Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Crybabies

Surprise, surprise--the Cowboys faithful are crying.  First off, let's be clear--that ball is moving a lot and Dez clearly lost control of it when he went to the ground.  It isn't a catch.  If you don't like the rule, you can bitch about the rule all you like.  However, the NFL has been rocking with that rule for a while now.  Based on the rule, the refs made the right call--for once, so far as your beloved Cowboys are concerned.  When I saw the play live, I said the ball was moving and it wasn't a catch before the Packers challenged the play.  After seeing the replays, I had no doubt that they were going to reverse the ruling on the field.  The rule is what it is.  That wasn't a catch.  Let's move on.

Secondly, last week the officials actually did butcher a call--a couple of them, in fact, and they've admitted as much.  Yet all we heard from these Cowboys fans was that one bad call doesn't change the outcome of a game.  I guess a couple doesn't either.  Regardless, if that was your case a week ago, why all the moaning and groaning now?  I argued last week that one lousy call can totally change the outcome of a game, so that was your argument, not mine.  However, if you were on that bus when your team benefited from the call, I'm not letting you get off when the pendulum swings the other way. 

Green Bay Must Shut Skip Bayless Up

I hate the Cowboys.  I'm a lifelong Seahawks fan who lives in North Carolina, so to be completely honest I don't have a lot of love for any of those mass-market teams.  However, the Dallas Cowboys and all their "America's team" nonsense are particularly bothersome to me.  I'm pretty sure that I hate them.  The refs served last week's playoff contest between Dallas and Detroit up to the Cowboys on a silver platter, and that doesn't make me like them any more.

Plus, now I have to listen to a fresh batch of garbage about the "great" Tony Romo from the Dallas faithful, most of whom hated this guy prior to this season.  Seriously, people are talking about this dude like he's some living legend because he finally put together a good season, and he's still 2-6 in win-or-go-home games--after the officials gave him a freebie at Detroit's expense last weekend!  He's the best QB around, that's what some of the talking heads and a lot of the dimwitted fans are saying, and I'm sitting here wondering what it is that they're smoking.  Why is he so great all of a sudden?  Because he has a really good QBR?  What trophy are they giving out for that?  Dude is mediocre at best.  Okay, he has nifty stats.  Nifty stats are a dime a dozen for mediocre quarterbacks in this passing era.  Get real.  Winners win--and that includes the month of December and beyond.  Romo is looking to cover some new ground this weekend, and the ground he has covered isn't exactly legendary.  Save the coronation for someone who gets to hoist a trophy in a few weeks.   

I hate the Cowboys and I'm pulling for Green Bay this weekend.  I would be pulling for Green Bay anyway against Dallas, but now I have extra reason to root for the home team.  Yes, I'm a fan of ESPN's First Take.  Yes, like any of you who are also fans of the program and aren't bathing daily in Tony Romo Kool-Aid, Skip Bayless is driving me positively insane.  He must be stopped.  If I hear another inflated speech about the glory that is Tony "I have never even sniffed a Super Bowl victory" Romo and the Dallas Cowboys, my head may just explode.  If I have to listen to another ridiculous monologue about a so-called team of destiny that hasn't enjoyed a meaningful post-season run since cellphones were roughly the same size as bricks, I may toss my television out the window.  I need a Green Bay win for my sanity.  I need a Green Bay win for Stephen A. Smith, who has to endure this senseless blather at close range.  I need the Packers to win on the behalf of America, a country that has many sports teams and certainly isn't involved in an exclusive relationship with an incredibly popular and frequently-discussed franchise that hasn't really accomplished anything of significance since they put more than two bars on NFL helmets.

The Alien Anthology

The SuperFox (my wife) hooked me up with the Alien Anthology set during the holiday season, so I recently had a chance to watch all four of the original Alien films.  I greatly enjoy the franchise, but mostly because of the strength of the first two entries.  I always felt that Alien was a really good horror film, and I think of Aliens as a genuine masterpiece.  Upon my first (and only) viewings of the third and fourth film prior to this endeavor, I found the third to be good but overly somber and the fourth to be total garbage.  Would I view things differently upon a second viewing?

First off, I still rank the first two pictures the same way.  Alien is a solid horror film, but it's probably not in my top ten.  I love the talent involved, the atmosphere, and especially the cinematography, and it is surely a fantastic movie--but it isn't a great one, at least not in my humble opinion.  Aliens is positively incredible.  It's easily the best sci-fi/action picture of all time, and if you want to look at it solely as an action film, it might rule that list as well.  It's tense, it's exciting, it's a lot of fun, and I just don't know that movies get much better than Aliens.  I love it.

Now, Alien 3 is a different story.  Talk about a buzzkill.  The overly bleak nature of the piece is so much more evident if the picture is viewed right on the heels of Aliens.  It can't help but suffer by comparison.  Honestly, this time out, I found that I enjoyed Alien 3 far less than Alien Resurrection--and it's a much better movie.  It's just such a downer.  I'm trying to do this whole thing spoiler-free, but suffice it to say that elements of the plot that are disclosed in the opening reel drag the whole thing down, and it never gets any happier.  The direction is fine, the action setpieces (few though they may be) are riveting, and there are a couple of likable characters in play, but the whole thing is a major downer.  If Aliens is as much fun as you can have watching a movie, Alien 3 is aiming squarely at the other end of that spectrum. 

So is Alien Resurrection any good?  No, it's not.  To be completely honest, it's rather awful.  But hey, it is colorful, and a bit unpredictable, and the direction is genuinely unique.  Despite a multitude of flaws, it's a lot of fun, and it has some incredibly creative sequences that are deserving of a better picture, but the plot is lacking and the closing reel is so bad that it's damn near offensive.  Having said that, at least it isn't a total pisser like the third entry in the series. 

The Anthology set itself is beautiful, and packed with value.  It contains two versions of every feature and two discs full of bonus content.  Anyone looking for the inside scoop on the Alien franchise will find all they could hope for and more included in this gorgeous set.  All in all, I was greatly pleased, and any fan of sci-fi, horror, or action must spend some time with these movies.  Of course, if it was up to me, the series would end with Aliens, and I may try to convince myself that Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection don't exist.  I'm fairly confident that I won't ever view them again. but that's okay--I'll continue to rock with Ripley, Dallas, and the Space Marines for as long as I live.