Enjoy the Show

24 is back on TV, and not surprisingly, controversy has followed with it, with the show coming under attack from two camps: those claiming it's anti-Muslim, and those who claim that the show is "right-wing propaganda". Both claims, of course, are patently ridiculous--the "good guys" within the political administrations have been Democrats since Day 1 back in 2001--in fact, the only Republican president that the show has had turned out to be one of the "bad guys". And the claims of anti-Islamic bias either haven't seen the show or purposely ignore characters like the former-terrorist-turned-terrorist-hunter, the head of the Islamic group who goes undercover to get information for the FBI, or the Arab-American who works directly for CTU with Jack Bauer. Maybe if these people were a little more concerned with the Arabs who were playing terrorists on September 11th, or those who play terrorists in Israel and Iraq now, they wouldn't have to worry so much about their portrayal on 24.

2006 Giants Postmortem

The conference championships are upon us once again, and once again, my New York Football Giants are nowhere to be found, as they haven't been for the last six years. At least I got to watch the Saints knock the hated Eagles out in a Reading, PA bar--albeit one with enough other folks rooting for the Saints that I was disappointed there weren't more people there to rub the loss in to. (It probably saved me a beating, though--there was a higher concentration of gold chains, IROCs, and mullets
this side of a Jets pregame tailgate party or Shea Stadium.)

Nonetheless, that was a small consolation after the performance of my own chosen team since early November--from 6-2 with talk of a playoff bye, home field advantage, and a Super Bowl appearance to 8-8 and just barely squeaking out the last wild card playoff seed with a less-than-impressive win against the horrible Redskins, then an early exit from
said playoffs in the first round. Here's my take on what needs to be improved for next season.

Offense: Eli Manning definitely took a step backwards that became much more pronounced when #2 receiver Amani Toomer went out for the season with a knee injury. He has a tendency to overthrow receivers, and gets away with some throws that he shouldn't (and won't, in the long term) because Toomer, Plaxico Burress, and Jeremy Shockey are taller than many other receivers. One thing's for sure, he won't continue to improve with Kevin Gilbride (that would be the Chargers head coach who brought the world Ryan Leaf as the quarterbacks coach. Gilbride is rumored to be in line for the vacant Giants' O.C. post, where I think he'll do much less damage than he did as Manning's QB coach. Failing that, he needs to be fired outright. Tiki Barber gave us a great final season, but Brandon Jacobs also proved that he deserves a shot at being the #1 RB next year. He reminds me of a stronger Rodney Hampton--I just hope his career can last a bit longer. The offensive line played well right up until Luke Petitgout went out for the year with a broken leg, and the pathetic Bob Whitfield stepped in, combining the physical breakdowns of a veteran with the hotheaded personal fouls of a rookie to prove once and for all that the Giants still need to add depth on their line. Burress was (rightfully) seen on giving up on plays after Manning threw interceptions, and Shockey at times seemed to be the only one who cared about how this team's season turned out despite putting up mediocre-for-him numbers. Overall grade: B-

Defense: The defensive line was so banged up at one point this season that first-round DT bust William Joseph was starting games at defensive end. Despite that, Osi Umenyiora was his typical solid self (when healthy), as was Fred Robbins. The two rookies on the line, Barry Cofield and Mathias Kiwanuka, both made good contributions--Cofield was an every-week starter, and Kiwanuka proved he has the physical tools to be one as well, so long as he shapes up his mental game. The linebackers played well enough, with the exception of Carlos Emmons, but they have enough talent there that they shouldn't need to go looking for a free agent replacement, provided they can hang onto all of the 'backers they've got right now. The secondary--well, that's a different story. Sam Madison reminds me of Will Allen with worse hands. McQuarters has the speed to be a nickel corner, but seems lacking as a starter. It's still too early to judge Corey Webster, especially as he can't seem to stay healthy enough to stay on the field. The safeties were average-to-below-average throughout the year--Gibril Wilson still hasn't lived up to his rookie season, and Will Demps started out below expectations but played better toward the end of the season (when the rest of the team started to slump). Coordinator Tim Lewis is gone. Hopefully, he's taken his soft zone coverage and lackluster blitz schemes with him. Overall grade: C

Special teams: From a kicking standpoint, Feagles was his usual outstanding self (hopefully we've got one more year before he retires to a life of family and golf) and Feely was reliable (appearing to have overcome his Norwoodesque performance in Seattle last year). The Giants lacked a standout kickoff returner, but they were surehanded, as was punt returner Chad Morton, at least until his injury. Coverage was about average, with tackling being somewhat below average. Overall grade: B

As a team, I'd give the Giants a B- grade overall for the year, avoiding slipping down into the C ratings only by virtue of the fact that they made the playoffs--which is more an indictment of the NFC than a credit to the Giants organization. Hopefully, new general manager Jerry Reese and some new coordinators and assistants can get a little more out of the talent that they have and improve some of their weaker areas--in the era of the salary cap and league parity, there's only a small window to make the Super Bowl before needing a major overhaul, and the Giants' window is closing fast.

Hip Hip Hooray For Christmas Vacation

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It Came From New York City...

When New York City passed a ban on cooking oils with trans fats for all restaurants, I was definitely against it, but since I haven't been to the Big Apple in over four years, I didn't let myself get worked up about it. But now, like a lot of bad ideas, it appears to be spreading like wildfire, including into my sometimes-stomping-ground, the city of Philadelphia. And now I'm pissed. There's a disturbing trend at the state and local government levels these days towards nanny state policies being put in place to protect people from themselves--my home state of Delaware has already banned smoking in just about every place you can think of. It's all in the name of good health, but it's at the cost of basic civil liberties--our own right to regulate what we put into our bodies (and before anyone comments about illegal drugs, no one has ever died from an acute overdose of cigarettes or fatty foods), and entrepreneurs' rights to run their business how they see fit (so long as they don't interfere with free and fair trade). Are trans fats bad for us? Probably. Do restaurants use more of them than they should (to save a few bucks from their lower cost and longer shelf life)? Again, probably. But the way to truly effect long term change in public health is to create educated consumers, and to legislate disclosure, rather than wielding the Hammer of Bureaucracy to ban products outright.

Pettite and McGwire

Like The Blowhard, I'm happy that the Yankees signed Andy Pettite. It was a move that I was against, until he signed a short-length contract. Is he overpaid for an aging, injury-prone pitcher? Probably, but not as much as some other members of the Yankees' staff (*cough*RandyJohnson*cough*), and not as much as they might have for the likes of Barry Zito. The Blowhard has a great analogy for the quality of free agent pitchers this year--go check out his latest post.

Also, the baseball writers are currently voting on players to be inducted into Cooperstown this month, and none other than Big Mac himself is eligible for induction for the first time. McGwire, of course, has been implicated as a steroid user in Jose Canseco's book Juiced. I've read this book (it was over in my Recent Experiences bar for a week or two--did you miss it?), and while I found it entertaining in the same way I found a crack-smoking vagrant's stories about Ara Parseghian and hitchhiking across Ohio with a shiv entertaining, there's not a whole lot of evidence there to back up his wild allegations. Come to think of it, that's a lot like the vagrant's stories too. Nonetheless, one way or another, the Hall of Fame voters will be sending a message this year. If McGwire is denied, they'll be showing current players that the integrity of the game does matter. If he's brought in as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the message will be loud and clear: home runs and offensive production matter more than keeping the playing field level for everyone, and it's OK to cheat as long as you don't get caught. That sort of attitude is fine for Bobby the Brain, but it's got no place in Major League Baseball.

Pluggage: The Online Soul Repository

I went to go visit my friends in the Washington D.C. metro area last weekend, and actually took a day off from work to go do some touristy-type sightseeing. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my camera at home, dummy that I am. Fortunately, Faxman had his with him, and you can see his pictures from the weekend on his Flickr site, The Online Soul Repository.

Video of the Day 12.06.06

The Iron Sheik has something to say about Michael Richards's use of the dreaded "N-word", in his typical incoherent fashion. Hat tip to Ron and Fez Show.

Discomfort Zones

There's been a lot of hay made in the news recently about certain ordinances recently passed in Farmers Branch, Texas, and similar laws recently put on hold by federal injunction in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. I love this new tactic in fighting illegal immigration. I liken it to the war on drugs.

See, attempts to stop the flow of drugs into the country have been fruitless at best, despite ever-increasing penalties for trafficking and unprecedented international policing efforts. But the simple fact is that as long as demand for drugs remain high, there are profits to be made for the suppliers that are worth risking the penalties, no matter how severe we make them, especially for lower-income people who can make the kind of money they have no chance to make legitimately. No, the only way to stop illegal drugs will be to make people no longer want to buy them--or at least not be willing to shell out the kind of money that keeps the trade profitable. That's pretty damned hard to do with addictive substances--almost to the point of futility.

But illegal immigration isn't an addiction, and these laws in Farmers Branch and Hazleton appear to be an effort to similarly attack an unwanted commodity from the demand side. Illegals want to come here because they can live better below the poverty line here than they can under average circumstances in their home countries. And employers enjoy having them here because they'll work for slave wages. And as long as those two conditions are true, all the fences, walls, border patrols, and armed dirigibles in the world won't stop people from coming here illegally. Instead, we need to make life more difficult for those who've broken our laws to enter this country. We need to make it more difficult for them to find places to live and work, and the only way to do this is to make it less profitable and more hazardous to business for landlords and other businesses to rent to and hire them. Once we decrease the tide of illegals, then it will become harder for the truly dangerous to hide themselves among them, and we can accomplish this through these laws for far less taxpayer cost than we can with more walls and guards.

And yet the ACLU (along with some other groups) still refuses to see the threat to national security posed by unchecked illegal immigration, saying among other things that these laws discriminate against Hispanics. Are laws increasing and establishing penalties for Americans assisting federal lawbreakers--whether they're from Central America, China, or the Middle East--more or less discriminatory than the other plans to build walls and mobilize forces exclusively along the Mexican border? The ACLU's apparently willful narrow-mindedness on this issue, and others pertaining to issues of national security, earns them a permanent link on my Enemies List.

Halloween

...is over, thank God. This is a holiday without much of an upside for me. My bad food habits run more towards chips than candy, for one thing. Sure, there's always the fact that a lot of women use the holiday as an excuse to get dressed up like hookers on the stroll, but the only Halloween party I was invited to this year was at the office, so that aspect would have been ruined by middle-aged women with midsections textured like trays of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. And that was before I got caught up in the opening series of the '06-'07 flu season. There's nothing more obnoxious than trying to get from couch or bed to the bathroom in complete darkness so as to avoid little hands pounding on my door to beg for candy. Actually, in my neighborhood, the most common costume is "thug teenager", and they don't trick-or-treat so much as shank-or-treat. But fortunately, my lights-out strategy worked, due in part, that there were more larger groups of kids going around to one another's homes, rather than simply going door to door. And with good reason--my neighborhood has a higher concentration of sex offenders than the Neverland Ranch. Bring on Thanksgiving--any holiday with customs focused on gluttony and football-watching is one that I'm solidly behind!

Attack Ads

I'm not a big fan of campaign commercials. I make my voting decisions through more-or-less independent research, not propaganda spewed out by candidates, parties, and (especially) special interest groups. But I've got to admit, some of the smear campaigns are just so damned entertaining to watch for their hyperbole, if nothing else. Take a look at this one, where Republican candidate Paul R. Nelson goes after incumbent Democrat Ron Kind for voting against funding body and vehicle armor for soldiers in Iraq (which is inexcusable), but for funding all sorts of odd sex studies (which is just friggin' funny).

But they don't get any funnier...or more true...than this ad produced by David Zucker (of Airplane! and The Naked Gun fame) for the Republican party (hosted by YouTube, hat tip to The Outhouse Times-Picayune for the link.)

My Radio Debut

For all you Beast fans out there...if you've got an XM satellite radio or DirecTV, catch the replay of today's Ron and Fez show on High Voltage. About 45 minutes before the end, I'm on there for a moment discussing Frosted Mini Wheats with everyone's favorite cowbell-slingin' hosts.

Caveat Lector

I'm loving Showtime's new series Dexter, about a CSI tech who happens to be a part-time serial killer, and a sociopath with a conscience, enough so that when I spotted the credit for "Based on the novel....", I had to read it, and then the next one in the series. And suffice to say, I wasn't disappointed...the series thus far has paralleled the novel fairly well, with a few subplots thrown in for television, and the novel is as entertaining and, if anything, even funnier than the show, if dark humor is your thing. The novels are running in my "Recent Experiences" pane this week, with this word of caution: from what I can tell, season 1 of the show is going to parallel the first novel, and I can only assume that if it goes another season, they'll be using plot points from the second novel. Thus the title of the post--translated, "reader beware"--by finishing the novels, I've likely learned most of the series' plot twists for the next couple of years. That's fine with me--I always prefer to read the book before seeing it acted out--but if your tastes run the opposite way, you may want to hold off for a while.