Bi-weekly grumblings

I'll start with Notre Dame news and then get to less important matters later.

It's mid-November, and for the first time in about a decade, our football team is still worth obsessing over - but don't let that completely distract you from the fact that the Notre Dame Basketball team is set to kick off its season too. The past 2 (or 4, if you're being technical and count "undefeated" George O'Leary and interim Kent Baer) football coaches have allowed me to focus more intently on the full season of Irish Hoops, including previous pre-season games against The EA Sports All Stars and the bad guys from Space Jam.

Right along with the Irish ballers, it's the start of the season for the Leprechaun Legion. Haven't heard of them? You can read about them here, here, here, or here, or believe this synopsis: They're kind of like the Cameron Crazies of Duke, but in addition to giving out spirit and cheers, they also give out opposing player cell phone numbers and criminal records. Each year, they create a shirt that they give to all of the students and then sell through the bookstore, with all proceeds going to Coaches vs. Cancer (though you already know that if you followed the above links). Anyway, there's this year's shirt, it's in the bookstore now and should be available for purchase online soon (ndbookstore.com, but promise me you won't buy this).



Ok, enough marketing. Now we turn to entertainment:


The rest of this post will focus on my review of the movie "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."


Those of you not lucky enough to have a high school Physics teacher who lets you watch claymation in class probably haven't encountered this duo before. They are basically the funniest two characters on the planet that people of any age can watch (now that Sponge Bob is apparently gay). The reason you don't know who they are is because they were originally a British program, and most Americans pretty much ignore everything British ever since we got burned on the Spice Girls. We also ignore everything Canadian too (formerly part-British), so you'll likely never be introduced to the sheer genius that is The Red Green Show. Here, look at this US Map. Canada's not even there! It's all Ocean!

But anyway, back to the movie. I came in with high expectations, and those were all blown away. The thing is amazing from start to finish, has multiple levels of humor for each age group, and manages to captivate audiences without a single mention of sports, politics, Paris Hilton, Ryan Seacrest, or the O.C.

On a scale of 1-10, I wanted to rate it a 50, but after consulting with some math-major friends of mine I found out this wasn't possible. The theoretical upper limit for a 1-10 scale is only 38.3, and so that's where it rates for me.



That's it for tonight, so I'll leave you with a sort of disturbing image I found on ebay: Yoda thinks you're #1, if you know what I mean.




P.S. The University of Washington Football site actually has a direct link to the national rankings. Let's see, the 2-8 Huskies are right... no, must be lower......nothing yet.....nearing the bottom.....hmm, must have missed them. My mistake, I'll check again.