Time to put some gas back into this beast and get another edition up. I'm feeling that I'm getting back into the groove a bit. Fall has hit, it's football weather and you might as well relax by reading some useless words of wisdom that I type up. Well, unless you have better things to do, which honestly, you probably do, but I appreciate you coming to the Madhouse to hang out for a few. What will we breakdown in this post? Fantasy sports (imagine that being a topic in here), movie reviews, my trek to a Mounties game as a Notre Dame fan, Frontier Days in the big town, busting out the FBI 5K, and a whole lot more!
I'll start out with a movie review. I don't want to lose the non-sports fans so quick. I've been slacking on my movies lately and hope to get back on the scene to give reviews. Not that I'm a critic or anything, far from it, it's just something to do. Last weekend's movie of choice was Whitney's turn to hit up Redbox. Her pick? Something Borrowed. I actually liked this one and think it is worthy of a watch. If you don't know this one, it's the latest Kate Hudson movie. No appearances from A-Rod though about their breakup. Kate's second in this movie is Colin Egglesfield who plays the character Dex and does a good job with that. It's not a big name movie as far as huge known talent if that's something that sells you right away. Ginnifer Goodwin is in this. I didn't know much on her before, but the long haired version of Goodwin isn't too shabby at all in my opinion. The movie isn't 100% as predictable as you'd think and there are a few little turns. I'll give this a rank of 7.0 girls that A-Rod has slept with out of 10.
As most know I'm a Notre Dame football fan. I don't go crazy on my stance, but most also know where I stand on not being a WVU football fan. It is what it is and I don't really get into crazy arguments or bash WVU fans, I'm just a ND guy. For the crew not in our area, ND has a decent fan base mainly in Clarksburg/Shinnston/Fairmont due to the Italian/Catholic connections, but you can probably find them anywhere. I've been to a bunch of WVU basketball games, but this past weekend was probably my third or fourth WVU football ever. I know, that's a surprise to some with me being a sports fan and you don't have to twist my arm to watch a game, minus WNBA of course.
This was actually my first WVU football game since 1996 that I attended. Yep, true story. Which game was that? TheAnswer remembers this one like the back of his hand, AKA the Tremain Mack Game. WVU was undefeated during this game and led 7-3 with 30 seconds left. WVU had to punt, Mack blocked it and then hit a lateral to a teammate who scores a touchdown for the win. Tons of controversy on this play as some argue Mack was offsides as well as another violation. I was in the second deck during this and at the end of the game, I see liquor bottles and golf balls flying in the air at the Miami coaches. The WVU fans were fired up while TheAnswer was at home partying. As an added stat, this was my first game up there without The Pit where I've seen cars tipped over and all kinds of wild stuff. The younger crew missed out on that action.
The tailgate setup in Morgantown is legit though and the fans are rabid. It's a tough place for a road team to come into, I've always said that. LSU was just on another level this day, which is understandable since they're one of the top teams in the country and rocked it out. Their fans were classy people too, we had fun chatting it up with them. I do think Geno is the real deal and has a good shot at being a pro quarterback down the line, guess only time will tell. WVU's offense looked good, but I can't say the same about their defense and even worse for special teams. At least they don't make 55 turnovers a game like my Irish do, so it all evens out in the end. Food galore and the Posey Tailgate was the place to be. Corndog's boy Landau Murphy of America's Got Talent fame did the anthem and the poor guy didn't do a great job at all. He sounds great on the show, but when I saw he was holding his ear pieces from the start, I knew it was bad news ahead. They didn't show this on TV apparently which sort of surprised me. I did have a great experience and enjoyed myself and liked where our seats were, not a bad seat in that place. The only negative was getting out of traffic, it was nuts. It took us 90 minutes to go about 2 blocks before we even got onto Patterson Drive to move a bit.
Let's switch it up a bit and get to the running scene. I was due for a 5K, so this was my first attempt at the FBI's version. This is by far the biggest 5K of my area and not sure why I haven't done that one before. First off, there were over 500 people at this and it was serious and very well organized. It was a challenging course and had a few hills, so I was advised to add a few minutes to my normal 5K time on a flat course to this one and in the end, that sounded about right. My time was 26:01 on this course and I was satisfied with that. I ran this one with Clay Riley who was on his game with 24:00 or so and BMO came in with a strong 28:00 range and #3 in the 50-55 age group, he's a beast.You had all levels of runners at this as you'd expect with that many participants, but I highly recommend this race next year if you want one to try. October 15th may be my next one, but haven't committed to anything yet. On that day, there are two in the area. At 9:00 in the morning, Nate Dogg will have the Shinnston trail packed like no other with runners. Then that night, Fairmont is trying a new thing with a Night Glow 5K as they call it. Apparently you run the 5K with glow sticks, rave style. Who knew? I may have to give that one a try just because. Then on Thanksgiving morning, Shinnston's race of all races, the infamous Turkey Trot. If you don't hit that one up, you're straight missing out.
You probably don't care, but I'm going to fill the world in on how my fantasy teams are doing. Fantasy golf ended recently and it was quite the battle. I've said before this is one of my favorite leagues. If you've never done golf and I don't even play golf in real life, I say try it out. It's a low key league with not a ton of maintenance so it's not going to consume your time or have your wives threatening to slice your head off. I came 2nd in our league this year as I just missed out on 1st, a crazy close race. Congrats are in order for none other than Kasher who comes away with the big trophy to hold over his head in the annual parade. Football? In the Shinnston Fantasy Football League, I'm currently 1-2-1. Yes, a tie in the mix there against Commish Sweet P and just lost to Pill by 3 points, that's a killer. This is the league that I've already lost Jamaal Charles and Headcase Britt for the season, that's a rough, but we gotta move on. The A#FL, League Lobstah? I'm 3-1 in that one, 2nd Place at the moment behind Blahah and have Tom Brady carrying the way as far as he can get me. Week 1 I was already eliminated in NFL Survival, terrible. I picked Slider's Browns and the Bungals of all teams beat them straight up.
In bigger news on the fantasy scene, the baseball season is over. In our infamous A#BL Lobstah league that features 18 of the internet's finest, it's a crazy competitive and deep league. It went down to the wire, but I was in the championship against Kris3, straight outta Arkansas. Kris3 has been a beast in this league for years and I knew I had my hands full. It literally went down to the final night and I pulled out the victory by the skin of my teeth in WHIP as a deciding factor. Party time in Shinnston! I'll be hoisting the trophy in the annual Lobstah Parade of Champions on a big float, location city yet to be determined, stay tuned.
The big town of Shinnston is always rocking. Quite the metropolis we are. Recently we had our annual Frontier Days, a blast from the past so to speak. You get the carnies and the whole works coming into town and doing their thing.. Nate Dogg has done a good job with organizing it the past few years, so I'll give him credit where it's due. Everyone has a little something different they might like about the setup. The local musicians, just hanging on the streets, greasy eats or taking the kiddies to the carnival rides. For myself? It's an easy answer to what I look forward to. Yep, the Demus crew selling their Italian sausage or steak hoagies is where it's at, yum!
How about another movie review? Sunday morning I woke up before 8:00 for some reason, but somewhat enjoyed that. Getting a big breakfast going, so I decided to pop in a movie. Two movies Whitney wanted to get were both out, so I made the decision to go Jason Statham style and get action in. I ended up getting Blitz out of the trusty Redbox machine. I'm a huge Statham guy anyways and didn't figure this could be bad, even with reviews not so awesome. It was a little slow for Statham's normal movies, but it was worth the watch. The ending was very well done. Not as good as his usual movies, but I'm going to give this one 6.5 bullets to the face from point blank distance out of 10. There wasn't a big name cast to go with this one, but I did like the roles of Aiden Gillen who played Blitz, Paddy Considine who was Porter Nash and Ned Dennehy as Radnor.
New season of Real World started up last week, who's in? It may have been played out years ago for some, but I'm still on this train since the first year back in the day. This version is in San Diego, one of Matty Cakes and Kari's favorite cities to hit up. The first episode was promising and we could have some decent drama going down. Last season's in Vegas I gave a thumbs up to for sure, but the one before that in New Orleans maybe not so much. A quick rundown is that we have Alexandra (lives with boyfriend, graduated high school at 14, genius level), Ashley (the oldest of this crew at 24 and the model type), Frank (bisexual dude who already is in tons of drama and has great anger for TV), Nate (the typical frat boy), Priscilla (the youngest at 19 and lives in San Diego and first time away from home), Sam (the lesbian of this bunch and looks like a 12 year old boy), and last we have Zach (footballer of the gang, listed at 6'3" but next to the rest of them he looks 6'9"). The main drama storyline of the first week is that Frank wants Alex, but she doesn't want him as something more than a friend. He blew up out of nowhere and started beating on stuff and the whole deal. This guy is a loose cannon, can't help but see what's going to happen next.
It's been said all over and this may not be the perfect spot for it, but my prayers go out to the Mills and Larry families for the terrible cancer news on Monday night. I can't even imagine how tough that has to be, especially for someone as young as Matty who always seemed to be in a good mood and everyone enjoyed him. We can always say that the suffering is gone and while that's true, it's still brutal news for a family to go through. We've all been affected by cancer and it's a horrible horrible thing obviously, just keep your thoughts out there for each of these families.
Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This comes to us from the great Kasher, straight out of Montreal. It's a short clip, but a goodie. Surfer Talk supreme. This guy is a goofball, but definitely worthy to make the blog:
3 Quick Thangs:
1. How about the local Cougs? 4-1 and beat Grafton on Friday for Homecoming? I've not been to a football game in a few years, but good to see the boys rocking it out. Plus, supposedly there was a streaker at the game who was wearing a wrestling mask. I crashed early that night and people on Twitter were saying it was me, good stuff. I wish I could take credit, but that wasn't my doing.
2. Roughly one month until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3! November 8th, be there. Bird33WV on 360.
3. Time to end with some quick and random facts. Children apparently grow faster in the springtime.. The elephant is the only animal with four knees.. Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.. One in 5000 North Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue. There ya go, see you folks next time.
