Friday, September 07, 2007
Cat vs Ferret NFL Picks - Week One!
If you look online. you'll find hundred of different sports betting experts each with their own can't-lose method for picking the winners in NFL games. They'll all be happy to let you in on their methods, for a nominal fee of course. Well, we came up with our own method for picking NFL winners and it's every bit as valid as the ones you can buy from those so-called experts! Not only that, but I'm going to give you these picks for absolutely NO CHARGE! You're welcome!
How did we do it? Well, we wrote the names of all 32 NFL teams on cheap plastic golf balls from Big Lots. Then we put the balls that represented all the teams playing this Sunday (only Sunday, no other days count) into a box, then dumped all the balls on the floor! Then we let our cat Sushi and our ferret Wasabi pick whatever teams they wanted! They get five picks. If one of them happens to pick two teams that are playing each other that week, then we let them pick from two separate balls representing the Over and Under for that game instead!
Now, I'm not going to say that these picks guaranteed winners, but THESE PICKS ARE GUARANTEED WINNERS! (not an actual guarantee)
So without further ado, here are the picks for Week One of the 2007 NFL Season:
Home team in CAPS - point spread listed is based on the Arizona Charlies betting line as it was posted on Friday, September 7th
The Cat Picks
Giants +5.5 over COWBOYS
RAMS -1 over Panthers
Eagles -3 over PACKERS
SEAHAWKS -5.5 over Buccaneers
Steelers -4 over BROWNS
The Ferret Picks
Dolphins +3 over REDSKINS
BROWNS +4 over Steelers
Patriots -6 over JETS
CHARGERS -6 over Bears
TEXANS -3 over Chiefs
These picks are for entertainment purposes only, but I'm totally going to fill out a couple of parlay cards on them anyway!
How did we do it? Well, we wrote the names of all 32 NFL teams on cheap plastic golf balls from Big Lots. Then we put the balls that represented all the teams playing this Sunday (only Sunday, no other days count) into a box, then dumped all the balls on the floor! Then we let our cat Sushi and our ferret Wasabi pick whatever teams they wanted! They get five picks. If one of them happens to pick two teams that are playing each other that week, then we let them pick from two separate balls representing the Over and Under for that game instead!
Now, I'm not going to say that these picks guaranteed winners, but THESE PICKS ARE GUARANTEED WINNERS! (not an actual guarantee)
So without further ado, here are the picks for Week One of the 2007 NFL Season:
Home team in CAPS - point spread listed is based on the Arizona Charlies betting line as it was posted on Friday, September 7th
The Cat Picks
Giants +5.5 over COWBOYS
RAMS -1 over Panthers
Eagles -3 over PACKERS
SEAHAWKS -5.5 over Buccaneers
Steelers -4 over BROWNS
The Ferret Picks
Dolphins +3 over REDSKINS
BROWNS +4 over Steelers
Patriots -6 over JETS
CHARGERS -6 over Bears
TEXANS -3 over Chiefs
These picks are for entertainment purposes only, but I'm totally going to fill out a couple of parlay cards on them anyway!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Mmm soylent pizza
Monday, December 25, 2006
Merry Christmas
I'm not going to write an essay on what Christmas means to me, I'm far too lazy for that. Instead, I want to give you this scene from what is perhaps the greatest Christmas movie ever made. I am referring to, of course, Troll II.
Michael: Do you see this writing...? Do you know what it means...? Hospitality. And you can't piss on hospitality! I WON'T ALLOW IT! [reaching for his belt]
Joshua: What are you going to do to me, Daddy?
Michael: Tightening my belt one loop so that I don't feel hunger pains, and your sister and mother will have to do likewise. Okay, Joshua. You wanna get rough with me? You wanna show me that you don't like the choice of this house for our vacation by going on a hunger strike? Well, I'll accept the challenge. But just remember when I was your age, I really did suffer from hunger. We'll see who gets through this, but just remember I've got more practice than you. I'll see you tomorrow.
More Troll II goodness can be found here. The above scene occurs about 3 minutes 30 seconds in. Consider it my gift to you. Merry Christmas.
Michael: Do you see this writing...? Do you know what it means...? Hospitality. And you can't piss on hospitality! I WON'T ALLOW IT! [reaching for his belt]
Joshua: What are you going to do to me, Daddy?
Michael: Tightening my belt one loop so that I don't feel hunger pains, and your sister and mother will have to do likewise. Okay, Joshua. You wanna get rough with me? You wanna show me that you don't like the choice of this house for our vacation by going on a hunger strike? Well, I'll accept the challenge. But just remember when I was your age, I really did suffer from hunger. We'll see who gets through this, but just remember I've got more practice than you. I'll see you tomorrow.
More Troll II goodness can be found here. The above scene occurs about 3 minutes 30 seconds in. Consider it my gift to you. Merry Christmas.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
It's a Christmas Miracle!
No, that's not sugar frosting. That is actual snow in Las Vegas. There is probably about a quarter of an inch of slushy snow outside as I write this at 3am. Stand by for school closings and people calling in sick from work. Mere words cannot describe how afraid I am to be driving in this weather. It's not the snow you understand, its the Vegas drivers. Seriously, they are the worst drivers in the known universe. We've seen people manage to flip cars over on dry, straight roads during broad daylight. There's no telling what a quarter inch of slush could do.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving!
NOW BURN IN HELL, YOU HEATHENS!
Oh, those wacky Christians. Saw this lady standing on in the middle of Freemont Street tonight as I took my parents Downtown to show them the sights. It's been awhile since the Christians have been down there with their signs, reminding the tourists that their souls are damned. I guess they just save it for the high-profile holidays for maximum visibility. Maybe you get more Jesus Points that way? I want to try and get my photo taken with one of them next time, like they're part of the Downtown entertainment.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The Good and The Beautiful
You know, Captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful. If you just take the time to look at it. - The Phantom Planet
I give up. The NFL has completely destroyed my will to live. Therefore, there will be no picks this week. I'm so disillusioned that I'm not betting on a single game. We'll be back to the picks next week, maybe.
Instead I'd like to fix my attention on something that can be considered both Good and Beautiful, Mike Nelson's Rifftrax.com! Some of you may remember Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K as we fans know it). It was a goofy little show where a guy and his robot pals were stranded in space and forced to watch bad movies. Joel Robinson (later Mike Nelson), Tom Servo and Crow provided a hilarious running commentary to some amazingly bad movies . The show gained a huge cult following and ran for ten years on two different cable networks. Even after it was canceled, reruns lasted for five more years on the Sci-Fi Channel. Pretty darn impressive considering this was a show that took up a two hour time block and that many of the episodes can't be re-broadcast or released on DVD due to rights issues with the original movie copyright holders.
Since the show was canceled in 1999, there has been sporadic output from it's three main actors and writers; Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow) in the form of various books and articles. Not surprisingly, many of these focused on bad movies or the state of movie making today. Mike even did a few DVD commentary tracks for Legend Films on such movies as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Reefer Madness. They were funny, but never MST3K caliber. Fans such as myself hoped that someday we'd have MST3K back in some form, but I doubt anyone found the possibility very likely. Then this past July, Mike moved to San Diego to work for Legend Films full time. I just assumed it had to do with his commentaries for future Legend DVDs. A week or two after this vague announcement, Rifftrax happened.
So what is Rifftrax? To sum it up in once sentance, I'd call it MST3K for the Internet age. One of the biggest limiting factors to producing MST3K was the problem of available films. They could only do movies that were in the public domain for the most part, which goes a long way in explaining why so many of the movies were so horrible. With Rifftrax, you simply download a MP3 file that you can play on your MP3 player in sync with the DVD of whatever movie they're riffing, similar to the Podcasts that the Apple iPod has made popular. It's a totally freakin' brilliant idea. It nicely circumvents any copyright problems since they are not releasing versions of the movies, just an audio track that happens to sync up with them. It also means that they can now make fun of absolutely anything ever released. The possibilities are limitless!
Movies riffed so far have ranged from the outright bad ('Crossroads' starring Britney Spears, 'Cocktail' with Tom Cruise) to bad movies with a devoted following ('Star Wars Episode One', 'Top Gun', 'Roadhouse', 'Star Trek V') to movies that are actually pretty good in their own right ('The Matrix', 'X-Men', 'Halloween'). As you can see they're going for much bigger game than 'Manos: Hands Of Fate' this time around. Another thing that continues to impress me is just how prolific they have been so far. The first Rifftrack, for the Patrick Swayze movie 'Roadhouse', was released in early August. The most recent was for the horror movie 'The Grudge' and was released on November 10th. It was the 13th Rifftrack released so far, meaning that Mike Nelson and company have been putting these out at a rate of almost one a week!
About half of the tracks released so far have Mike Nelson riffing on the movie solo, with occasional help from the 'robotic' audio sync voice Disembaudio. The other half feature either Bill Corbett or Kevin Murphy as guest riffers. So far, they haven't released a track that features all three them but it's only a matter of time. The tracks featuring either Kevin or Bill are generally more funny, but Mike has done some pretty strong solo riffings such as 'Roadhouse' and 'Point Break'. Some movies just work better than others. The Britney Spears movie 'Crossroads' turned out to be a fairly weak outing while 'Halloween' was much better than I expected it to be but all the tracks have their high and low points. My top five favorites so far would be: Star Wars Episode One, Star Trek V, Top Gun, Roadhouse and Halloween. Any of these would be a great place to start with the Rifftrax goodness.
Since this is not on television and there are no sponsors to foot the bill, there is a cost for the files. What do they charge for all this joy? A mere $2.99 per download. (Plus whatever it costs you to buy or rent the movie being riffed but don't blame them for that.) Less than a cup of expensive coffee, cheaper than sponsoring one of those starving African kids. Truly, this is both Good and Beautiful.
Please note: I'm just a gushing fan who feels the need to spread the word. I'm not getting any kind of kickbacks from referring people to Rifftrax. It makes me happy and it sure beats more crappy NFL picks.
I give up. The NFL has completely destroyed my will to live. Therefore, there will be no picks this week. I'm so disillusioned that I'm not betting on a single game. We'll be back to the picks next week, maybe.
Instead I'd like to fix my attention on something that can be considered both Good and Beautiful, Mike Nelson's Rifftrax.com! Some of you may remember Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K as we fans know it). It was a goofy little show where a guy and his robot pals were stranded in space and forced to watch bad movies. Joel Robinson (later Mike Nelson), Tom Servo and Crow provided a hilarious running commentary to some amazingly bad movies . The show gained a huge cult following and ran for ten years on two different cable networks. Even after it was canceled, reruns lasted for five more years on the Sci-Fi Channel. Pretty darn impressive considering this was a show that took up a two hour time block and that many of the episodes can't be re-broadcast or released on DVD due to rights issues with the original movie copyright holders.
Since the show was canceled in 1999, there has been sporadic output from it's three main actors and writers; Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow) in the form of various books and articles. Not surprisingly, many of these focused on bad movies or the state of movie making today. Mike even did a few DVD commentary tracks for Legend Films on such movies as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Reefer Madness. They were funny, but never MST3K caliber. Fans such as myself hoped that someday we'd have MST3K back in some form, but I doubt anyone found the possibility very likely. Then this past July, Mike moved to San Diego to work for Legend Films full time. I just assumed it had to do with his commentaries for future Legend DVDs. A week or two after this vague announcement, Rifftrax happened.
So what is Rifftrax? To sum it up in once sentance, I'd call it MST3K for the Internet age. One of the biggest limiting factors to producing MST3K was the problem of available films. They could only do movies that were in the public domain for the most part, which goes a long way in explaining why so many of the movies were so horrible. With Rifftrax, you simply download a MP3 file that you can play on your MP3 player in sync with the DVD of whatever movie they're riffing, similar to the Podcasts that the Apple iPod has made popular. It's a totally freakin' brilliant idea. It nicely circumvents any copyright problems since they are not releasing versions of the movies, just an audio track that happens to sync up with them. It also means that they can now make fun of absolutely anything ever released. The possibilities are limitless!
Movies riffed so far have ranged from the outright bad ('Crossroads' starring Britney Spears, 'Cocktail' with Tom Cruise) to bad movies with a devoted following ('Star Wars Episode One', 'Top Gun', 'Roadhouse', 'Star Trek V') to movies that are actually pretty good in their own right ('The Matrix', 'X-Men', 'Halloween'). As you can see they're going for much bigger game than 'Manos: Hands Of Fate' this time around. Another thing that continues to impress me is just how prolific they have been so far. The first Rifftrack, for the Patrick Swayze movie 'Roadhouse', was released in early August. The most recent was for the horror movie 'The Grudge' and was released on November 10th. It was the 13th Rifftrack released so far, meaning that Mike Nelson and company have been putting these out at a rate of almost one a week!
About half of the tracks released so far have Mike Nelson riffing on the movie solo, with occasional help from the 'robotic' audio sync voice Disembaudio. The other half feature either Bill Corbett or Kevin Murphy as guest riffers. So far, they haven't released a track that features all three them but it's only a matter of time. The tracks featuring either Kevin or Bill are generally more funny, but Mike has done some pretty strong solo riffings such as 'Roadhouse' and 'Point Break'. Some movies just work better than others. The Britney Spears movie 'Crossroads' turned out to be a fairly weak outing while 'Halloween' was much better than I expected it to be but all the tracks have their high and low points. My top five favorites so far would be: Star Wars Episode One, Star Trek V, Top Gun, Roadhouse and Halloween. Any of these would be a great place to start with the Rifftrax goodness.
Since this is not on television and there are no sponsors to foot the bill, there is a cost for the files. What do they charge for all this joy? A mere $2.99 per download. (Plus whatever it costs you to buy or rent the movie being riffed but don't blame them for that.) Less than a cup of expensive coffee, cheaper than sponsoring one of those starving African kids. Truly, this is both Good and Beautiful.
Please note: I'm just a gushing fan who feels the need to spread the word. I'm not getting any kind of kickbacks from referring people to Rifftrax. It makes me happy and it sure beats more crappy NFL picks.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
NFL Week 9 Picks - We Continue To Suck
Our football picks just seem to get worse. I'm only posting them at this point out of habit.
Last week I went one for five. My sole win was the Packers beating the Cardinals. That puts me at 16 wins and 14 losses for the season. Andrea had two wins with the Chargers and the Browns, putting her at 15 wins and 15 losses. Exciting stuff huh?
My picks for week 9 - home teams, as always, in CAPS
ST. LOUIS RAMS (-2) over Kansas City Chiefs
NEW YORK GIANTS (-13) over Houston Texans
Green Bay Packers (+3) over BUFFALO BILLS
CHICAGO BEARS (-13.5) over Miami Dolphins
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (-3) over Indianapolis Colts
Andrea's picks
NEW YORK GIANTS (-13) over Houston Texans
Green Bay Packers (+3) over BUFFALO BILLS
Tennessee Titans (+9.5) over JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS
Atlanta Falcons (-5) over DETROIT LIONS
BALTIMORE RAVENS (-3) over Cincinnati Bengals
My bet is on Andrea going five for five this week. Simply because she made her picks at the last minute and I wasn't able to make a five team parlay bet for her this week. Just you watch.
Last week I went one for five. My sole win was the Packers beating the Cardinals. That puts me at 16 wins and 14 losses for the season. Andrea had two wins with the Chargers and the Browns, putting her at 15 wins and 15 losses. Exciting stuff huh?
My picks for week 9 - home teams, as always, in CAPS
ST. LOUIS RAMS (-2) over Kansas City Chiefs
NEW YORK GIANTS (-13) over Houston Texans
Green Bay Packers (+3) over BUFFALO BILLS
CHICAGO BEARS (-13.5) over Miami Dolphins
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (-3) over Indianapolis Colts
Andrea's picks
NEW YORK GIANTS (-13) over Houston Texans
Green Bay Packers (+3) over BUFFALO BILLS
Tennessee Titans (+9.5) over JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS
Atlanta Falcons (-5) over DETROIT LIONS
BALTIMORE RAVENS (-3) over Cincinnati Bengals
My bet is on Andrea going five for five this week. Simply because she made her picks at the last minute and I wasn't able to make a five team parlay bet for her this week. Just you watch.
