'Save the cheerleader...Save the world'

NBC's “Heroes” is easily my favorite show on TV right now. I so look forward to sitting down in front of the TV every Monday night and satisfying my inner comic book geek.

My favorite character on the show has to be Hiro—because he is a comic book geek who embraces his new abilities and adventures with such wide-eyed enthusiasm. It's what every kid with a comic book collection dreams of.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do in January when “24” returns on the same night and time.

Exploring the dark side

Here's a great time-waster, courtesy of PLANET3RRY.

To promote their new dark chocolate M&Ms, and to tie in to Halloween, M&Ms has launched a clever online game. This picture contains images that represent the titles of 50 "dark" movies. When you think you see one, click on it and type your guess in to see if you're right.

How many can you find? I've been working on this for a while now (you cansave your game and come back to it later) and I'm stuck at 35 out of 50. Some of them are pretty obvious. Others, not so much.

Not it!

I thought this was pretty outrageous when I first read about it earlier in the week. But at the time I thought it was limited to just one kooky school in Massachusetts.

Now it seems there are more schools banning "tag" and other playground games that include any sort of physical contact. Another school in the Bay State as well as schools in Wyoming and Washington are worried about lawsuits if a child is hurt in a contact game.

Never mind the jungle gyms, swing sets and slides.

If one of my kids was somehow hurt playing tag, suing the school would be the last thing I'd think of. When I was in the seventh grade I broke my arm playing football on a playground. No lawsuits were filed, nor were they even considered. Accidents happen.

Officials at one school say they've ordered kids to come up with other games to play.

"What we require is that children do not touch each other," said the principal at one of the schools.

Where do we draw the line? Is duck, duck, goose out? You know, someone could suffer a head injury!

Treehouse of Horror!

You've got to check out the cool "Treehouse of Horror XVII" promotion over at thesimpsons.com.

You can make your very own promo for the annual Halloween episode! They've posted loads of clips, music and sound effects from the show. Then you can use their simple editing tool to pick and choose the elements you like and put them together however you want.

Once you're down you can share your video with friends and even submit it for a chance to win a trip to the Simpsons 400th episode party.

Here's my entry.

Here's one of the ones someone else created that I liked.

Enjoy.

Tiger Cub Fun Day

We had a fantastic time at the Tiger Cub Fun Day yesterday at Camp Boyhaven. There were all sorts of great activities for the boys to take part in.

I haven’t been to Boyhaven in close to 25 years.

While we were there I bumped into longtime scout leader Jim Burgess and Marc’s dad, Don Colosimo. Mr. Burgess told me that a long time ago, probably during my brother’s era, my dad got some parachutes from the Air National Guard and gave them to the scouts to be used for games and activities. Mr. Burgess said those parachutes are still being used a Boyhaven today.

Anyway, here’s some quick video I youtubed of the relay race yesterday. Each cub had to put on a hat and vest, run around a tree and then pass the hat and vest off the next cub…

Thomas the Tank Engine

Thomas and I spent some nice one-on-one time together this afternoon while Kris and Nolan were out together. We built a big track with his wooden Thomas the Tank Engine parts and played with his trains.

It was good to have some nice, simple fun at home on a quiet afternoon. We had so much fun that I grabbed the camera to take some shots…

Rooney wrap-up

Sorry, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve neglected the blog for this long.

It certainly hasn’t been for lack of material. Maybe that’s just the problem. There has been too much going on. This has been a crazy-busy week.

Last weekend was filled with good news and bad news. The good news was that we had a very nice visit with Kris’ parents—and the scenery on the drive up and back through the Adirondacks was some of the most beautiful I’ve scene on that route. The bad news is I forgot to bring the camera. But the good news is that Aaron was in Lake Placid over the same weekend and he did bring his camera. So check out his blog to see what the peak foliage looked like.

Oh yeah, and there was another small piece of bad news—the Yankees loss to Detroit Saturday. As bummed as I was about that, it’s hard to complain about it being one of the low points of the week when just a few days later Cory Lidle was dead after his plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side. So while I have other thoughts about Joe Torre and A-Rod, maybe I’ll save them for another time.

Work and school and, it seems, life in general have been keeping us busy lately. Looking ahead to the weekend, we’ve got another soccer game tomorrow (I’ll have to tease his coach, who also coaches the girl’s varsity team, about the incident at the girls’ game this week) and our first Cub Scout outing on Sunday—the Tiger Cub Fun Day at Camp Boyhaven.

I’ll leave you now with a couple photos Kris took of the boys playing basketball in the driveway…

Rockin' out with the Blue Man

I thought Blue Man Group totally rocked tonight!

Back in the 1990s, BMG started out as bunch of guys who wanted to make fun of pretentious performance artists. Somewhere along the way they became some of the most well known performance artists in the world themselves.

Likewise, their “How to be a Megastar 2.0” tour is meant to be a parody of arena rock concerts. But in fact, this was one of the best concerts I’ve seen (granted, I don’t get out to a lot of concerts). Hearing their cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” alone made it all worth it.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, here’s a sample of one of the numbers they performed…

Page puns

From the Double Entendre File: I just heard this on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC. This is the last sentence from the editorial in today's edition of The Hill, a newspaper described as being "for and about the U.S. Congress"...

[House Speaker Dennis] Hastert and [House Majority Leader John] Boehner need to get on the same page or Republican troubles will continue to mount.

As Tucker points out, no, if these two guys were to "get on the same page" that would only make their problems much, much worse.

Anniversary Blues

Tomorrow Kris and I will celebrate 11 years of wedded bliss. We’re marking the occasion one day early tonight by taking in the Blue Man Group’s “How to be a Megastar 2.0 Tour.”

Blue Man Group! How cool is that?!? I’ve always got a kick out these guys on TV, in their Intel commercials and various talk show appearances (granted, they don’t talk). Over the summer we saw parts of their special on PBS and enjoyed it.

So when I heard they were coming to Albany I just had to get tickets. We’re pretty psyched.

Tomorrow after soccer we’ll be heading up north to visit Kris’ parents for the weekend. Maybe I’ll offer a Blue review after we get back.

Biff sings!

Check out actor Thomas Wilson, aka Biff Tannen of the "Back to the Future" movies, sing about being asked endless, annoying questions about his most famous role...



Thanks, Joe Video.

They report, we decide

Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine makes some really intersting points today as he comments on the 10th aniversaries of Fox News, The Daily Show and Al Jazeera. Here's a sample...

FoxNews is 10 years old this week. This year, Al Jazeera turns 10. So did The Daily Show. All that the three have in common, besides birthdays, is that they brought new voices to TV news: no longer the allegedly objective, cold, institutional tone that journalism took on when it became a monopoly, one-size-fits-all business in this country, thanks to the impact of broadcast on the media marketplace. These fraternal triplets each brought perspective to news, a distinct and clearly apparent worldview, and a passion about serving a public that each believed was underserved.

I know many people have strong feelings about Fox News and Al Jazeera. If you're on the far right, you might find The Daily Show irritating.

But Jarvis goes on to make a very good point: How can adding more voices with more opinions to the conversation be bad for democracy?

A former co-worker I have great respect for once taught me that those with strongly held views should not be afraid to have those views challenged and listen to what the other side is saying.

'Indiana, let it go'

In a recent interview George Lucas said "Indiana Jones 4" is still in development, but not exactly on the horizon. He says he and Steven Spielberg are still trying to come up with something everyone in involved can agree on.

That's the same line we've been hearing for the last...I've lost track of how many years. At one point this was supposed to be out in 2005 to dovetail with "Star Wars: Episode III." Now we're in the latter part of 2006 and Lucas saying they're about a year away from being ready to shoot.

I'm getting tired of hearing about this movie that's never going to happen. They really need to just let this one go.

Foleygate: a dramatic reading

As if the slipping support for the war wasn't enough, this Mark Foley perv might just single handedly (no pun intended) swing the House to the left. Yeah, it's not looking too good for the GOP.

I don't blame you if you don't want to read the transcript of Foley's IM converstion with a Capitol page. You might feel like you need a shower afterward.

Instead, check out this dramatic reading of selected excerpts...

Soccer season

I brought the camera to catch shots of the action at this past Saturday's soccer game. I just didn't get around to posting them until now.

I only shot stills this time. I'll try to grab some video at a future game. If you want video, you'll have to go back to the clip from last year with the crazy father completely overreacting to his son's goal.

Nolan scored two goals this past Saturday. Although he didn't even realize he scored one of them. It sort of ricocheted of his leg.

Of course we don't keep score at a soccer game for first graders. But if we did, the red team would have won 12-1. Just ask any of the kids--they all keep track!

Google World

Google is slowly taking over my life. As you can see, I use Blogger (a Google product) to run this site. I use Gmail for my primary, non-work e-mail. I keep track of my schedule on Google Calendar. I have a Google personalized homepage. And I'm completely addicted to keeping track of all of my feeds on Google Reader.

Granted, I prefer YouTube to Google Video.

So what portion of my life will Google insidiously weave it's way into next?

My post-season pledge

Good afternoon and welcome to post-season baseball. Before we get started, I'm making a pledge right now not to whine (at least not here) about the Fox coverage or the late start of the games like I do every year.

If you want my thoughts on those issues, here are the old links:

• Damn delays
• Post season baseball
• Celebrity sightings
• Play-byplay, Fox style
• MLB's Late-Late Show

Power suit

Am I the only geek that finds it ironic that there is a news piece about Japanese scientists creating a "power suit" that augments someone's strength on the same day the news breaks that Robert Downey Jr. will star in the new "Iron Man" movie?

What happened to T.O.?

It seems most people are abandoning the notion that Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens attempted suicide and are embracing his explanation that he had a bad reaction after mixing pain medication with supplements.

T.O., who was back at practice today, says he was out of it and didn't know what he was saying when police responding to the 911 call from his publicist, Kim Etheredge, asked him if he was trying to hurt himself. They say he answered “Yes.”

Granted, that possibility was one of the first things I suggested upon hearing the breaking news yesterday morning. Everyone else is now on board, but this time I'm the one who's not so sure.

Here's the sticking point: the police report. It says Ethridge told police he was depressed and that he apparently swallowed most of his prescription.
Etheredge and T.O. flatly denied that yesterday. So were the police just making this stuff up? That's what they'd have you think. Here's what Etheredge said yesterday:

“I am just upset that I just feel they take advantage of Terrell,” she said. “Had this been someone else, this may not have happened.”

Yes, everyone is out to get poor T.O. Here is the response today from a representative of the Dallas police union:

“The officers reacted because they were called to this location to do this job. Now they're being put under a microscope by some fancy little football person,” Senior Cpl. Glenn White said. “Give me a break. Those officers are 10 times better than this man. ... We police officers don't go out to these calls and make stuff up.”

I'm not saying I believe T.O. attempted suicide. I'm merely not dismissing the possibility.

People are saying that it makes no sense that someone would try to kill himself one day and be out tossing footballs and acting like nothing is wrong the next. Um, hello?!? That's textbook bipolar disorder.

Again, I'm not saying he definitely tried to kill himself or that he is bipolar—just that it's possible. Either way, I do believe that something much fishier than a random allergic reaction happened at T.O.'s house Tuesday.

UPDATE: Here's CBS correspondent Armen Keteyian with another take on the T.O. drama.

Free popcorn

My never-ending quest for free stuff brings us to the Dale and Thomas Popcorn company (by way of PLANET3RRY).

It seems October is National Popcorn Month and they're celebrating the occasion by giving away bags of what they describe as "the most mothwatering, munchy and crunchy popcorn you've ever had."

Granted, you need to send them $2.95 for shipping to get your free popcorn.