Edwin MacPhisto

My mom did buy them for me. Shit's amazing. No matter what you make in them, the food comes out without leaving anything behind. Domesticity rules.

As I say every year, I love these stupid pieces of shit, the most pretentious crappy horror films ever conceived. Superb. It's always good to see Dinocroc's Costas Mandylor getting steady work.

Yeah, that's a terrible, terrible twist. That, and having Papa Petrelli show up, reminds me of the 6th season of 24, when suddenly a character from a previous season was Jack Bauer's seditious brother. Oh, and then Jack Bauer's dad got involved. There were a ton of ways to get Sylar to trust and be protective of Mama Petrelli that were less trite than "oh you're mah mom."

I have a pair of great baking dishes, one large and one small-medium, so I usually make two lasagnas at once. I usually do something similar to Agent's cottage cheese recipe for the smaller one. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I hate the texture of cottage cheese, but the flavor's pretty solid; once it's all melted, you don't have to worry about texture anyway. Marv, I think an alfredo sauce might be a little heavy unless you dial back on the ricotta--I'd like it in small doses, but that seems a little excessively rich even by lasagna standards.

Because Malcolm McDowell wanted to remodel his bathrooms.

1. One would assume an emphasis on defense, given that he's been an LBs coach in various capacity since 2003, but can you really remold a defense in the middle of a 2-5 season? I don't see much changing, except louder cheers and proclamations of "the 9ers are back, baby!" from the fanbase when they beat the Seahawks or something. 2. I still think Indy's in decent shape, even with a loss on Monday. It looks like 10 wins will be good for a spot in the AFC and they can get there. It wouldn't leave them much room for error, though. 3. They're already in modest shit, but losing on Monday would be massively damaging. They'd need to beat the Giants heading into the bye to have a chance, and I don't like those odds if Romo's still out, after seeing how terribly the team executed last week. 4. I doubt it. The other football's the equivalent of little league baseball or high school football in the U.S. Too much cultural investment already to make room for another big one, I think. 5. Give the ball to Steven Jackson 47 times a game. As for the Patriots, put saline in Steven Jackson's apple juice. Their defense looked much improved last night, and they should be able to push the Rams into the same kind of self-destruction they did for the Broncos.

I want to give BJ Upton one of his namesakes for giving Boston sports fans another kick in the dick.

I usually starting listening to Chelsea Girl with the intent of playing only the first two tracks, but I nearly always go all the way through. Love it.

You could pretty easily preserve a lot of those rivalries by having a permanent game across divisions as well. In the SEC and ACC, every team has a cross-division rival they play every year; for example, FSU always plays Miami, Georgia always plays Auburn, etc. The disadvantage there is that you get fewer games against the rest of the division, but the advantage is that you don't have a Big XII scenario where Nebraska and OU don't always play. I'd rather see 6 or 7 beautiful 10-team leagues that follow the Pac-10's round-robin schedule, but we'll never go back now that we've got mega-conferences.

Ooh, BCS and title game stuff! I agree that it's early, but yeah, still fun. Since I'm still buzzing from today's games, I'll put out what is, to me, the most intriguing BCS scenario. I was discussing this with one of my best buddies earlier today, and we couldn't quite figure out an answer. Texas wins out, and stays #1. Florida wins out, beating Georgia, Vandy, FSU, and then Alabama in the SEC championship. Penn State wins out, but Ohio State and Michigan State lose some more games, finishing, say 9-3 and 8-4 respectively. Do the clout of the SEC and victories over several 1- and 2-loss teams propel Florida into the title game? It sounds slightly ridiculous--an undefeated BCS team should always go in over a 1-loss team, right?--but Ohio State has pretty much singlehandedly killed the big-stage rep of the conference, and the SEC's performance against the Big Ten in the last two title games has certainly built a particular perception. If you really end up with wins over 10-2 Georgia, 12-1 Alabama, 10-2 LSU, 8-4 Vandy, and 9-3 FSU, could that compensate for the 1 loss? I lean towards "no, it wouldn't," but would love to see something that potentially apocalyptic play out, to really see how much weight strength-of-schedule has versus the big, beautiful 0 in the loss column.

Holy shit, UVA did it. 16-13, OT. UNC still hasn't won in Charlottesville since '81. I cannot believe they pulled that off the way that one looked to be slipping away from them. Thank you, Butch Davis, for taking a knee at your own 20 with 47 seconds to go, instead of trying to win the game.

Evan Royster gently replies HI.

How about the slow, sad destruction of Wisconsin? Shonn Greene is taking them on a tour of the bitchmaking factory. If they can't turn it around against Iowa today, I think we have to stop calling them stuff like "the best 0-3 team in Big Ten history" and more like "a surprisingly crappy team."

This is very true. For the most part, Johnson's been a very steady coach this year, sticking with his scheme and not making rash decisions. It'll cost them a few games this year when they do need a big play or when the defense solves the triple option, but as the scheme becomes more and more a part of Georgia Tech football, they should get stronger and stronger. He walked into a very good situation for installing a new offensive scheme: no matter what you're running on offense, or what square pegs you're trying to jam into round and triangle-shaped holes, that defensive line will give you a lot of leeway.

Maryland's black jerseys are pretty much the worst take on the concept. The yellow piping is just awful. Also, Dabo Swinney's prep for his first game as head coach seems to have consisted of watching Varsity Blues and The Replacements. Failed trick plays everywhere.

I guess my natural reactions of "wait till you have more money to buy it or it goes on sale" or "choose the 2 games you like most and buy those" just doesn't apply here. I'm not exactly an advocate for Walmart or Toys R Us, but I have a hard time thinking of something more dirt-ass and trashy than pulling a fast one on some chubby, poorly washed customer service guy. Actually, being that guy is probably a little worse.

I never cease to be amused by the various "buy a game and return it...OR TAKE IT TO WALMART!!!" schemes, and the fallout when it doesn't go right. You guys really that hard up for cash that you have to steal a videogame?

THURSDAY BYU SATURDAY Georgia Tech Northwestern Wisconsin Wake Forest Georgia Ohio State Oklahoma Pittsburgh Stanford Kansas State Texas LSU Virginia Tech Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Missouri/Texas game? 51 Tiebreak #2: How many rushing yards will Michigan State's Javon Ringer have against Ohio State? 121

Agreed. With human votes accounting for a full 2/3 of the results, there's enough influence there to override pretty much anything the computers say. The so-called "human love-fest" for USC won't keep up if teams like Florida, Georgia, and any of the Big XII south contenders keep beating other ranked teams. You saw Florida jump Georgia and Texas jump Alabama this week, and I expect you'll see more of the same as the season progresses. It should be shaken up every week based on performance, but there certainly seems to be a significant accounting for body of work at season's end now.

I argue: gooder thread.

The best part about it is how the announcer's insistent on making it sound like he had no choice but to flee Jared Allen, despite Allen sort of ambling around 5 yards away when Orlovsky's cleats hit paint.

1a. In a vacuum, no. When they have much greater needs at CB than receiver, and for what they gave up? Oh yeah. 1b. I don't think so, unless they were really expecting him to finish the year. He was worth a shot considering the low-stakes of the deal. 1c. No, and I still actually think they have a great chance at winning the NFC East. I'll reserve judgment until seeing ol' man Brad play, but right now I can't see them going worse than 2-1 before Romo gets back. 2. Bears in Week 9, Colts in Week 15. SUCK IT, AGENT. 3. I'm thinking the 49ers finish right at .500, 1 or 2 games behind the Cardinals. 4. Ryan Grant by a mile. Then again, I didn't really have monster expectations for Addai going into this year. If Addai's good to play this week, I think he has a great day. Packers have getting plowed on the ground all year, admittedly by bigger backs, but enough that I'll call it a win for him. Grant just can't get anything going; he had 90 yards last week, but was under 3 yards per carry. I think that hamstring is worse than advertised, or he's spending his new contract money on heroin and chubby hookers. 5. The Browns that whipped the Giants, but the Browns that still lose to the Redskins by a smidge.

Dallasnews.com says that the Cowboys are getting a 7th rounder back as well, but really? A first and a third for Roy Williams? Brutal.

Never, if your team already lost an important game!

That'd just be crazy stupid, as it would completely defeat the purpose of conference play. But, as Bored pointed out, the Big XII works the same as all the other conferences anyway. Over in ACC country, there are actually two pretty important low-profile games. Virginia, who has rediscovered the concept of "scoring points," hosts UNC, and Wake's at Maryland. UNC'll be favored, but they haven't won in Charlottesville since 1981 and just lost receiver Brandon Tate for the year. As a Virginia guy who's long seen the difference between Al Groh teams at home (surprising) and Al Groh teams on the road (vomitous), this one looks appetizing. The Maryland game means a little more for Maryland than it does for Wake, although more or less eliminating another challenger in the Atlantic would be big for the Deacons this early in the year. If Maryland loses, they fall into the same 2-game and a tiebreak hole Clemson's in, pretty much ending their shot. Finally, let's take a look at Minnesota for a second. After upsetting Illinois, they're 6-1 and bowl-eligible. This is after a 1-11 season that was worse than the record showed. Their competition's mostly been crap, but last year they were getting thumped by crap. They miss Penn State this year and have Purdue, Michigan, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Iowa to close things out. Can you imagine a very possible 9-3 after last season? Monster turnaround, even if they eke out only two more wins.