Rest in Peace Jedediah Eckart

Moral superiority

Remember back in the 80s when we hated Libya? We bombed the crap out of them, they blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988? It killed 180 Americans, along with another 90 people from other countries. It was thought to be a retaliation from Moammar Qaddafi for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi that killed Qaddafi's adopted daughter. The bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi was, of course, a US retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin nightclub that killed 2 US Servicemen and wounded another 270. The nightclub bombing was a retaliation, of course, for the sinking of Libyan navy vessels in the Gulf of Sidra that challenged US warships. Also factored in there was the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes.

Lost in the daily grind of Iraq and Afghanistan is the fact that the west and the middle east have been slugging it out since 1979 when the Khobar Towers were bombed. Beirut, Munich, Ethiopia, Israel. Every other month someone was blowing someone else up back then. Really since about 500 A.D. when Islam got its start if you want to be honest.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, the UK tried a Libyan intelligence agent for orchestrating the Pan Am 103 bombing. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was convicted and faced life in prison. A co-conspirator, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. Al Megrahi, the man responsible for the deaths of 270 innocent people, is about to be released from a Scottish jail and sent home to Libya so he can die in peace (he has terminal prostate cancer).

This is exactly why the US and UK will continue to be targets to state sponsored terrorism.

Fantasy Football team name time

Each year the agony over picking a new team name seizes me once training camp starts. Do I change my team name in the hopes that it will change my shitty fantasy football abilities? My problem is I can never settle on one name. I come up with 20 good ones but none of them quite captures the overall shittiness. Top 20 new team names:

Roethlisberger's Rapists (will probably only be relevant for a year or two)

Spagetti with My Balls

Monkey Butt

Nut Butter

Your Mom's Shitbomb

Fat and Hairy

The Mudsharks (for Kim Kardashian)

Sneaking Beers

Colicky Fucking Baby

Serious Limp

Mood Lighting

Codliver Oil Bandits

God likes Copenhagen

Fishy Smell

Flanagan's Semen Slingers

Monkeys Throwing Poo

Ulitmate Sacrilege

Solomon's Sweet Tea

Eggsaroni

Manbearpig

Too Busy With My Job

Pick #10

First of all, Last Crusade is already mine. Second, you forgot Connery's greatest role as Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez in Highlander.

Pick 10: Christopher Walken.

Annie Hall, Deer Hunter, At Close Range, King of New York, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Catch Me If You Can, Wedding Crashers

Pick #9

Sean Connery

The Longest Day, All the Bond Movies (there's like 9 of them and they're all good), A Bridge Too Far, Time Bandits (fuck that movie was sweet, midgets and time travel), The Untouchables, The Presidio, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Rising Sun, The Rock, and all the Celebrity Jeopardy clips on SNL.

Pick #8

Steve Buscemi

Mystery Train, Lonesome Dove, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Reservoir Dogs, Hudsucker Proxy, Pulp Fiction, Billy Madison, Fargo, Wedding Singer, Big Lebowski

Pick #7

Al Pacino

Heat, Godfather Trilogy, Serpico, Carlitos Way, Scarface, The Recruit, Any Given Sunday, Donnie Brasco, Scent of a Woman, The Devil's Advocate

Pick #6

Nice pick noonan. Can't believe I didn't think of Hackman. But just try to top this...

Harrison Ford


American Grafitti, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner, Return of the Jedi, (I don't want Temple of Doom), Witness, Last Crusade, Patriot Games, Fugitive

Pick #5

Gene Fuckin Hackman, bitches.

French Connection (and FC2, which sucked), Hoosiers, Crimson Tide, Unforgiven, The Firm, Young Frankenstein, A Bridge Too Far, Uncommon Valor, The Superman series (1, 2, 3, and 4 all as Lex Luthor), No Way Out, Bat*21, Mississippi Burning, Wyatt Earp, Get Shorty, The Chamber, Enemy of the State, The Replacements, The Royal Tennenbaums, Behind Enemy Lines, Welcome to Mooseport.

That's like being able to draft 1998 Daunte Culpepper in 2009.

Pick #4

Dan Aykroyd.

1941, Blues Brothers, Doctor Detroit, Trading Places, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us, Great Outdoors, Tommy Boy, Grosse Pointe Blank

Pick #3

Charlie Sheen.

Red Dawn, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Young Guns, Platoon, Lucas, Wall Street, Major League 1&2, Being John Malkovich.

Pick #2

Bill Murray.

Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Kingpin, Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic...

Pick #1

Will Ferrell.

He's the Adrian Peterson of this draft. Old School, Wedding Crashers, Talladega Nights, Zoolander, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Anchorman, Kicking and Screaming, Starsky and Hutch, Elf, A Night at the Roxbury, the Austin Powers movies.

Mock Draft: Movie Stars

The rules are simple. You draft a movie star and you get all of his/her movies. For example, if you draft Corey Feldman, you get Lost Boys, The Goonies, Stand By Me, The Burbs, Liscense to Drive and Gremlins, as well as some of his later work like Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce GO! (he's a solid 9th round pick). Use of IMDB is allowed, but discouraged.

Welcome back Ron Mexico

Roger Goodell conditionally re-instated Ron Mexico yesterday. Maybe you heard. Ron released the following statement through his agent, Joel Segal:

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to commissioner Goodell for allowing me to be readmitted to the National Football League," Vick said. "I fully understand that playing football in the NFL is a privilege, not a right, and I am truly thankful for the opportunity I have been given."
"As you can imagine, the last two years have given me time to re-evaluate my life, mature as an individual and fully understand the terrible mistakes I have made in the past and what type of life I must lead moving forward," he said.

That sounds just like something Vick would say. Really, I swear. Please allow me to translate into Mexico-speak:

"Fuck all yall motherfucks. Ima get mine bitch. Arthur Blank a bitchass bitch. Fuck you ATL. Jail fucking sucked. Now I needs money to pay the bills. Who gonna pay me?"

This is why it's good to have your 50 year old agent write your statements for you.

Manny Hits Grand Slam on Bobblehead Night

Thanks Lenny.

Here's the full story: http://www.vimeo.com/5733454

The Eagle has landed

In honor of the moon landing 40 years ago today, below is an excerpt from Buzz Aldrin's new book "Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon" where he recalls how close he and Neil Armstrong came to aborting the mission. Its well worth the read...

On the morning of July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and I floated up through the access tunnel that linked Apollo 11’s command module to its lunar module, the spacecraft in which Neil and I would descend to the lunar surface.

Three days earlier, I had entered the lunar module to check things out and prepare what would be Neil’s and my home away from home for approximately 24 hours. The “LM,” though a technological wonder, was the epitome of bare-bones construction. Because it had to be as light as possible, it was far from luxurious inside. There were no seats or sleeping couches. Neil and I would sleep in makeshift hammocks hung from the walls, and we would fly the lunar lander while standing up, wearing our 21-layer pressurized suits and helmets. Two small triangular windows provided our only sight of the surface.

Crucial to the success of the landing was the module’s guidance computer. Like its twin on the command module, this machine had a 19-button keyboard, a 2.048 MHz clock processor, and about 74 kilobytes of memory. In short, many modern mobile phones have more computing power than Apollo 11 did. But those two computers enabled us to measure our velocity changes to a hundredth of a foot per second, determine course corrections, and make minute maneuvers for our descent to the moon. On the day that Neil, our crew mate Michael Collins, and I launched, we were probably 60 percent certain that we would succeed in landing on the moon and 95 percent sure that we would make it home alive. We depended on those computers to work astoundingly well.

The three of us were on the far side of the moon, during our 13th orbit, when Mike announced that we were ready to commence undocking. Until this point, our linked pair of spacecraft had simply been known as Apollo 11. Now, as we sealed off the hatches to become two separate entities, the command module would take on the name picked by Mike, the Columbia, and the lunar module became known to Mission Control and the world as the Eagle.

Mike wasted no time when Houston ordered the undocking. As though he were backing a truck out of a parking space, he pulled the Columbia away from the Eagle, releasing us with a thump.

“Okay, Eagle,” he said. “You guys take care.”

“See you later,” Neil replied, just as casually.

More than two hours later, Neil and I were flying about eight miles above the lunar surface when the voice of astronaut Charlie Duke, communicating from Mission Control, parted the static: “Eagle, Houston,” Charlie said, in his friendly Texas drawl. “If you’re ready, you’re go for powered descent.”

Neil nodded. Inside my helmet, I grinned. In 11 minutes we were going to set the Eagle down for a landing unlike any other.

Oddly, when Neil threw the switch to ignite the descent burn, we could barely feel any sensation caused by the orange plume pouring from our engine into the black space below us. Had we not seen the change on the instrument panel in front of us, we might not have even known that the engine was whisking us downward. But downward we were going, and rapidly, too.

Five minutes into our powered descent, everything was looking good. Suddenly, though, an alarm flashed on the screen in front of us.
“Program alarm!” Neil said instantly. Even with our transmissions traveling at the speed of light, there was a three-second delay in our communications with Earth, meaning that Charlie couldn’t respond immediately.

“It’s a twelve-oh-two.” Neil added. “What is it?” We had never seen a 1202 alarm in our simulations, and in the middle of our crucial landing maneuver, we weren’t about to take out the thick navigation dictionary we had brought along. To Houston, Neil said, “Give us a reading on the twelve-oh-two program alarm.”

“Twelve-oh-two,” I repeated, as the data screen in front of me went blank. We were now at 33,000 feet, not a time to have our landing data disappear. Neil and I exchanged tense looks. Something was causing our guidance computer to have difficulty handling the gigantic array of information coming into it from the landing radar.

Neil and I weren’t thinking about aborting; we didn’t want to get this close and have to turn back. On the other hand, the alarm was ominous. Even if we succeeded in landing without the aid of the computer, the malfunction could prevent us from blasting off the moon and making our rendezvous with Mike the next day. The demands on the computer then would be even greater.

While we grappled silently with these possibilities, we continued descending toward the moon, the large red abort button looming large in front of us. If either Neil or I hit the button, the Eagle would instantly blast back up toward Columbia, and America’s attempt to land on the moon would be dubbed a failure.

“Roger,” Charlie’s voice broke through the static into our headsets. “We’ve got you ... we’re go on that alarm.” Even from 250,000 miles away, I could hear the stress in Charlie’s voice. Yet for some reason the experts at Mission Control judged the computer problem an “acceptable risk,” whatever that meant. There was no time for discussion; we could only trust that Mission Control had our best interests at heart. Of the hundreds and hundreds of people who had helped get us here, nobody wanted to abort the mission. Yet at the same time we knew that Mission Control would not jeopardize our lives unnecessarily. Two nights before we launched, NASA’s top administrator, Tom Paine, had eaten dinner with Neil, Mike, and me in the crew quarters. “If you have to abort,” he said, “I’ll see that you fly the next moon landing flight. Just don’t get killed.”

Just as I was getting over my concern about the first alarm, another 1202 alarm appeared on the display. I felt a shot of adrenaline surge through my system.

At Mission Control, 26-year-old Steve Bales was the expert in the LM guidance systems. When the alarms started flashing in the Eagle, they showed up on Steve’s computer as well. Even if Steve didn’t know the source of the problem, he did know that the computer was programmed to ignore the data causing the overload while it did the more important computations necessary for landing. Or so he hoped.

In any case, he had little time to think when mission flight director Gene Kranz called out to him by the acronym Steve held as guidance officer: “GUIDO? Are you happy?”

Eyes glued to his computer screen, Steve called back, “Go!”

At about 1,000 feet, Neil began a visual search, looking for a good spot to land. My gaze, meanwhile, was glued to the panel in front of me. With the dropouts in radar information, it was vital that Neil receive accurate altimeter readings. Moreover, our fuel level was becoming a concern.

Neil was not happy with what he saw as we headed to our designated landing site.

“Seven-fifty, coming down at 23,” I said, letting Neil know that we were a mere 750 feet above the surface and descending at 23 feet per second.

“Okay,” Neil said. “Pretty rocky area …”

“Six hundred, down at 19.”

Neil had made up his mind. “I’m going to …” He didn’t have to finish his statement. I knew that Neil was taking over manual control of the Eagle. Good thing, too, since our computer was leading us into a landing field littered with large boulders. Neil made a split-second decision to fly long, to go farther than we had planned, to search for a safe landing area.

“Okay, 400 feet,” I let him know, “down at nine.” Then, for the first time, I added, “Fifty-eight forward.” We were now skimming over the moon’s surface at 58 feet per second, about 40 miles an hour.

“No problem,” Neil responded, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he still wasn’t satisfied with the terrain. I started to be concerned about our fuel. It would be problematic to get this close and “run out of gas.”

“Three hundred,” I called.

“Okay, how’s the fuel?” Neil asked without taking his eyes from the surface.

“Eight percent,” I responded.

“Okay, here’s a ... looks like a good area here.” Then: “Gonna be right over that crater.”

“Two hundred feet, four and a half down,” I said.

I looked at our fuel gauge. We had about 94 seconds of fuel remaining, and Neil was still searching for a spot to bring us down. Once we got down to what we called the “bingo” fuel call, we would have to land within 20 seconds or abort. If we were at 50 feet when we hit the bingo mark, and were coming down in a good spot, we could still land. But if we still had 70 to 100 feet to go, it would be too risky to land; we’d come down too hard. Not wanting to say anything that might disrupt Neil’s focus, I pretty much used my body English, as best I could in a spacesuit, as if to say, Neil, get this on the ground!

“Sixty seconds,” Charlie warned. Our ascent engine fuel tanks were filled to capacity, but that fuel did us no good, since the descent engine tanks were completely separate. We had 60 seconds’ worth of fuel left in the descent tanks to either land or abort.

“Sixty feet, down two and a half.” Neil had slowed our descent. “Forty feet … Picking up some dust.”

We were moving over the lunar surface like a helicopter coming in for a landing, but we were now in what we sometimes referred to as the “dead zone.” If we ran out of fuel at this altitude, we would crash onto the moon before our ascent engine could push us back into space.

“Thirty seconds,” Charlie said, the nervousness evident in his voice. Neil slowed the Eagle even more, searching … searching …

Then I saw it—the shadow of one of the three footpads that had touched the surface. Although our engine was still running and the Eagle was hovering, a probe had touched the surface.

“Contact light,” I said.

Neil and I looked at each other with a stolen glance of relief and immense satisfaction. The LM settled gently, and we stopped moving. “Shutdown,” I heard Neil say.

It was 4:17 p.m. (EDT). We had less than 20 seconds’ worth of fuel remaining, but we were on the moon.

“We copy you down, Eagle,” Charlie Duke said.

I had already turned my focus to completing a flight checklist, but I paused now, and for the first time glanced out my window. The moon’s pockmarked terrain, which now for the first time in its existence hosted human beings, stretched out as far as I could see.

At that moment, Neil did something that really surprised me. “Houston,” he said calmly. “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

“We made it!” I whispered, almost as if I didn’t want to seem amazed.

Beat it

Michael Jackson. What a fucking whackjob. His funeral makes me want to introduce a puppy to a cute little baby, then get the baby to love the puppy, then shoot the puppy in front of the cute little baby. A 24k solid gold casket? What are you, Amen-hoptep the sun god?

All these celebrities attending wouldn't get within 400 miles of this perv when he was still alive. Now they're all homies. What the fuck.

I don't honestly believe MJ was a pedophile. I think he's just so fucked up in the head that he likes hanging out with kids. Kids reading comics books in their underwear on his bed, but whatever. That's still creepy enough to get you killed in jail. All this love and affection for a guy who was as financially irresponsible as Bernie Madoff, who was tried twice on molestation charges, who altered his appearance so dramatically that he was irrecognizable as a 50 year old human, let alone an african american male.

The guy is so fucking crazy I can't even come close to capturing it all. And the phony crap over this funeral makes me want to shit a porcupine. The world is a much better place without his creepy ass. At least now we can focus on other creepy old celebrities like Elijah Wood and Meg Ryan.

Air McNair

I felt the most touching tribute to McNair, in an odd way, was KSK's "Celebrity Death Doesn’t Get Holidays Off: R.I.P. Steve McNair" post. Although I like the title "Riddled with Bullets in a Murder-Suicide Committed by Your 20-Year-Old Extramarital Girlfriend Who Just Got a DUI: How Not to Have a Cheerful Holiday Weekend" better.

I don't know anything about his death and won't pretend to guess, so I'll shut up about that except to say that it's horrible. I will say this: McNair was a great quarterback, but if his Titans had come back to win that Super Bowl over the Rams, we would be now talking about the death of a legend.

Remember how amazing he was on that drive? If Kevin Dyson can reach one ... foot ... farther ... maybe the Titans send that game into overtime, and then win it.

Instead, Dyson gets dragged down by his legs by some guy that no one's every heard of, leaving him to reach for the goal line. As the play happened, everybody watching was on the edge of their seats, and then Dyson's shoulder touched the ground.

Game over, drive home safely folks.

One foot short, that ball. I believe that was one of the bests play in NFL history. So much of sports, so much of life, wrapped up in that idea: You do everything right, you reach out to the goal ... and someone behind you pulls you back just one foot short. And then everything is different, from then on.

Press Hop

iPhucked

So Mrs. Fletcher and I got each other iPhones for our anniversary. We had to switch from Verizon to AT&T.

I was weary to do this because back in 2001, I moved from AT&T to Verizon because AT&T's service was so shitty. I would drop calls all the time. But, its been practically 10 years. Obviously they're service must have improved, especially in the middle of Los Angeles were I live, right? Wrong.

On my drive home thru Pasadena last night I lost a call TWICE. I don't think I dropped a call with Verizon ever. Then I got home, and I had a dead zone right in my living room. Not the whole living room, mind you, just one side.

And isn't it AT&T who has the "fewest dropped calls" or "more bars in more places" or some shit like that? It says right on the AT&T coverage map that Pasadena is covered. See, its all fucking blue. Not partially covered, completely covered.

What I mean is FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING LIARS.

The iPhone is not a fucking status symbol, its not a exclusive pass to some gay club in Hollywood. It's a PHONE. It needs to fucking WORK!

GAAHHH! THE WORLD IS FUCKED.

Update: Nevermind, this phone rules.

#12 Airwolf

Airwolf. The theme song was Revenge of the Nerds meets Magnum PI. Airwolf going at #12 is the equivalent of getting Tom Brady in the 6th round. Steal of the draft.

#11 Night Court

Hats off to 30 Rock for reviving the show's memory recently, even though they didn't bring back Bull.

By the way, how fucking hot was Markie Post on this show!? I had a huge crush on her when I was ten.

#10 Silver Spoons

Another in the long line of sitcoms that revolved around kids and parents getting along after a divorce/death of a parent. Total horseshit. I remember thinking divorce sounded pretty cool, then my parents split up, I never did homework again and went to jail.
Any show with Erin Gray in it is awesome. Of all my imagined conquests, Erin Gray is #2, coming in just behind Tina Louise. So I'm weird, fuck off.
The theme song was awesome. "Here we are, face to face, a couple of silver spoons, hoping to find, we're two of a kind, making a go, blah blah blah" None of it makes sense but that's why it's sweet.

#9 Cheers

Growing up watching this show, I guess I just kind of assumed that one day I would inevitably find the bar where everyone knows my name too. I'm still looking.

Cheers actually should have been my #1 overall pick. Great value; thats like getting Selvin Young in the first round.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BdJYIXMe1M

#8 Battlestar Galactica

Not the 2005 remake and not the crappy version where they finally make it to earth. The version where Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer, and the two hot chicks cruise around blasting cyclons. Remember the robot dog? That thing was sweet.

#7 Emergency!

I actually liked this show better than Chips. I never missed an episode. One time when I was a kid my parents even took me to the station in Carson where the show was filmed, introduced me to all the firemen and convinced me it was really Station 51. Fucking liars.

Here are some classic audio clips:

http://www.emergencyfans.com/sounds/1emergcy2.mp3

http://www.emergencyfans.com/sounds/1firstseason.mp3

#6 Miami Vice

Brenda: How do you go from this tranquility to that violence?
Sonny Crockett: I usually take the Ferrari.

Pick #5 Magnum P.I.

The preimse of this show had it all: Ferraris, scantily clad women, a faux-British “estate manager”, moustaches, helicopter rides, moustache rides…
and a bad-ass guitar riff accompanied by a cheesey keyboard.

Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CquMO3vJvo

Pick #4 Dukes of Hazzard

Someday the mountain might get em but the law never will.