jen and i went to the avalon last night and caught clap your hand say yeah and architecture in helsinki. jen really dug AIH. they were kind of phish/rusted roots meets pet sounds meets new york city, i think. surprisingly catchy, not all that interesting to me.
after their performance, however, clap your hands seemed almost like a straightforward rock band, which ... is insane. some of the people standing behind us were really loud and obnoxious, but other than that, the show delivered. i mean, nothing spectacular, not incredibly crisp like dredg was, but still, the 5 songs of theirs i liked were good.
the thing that was wack was that they all looked like they were in their 30s. the lead singer had a serious receding hairline. i had imagined them as 23-24 bohemian types, but instead i got, as zach put it, "middle-aged accountants."
time to do the nfl thing, since it is so f'n fun. not a great weekend for my picks, but i'm still alive in the survivor pool, which is more than i can say for 4 of the 7 participants. it was hairy for a while, but miami pulled it out. ok, on to my playoff picks.
afc
indy - didn't see what happened in this game at all, but beating that jacksonville team is an accomplishment. well done indy. holding them to 14 points with that defense was also nice, but again, i have no idea how they did that.
pats - ok, consider me f'n nervous. offense looked like shit. i saw the herald last night, and their headline was along the lines of "the afc east is already locked up, so brady has all year to fix whatever is going on." this annoyed me, until i thought about how the pats are 2-0 in the east and the bills lost to the jets on sunday. so, i guess they're close to correct. still, losing the denver at home is brutal, especially considering that denver's offense was not world beaters in weeks one and two.
bengals - big, big win. overcame mistakes and sloppy play and pulled it out. went a LONG way towards winning the central.
broncos - someone had to make the pats look bad on offense - well done broncos defense, and way to make just enough plays to win the game against a very tough defense that played mostly very well (other than the javon walker TD, i think). this win doesn't do as much for me as it should have, though. still nervous about them broncos.
steelers - look out for the ravens (who sucked and barely beat the browns, but whatever) - the steelers need to run off a few wins badly.
chargers - bye, i think.
nfc
panthers - WAY. TOO. CLOSE. fuck.
seattle - hot damn that was a fun first half. and hot damn that was a bad second half. no alexander hurts a lot, but with those WRs and hasselbeck, it may not matter.
eagles - i still love the eagles to win the nfc east. they did nothing to hurt that feeling last weekend.
bears - that bears-vikings game was pretty gutty huh? grossman showed some mettle despite making a terrible mistake. think about that - how often does a qb make as terrible a mistake as grossman did (reminiscent of ainge against lsu last year) and then bounce back IN THE SAME GAME and make a huge throw PERFECTLY to win the game? i think thats pretty rare, and it does speak to the maturity of rex grossman.
giants - dear giants, your defense sucks complete ass even though i touted it as good. mainly your secondary. please fix it if you want to make the playoffs. regards, niv.
vikings - losing at home to the bears pretty much locks up second place in the division, i think. still, this team has been surprisingly good.
surprises
are there allowed to be surprises this deep into the season? well, i'm surprised by how bad tampa and detroit are... and hot damn the saints might be for real. i know, high emotion and all that, but 23-3 ROLLING of the previously indestructable falcons? that saints defense looked very good, and the offense does enough, for sure. for real? i don't know. but good and surprising, yes. and my week 3 surprise in the afc has to be the brownies, despite their heartbreaking loss to the ravens. i really want to take the browns@oakland in my survivor pool this week.
thanks for indulging me.
child stars
1059-september27-2006
comments
re: my thoughts
from: ken (2006-09-28 18:41:29)
while paralleling thad's thoughts, i keyed in mostly on dillon being out after the first drive. Our first posession dillion ran for 1, 1, and 10 yards in 3 downs... so obviously he could've broken through more. The problem was after he went out we ran maroney like 3 times total the rest of the game. Going vs good linebackers and champ bailey on one side and lawyer milloy on the other as SS, our passing game had problems until they lost their other corner to injury and gabriel/brady got that one drive going.
and we still could've been in the game if the defense got turnovers, but denver's qb (whos name i'm blanking on) actually passed well, so it didnt happen.
re: jake plummer!
from: niv (2006-09-29 08:27:50)
the name you were looking for, kenneth.
and yeah despite that terrible showing the pats are most certainly in the afc east driver's seat, which is nice.
re: football
even though mike shanahan can't figure out how to stop indianapolis to save his life, the man simply owns belichick/brady like no one else in football. brady is now like 1-5 against him, i think, and that one was in that crazy comeback game when the pats took the intentional safety so they could punt from the 20 instead of out of the end zone to get better field position after the defense got a stop.
i figured the pats would probably get the #2 seed in the afc this year cause their schedule is so damn easy. now i think it'll be more like #3 or 4, since the bengals (and chargers/broncos) look pretty frisky, but there's still at least 11 wins in their schedule. though i do think they lose by 10+ at cincy this weekend.
but yeah, i'm worried about the offense, but the headline is correct in my view. if this was like week 15, i'd be scared, but there's still 14 weeks left in the regular season. chad jackson's only played 1 game, and looked pretty good in that game, and doug gabriel started to have something with brady in the no-huddle i think. not having dillon for most of the game didn't help the running game either. and denver's d is pretty damn good too, i think... those linebackers plus champ bailey equals tough times.
anyways, no one but ken cares about this, so i'll wrap it up. i look at it kind of like i look at last year's team, where the defense struggled mightily when some key guys went down, then as they played more together they figured shit out, and when a few guys came back the defense was excellent down the stretch. so maybe a similar story for the offense this year.