent signing for the Cleveland Cavaliers a couple years ago. By huge, I mean his contract and certainly not the “results” in the box score from games that Hughes isn’t sitting out with injuries. To call Hughes a disappointment is like calling Katrina scattered showers. Hughes was supposed to be a legit running partner for LeBron, but I think we can safely say that this will never be the case. On Wednesday night at Quicken Loans arena in Cleveland, it became abundantly apparent that Cleveland fans have officially given up on Larry Hughes.

Before you get all over Cleveland fans for turning on one of their own, I have to say just how out character this behavior is in Cleveland. Remember that this is the same town where a bloated Shawn Kemp was given every benefit of the doubt until he was finally rolled out of town on a flatbed truck. This is the same town where Albert Belle was cheered from the moment he beaned a fan, to the moment he cursed out Hannah Storm, all the way to the moment that he attempted to run down trick-or-treaters with his SUV. It took him snubbing the Indians for more money in Chicago before the fans to finally turned on him. Hell, Cleveland was even willing to give a troubled, racist John Rocker a shot to redeem himself.

With this in mind I must embrace the fact that Cleveland has officially turned on Larry Hughes, and probably for good. I was in The Q on Wednesday night during a frustrating overtime loss to Orlando, and long before the game became a contest, the fans were all over Larry Hughes. He missed shots left and right, and he just kept shooting. Cavs fans are tired of giving him the benefit of the doubt and they were relentless all night long. I think they even booed his first miss, which says a whole lot for a Cleveland crowd.

The night progressed and even as Hughes hit his first shot at some point in the second half, the cheers were of the Bronx variety and it was blatantly obvious to everyone. The night finished and Hughes’ box score line showed 2-12 from the field for four points and three turnovers. It is surprising just how little you get for $13 million nowadays, isn’t it?

I don’t know how this whole thing is going to end. The Cavs haven’t been able to unload Hughes over the last couple of years and we all know just how unmarketable a huge contract like Hughes’ can be. At the same time, how long can the Cavs survive in a league of short rosters with a guy who takes up a huge amount of cap space and yet can’t fill up even a single positive statistic in the box score? One thing is for sure, the historically patient Cleveland Cavaliers fan base has had enough of Hughes and that doesn’t bode well for him turning it around in Cleveland.