Noj

Just saw this at JC... Oscar-Winning Actor Jack Palance Dies Friday, November 10, 2006 5:29 PM EST The Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in "Shane," "Sudden Fear" and other films who turned to comedy at 70 with his Oscar-winning self-parody in "City Slickers," died Friday. Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. Palance was 85 according to Associated Press records, but his family gave his age as 87. When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess. "That's nothing, really," he said slyly. "As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not." That year's Oscar host, Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance's accomplishments throughout the night's awards presentations.

They interviewed his high school coach who was at the scene on ESPN last night, and he got choked up talking about what a bright young man Bryan Pata was. Brought tears to my eyes. What a tragedy.

"Mozambique"

Shirley Temple John Chaney Dick Cheney

I picked this one up at the same time, also at a bargain basement price. Great stuff!

The low, ominous rumble you hear from the West is the Lakers' 19-year-old Andrew Bynum. 20 points and 14 boards in a win over the Tenderwolves.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Ah, I missed that development. Glad to hear it!

Weird. As a side note, I sure miss the contributions of deus62 and Muskrat Ramble.

I have all three volumes.

Sonics really shot the lights out last night. Lamar and Kobe had chemistry issues until late in the season last year, but I think in the two games so far this year it is difficult to judge because Kobe looks terribly rusty. He can't jump and is making uncharacteristic errors. Hopefully he'll get his legs back under him soon.

Good grief, I've been awful at this for weeks now. Just can't pick 'em. Last season I was fairly consistent.

Saw this today, and was doubled over with laughter for nearly the whole film! It is as much a parody of American culture as it is of Eastern Europeans.

Heineken is another beer that doesn't travel well. In the States it is skunky and I don't care for it at all. In Amsterdam, it's delicious! Amstel Beer is decent too......but you can't get it here. Just that 'Light' stuff. Wonder why? Jon, looks as though we'll be over there in a couple of months....where's a decent place to stay these days in the city ctr? It's been 20 yrs anyway. Not sure Rolf. I've only been there once, for a week. My friends and I stayed here, which was pretty nice and on the affordable side. It was next door to the Royal Palace.

Heineken is another beer that doesn't travel well. In the States it is skunky and I don't care for it at all. In Amsterdam, it's delicious!

For Conn... "after seeing him choke like Aurora Snow" Simmons: I grew up disliking the Yankees. Maybe I didn't have much of a choice growing up in Massachusetts, but much of that dislike happened organically, thanks to a bench-clearing brawl in '76 in which Mickey Rivers and Graig Nettles teamed up to separate Bill Lee's shoulder and give him a black eye, followed by the Boston Massacre and the Dent homer two years later. That antipathy has been part of my life ever since. I enjoy disliking the Yankees. I love watching them lose. When the Tigers upended them a few weeks ago, I was almost embarrassed how happy the whole thing made me, to the point that I decided against writing about it. I actively dislike them. And sure, I've had other sports flings with extreme dislike: the Dolphins and Sixers in the early '80s; the Pistons and Lakers in the mid-'80s; the Canadiens in the late '70s; the Jets in the late '90s; the Penguins in the early '90s (right before I quit following the Bruins); Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito in the late '70s; and about 20 different broadcasting teams that I'm not allowed to mention. But you know who else cracks that list? The Manning-era Colts, that's who. Every year, I dislike them a little bit more. I'm tired of seeing them, tired of reading about them, tired of hearing about them. Seeing their white and blue uniforms puts the same sneer on my face that Nicholson had when he saw Cruise's JAG outfit at Guantanamo Bay. Getting constantly bombarded by those insufferable Manning commercials makes me want to throw my remote against the wall. And after seeing him choke like Aurora Snow in Pittsburgh last January, I thought everyone would realize he was the A-Rod of football, someone who couldn't deliver in the clutch, someone who routinely shrunk from the pressure. How many more seasons of evidence did we need? Of course, with the Colts undefeated through eight weeks, the same crap has started up again. Manning is the best quarterback ever. The Colts are unstoppable. On and on it goes. Nobody seems to care that their front seven can't stop anyone, or that January football is completely different that regular-season football. The whole thing gives me a headache. Even worse, everyone's lack of historical perspective has been more skewed than ever: Like Phil Simms remarking during the tail end of Indy's victory in Denver, "over on the sideline, you've got two of the best clutch players in NFL history in Adam Vinatieri and Peyton Manning." Um ... what?????? What planet is this? And to think, I used to defend Phil Simms. I don't even know how to react to a statement like that; Simms could have called Manning "one of the greatest African-American quarterbacks of all-time" and it wouldn't have been any less perplexing. Meanwhile, here's Tom Brady and his three Super Bowl rings. He's never had a top-10 receiver on his team. He's never had a top-10 tight end on his team. He's never had an elite runner except for Corey Dillon in 2004. His receivers leave for other teams and completely fall off the face of the earth. During his first Super Bowl season, he survived a QB controversy with local hero Drew Bledsoe and the loss of his only deep threat (Terry Glenn). Two summers ago, his offensive coordinator fled for Notre Dame and the team didn't even bother spending money to replace him. This season, they lowballed his top two receivers, pushed them out the door, then expected Brady to break in a new group of guys as the season was going on. And the guy just keeps winning. Out of all the must-win games over the years, he came up short only in Denver last January. And obviously, I'm horribly biased on this subject. But after everything that's happened since 2001, for the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ... A. Take Manning over Brady in a big game. B. Even bring this topic up. It's perplexing. It's completely illogical. It's like standing in front of a used car dealership looking for something reliable for a cross-country trip, having the oily salesman tell you, "The car on the left won't knock your socks off, but it will definitely make it to the West Coast, while the car on the right is more fun to drive, but there's a 99 percent chance it will break down somewhere around Arizona or Nevada," then saying, "Screw it, I'll take my chances with the car on the right." If I wasn't a diehard Pats fan, I'd write about this subject more often because it's one of those debates that gets to the heart of sports. What REALLY matters here? Would you rather have the guy with great stats or the guy who comes through when it matters? And if you'd go with the guy with the great stats, why even play these games in the first place? For instance, there's been a revisionist movement over the past 20-25 years from basketball writers (mostly statheads) arguing that Chamberlain was better than Russell, which is completely absurd. Ask anyone who watched basketball then and they all say the same things: Russell wouldn't be denied in big games, while Chamberlain consistently shrunk from the moment. Wilt was obsessed with individual stats, while Russell was obsessed with team play and doing everything possible to make his teammates better. (Note: If you ever want to read a decent book about Wilt-Russell, check out "The Rivalry" by John Taylor, and if you ever want to read a great piece about Russell's obsession with winning, check out the chapter in "Second Wind" called "Teammates.") That's why Russell won 11 titles in 13 years, and that's why Wilt was the centerpiece of as many titles as trades: two. Look, I'd never be dumb enough to compare Manning to someone as famously selfish as Wilt. But his playoff track record is eerily similar to Wilt's before the '67 season -- right down to the lack of titles and the boatload of excuses -- and if you really want to get technical, you could argue that Wilt's Philly team beat Boston in '67 only because it was Russell's first year as player-coach, he didn't have any assistants, and he would always lose track of how long people had been playing and forget to bring back his best players into games (something Taylor's book covers really well -- Philly didn't win the title that season as much as Red and the Celtics gave it away by mistakenly thinking Russell could handle his player-coach role without any help). Whether Manning enjoys his version of Wilt's '67 season remains to be seen. But how can we keep comparing a player who repeatedly comes up big to a player who repeatedly does not? The ongoing debate (and the inanity of it) makes me dislike the Colts a little more every year. Which is a good thing. I like having rivals. I like having opponents to actively dislike. And now we're at the point where I don't just want the Pats to win on Sunday night, I want to destroy the Colts. I want to see their hearts get ripped out. I want to see Manning limping off the field with his chin strap dangling and one of those dumb looks on his face where he looks like a psychiatric-ward patient who was just heavily sedated after he hit someone over the head with a metal chair. I want to see them leave Foxborough with everyone saying, "Yup, we're idiots, we forgot that you shouldn't go against Brady in a big game" and "God, I'm dumb, I forgot that you can't beat a great team in a big game if you can't stop the run." All of this would make me happy. Really, really happy. As weird as this sounds, I'd like to thank Manning and the Colts, as well as everyone who keeps blowing smoke up their butts. You're making sports more fun for me. It's always fun to have a team you actively dislike. In my case, I have two. So thank you.

Beside your point Ray, but iTunes files are "Protected AAC" files and will not play on a computer without a password. They'll play fine in a regular cd player. They also prevent computers from altering their format, so they can't be changed into mp3s. For that reason iTunes will never see another penny from me!

Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis usually give the Lakers fits, they're two of my favorite players to watch. I'm hoping KB looks healthy following his off-season knee surgery, and that the Lakers can continue their stellar start.

I decided I'd procrastinated enough on this one. I'm looking forward to hearing prime Sonny Clark and Grant Green. I ordered Solid and Street Of Dreams with it, beefing up my Grant Green section considerably.

The Pistons gave up 68 points in the paint last night. I'm very happy to see Ronny Turiaf contributing for the Lakers, after heart surgery kept him out last year and never playing again was a possibility. He and Maurice Evans are some real hustle players, something the Lakers have lacked for the last few seasons. I expect Jordan Farmar to replace Smush Parker in the starting lineup quickly. Only Sasha Vujacic has looked worse than Smush.

We already had Saxophone Vagina, that one went over like a fart in church.