Merry Chrismas, Everyone!*

* I hate Charles Dickens, by the way.

Lisa has left for florida, but she made some suggestions on her way out. Still, that means I have final control, which has been dangerous this year.

CIN at STL: Despite other's projections, I still firmly believe Cincy will find a way to not make the playoffs. Some old habits are hard to break. STL

DET at CAR: Yes carolina is playing like crap right now, but they have the easiest end-of-season-schedule ever. Atlanta - Arizona - Detroit - Giants? The Panthers may have forgotten what it feels like to play a real NFL team by the time the playoffs roll around. CAR

NO at JAX: I made a last-minute change here, just for Lisa. Also, the Saints are guaranteed to blow a late season game they should win, and this seems as good as any, especially with the Joe Horn distraction. JAX

TEN at HOU: The Texans are only about 8 quality players away from having an NFL-calibre offense. TEN

MIA at BUF: Lisa wanted to pick Miami here, but she hasn't been watching football long enough to know about late season Dolphin trips to Buffalo. BUF

WAS at CHI: Discouraged by a recent thumping by the Cowboys, Steve Spurrier will put Dan Snyder in at DT. LaVar Arrinton will tackle him from behind. I feel dirty for picking the Bears. CHI

BAL at CLE: Not much has been made of this, but Butch Davis had a chance to take his own college halfback from Miami, Clinton Portis, in the first round a couple years ago, but instead decided to pick William Green from Miami's Big East archrival, Boston College. I assume he's not getting much sleep at night. BAL

NYG at DAL: "Hopelessly out of contention, decided to pack it in for the last two weeks of the season.": Words to describe the Giants, or Chris's NFL Picking. DAL

SD at PIT: Drew Brees actually looked improved last week vs. Green Bay, and LT was a machine as usual, but David Boston was M.I.A. The probability of all three having strong performances in the same week is about the same as the probability of all three Stooges reuniting to do a remake of Pretty Woman. Game I Don't Care About of the Week. PIT

AZ at SEA: Seattle's only win on the road this year was at Arizona, where they won 38-0. Now they get the Cards at home, where they're 7-0. You tell me what's going to happen. SEA

SF at PHI: If the eagles are the class of the NFC, we have one weak conference on our hands. Same for the pats in the AFC. I've been equating these two teams since October, people. It's only now that the national media has caught up. PHI

DEN at IND: It's hard to not respect Indy's defense after what they did to Vick last week. Within the next year or two it's going to become obvious that Tony Dungy deserved as much credit for the Bucs' super bowl as anyone else. I'm glad a classy guy like him is gone from such a classless organization. Meanwhile, Gruden will enter the land of George Siefert and Barry Switzer, where coaches inherit a great team and squeeze one championship out of them before they fall apart. IND

GB at OAK: The black hole scares me, it really does. Thank god Oakland has The Rick Meier at QB. GB

I started my new job this week, which will likely mean a decrease in posting frequency for this site until I get settled in, although it shouldn't be much less than it has been for the past month or so. Expect updates 1-2 times per week. Today we have a few picks lined up.

ATL at TB: Warren Sapp making the pro bowl is almost as great of a travesty as Brian Urlacher making the pro bowl, but more about that tomorrow. Atlanta should have every chance to win this game, but Mike Vick stunk last week and he always stinks against the bucs. TB

KC at MIN: It's interesting that Chris and I are both picking this game the way we need it to turn out. Watching KC move the ball at will against Minny's failing defense would bring a joyous tear to my eye, not to mention Dick Vermiel's. I bet he cries when he finds out what's for dessert each night. KC

NE at NYJ: There are obvious strong parallels between this season and the Pat's 2001 super bowl romp, but there's something different about this team, something I can't quite put my finger on, and that makes me doubt another championship season. I'm not sure if they'd remember how to bouce back from an unluckly loss after this many lucky wins, not that that's going to happen against the Jets or anything. NE

Regarding my last post, it has subsequently come to my attention that Joan Cusak is not in Cingular commercials. They're U.S. Celluar. Like it matters.

Now, on to the NFL picks, we're coming down the stretch here...

SEA at STL: If I didn't have enough reasons to hate the Rams, they totally screwed me in fantasy football last monday night. However, the Packers need Seahawks loss here, which shouldn't be a problem since they're on the road. STL

JAX at NE: The Jags are looking good, but you just can't pick against the Pats right now, considering that football gods evidently have a large amount of money riding on them every week. NE

PIT at NYJ: The Game I Don't Care About of the Week, and increasingly prestigious award as the season wears on. NYJ

HOU at TB: Go ahead and win out Tampa, it just means you'll be getting a lower draft pick next year. TB

MIN at CHI: The playoff race always gets you to do crazy, utterly unexplainable things, like root for the Bears. MIN

SF at CIN: Sorry, Cincy, not this year. SF

BUF at TEN: It's high time the Titans got back on track. TEN

ATL at IND: Actual count of the number of times the ESPN Sunday Night Annoucing Crew said the words "Michael Vick" last week: 6.02*10²³. That's right, an entire Mole of Mike. IND

DET at KC: Suddenly, it seems like Chiefs aren't even a .500 team. Fortunately for them, Detroit is a .000 team on the road. KC

CLE at DEN: This actually strikes me as a great candidate for an upset special, but I'll let Lisa win out here just because I want to see Clinton Portis break out that ridiculous boxing belt again. DEN

BAL at OAK: Baltimore is looking very similar to the Ravens team that won the Super Bowl a few years ago. It's time to bring all 400 pounds of Tony Siragusa out of retirement. BAL

DAL at WAS: Dallas won't play well enough to win again this year, but we've already seen how ugly things get when a Spurrier offense goes up against a Parcells defense. DAL

CAR at AZ: Late breaking reports indicate that Arizona Cardinals tapes will be used in the interrogation of Saddam Hussein. CAR

GB at SD: Now that Drew Brees is QB again, the Chargers offense can go back to being completely ineffective. At least under Doug Flutie, it was ineffective with a small chance of being interesting. GB

NYG at NO: The Giants have taken over the Saint's mantle as the preeminent late-season quitters in the NFC. NO

PHI at MIA: Eagles are the Patriots East, and this week it's their turn to wail on the punchless Dolphins. PHI

I recently realized that I have a couple of old movie reviews sitting around on the old "to-blog queue", and due to their similar nature, I will attempt to review both at once, highlighting similarities between the two in the manner of a 5th grade English paper.

The two movies, School of Rock and Elf, fall into that sketchy area between children's entertainment and grownup's entertainment, and I am not referring to teen entertainment, which is a completely different genre populated by the How to Deals of the world. I tend to go into a child/adult or "family" movie with a good deal of suspicion, as movies that fail here tend to fail spectacularly, reaching neither target audience (see Ron's Cat in the Hat review). Luckily, both of these films are well conceived and well executed, due in large part to great casting for their central characters. Will Ferrell and Jack Black both have the potential to go off the deep end if left unsupervised, but are reigned in quite nicely by a certain amount of morality in their roles. Both may want to quit making movies after this, as they are unlikely to find roles so accommodating to their one-dimensional personalities. Ferrell accomplishes the tough task of making "being nice" funny, and Jack Black connects well playing a character that is basically a slightly nicer version of Jack Black. A grating Joan Cusak (thanks for those horrible Cingular commercials, by the way) and an uninterested James Caan are the respective counterweights, but fortunately neither one receives all that much screentime. And the kids are allright.

Both end up a tad on the sappy side at the end, but that's to be expected, and for the most part neither takes itself seriously, always a positive trait in a comedy. Neither will have you rolling on the floor, but they're both consistently funny. In any case, these movies are better than 90% of what has come out in the past year, and are worth looking at despite their childish skew. 3 1/2 stars each.

If you couldn't tell, I'm in the middle of a rather large-scale posting funk. Suddenly it seems like nothing interesting happens to me anymore. Either that or my memory is already going, to the point where I can't remember interesting material long enough to be able to get to a computer and post it. If the first scenario is true, it bothers me as a sign that I'm creeping into the incredibly scary regions of (gasp!) adulthood. If the second scenario is true, its bothers me as a sign that I'm skipping adulthood and going straight into senility. I think I'd actually prefer the second, but for right now I'm going to try to fight things and keep my chin up.

Anyway, speaking of senility, I happened upon a news article today talking about how republicans are trying to replace FDR's portrait on dimes with Ronald Reagan. This, quite simply, is one of the best examples I've even seen of elected officials wasting time and money. I'd rather see my congressman accepting dirty money from the tobacco lobby than proposing something this asinine. First, who cares who's on the dime? Once you've learned who it is in 4th grade do you ever think about it again? Do I care more about Thomas Jefferson because he's on the nickel? Second, what exactly did Franklin Roosevelt do to be booted? I mean, all he did ever did was pull america out of the depression and turn the tide in WWII. Oh, and he was a democrat. Bad move on his part. Ronald Reagan meanwhile broke new ground in showing how rich and famous yet underqualified people could go incredibly far in politics. To be fair, his adminstration made major progress in a number of areas, but couldn't his supporters come with another way of expressing their undying love for him, with their own private funding, perhaps? Go build another library or something, but stop wasting everyone else's time.*

And yes, I realize this is two rants on currency design within the past dozen posts. Can't get much dorkier than that.

*A disclaimer: I don't address politics here on this blog, and I consider myself to be an irrational independent regarding those matters. Plus, I usually spend very little time thinking about politics at all; as my thoughts center around things like Halo, tacos, or the power potential of the Brewer's single-A first baseman, Prince Fielder. This rant, therefore, is not about politics. It is about people being stupid.