all kinds of madness and badness in the nba's eastern conference has this preview looking kind of wretched right now, but that's not what i want to talk about. i watched the lakers beat the spurs last night with the kind of team effort that didn't seem possible on a kobe-led team. the lakers team defense in particular was excellent, and i'm willing to give them the 4 seed in the west and kick the clippers to the curb. bye bye, clippers.

week 14 in the nfl is over. of these playoff teams, let's count how many suck:
1) the broncos
2) the steelers
3) the panthers
4) the giants
5) the vikings
6) (arguable) seattle

and now let's look at the previous weekends results: miami beat new england 21-0, buffalo beat the previously resurgent new york football jets 31-13, the cardinals beat the seahawks 27-21... like i told geoff, if anyone can beat anyone over a 16 game schedule, nothing really means anything. it boils down to luck, or something similar to that. college football has an even shorter schedule, but the good teams are consistently good - the buckeyes (or any team with double digit wins, for that matter) isn't about to lose to some 5-7 chump team qb'd by joey harrington, let alone some 3-9 perennial joke of a team. of course, the winning team's records are pretty meaningless too - both the dolphins and the cardinals (continuing with my two examples) left wins on the table (the bears are who we thought they were, etc).

basically, in today's nfl, no team is truly good, and only the browns are truly bad. great. anyways, lets see where this all goes.

saw "casablanca" for the first time on saturday night. it is pretty intimidating to experience these famous lines/scenes for the first time... maybe intimidating isn't the right word, but it's pretty something, that's for sure. the movie was incredible; it lived up to the hype in every way. the final turn, which i sort of saw coming, still left me surprised and happy. so it was 10pm on saturday night and both jen and i were semi-drunk and not too sleepy. what to do? why, put on "rushmore" of course, a movie jen had never seen and i haven't watched in a criminally long time.

of course, "rushmore" is also excellent. it's sad how much wes anderson's earlier and later work all pales in comparison. the only downside is cat stevens is now on repeat in my brain.

i have been playing pretty much every 360 game i own and goal! for the nes, but they all will take second stage tomorrow. the new zelda comes out on the gamecube tomorrow, 3 weeks after its release for the (fucking) wii. i have quite the video game plan lined up, with zelda being purchased tomorrow from circuit city (37.99 instead of 49.99), rainbow six being purchased in a week from circuit city (47.99 instead of 59.99), and a possible marvel: ultimate alliance purchase in early '07. possibly.

i'd like to ramble on but i don't have much of anywhere else to go. check the photoblog, as always.