I like…

New York Magazine’s Vulture blog took it upon themselves to list the Top 10 Video game movies that haven’t been made yet and even picked directors to make them. Wouldn’t you want to see a Michel Gondry Tetris flick?

The Indianapolis Star has a nice piece about IU wideout James Hardy and his relationship with Coach Hep.

I don’t like…

Indianapolis Star columnist, and IU alum, Bob Kravitz writes today he thinks IU needs to bring interim head coach Bill Lynch on permanently.  I blogged about this last week and when I saw this story on my newsreader, I didn’t realize it was a column and thought they had made, what I believe to be, the decision that could bury this program once and for all. I don’t think Kravitz is close enough to this program for his opinion to be valid, in my opinion. I doubt very seriously that he caught Lynch’s bad clock management at the end of the game at Northwestern. I think he is seeing the end product and giving all the credit to Bill Lynch and not enough credit to what’s really at the heart of the Hoosiers 6-4 record: their weak non-conference and conference schedule. 

Strolling down the aisles this afternoon on a quick trip to my neighborhood Publix and what’s playing over the store PA…. Spoon.

Hey, I’ll gladly pay a $1.00 more on two things of milk if I get to listen to Spoon while I do it.

Well, rumor has it, Alex Rodriguez is close to signing a 10-year, $275 million dollar deal to stay in Pinstripes and I am baffled.

Admittedly, I don’t particularly care ever about baseball but this story has really grabbed my attention. Here’s a chronology of events for those of you who have been living in a cave or, like me, pay little attention to baseball and most baseball-related news items. A-Rod and his agent decide to upstage the World Series by announcing that he was opting out of his deal with the Yanks and was going to test the free agent market. Rodriguez and agent A-Rod were combing for a deal worth $350 million, meanwhile, everyone with an opinion was taking a swing at the MVP and just bashing the living daylights out of the public image of one of sports’ most image-conscious athletes. Hank Steinbrenner, George’s little boy who’s calling the shots in the Bronx now, came out and said he didn’t want Rodriguez and anyone else who “didn’t want to be a Yankee.” Rodriguez reminds his agent that he works for A-Rod and not the other way around and calls the Yankees and here we are. Rumor has it a deal is close.

Why is this deal happening?

Rodriguez has shown a completely inability to a) share the spotlight with teammate Derek Jeter and b) performs when it matters. In New York, you could be the greatest regular season player in the game, which Rodriguez has often been, but if you come out and are awful in the playoffs, which Rodriguez has often been, the fans and the press will be screaming for you to be sent down to Columbus.

For fans, I think we can look forward to at least another decade of Yankees fans booing A-Rod and A-Rod being seen coming out of strip clubs and reportedly dating girls who could pass for trannies and the Yankees coming into the playoffs and A-Rod batting .098 and the fans booing A-Rod again. I don’t know why the Yankees or A-Rod would put themselves through this all over again. It doesn’t seem worth it to sign the regular season’s best player and annual playoff turkey to a 10-year-deal when it’s been shown that Gotham’s brightest spotlight gets a little too hot for the game’s most valuable and most gutless player.

My girlfriend broke the news to me last night. Tonight would be the last episode of The Office until further notice. I knew that they had shut down production on the show last week but I had no idea that the impact of the WGA strike would be felt so immediately. But here we are. Tonight is the last half-hour episode for a while, it would appear. I hope it’s half as good as last week’s Survivor Man episode which left me in tears.

TV Guide has an updated list of how many episodes of every Network show we have left.

I like…

Chef Traci Des Jardins prepared recipes for a Thanksgiving menu with wine parings for Epicurious and in return she wants to ask homecooks to request that their diners donate money to America’s Second Harvest, a national food bank that helps 9 million families annually.

Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen gives the Heroes graphic novel collective a B-.Glad I didn’t buy it.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tony Barnhart thinks Georgia fans would be crazy to hope that Tennessee makes the SEC Championship to practically guarantee the Dawgs a trip to a BCS Bowl.

The AJC also has a good piece on UGA coach Mark Richt transforming into the football version of Bruce Pearl.

ESPN’s Todd McShay has a list of the top 10 freshmen in college football.

 Chefs to Know.

I don’t like…

The writers’ strike may cause the final season of Scrubs to air without a series finale.

New York Magazine’s Vulture blog has some disturbing information about NBC’s “Create a Hero” feature on the Heroes site.

..about the WGA strike is in this video with journalist, author Neal Pollack and his five-year-old son Elijah from offsprung.com.

For more strike related hijinx, head on over to www.lateshowwritersonstrike.com, for a hilarious blog written on the picket lines by the writers from the Late Show with David Letterman.

So I watched last night’s episode of Heroes, “Four Months Ago,” the much-anticipated rewind episode and I would have to agree with Entertainment Weekly’s Marc Bernardin when he says that had this episode been the season 2 premiere, the show wouldn’t have been put on sharkwatch. The episode is far from perfect but it’s done more to advance the plot and the character’s storylines (save the wondertwins, Maya and Alejandro, who we’ll get to in a minute) in an interesting way than any episode we’ve seen so far.

After seeing the trailer and read the tease on the NBC website for next week, we have been assured of two things:  1) Agendas will clash and 2) A hero will die. In the interest of pure speculation (and hope), I’ve assembled a small list of the characters this show needs to kill off in an expeditious manner.

Nikki/Jessica/Gina - Ali Larter

In a show where people can travel through time, heal instantly, fly and move things with their mind, someone with multiple personality disorder isn’t really going to seem all that interest. And it hasn’t. This character is one of my whipping boys from season 1 and with the introduction of a third personality, I can only roll my eyes that Nikki/Jessica/Gina hasn’t kicked the bucket yet. This character is profoundly uninteresting and whenever Larter appears on the screen, I go somewhere else. I also thought *SPOILER ALERT* DL’s death in this week’s episode was a TERRIBLE way to send off a character that has been at the center of this character arch. It was fast, easy, and cheap.

Elle - Kristen Bell

I get where the writers and Kristen Bell are trying to take this character and I’ll have to disagree with Bernardin when he says that Bell is missing the mark by “this much.” She’s missing it by a whole lot more than that. This character is probably the most cliché, trite character on the show. I also disagree that Bell’s Elle is fun to watch. It’s anything but. It’s like being electrocuted, slowly.

Maya and Alejandro - Dania Ramirez, Shalim Ortiz

I almost feel bad about this one because it’s too easy but the writers have really made me do this. For weeks now, since we were introduced to the death-tear crying Maya and her sponge of a brother, Alejandro, we have wondered what the story was with these two and for weeks, the writers have refused to tell us. But that hasn’t stopped them from showing us — over and over — what the pair can do. I’m wondering when the payoff is coming. Unfortunately, it’s not soon enough.

Sylar - Zachary Quinto

I thought it was really a regrettable decision when the show opted not to let season 1’s villain die in Kirby Plaza at the end of the season. The early part of this season has really reinforced that opinion for me. NBC bill’s Sylar in its promos as the hero America loves to hate. What about those of us who are indifferent and have moved on? There is so much going on in the show right now and so many character arches intersecting that to have Sylar crawl out onto the highway that the aforementioned Wondertwins happened to be driving on was really awful television. I wish they hadn’t brought Sylar back but now that he is, I guess viewers get to endure Quinto sneering like an idiot at the camera and his fellow actors for the next three weeks or so.

Mohinder - Sendil Ramamurthy

This character is kind of Heroes’ perfect storm. Awful writing meets really heavy-handed acting to make for one of the most gut-wrenchingly bad characters in the history of television. That may be a bit strong but I think no one would be sad if the hero to fall next Monday was the junior Suresh. Suresh’s flip-flopping about whether he was for or against The Company and the moral ambiguity of it all should have been interest but fell terribly flat. I know the show will have to find someone else to do its pseudo-profound voiceover narration at the beginning and end of every episode but this character needs to go.

I like…

Eric Gordon drops 33 in his debut for the Hoosiers last night.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradly says Georgia is every bit as tough as LSU.

Fanhouse has a funny take on the Missouri-Kansas border war.

Marvel is offering an archive of 2,500 back issues.. not for free but still pretty cool.  Lost creator Damon Lindelof has a list of what you should start with.

USAToday’s Beau Dure has devised a hypothetical playoff system.

I don’t like…

ESPN is stockpiling journalists.

The Michelin Guide gave zero stars to chef Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Las Vegas. Keller is the only American-born chef with two three-star Michelin restaurants to his credit (French Laundry and Per Se).

1. Oregon - The SEC, for the past five years, has been the best conference in America and certainly the most competitive but this year the Pac-10 is better and no one has more impressive wins, in conference and out, than Oregon.

2. LSU - Any national championship matchup that doesn’t include Les Miles and the Bayou Bengals would be something of a disappointing. Their defense is swarming and stifling but their offense is a little stagnant and boring and it really shouldn’t be given their personnel. This team is far from the unbeatable juggernauts many thought them to be early in the year.

3. Oklahoma -  Malcolm Kelly, DeMarco Murray and an up-and-coming quarterback in Sam Bradford is enough of a reason to feel good about Bob Stoops’ Sooners. But you really have to wonder how Oklahoma would compete against an explosive, quickstrike offense like Oregon’s given that they gave up 450 yards of total offense last week… to Baylor. I fully expect the Sooners to completely obliterate the Jayhawks should Kansas make it to the Big 12 Championship game and have a tougher go of things if Chase Daniels and Mizzou makes it to Kansas City in December.

4. Kansas -  No quality wins, none, zero. It is really hard for me to include Mark Mangino’s undefeated Jayhawks in the top 5 but given that they are the nation’s only remaining undefeated team, I feel obligated. I don’t believe in this team, not yet. One could argue that the only thing that closely resembles a quality win was their win on the road last week against an unranked Oklahoma State team. I don’t see the Jayhawks getting past Missouri this week in the Border War and should they luck their way into the Big 12 Championship, they have to play Oklahoma, still very much a contender for the national championship. Forget about it, KU fans.

5. Georgia - Some people might think I’m crazy for catapulting the two-loss Bulldogs ahead of so many other one-loss teams but I think Georgia’s for real. A team that was somewhat struggling to find its identity at the beginning of the year, dropping two bad losses to South Carolina and Tennessee, has come together in a big way. Matthew Stafford has developed into a fine quarterback, a little interception prone but fine and Knowshon Moreno is one of college football’s best running backs. If I were LSU, I would much prefer to see Tennessee cruising into Atlanta than Mark Richt and the resurgent Bulldogs defending the Georgia Dome.